Especially now. Now that he’d submitted his report to the colonel, which he’d finished before he’d hit the sack last night. A report that, the more he thought about it, the crazier it seemed. He’d opened it with his conclusion, a paragraph he remembered word for word:
Master Sergeant Rodgers’ Reaper GPS navigational system threw a 15-mile error at 23.37 on Jan 10. The error forced the autopilot to alter the aircraft’s course. Having checked the imagery from the Reaper’s file, at the time of the error the aircraft was seconds away from flying over an unmapped, modern facility of at least two buildings and a sizeable satellite dish. It is my belief that the Reaper was fed rogue navigational data to ensure that it didn’t discover the unmapped buildings.
It was madness. The conclusion threw up so many questions that he was unable to answer. How did someone (something?) manage to affect the Reaper’s GPS? Who would do it - and who had the technological knowhow to make that happen? And, what was the building complex they veered away from? There were many more.
He shook his head, banishing the madness. He focused on the traffic, searching for a safe place to cross. It was mid-afternoon. The road was quiet enough, but there were still vehicles to avoid. He checked over his shoulder. A red saloon, followed by a big Mack truck hauling a rusty-brown shipping container. No gap in the traffic yet.
Ahead of him were two cars, one a smart, silver-blue Mustang - the new model; the other a nondescript grey saloon. He couldn’t make it out. Behind them was a black GMC Savana. A big van with blacked-out windows. He couldn’t shake FBI surveillance from his head. He laughed to himself.
The Mustang and the second car drove past. The Savana slowed, as if it were about to turn across the traffic into the mall.
But it didn’t cross the traffic.
And it hadn’t slowed to make a turn. Rick was about to find out that the van had slowed for him.
The driver of the Savana pulled up at the exact moment Rick was level with the van’s sliding door. It was a neat bit of driving - they were both moving in opposite directions and it would have been easy to overshoot.
Rick was confused; his pace faltered.
Are they stopping for me? To ask me something? Maybe they’re lost?
None of those questions was the right one.
It happened in an instant. The sliding-door flew back. Before Rick could react to the man in the back of the Savana who was brandishing a handgun, it was too late.
Bang! Bang!
A double tap. Two shots in very close order. The second shot was higher than the first. Nobody can hold a handgun completely steady after a round has left the barrel. The barrel rises due to the explosive force from bullet’s cartridge, the gun pivoting on the firer’s wrist.
The first round hit Rick just below the rib cage and tore through his liver and left a six-inch hole in his back. It was a marker for the second round which was meant for the heart. But the shooter had miscalculated the effect that the stopping vehicle would have on his balance; he rocked a fraction. The shot went higher and further right than intended. It still hit Rick in the chest, but missed his heart by a couple of inches. Instead, it smashed through his rib cage, deflecting high right and exited through his shoulder. By then the round was tumbling and taking with it veins, bone, sinew and cartilage. The hole in his shoulder was wider and uglier than that from the first round. Fixing that would take twelve hours of surgery. And that’s only if he made it to the hospital before the combination of blood-loss and shock did for him.
The door of the Savana was slammed shut before Rick hit the pavement. The van sped off, quickly mixing into traffic. There were no other pedestrians to check on the van’s plate, and the noise of the two shots were similar to a large car backfiring. And this was Vegas. A couple of cars saw Rick fall to the ground, but drove past his body. They saw a scruffy black man who had been shot in broad daylight and made the wrong assumption that this was a gang killing.
Best not to get involved. The police will be here soon enough.
As Rick’s heart pumped half-a-pint of blood a minute onto the pavement the police didn’t turn up.
But an ambulance did. Within 90 seconds of the shooting. It had just left Sunrise Hospital and was heading for an old-folks’ home to taxi a patient for a check-up. As always, they were looking for business.
The driver saw a black man on the pavement in a pool of blood. Picking up a black man was always a risky call. Would he have insurance? The driver slowed the vehicle down to get a better look. Decent Nike trainers.
It’s worth a punt.
