Rick breathed shallowly, his eyes glazed but open.
The nurse turned to Austin.
‘I think he needs to rest now, probably on his own. The coughing is a natural reaction to the surgery. It will pass. The blood was left over from the surgery. I don’t think there is any new injury. The increased sedative will allow him to sleep for a bit longer.’
‘Can I have a few words with him before I have to leave?’
The nurse looked at her watch.
‘Two minutes. No more.’
‘Thanks.’
As the nurse left Austin pulled up his chair and sat down. He took Rick’s hand in his.
‘Your mom is at home, son. She sends her love. You’re going to be OK. You just need some time.’
Rick turned his head slightly so that he was facing Austin. His eyes were damp with tears.
‘In my jacket pocket …’ Rick’s words were hardly audible.
Austin was confused. Was his son delirious?
‘What son? What’s in your jacket pocket?’
Rick closed his eyes and just before he fell off to sleep he uttered, ‘Report.’ And then he was out of it.
Austin squeezed his son’s hand tight and couldn’t stop his own tears from forming. It was the first time he’d cried since his childhood.
Will he make it?
The nurse came back into the room and walked to the end of the bed. She put both hands on the bedstead.
‘The doctor will be doing his rounds first thing tomorrow. I suggest you go and get yourself a cup of coffee from the canteen and maybe wait for his report? He should have something concrete to tell you at, say, 7 am?’
Austin didn’t want to go, but he was trained to follow orders. He took one last look at his son, squeezed his hand tight and stood. He was about to leave the room when he remembered what Rick had said.
He stopped just before the door.
‘May I have a look at my son’s jacket? He said there was something in his pocket that I might be interested in.’
‘Sure. His clothes are hung up in the wardrobe over there. Please remember that his jacket has bullet holes in it. I wouldn’t want you to be distressed.’
‘Sure.’ Austin nodded a patronising nod. He had seen enough bullet holes in his time.
He opened the wardrobe door and pulled out his son’s jacket. He put his hand in each of the pockets in turn, but couldn’t find anything. He was about to put the jacket back, when something made him look again. Ahh, there it was. He’d missed a memory stick in the top left-hand pocket. A small, lime-green flash drive with no markings.
He studied it for a second and then put it in his trouser pocket.
He had no idea what his son was talking about. Maybe in a couple of hours he’d be able to speak to him some more and get to the bottom of this ‘report’.
Headquarters SIS, Vauxhall, London
Jane stood at Frank’s desk. She thought he hadn’t noticed. He was intensely manipulating an image of an Arab-dressed man on his main screen - the background was a wood-panelled office. On a second screen was another photo, this time of a group on the open-back of a Toyota Hilux. Jane counted five men squeezed together. All of them were carrying rifles, probably AKs, the barrels pointing skyward.
‘This is Ahmad Malouf.’ He had noticed her.
He was pointing at the main screen. ‘This photo was taken in Damascus earlier this year. Ahmad Malouf is a sidekick of the current Syrian Minister of Defence. He’s a “senior civil servant”,’ Frank used his fingers to denote speech marks, ‘without portfolio, as far as our team there can ascertain.’
He now pointed at the second screen and using a single finger[RJ38], he drew an e-box to highlight the face of one of the men on the back of the Hilux. He spread two fingers across the screen and the image enlarged and pixelated. Cynthia, SIS’s mainframe, used its very powerful image-enhancing software to bring the face in the box back into focus.
‘This could also be him.’ He turned back to his first screen and opened a new tab - throwing up a map of Iran and Afghanistan. He zoomed in on a border-crossing point in the east of Iran.
‘Interestingly the photo of the Hilux was taken crossing the Iranian/Afghan border here, at Zaranj. The DTG is here ...’ He pointed at the date/time/group at the bottom of the photo. It read: 071430ZJan17. Jane’s brain decoded it with ease.
‘That’s a week ago? Who took it?’
