Execution ht-5

by Adrian Magson

  A few minutes ago he had called the number of the taxi company on the card from the amusement arcade. Then he had tried Richoux one more time. Still nothing. The lack of response wasn’t good news; local assets like Richoux were chosen for their knowledge, contacts and reliability, in case an operative needed help on the ground. That help ranged from the provision of equipment, like guns and a safe place to stay, to simple background information on a place or a person which only a local resident could pick up. If an asset was indisposed for any reason, there was always a backup message to explain it. Going off-line in the way Richoux had done meant that he had been intercepted and blown.

  End of game.

  ‘Can they lock in on your mobile?’ He was aware that some phones had anti-tracking devices. He’d never seen the point, since software development invariably put the ungodly just one shade behind the good. But using a mobile that was open to triangulation or tracking the signal would be a sure way of being caught very quickly. And Katya’s colleagues would almost certainly have a search going on right now for her signal.

  ‘No. The risk is too great for FSO protection officers. All our phones are fitted with blocking software.’ She looked at him with a faint smile. ‘Don’t you have it in your department?’

  ‘I don’t have a department. Life’s much simpler that way.’

  As Rik joined them, a light coloured Mercedes cruised to the kerb and stopped. It was a taxi. The driver looked across at them with a questioning lift of the head. Stopping for an unknown pick-up on the edge of a park was a risky business in any city, even Vienna. But taxi drivers have to make a living, too.

  Clare stepped into the light, her arm through Katya’s. The driver nodded and beckoned them aboard, listened to the destination Harry gave him, and set off for the Praterstern and the south.

  The area known as Favoriten was a mixed residential and commercial zone, the cultures of its residents leaning heavily in favour of Turks, Croatians and Serbians, all workers who had populated the area over many decades. The safe house had been chosen, Harry guessed, for this very reason. In an area where incomers were frequent and varied, and their backgrounds often too obviously tragic to question, nobody would pay much attention to a few more moving among them. Hopefully, it would only be for one night, before moving out again the following day.

  He got the driver to drop them off not far from the exit from the A23, which ran north-south through the district, near a collection of large apartment blocks. They waited for the Mercedes to disappear before turning and following Harry along the street to one block of five set among parkland.

  ‘We should check it out first,’ cautioned Rik, as they surveyed the building from the shadows beneath a belt of trees. It was neat, bland and four storeys high, with bedding and washing blowing out from verandas along its length. Nearly every window showed a light, testament to the working day being over and a sign of normality. But entering this place without care was asking for trouble, especially with Richoux having gone silent.

  Harry agreed. ‘I’ll go with Katya. You stay here with Clare.’

  He and Katya set off, walking close and slowly, like a couple returning home, their bags and the briefcase close enough to resemble shopping to throw anyone off-guard. Once off the street they followed a neat pathway to the main entrance, and inside, used the stairs. Both had their hands on their guns, aware that if trouble was waiting for them, they would have split seconds to react and fight their way out.

  The apartment that was their safe house was on the first floor. They walked past it once, studying the lock for signs of a forced entry. It looked good, and after reaching the end of the corridor, they turned and went back.

  Harry knocked while Katya stood to one side.

  No answer.

  He inserted the key and pushed the door. It stuck for a second, then opened, releasing a gust of warm, stale air. Harry stepped inside, dropping his bag and moving swiftly forward along a short hallway into an open living room. Katya slid past him and checked out a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

  ‘Clear,’ she said, and returned to join him.

  Harry dialled Rik’s number and gave the all-clear to come in.

  ‘We need food,’ said Katya. ‘I saw a store along the next street where we were dropped off.’

  Harry nodded. It made sense. Going out in a group to eat would attract attention. They were clearly not Turkish, and their clothes in a well-lit restaurant would mark them out immediately as foreigners, and therefore a subject of interest. ‘Good idea. Cold meats, preferably, and bread. Coffee, too.’ He held up his mobile. ‘I need to make a couple of calls.’

  Katya nodded and went out.

  As soon as Rik and Clare arrived, Harry dialled Ballatyne’s number. It rang without answer. He tried again in case he’d misdialled. Still no response.

  ‘Problem?’ Rik was standing by the kitchen door, watching him. Clare had gone into the bathroom.

  ‘Could be, but I don’t know what. Ballatyne isn’t picking up.’

  Rik delved into his bag and opened his iPad, waiting for a connection. Seconds later, he was tapping away one-handed on the screen’s virtual keyboard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Harry queried.

  ‘Just checking something. Won’t be a minute.’

  Harry left him to it and took a walk round the apartment. He wondered how many people had used this place before. It was minimally furnished, with two single beds, chairs, table, small sofa and cupboards. No carpet but a simple tiled floor. It reminded him of British army accommodation around the world: basic, unfussy, plain and cheerless. There was probably a specialist department somewhere in Whitehall, with an order book full of details about such furniture very similar to this.