The Port of Harwich, UK
Sam gingerly drove the Golf off the ferry. It wasn’t her car, but she’d already grown to love it. She didn’t want to dent it, or scrape the undercarriage. She had this thing with possessions. All of her stuff was in good order - for its age. That’s because she looked after all of her stuff to within an inch of its life. It wasn’t necessarily because they had monetary value, or that they would be difficult to replace. It was mostly because everything she owned had its own personality. They had feelings. They depended on her to be looked after. And, if they were lost, some other lunatic would be responsible for making sure they were OK. And that wouldn’t do.
The Golf was in pristine condition. It had fewer than 6,000 kilometres on the clock - hardly run in. The leather seats smelt of recently-dead[RJ24] cow, and the switches clicked like they belonged to a precision instrument. And the engine - wow. She wasn’t a great driver. Wolfgang had been behind the wheel of his Dad’s Audi Quattro three years ago when they were being chased down by a BMW M3. Four-wheel drive muscle versus two-wheel drive brains. Wolfgang had driven the Quattro brilliantly. And after Sam had put a couple of rounds through the M3’s radiator grill, they had made a clean escape.
No, she wasn’t as good a driver as Wolfgang. But the Golf’s engine was incredibly eager, and very forgiving. So, after a couple of hours behind the wheel, she was beginning to feel like she was.
Sam managed the ferry’s ramps carefully, got through UK customs with surprising ease and pulled up on the first layby that presented itself on the A120. It was 2.30 in the morning, and dark. She needed to rest. Since yesterday afternoon’s phone call with Jane her mind hadn’t stopped whirring. Who was right? Wolfgang? Or the whole of the British intelligence service?
Was Mitchell dead? Was Stone a member of The Church of the White Cross? Or just an alcoholic - who also happened to be responsible for the British military?
Jane versus Wolfgang.
An interesting dilemma.
Wolfgang was a loaner - but a hugely capable one. A man who played the internet as well as he played his Höffner violin. A man on a mission, with the capacity and intellect to unearth and unpick the most well-hidden conspiracies.
Jane was an incredibly competent operator. And nobody second-guessed Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. But, Sam had been in the middle of that organisation. Experienced its flaws. Worked among many brilliant, but one or two fallible, people. And, 12 months ago, she and Jane had fallen out over a matter of principle. Whether or not the lives of thousands of Italians and tourists were more or less important than the status of a British-owned informant in the highest echelon of the Russian government. A man with so much reach, Vauxhall knew what the Russian premier was going to do before he made the decision.
Sam had sided with the thousands. Jane with the oligarch.
Whom should Sam trust now?
She picked up one of the mobiles that Wolfgang had given to her. She dialled his number.
It rang. And rang.
A muffled, ‘What? Who is this? Do you know what time it is?’
It was Wolfgang. She, not surprisingly for the time of day, had woken him.
For some reason Sam spoke quietly, as if not to wake Wolfgang further.
‘It’s me.’ Sam didn’t say anymore. She knew Wolfgang had a voice-recognition App on his phone which, in addition to the displayed number, allowed the receiver to verif
y the caller.
‘Hi. I was asleep.’
They had agreed not to use names. And speak in loose code where they could.
‘I know. Sorry. I have a dilemma.’
‘At this time of the morning. Surely, the answer is “sleep”, regardless of the other choices.’
Sam smiled to herself. Who said the Germans were humourless?
‘I spoke with my ex-boss. She reckons that the guy I saw in Austria is no longer with us. Confirmed. And that there’s no way the British military “higher-up” could be “with The Church”.’
There was silence for a couple of seconds. Sam couldn’t lose the image of Wolfgang probably snuggled up under a feather duvet with the apparition that was Inge. It made her stomach churn. She had no idea why.