‘It’s a US photo. Taken by a CIA informant working with the Iranian border security team. We had the one taken in the Ministry; they had the one at the border. If this is Malouf,’ he was pointing back at the second screen, ‘then we have irrefutable proof linking the Syrian regime in Damascus to some, as yet unknown, cell in Afghanistan.’
Jane scratched her chin.
‘It’s a helluva trick getting from Syria to the Iranian/Afghan border. If they drove they’d have had to make it through Turkey or Iraq and then through the whole of Iran?’
‘Unless they flew and picked up a ride in country?’
‘Then why not fly straight into Afghanistan?’
‘Stingers?’
Frank’s comment was overstating the deployment of the US hand-held anti-aircraft (AA) Stinger missile system, both in capability and deployment. Jane was unsure that the US had troops in the southwest of Afghanistan, and she didn’t think the ANA (Afghan National Army) had been issued with Stingers.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
She bent forward and looked at both the images of the man. They did look very similar. Cynthia’s face recognition programme would be able to give them a degree of certainty once Frank had run it.
‘Great work.’ She then changed tack. ‘Anything from Sam?’
Frank looked up and over his shoulder to Jane.
‘No, sorry. The number she phoned you on is dead, or off. Her original number is the same story. I’ve looked through her closed file and there are no other numbers. Do you want me to spread the net wider?’
Jane thought for a second. Sam was probably covering her back and switching phones.
‘Yes, please. Put an alert out through Border Force and stick her details on a countrywide alert. All bases: phone, credit card, hotels. I need to track her down.’
Frank had already opened a new tab, the title displaying ‘Border Force Personnel Security Alert’.
‘Thanks.’ Jane turned to leave, but then added, ‘Anything from your CIA pal on the “who messed with my GPS?” conspiracy?’
Frank tilted his head to one side. He stared through Jane and seemed to be focusing on the ceiling.
‘No, it’s funny. His desk has gone silent. There’s an automated “out-of-office” response on his email and he’s not answering his phone. I suppose he could be on holiday, or there’s been some other catastrophe with which he has had to deal. But I’ve got to know him quite well. I would have thought he might have said something to me before he disappeared?’
Jane studied Frank’s face. He was a darling. Hard-working, excellent with images and video. And a heart of gold. She thought she registered ‘concern’ on his face.
‘Check it out Frank. And if you don’t get a sensible reply, come back to me and I’ll go up the chain.’
‘Sure, Jane, sure.’
Terminal 5, London’s Heathrow Airport
Sam stared absently at the departures board. She was looking for a flight to Nassau - The Bahamas.
There it was: BA253. Departing at 9.40am, gate number B36. The clock on the display said it was 7.25am. She had plenty of time.
It had been a bit of a whirl since she’d spoken to Wolfgang yesterday afternoon. She’d done exactly as she’d said she would after she’d phoned him from Victoria Mitchell’s place. She’d driven to Norwich, found TK Maxx and then spent £180 on a range of winter clothes that suited her off-the-shelf, ‘trekking’ vogue. Shabby safari. As she absently shopped, always looking at the price before she held the selected garment up against her appropriate body part(s), she asked herself, ‘what should
I do next?’
The resounding answer was: not sure.
A year ago she would have had access to the best intelligence depository in the world. She would have used Cynthia’s vast search capacity to unpick and then piece together the question: ‘who is Victoria Mitchell?’. At the same time she would have liaised with GCHQ and, having gained appropriate authority, asked them to tap Mitchell’s phone and review her call history. It may have taken a couple of hours, but soon enough she’d have been much closer to working out what was going on with Mr and Mrs Mitchell. And she could have photofit of the red-ski-jacket-man from Alpbach - and discovered who he was.
Instead she was at a loss.
That was until Wolfgang called.
As a precaution Sam had removed the two SIMs she’d used so far from her phone. She’d loaded a third into the unlocked Motorola Wolfgang had given her and, just as she was paying the nice lady behind the TK Maxx counter, it rang.
