Execution ht-5

by Adrian Magson

  He texted Ballatyne. Need talk.

  Rik had been watching him. He gave a start. ‘Hey — I forgot, I got the details of that subscriber you asked for; the misdial.’ He took out his own phone and scrolled to the notepad function. ‘His name’s Fortiani; he’s a trader of some kind in an office near Victoria.’ He handed over the phone and Harry read the details. ‘You playing the markets now?’

  Harry shook his head and dialled the number.

  It rang out and went to voicemail. A man’s voice. ‘This is Ray Fortiani. I’m unavailable right now. My apologies. Please leave a number and I’ll call you back. Thank you.’

  Harry stared at the screen. Fortiani, whoever he was, sounded educated and confident. A businessman. Not the sort to misdial, but if he did, he would apologise and not leave someone hanging.

  He checked Rik’s notepad and saw another number, this one a landline. Home or office. He dialled the number.

  ‘Fortiani.’ It was the same voice.

  Harry apologised for calling so late and asked Fortiani if he had recently lost a mobile phone.

  ‘What? Yes, I have, actually.’ He sounded excited. ‘Have you found it?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Harry explained about the call he’d received. ‘Have you reported it lost yet?’

  Fortiani sounded sheepish. ‘No. To be honest, I don’t know for sure if I left it in the office or if it was stolen. I didn’t want to have it cancelled in case it was handed in by the cleaners at work. There’s a ton of material on there that I’d like back, though.’

  Harry asked where else it might have gone missing if not at the office.

  ‘Well, the only place I can think of is a place in Pimlico: The Grove. It’s a wine bar I go to a lot with a group from work, and it’s the last place I remember using it. I mean, if that’s where it happened, it was done so smoothly I couldn’t actually recall having it with me. You know how it is when you’re with a bunch of friends and colleagues? The place is always packed and half the time you can’t hear yourself speak. But I can’t imagine any of the usual clientele stealing phones; it just doesn’t gel.’

  Harry didn’t have such reservations about other people’s honesty being guaranteed by the places they frequented, but he didn’t bother enlightening Fortiani. ‘When was that?’

  ‘I was there the evening before last until late, and again yesterday afternoon. I have a work mobile, too, so I’ve been working with that. I guess I should report it, for the insurance.’

  ‘Can I ask you not to do that yet? If I can, I’ll get it back for you. But it’s important that we don’t alert whoever has it that we know.’

  Fortiani sounded puzzled. He said, ‘Are you police?’

  Harry cut the call. It saved having to explain the unexplainable.

  Then he looked around and spotted an Indian restaurant along the street. It reminded him that they hadn’t eaten properly.

  ‘You hungry?’

  Rik nodded. ‘Could eat a horse. What’s going on with the phone?’

  ‘It wasn’t Fortiani who called, trying to sell some bonds.’ He explained about the trader’s phone lifted from a cafe table in Pimlico.

  Rik’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think it was Clare? That’s a reach.’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone else. She’s resourceful enough.’

  ‘True. Maybe she’ll call back.’

  ‘Maybe. In the meantime, it tells us where she is. Or was.’

  They were well into their meal by the time Ballatyne called back. He didn’t sound happy.

  ‘My wife’s going to kill me for this. We’re supposed to be at dinner.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a wife,’ said Harry, and gave him a brief report, avoiding names. He finished by asking, ‘Clare’s target — the one she got canned for.’

  A cautious pause, then, ‘What about her?’

  Her. So the target had definitely been a woman. His response was too instinctive to be a mistake. But Ballatyne was too experienced not to have read the files. He’d have brushed up on all their histories as a matter of course, the moment this business began.

  ‘Do you have a name and a location?’

  Another silence, this one lasting several seconds. Finally Ballatyne said, ‘You must be bloody joking.’ The phone went dead.

  Harry put his phone down with a wry smile. Ballatyne’s obtuse way of not saying no.

  Rik looked up from his chicken korma, one eyebrow raised. ‘I bet he didn’t like that. You’re not serious, though, are you? She wouldn’t go there, surely?’