  He turned off the room lights before approaching the windows, and checked the view of the parkland and street outside as carefully as he could. There was too much shadow and darkness to be certain of anything, however. He considered that ironic seeing as how he had been relying on that very thing to survey the apartment building before coming in.

  Rik appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, waving his iPad. ‘Six have had a system shut-down. They issued an inter-agency security statement two hours ago saying all non-essential comms channels have been suspended for security checks. It includes a short-term interruption to most call networks.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Sounds like they’ve been hacked. But it could be they’re tracking down the insider. It would explain why Ballatyne’s been out of touch.’

  ‘How did you get this?’ He knew Rik wouldn’t have had time to get into any of the security agency systems, and nor would Six have gone public with the situation. The one thing you don’t do is alert your enemies to the fact that you’ve suffered a system meltdown.

  Rik smiled. ‘Friend of a friend. Don’t worry, I didn’t hack into Six.’

  Harry said he was going downstairs to check the outside more closely, and left the apartment, scanning the corridor carefully before stepping out. He passed the doors to other apartments, where for many, life was going on as usual; an argument in one, music from another, a child crying, a football match commentary.

  He left the building and walked along one of the paths, passing two Muslim women with a baby buggy and shopping bags, their heads covered in hijabs. Once they had gone, he stepped off the path and melted into the trees. Then he stood and breathed in the atmosphere, using his senses to tune in to the night.

  Cars passed along the street nearby, and there was a steady roar from the A23 dual carriageway which they had joined to bring them down from the city centre. But there was nothing that suggested there was anybody here who shouldn’t be — except maybe himself and the others.

  He wondered what Katya was doing.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Katya was standing outside a small Turkish-run general store, studying the street. She was clutching a plastic bag of groceries in one hand, while the other was inside her jacket, resting on
the butt of her gun.

  The weapon, a slim-line PSM 6.35mm pistol, issued on arrival by the embassy’s security armourer, was designed to sit snugly beneath the jackets of personnel of both genders. It felt uncomfortably small compared with her usual service weapon, a heavier Viking MP-446 9mm. She had used the PSM before, but never in a hot action, and never out on the street. Right now, it left her feeling vulnerable and exposed. If anyone decided to launch an attack on her out here, she would have felt better prepared with a heavier weapon carrying more punch.

  She walked away from the store towards a darker area at the end of the building, and took out her mobile. What she was about to do was crazy, and she knew Tate, the Englishman, would advise her against it. But she had no choice. If she could find out who was ranged against them, and what they knew, it gave her a better chance of getting out of this city with her life, or locked up in a cell awaiting a trial back in Moscow. In aligning herself with Clare and her colleagues, she had already gone too far to turn back now.

  The truth was, she didn’t want to go back. Whatever her life had been was over. From here on in, the future would be whatever she could make of it, with Clare, hopefully.

  But to do that, she had to live. They all did.

  She sent a text message to Bronyev consisting of a single dot. Her number would not show up on his mobile, but he would know it was her. They had once discussed a colleague using it to get a friend to call her back when needing backup or an escape from a clingy or boring companion — a dating SOS. If anyone with Bronyev should see the dot, it would look like an incomplete or blank call from an unknown number.

  She waited for him to call back, sinking into the shadows of a doorway and watching the street. There was no way they could trace the call, but she didn’t know how clean of telltale signals Clare and her two friends were. If either one of them used their mobile and the local FSB unit somehow got a trace on it, they would be here within twenty minutes.

  Her phone buzzed. A dot and a question mark.

  It was Bronyev. He was asking where she was. She smiled. More than that, he hadn’t given her away. If he had, he’d have called her, tried to keep her talking and find out where she was. And every moment she spent on the line would reduce their chances of remaining free. The downside was that in using this brief communication, he was also telling her that his freedom was severely restricted.

  At least he was still in one piece and not confined to a locked room in the embassy basement.

  She wondered what to do. Ironically, neither of them could communicate freely now. She because whoever was with Bronyev would be waiting for just that event; Bronyev because he would be being watched.

  She had to get back to the apartment building. Tate and the others would be getting anxious about how long she had been gone now. She was about to put the mobile back in her pocket when it buzzed again. She checked the screen.

  ‘888’

  She frowned, then went cold. Bronyev had once told her that his mother had studied numerology, and had talked about it often with her son, explaining the importance of numbers in spiritual matters. All numbers meant something, he had explained to Katya, and had gone through a list from 0 to 9 and their repeat sequences. She’d forgotten most of the list because it meant nothing to her. But 888 had stuck because it had once been her mother’s apartment number in the concrete housing block where she had lived and died several years ago. Too lacking in imagination to name the blocks after anyone interesting, such as heroes of the former Soviet Union, the then Cold War authorities had settled instead on the dull conformity of numbers.

  Apartment 88 in Block 8. 888.

  In spirituality, the three numbers 888 meant a phase in one’s life was about to end — a warning so that one could be prepared. She recalled telling Bronyev at the time that he was being over-imaginative. Numbers were to be added and subtracted, not feared. Anyway, she hadn’t wanted to think about her mother dying alone in that place while she had forged a career in the FSO.