‘Sorry.’ She said to the woman. She pressed the green connect button, turned away from the counter and put the phone to her ear.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me. I have your next mission, should you choose to accept it.’
Very droll.
‘Give me a second.’
Sam paid the woman, took hold of the red-and-white logo’d plastic bag and started to make her way to the exit. On the way out she spotted a pair of Salomon walking trousers which she had missed earlier. They looked to be her size. Bugger. She may come back for them once she’d taken the call.
‘How can I help you?’ Sam was outside now.
‘Have you been shopping?’
Sam dropped the bag on the floor, reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her black beanie. The wind was whistling in from The Steppes having just crossed the North Sea - its first stop was Norwich High[RJ39] Street. She deftly pulled the sides of the hat down over her ears with her free hand.
‘Yes. Thank you. You’ll be pleased to hear that I didn’t spend a great deal.’
‘Ahh. Good. You might want to take it all back. I fancy that you have paid for the wrong wardrobe.’
What?
‘What?’
‘I have bought a ticket for you out of Heathrow tomorrow morning, leaving between 9 and 10 am. I have taken the liberty of booking you into the Sofitel, which is a half-mile walk from the Terminal. The reviews on TripAdvisor are very good. They particularly rate the breakfasts.’
Sam had turned her back on the wind. It was perishing.
‘What? What are you playing at?’ In the mayhem Sam almost finished the sentence with Wolfgang’s name. But checked herself.
‘I was able to turn over a few more stones yesterday. When you get to the hotel we’ll set you up with a password to securely access the hard drives here. You can look through the intelligence I’ve found - and check your flight details. I don’t want to mention them now. In short, and to whet your appetite, I’ve established a positive link between the husband of your woman, and an offshore bank account. And, with no other assistance than Lady Luck, I think I have an “in”. That is, you have an “in[RJ40]”. We should talk more using the secure interface when you get to the hotel.’
Sam was confused, but now interested. She knew better than to ask for any more details.
‘What should my wardrobe look like?’
‘I’d buy a bikini.’
That’s a great help.
‘And some flipflops?’
‘Those too.’
‘And how did you manage to do all of this without my passport?’
‘Come on …’, Wolfgang almost fell into the same trap that Sam had avoided and mentioned her by name, ‘I am a hacker. This is what I do.’
That was yesterday afternoon. Now well-rested and particularly well fed, she had a medium-sized rucksack full of hot-weather gear and was heading for The Bahamas.
Sam approached the British Airways Clubworld (a nice, but unnecessary touch from Wolfgang) check-in. Behind the desk was a slightly overweight, middle-aged woman with a forced smile and too much make-up. She looked Sam up and down as though she was definitely at the wrong check-in. Sam wondered if it were her empire-building shorts, her Jesus sandals, or her light-blue baseball cap with its palm tree emblem - or maybe all three - that was putting the woman off.
‘Passport and e-ticket, please.’ That fake smile again. It was beginning to irritate Sam.
She handed over her passport and showed the e-ticket details from her phone. The woman smiled again. Sam was sure she saw her make-up cracking.
The next five minutes were unsettling, and it wasn’t miss smiley-pants that was the cause.
As the woman logged her in, Sam noticed the expression on her face change as she worked the keyboard and monitor (which Sam couldn’t see). The woman glanced up at Sam, and then back down at the monitor. Twice. She smiled again, this time with a touch of nervousness, her head tilted patronisingly to one side. And then she typed some more - more than Sam remembered being necessary from the last time she flew.
Another smile.
Was that a touch of sweat on her forehead? Sam wanted to reach out and mop it up with The Simpsons-motif hanky she had in her pocket (which she’d found in the ‘reduced’ red-label section of TK Maxx - bargain).
‘Is that your only bag?’ The woman pointed to her rucksack.
Sam didn’t take her eyes off smiley-pants. She gave her her best terrorist look. At which point she thought that the woman had squeezed her knees together.
‘Yes.’ Without looking at her bag.