  ‘Why not?’ Harry repeated what Alice had told him before getting into the taxi. ‘What would you do if you were that desperate?’

  ‘I don’t know. Find a friend — any friend, I guess.’ He frowned. ‘But her target was a Russian, wasn’t she? If they find out she’s gone there, she’ll never see daylight again.’

  ‘Maybe she knows that and figures she has nothing to lose.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Clare awoke suddenly, her heart pounding. A loud noise had ripped into her subconscious, like the crash of a door bursting open. She sat up, panic overtaking her, and was on her feet without thinking. Somebody trying to get in! Then she bent over as pain creased across her middle, an unsubtle reminder that she wasn’t in any fit state for gymnastics.

  She breathed in and out, allowing her heart rate to settle. The room was silent and chill, smelling of damp. A gloomy space but not dark. The sickly glow of a street light filtered in across the floor. She’d been dozing in a battered old armchair. She recalled the building work further down the street earlier; tips being filled with rubble, workmen shouting, a cement mixer chugging constantly. Like a small war going on. Then silence when they packed up for the day. And sleep.

  She’d been woken by a delayed playback, that was all. The mind playing tricks. She forced herself to relax further and assessed her surroundings. She was alone, the garden door locked and jammed shut against outsiders. The connecting door to the rest of the building had been nailed up by whatever previous tenant had isolated him or herself down here in the basement. There was nobody in the room and she felt angry at herself for losing her grip. This wasn’t her, not this jittery, disconnected heap of jelly who jumped at every slight sound.

  She straightened up by stages, like unfolding an old newspaper, stopping at each ragged tug of pain, until she was more or less upright. It took a while. Then she breathed in and out, the taste in her mouth sour and bitter.

  Jesus, was this what it was like to be old? If so she wanted none of it. She checked herself over, a slow examination of her physical extremities first. Legs stiff, arms ditto, stomach burning but not as bad it had been. Sleep had helped. She peeled back the bandage under her waistband. Hissed at the redness of the skin around the gunshot wound, but it was better than it had been. Maybe the effort of getting here had helped, forcing her body to flush with healing power, to fight off infection.

  But where was here?

  Her inner senses took over, remembering the hospital. Images came to her slowly, an unravelling film reel of her rush from the building and through the shadow-filled streets, overhead lights harsh and painful to the eyes, her feet sore from not having worn shoes for a while. She’d met a German girl — Mitzi? — then gone to a squat, followed by the outdoors again and more walking. Until she found this place.

  Pimlico. She remembered now. Near Victoria Station, busy streets, residential and businesses cheek by jowl. Lots of people.

  Safety, of sorts.

  Other images forced their way in from further back. The hospital smell, night-time, the sound of the men in her room; before that the man across the corridor, Tobinskiy, shouting in Russian, angry and at times incoherent, but according to the nurse, never fully conscious. Educated, though, she would have known that by his use of words, even if she had never heard of him before. Raging at the state, the persecution and murder of his friend, they were trying to kill him, he’d gabbled; sending assassins just like they did
with Alexander. Why could nobody see it? Why would nobody believe him? The torrent of words had at times been unintelligible.

  He would be next, he’d moaned once. Then they would believe.

  She’d wondered for a while who Alexander was, her mind still foggy. She had known, once, she was certain. It lurked on the edges of her mind, a vague whisper of sound, from a briefing or the news. . maybe something she’d read. But it wouldn’t come. Then suddenly it did, in a rush like a floodgate opened: Alexander Litvinenko, former FSB officer, asylum seeker in Britain, journalist and hater of Vladimir Putin. Polonium 210. Radiation poisoning. Photos of Litvinenko in hospital, hunched and dying. Grey going on white.

  Now dead.

  She eased herself carefully down in the armchair. The elbow crutch was nearby but she ignored it. Sighed with relief when the pain subsided. Felt the mobile phone jammed down between the cushion and the arm.