Wolfgang was brighter now. ‘She’s wrong. You’ve seen the man - physically. And I’ve seen his electronic fingerprints. As for the other guy, I showed you some of the proof. I have some more. I’ll need to dig it out, but I’m pretty sure I have SMS records between him and a known Church figure in the States. And, also, I have his bank details - I think there are four accounts. One, which is well hidden and based in The Bahamas, has multiple high-figure transactions from many countries. Including, if I remember, Croatia.’
Wolfgang paused for a second. In the background Sam heard a female voice.
‘Wer ist es?’
‘Es ist Sam, geh schlafen[RJ25].’
There was a feminine grunt, and then Wolfgang repeated himself.
‘She’s wrong. We’re right.’
Sam pulled the phone from her ear and studied it. She was at a loss. She needed to do something, even if it were just to occupy her time. If she switched off now, she knew she’d spiral downhill. Depression, a major part of the PTSD for her, had never been far away since she’d been badly injured in Afghanistan all those years ago. She was best kept busy. Employed. Without a focus her brain turned against itself and picked a helluva fight; from which there were no winners.
She put the phone back to her ear.
‘Get me the man’s wife’s home address. All of them, if she has more than one.’
‘The supposedly-dead man’s wife or the military’s one?’ Wolfgang’s tone had changed. He moved up a couple of gears from sleepy, through mildly awake, to alert.
‘The possibly-dead one. I’m going to pay her a visit. And if I get nothing from that, I’ll go and see the other chap. Confront him. Set some hares running.’
Sam had no plan. So, she would do what she did best. Blunder about, press some buttons and hope that none of them was the ejector seat.
‘OK. I’ll have that with you in a couple of hours.’ Wolfgang paused. ‘And, in the meantime, get some sleep? Please?’
‘Sure, sure.’
The car rocked as an articulated lorry sped past a little too close for comfort.
‘Give my love to Inge?’
Sam wasn’t sure if it were a statement or a question. She still had no idea how she felt about the Wolfgang/Inge relationship. It was a stupid, irrational feeling and she hated herself for having it.
Stupid, stupid.
Chapter 5
Brandon Parva, Norfolk, United Kingdom
Sam pulled the Golf onto the grass verge of the single-track road. She was careful to make sure there was room for another car to pass, not that she’d seen one during the last half an hour. She was in deepest Norfolk, a county renowned for being at the end of nowhere; farming communities that hadn’t changed hands for centuries. Everyone married to everyone else’s cousin.
Google Maps told her that she was just short of Welborne Manor which, according to Wolfgang, was the last known address of Victoria Mitchell. He’d texted it through first thing this morning. The ping from Sam’s phone had woken her from a deep, cold and restless sleep - the clothes she had bought in Alpbach may have been good quality, but there were hardly enough layers for a roadside January night in southeast England. For her, though, being awake and cold was better than where she had been before the ping. Her dream had taken her back to Afghanistan - the whine of the mortar round as it fell to the ground. The deafening explosion, the blast, the pain. And the sight of the love of her life lying dead in the sand; her own insides hanging from a hole that shouldn’t have been there. Then she was drowning in a sea of blood, guts and camouflage netting. And still the mortar rounds fell ...
Being awake, more often than not, was better than being asleep.
The drive to Brandon Parva, a small, dispersed village randomly arranged around an ancient church, had been painless enough and taken two hours. Sam had stopped for breakfast at a roadside caravan. She was dead against eating processed food, but the smell of the bacon sizzling on the industrial griddle was too much for her aching stomach. When she asked for the rind to be removed from the bacon, the man cooking had looked at her as if she had two heads.
‘There’s no discount for that, love.’ The words rising and falling lyrically in a rich Norfolk accent.
Sam wasn’t sure if his comment were a joke. So, she didn’t reply, but gave him her best, humouring smile.
That was an hour ago. She was still hungry.
She got out of the car, stretched and walked down the road. After a few yards, in the middle distance, she spotted a two-floor, red-brick Edwardian house with a red-tile roof and white-painted windows. It was set back from the road, but hardly hidden. She took a quick glance back at the Golf (Did she lock it? Should she check?), dismissed her OCD thought process and walked on.