  Bronyev hadn’t argued, but had smiled indulgently, something which had made her think he was more spiritual than their superiors might approve of. For a man whose job was to potentially kill in order to protect the lives of others, it could be seen as a sign of weakness.

  She swallowed and wondered if she wasn’t now imagining things.

  888. The numbers glowed in the poor light.

  Then she heard the car engine.

  In this part of the city she was pretty certain that 4X4 Mercedes of the type she had seen used by the FSB simply did not exist. The vehicles were highly tuned as a matter of course, with reinforced glass and panels, and she could pick out one of their engines quite easily in a quiet location such as this. The only cars she had seen here so far had been standard road models, small and mostly in poor condition and badly maintained.

  But not this one.

  It appeared at the end of the street, slowed and stopped, one indicator winking. A gleaming black M-Class vehicle with tinted windows and heavy duty tyres. She knew there would be at least four men inside, all armed.

  She stepped back into deeper shadow, her stomach going cold. Somehow they had found her. Worrying about how was a problem for later, if ever. Right now she had to warn the others. Warn Clare.

  She began to dial the number, panic for a moment making her forget whose phone she was ringing — Clare’s or Tate’s?

  Her own phone started ringing, and she jumped.

  At that moment a man stepped out of the Mercedes down the street. She shrank back against the wall, shielding the light from her mobile behind her, and scrabbled at the keyboard to shut it off.

  She managed to hit the ‘off’ key and the ringing ceased. But it was too late. The man by the Mercedes had swung round and was looking towards her. She recognised the stance: that of a hunter sniffing the wind. Then he turned and muttered something to the others in the car.

  The doors opened and three more men stepped out. One had a gun in his hand, the street lighting glinting off the barrel. The others would be similarly armed.

  They weren’t here to take her back, then.

  She dropped the bag of groceries and started running.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Harry stared down at his mobile. He’d rung Katya to find out where she was. It had been ringing out, then stopped in mid-ring. It could only mean one thing: she was in trouble.

  He started moving across the parkland towards the streets where Katya had seen the store. She must have seen something. Or somebody. But why kill the phone without answering? It could only mean she wasn’t in a position to pick up. He used the trees for cover, jogging through an area heavy with bushes into a clearing with a bench and a picnic table. A single light threw a pale glow over a play pit full of sand and a makeshift see-saw. A child’s football lay punctured to one side, and a coil of rope, abandoned until another child found a use for them.

  A small car clattered by on the other side of the next line of trees, beyond some bushes, its muffler stuttering and throaty. He slowed and drew his gun. He was close to the road and guessed the store must be nearby.

  A man’s voice called out in the dark, unintelligible. Another answered, then came the sound of footsteps receding. They were light, fast. Running.

  A woman.

  As Harry ducked through the trees he caught the hum of a car engine coming closer. It sounded powerful, high-performance, unlike the rust-bucket he’d heard moments before. Then came the crunch of tyres on gravel. Whatever it was, it was heavy.

  The man shouted again. This time Harry understood the word.

  ‘Skoree!’ Hurry.

  Russian.

  Damn. How the hell had they found this place? But the answer was obvious: Richoux. He was the only person who knew where the safe house was located. He must have talked. Pushing the thought away, he focussed on the sound of running feet. It had to be Katya they were after. If so, he had to intervene somehow, to give her a chance to get away.

  As he brushe
d aside a hanging clump of foliage, he saw a black Mercedes 4X4 standing in the street in front of him, the engine ticking over. The front passenger door was hanging open, and he could see the driver holding a radio or phone to his mouth. There was a burst of conversation and static. There were no passengers, though. They must have decamped to go after Katya.

  Then a man stepped out from behind the 4X4 and scanned the parkland. He was strongly built and dressed in jeans and a nylon jacket. He had a gun down by his side in one hand, a radio in the other. He was coordinating the search.

  His head swivelled away, eyes brushing across where Harry was standing, checking the scenery for movement, his job to watch for interference and direct his colleagues. There was no reaction for a split second, and Harry thought the man had missed him.

  Then his head snapped round again.

  The gun came up and the man went into a crouch, instincts and training driving him.

  Harry responded in the same fashion. He dropped away to his right knee and moved sideways all in one movement, allowing his body to roll. He felt grass beneath him, smelled the musky aroma of dead foliage; heard a shot and felt the air shift as the bullet snapped past his head. Then he was coming up again, this time with his gun held in front of him, the butt cupped in his left hand, a move he had practised many times before. The barrel centred on the Russian, and stopped. The man stared in disbelief at having missed, his mouth open as he tried to bring his gun across to centre on the target.

  Harry absorbed the scene automatically, running the details through his head. The man was standing against the 4X4; a solid body mass; nowhere for the bullet to go afterwards; no pedestrians in danger. No options but to shoot.

  He squeezed the trigger twice.