  She picked it up, switched it on. Waited while the icons flickered into life. Checked the amount of power left. Three bars. Not bad but not great. The time on the small screen said 23.15.

  There were several missed calls and eight voicemail messages. Jesus, she’d stolen the phone belonging to a talk freak. She ignored them all. Didn’t want to waste power by deleting or checking them.

  Tomorrow, she’d call. . who? Still couldn’t recall Alice’s number. Pointless asking directory enquiries or 192; MI6 didn’t encourage easy access for any of their personnel.

  Harry Tate? She saw his number in her head, floating past with perverse immediacy, tantalising. Why was that?

  She switched off the phone, put her head back. She was hungry, her stomach tight with the need for food and fluids. She should hit the street and find an all-nighter, get something inside her. Maybe in a while. When she felt better.

  Seconds later she was fast asleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘We need to step things up.’ Sergei Gorelkin was annoyed, but holding his mood in check. Getting pissy with Votrukhin and Serkhov would serve no immediate purpose other than to make him feel better. He could save that for later. Right now they had to find the Jardine woman and silence her before she got to the press with anything she knew.

  He had called them in early to the office in Mayfair. He dispensed with the sweep for bugs; he didn’t have time. Neither did he allow them any breakfast, a distraction from the main topic. He had, however, arranged strong coffee, to ensure they were wide awake and listening.

  ‘How?’ Votrukhin queried. ‘We don’t have enough feet on the ground, we can’t use the embassy and we’re not allowed near any of the residents.’ These last were deep cover agents unknown to the embassy, but supported at arm’s length in their legends and daily activities. Deeper still and even more remote were the gold standard of spies, the sleepers, although, as some wags in Moscow had been heard to claim, since the fall of communism not even Moscow knew who they were anymore.

  ‘We hit the streets.’ Gorelkin reached down and picked up a cardboard box from the floor. It was twice the size of a shoe box. He tore off the lid and tipped the box up, spilling out some of the contents, which skidded across the table in a fan.

  They were a mix of two shots. Half were photos taken inside a plain corridor, the flare of overhead lights reflecting off a shiny tiled floor. The subject was a woman walking beneath the camera. The format was clearly from CCTV footage, the best few frames frozen for all time. The others were file shots, face-on and serious, like passport shots, but larger and better quality, provided by Paulton, although he hadn’t disclosed where he had got them.

  Clare Jardine.

  Votrukhin and Serkhov picked up samples and scanned them quickly, committing the images to memory. They hadn’t seen the CCTV stills before, but had handed over the hard drive for Gorelkin to process the moment they got back from the hospital. The images weren’t perfect, but good enough. They showed a young woman in her thirties, possibly older, gaunt in the face and pallid, walking with one hand clasped across her middle, the other holding a metal crutch. She wore dark trousers and a jacket over a white top, and if she was aware of the camera above her head, seemed unconcerned.

  ‘She’s on the street,’ Gorelkin told them, ‘most likely in central London. As the Englishman told us, she has no family and nowhere to go. She’ll have joined the rabble. So that’s where we look for her, using the people she mixes with.’ He tapped one of the photos. ‘And that crutch is going to make her stand out.’

  Votrukhin fanned his face with one of the photos and nodded. ‘I get it. Use the rabble to find her. But which ones?’

  ‘All of them. But concentrate on illegals from the east; them we can talk to.’ Illegals had more to lose, and far more to gain by earning any kind of reward. And those from the east had a much stronger network of their own kind to use and mobilise. In addition, if Votrukhin and Serkhov had to lean on anyone, the last thing an illegal would do was complain to the police for fear of compromising their position.

  ‘What about the Englishman?’ Votrukhin asked. ‘Did he come good?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’ Gorelkin opened out a map of London. It had a series of coloured dots on it. The furthest south was a short distance from King’s College. There were six more, all in a line leading towards central London, all black. The last black dot was at Waterloo Station.