‘’Good. On the conveyor please.’
Sam did as she was asked.
And then, with renewed efficiency, her bag was labelled and dispatched down the chute. In a rush the woman handed back Sam’s passport and boarding pass.
‘Flight’s in two hours. Gate B36. You’ll have time for a coffee.’ More smiles.
Ugh!
Sam warily took her passport back and nodded - slowly.
‘Thank you.’ She let her stare linger. For effect.
‘You’re welcome.’ That smile again, but it could have been a grimace. Was it tinged with relief?
As Sam walked towards the departure gate, she turned to look back at the desk. The woman was gone. She’d left in a rush.
She revisited the last ten minutes.
Am I tagged? Is there a flag against my name? If I were a threat I’d have been immediately surrounded by men with guns, shown to a small room without any windows and had parts of me searched that usually didn’t see the light of day. So, I’m not a threat - per se. But someone wants to know where I’m going?
When she was an SIS case officer she’d had three aliases, and could fly around the globe pretty much unnoticed. Those days were gone. Today she was just Sam Green. Wolfgang had had no other alternative than to book her on a flight using her own credentials. If someone wanted to find her, or follow her, they’d just need access to the Border Force’s secure travel inventory. Any half-decent hacker could do that.
I’m tagged? Probably.
Alarm bells rang in the back of her head. She involuntarily hunched her shoulders. And pouted.
But Sam had no option other than to run with the plan. She was off to The Bahamas to meet a friend of Wolfgang’s deceased father: a Lukas Müller. He was the 2IC of Walter Ingris Bank. Walter Ingris was a respectable offshore set-up which, among other attributes, laundered and hid money for people who didn’t want it to be found. Sure, the bank probably had plenty of clients who operated within the boundaries of the law. But this type of bank doesn’t ask many questions. They just take your money.
And, and this was key, Wolfgang had established a clear linkage between Paul Mitchell, his current business dealings and Walter Ingris. He reckoned that, with numerous accounts linked to The Bahamas, it was likely that the bank was The Church’s main financial hub. Sam had seen the evidence last night. It looked pretty conclusive.
Wolfgang had assured Sam that he could arr
ange a meeting between her and Herr Müller, and that she would know what questions to ask. Especially as Müller was an old family friend who, on checking his BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst - the German Federal Intelligence Organisation) records, had a penchant for young boys.
‘You will know how to handle him, I’m sure. I’ll set up a meeting once you’ve acclimatised. Leave it with me.’
So, Sam now had at least two sets of unpleasant people who might be interested in her itinerary: Mitchell and The Church of the White Cross; and Walter Ingris Bank. Both would be able to follow her around the globe. She was sure of that.
She’d definitely needed to be on her guard.
Sunrise Hospital, Las Vegas
Austin woke with a start. He’d been sleeping on a soft chair in the hospital cafe. His back ached and his left arm had pins and needles. As he rubbed his eyes he glanced at his watch. It was 7.25am. Hopefully the doctor would have seen Rick by now.
He stood and stretched. The cafe was empty, save for an elderly woman in hospital robes nursing a cup of coffee. She smiled at him. He managed a smile back.
Rick’s room was in a separate block and three floors higher. Austin walked quickly but it still took him over five minutes to cover the distance. He didn’t take the lift but, as was his way, he took the stairs two at a time. When he opened the stairwell door he was breathing hard. It felt good.
Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last. As he turned into the corridor off which[RJ41] his son’s room was located, he was met by third-degree chaos.
There were cops everywhere. The route past reception was cordoned with black and yellow ‘Police Do Not Cross’ tape. A young cop had his notepad out and was interviewing a nurse. Next to him was a man in a white SOCO (Scenes Of Crime Officer) suit. His hood was off his head and he was inspecting an evidence bag. Austin couldn’t see what was in it.
As he stepped down the corridor he was immediately met by another cop, who firmly stopped him in his tracks.
‘Sorry, sir. There’s been an incident. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
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