An engraved metal sign announced her arrival at Welborne Manor. The house had an ‘in and out’ gravel drive, the garden was mostly laid to lawn and what looked like an old stable off to one side had been converted into a double garage. The manor’s boundaries appeared to be defined by a mixture of hedgerows and small copses. Sam thought she spotted an irrigation channel running down one side of the front lawn. Norfolk was as flat as a loose guitar string, and most of the county was either at or slightly below sea level.
Sam stood and waited where the ‘out’ bit of the gravel drive met the road’s tarmac. She studied the house further. Parked to one side of the central front door was a car: a black Toyota Prius c - she couldn’t stop herself; when in focus, she’d pick out and remember the licence plate. Access to the front door was afforded by a semicircular set of low brick stairs. The third of the four downstairs windows was open, which seemed strange to Sam as it was cold - the frost still lingering on the grass. But at least it meant someone was at home. Hopefully that someone was Victoria Mitchell.
Sam had no particular plan. Victoria Mitchell wasn’t expecting her. Sam’s arrival would be a surprise and she was sure to get a further shock when Sam asked the only question she wanted an answer to: do you think your husband is still alive?
She was sure that the answer would be, ‘No!’. But the woman’s reaction would throw up some clues. Sam had a thing with faces. She could spot a lie from 1,000 paces. Decode an expression like a safebreaker.
Also, seeing the inside of the house would help to unpick any story. She had to - had to - get into the house. She’d break in if necessary. She was a trained analyst. She was good at looking. She knew what to spot. Signs of a man. Or, just as significant, an overwhelming sense that the house no longer had a man in it.
Look for what should be there, but isn’t. Not necessarily, what shouldn’t be there, but is. It was the key to unlocking any scene - any image.
If Victoria Mitchell were hiding her husband, she’d go out of the way to remove any current traces of him in the house. Make the place overtly feminine. Work too hard. If she wasn’t hiding him, there would be the odd bit of him here and there.
Sam would sense if Victoria Mitchell knew her husband were alive by her reaction, not necessarily her answers, to Sam’s questions. The way she laid her house out would seal any suspicion.
She checked her watch. It was 10.37 am.
Let’s do this.
It took Sam half a minute to reac
h the brick stairs, which she climbed in a single stride. To the left of the door was a brass bell-pull. She gave it a tug. In the distance she heard a clang.
A few seconds later the door opened and a late-middle-aged woman, probably in her early sixties, mid-height, slim, off-blonde and dressed for the country, came to the door.
The woman had sparkling eyes, sunk into a face that had been through a number of seasons - wrinkles cut deep into her skin; crow’s feet drawn from the corners of her eyes. In her right hand she held a lit cigarette. Sam couldn’t make out the brand.
The woman smiled, but confusion was the underlying expression. She took a drag of her cigarette.
‘Hello. Can I help you?’ The accent was very English, almost aristocratic.
‘Victoria Mitchell?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes. Who are you?’
Sam had thought through a number of options in response to that question. First was the truth. She was ex-SIS, she’d spotted Paul Mitchell in a skiing village in Austria and was wondering what Mrs Mitchell thought about that?
That was Plan A.
Not sensing open hostility, she opted for Plan B.
‘I’m Sam Green.’ Sam offered her right hand. Rather inelegantly Victoria Mitchell put the cigarette in her mouth, allowing her to shake Sam’s hand.
The woman took a second drag, released Sam’s hand and retrieved the cigarette from her mouth. She tilted her head to one side and blew the smoke away from Sam’s face.
Embassy Number 1s. Sam had the make.
‘And?’ Victoria Mitchell’s smile had vanished.
‘I work for the Foreign Office.’ Sam waited for a split second to see if the woman picked up on the disguise often used by SIS employees when talking about where they worked. Nothing. ‘And I’m here to ask you a few questions about you and your late husband’s ill-fated[RJ26] sailing trip to the Indian Ocean. If you don’t mind?’
For Good Men to Do Nothing Page 9