  ‘These black dots represent firm sightings of Jardine,’ Gorelkin explained. ‘They end at Waterloo Station, but there’s an imperfect shot of a figure across the river near Charing Cross Station which could be her.’

  ‘The blue ones,’ said Serkhov, ‘are they possibles only?’

  ‘Yes. Either the image was poor or it was too far to tell for certain. There would have been others bearing a similarity to Jardine, of course, but the blue ones are in line with where she might have gone, so we don’t discount those.’

  He placed one hand on the paper, forming a curve with his thumb and forefinger. The curve embraced the area of Battersea in the south right up to Waterloo Station and the Embankment in the north, including where the river bent eastwards towards the area of Southwark and London Bridge. ‘Start here by the river and work your way across to the north and west. She is in that area somewhere. Maybe north of the river by now, maybe not. Use those you can trust to spread the photos.’

  ‘What does Paulton think?’ Votrukhin ventured a question. ‘He’s the expert. Does he have an opinion he’d like to share with us?’

  ‘Only that Victoria is probably a good area for anyone to hide. Lots of tourists, lots of movement, cheap hotels and faces nobody remembers.’

  ‘It’s still a hell of an area.’ Votrukhin picked up the map and folded it, nodding at Serkhov to bring the box of photos. He might not like what they had to do, but refusing Gorelkin’s orders was not an option.

  Gorelkin smiled and checked his watch. ‘You’re correct, lieutenant; it’s a big area. It’s now eight o’clock. Do it right and you should have this part of London covered by nightfall.’ He stood up, straightening his jacket. ‘Find her, deal with her. . and you might just be forgiven for letting her go in the first place.’

  Harry and Rik had had the same idea, although they were working with a better head and shoulders shot of Clare, from JPEGs supplied by Ballatyne. They were at least three years old but clearer than any CCTV shot. They also had the advantage of being less likely to arouse suspicion among those they approached that she had been filmed by a security camera, and was therefore on the run from the authorities.

  Harry had abandoned any idea of checking the neighbourhood where Clare had once lived, on the simple grounds that she wasn’t the nostalgic sort and wouldn’t bother returning there.

  They reached Victoria Station and began to ask around, having decided to split up and work their way south towards the river. It was dog work, requiring them to go into the darkest corners they could find, but necessary if they wanted to reach the most obvious people — the ones Clare might have met in the past few days. They approached street
hostels, rough sleeper communities, figures huddled in sleeping bags and beneath layers of cardboard; they checked doorways and empty premises, squats and renovation sites, spoke to traffic wardens and sweepers, rail workers and cafe owners. The response became numbingly similar, mostly in the negative. But equally depressing were the possible sightings too vague or too long ago to follow up easily, from individuals trying to help, yet offering a tantalising hint that Clare was out there somewhere.

  By midday, they had exhausted their supply of photos, and were forced to take Rik’s memory stick into a printer to get more produced.

  ‘She might have moved further out,’ Rik suggested, as they sat and drank coffee, waiting for the photos. ‘Or north of here. There are plenty of squats beyond Park Lane, fancy big places waiting to be renovated.’

  Harry knew he was right. But they couldn’t afford to spread the search too thin. They were already overstretched as it was. Clare could be anywhere in the city, he knew that; but it was simply his instinct that placed her somewhere within reach.

  He took out his mobile and composed a text. This one wasn’t for Ballatyne.

  We can help you. Ring me. He paused, wondering what he could use as an identifier. To Clare, on the run and hurting, this text could easily be a trap to lure her out of hiding. Then he had it. He added, Pink Compact. So not your colour. He dialled the number of Fortiani’s mobile and pressed Send.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Have you seen this woman?’ Serkhov shoved the photo under the nose of a man sitting in the doorway of a day hostel a hundred yards south of Victoria Station. The doors were locked and the alcove reeked of urine. Serkhov tried not to throw up at the rank body odour coming off him.

  ‘Say what, pal?’ The eyes were slate grey and unfocussed, his greasy skin a network of veins and ingrained dirt. The neck of a bottle stuck out from his coat pocket.