Nomad

by James Swallow

  “Smart boy,” she said to herself. “Go to the guy who likes you the least.”

  But Dane hadn’t been smart enough. What he could think of, so could MI6, and so could Rubicon. It was a play a more seasoned field operative would never have made.

  The Nissan pulled out and rolled away into traffic. Lucy gave a count of ten and then fired up the bike.

  * * *

  Stepping off the bus with his collar up, Marc avoided the main road where he might have been caught on a CCTV camera, and skirted the edge of Burgess Park until he found his way down the side streets to the vacant residential blocks of the Aylesbury estate.

  The folded slip of paper in his pocket bore the address of a flat in one of the main structures of the complex, a crumbling series of neo-brutalist concrete blocks. Much of the site was derelict now, with a handful of die-hard residents still living among hundreds more empty apartments. The place was mired in the slow process of preparation for demolition and future gentrification, and in among the boarded-up flats there were ideal spaces for a forger to set up shop.

  He followed the long, narrow terraces past lines of tin security panels bolted over windows and door frames, passing down ghost-town walkways where windblown leaves collected in the sharp-angled corners. The estate was sparse, almost beyond abandoned, empty even of squatters or the more usual low-end criminal wildlife, nothing more than hollow shells sealed tight and left to wait for the eventual march of bulldozers and wrecking balls.

  The rain started, hard threads of it falling at angles that clattered against acres of grimy windows. Marc jogged across the overgrown grass verge outside the block he was looking for, and found the entry door on the ground floor propped open by a brick. Inside the air was stale. Haphazard graffiti marked the brown tile of the walls.

  He climbed the stairs, catching the smell of cigarette smoke and the low mutter of conversation from upstairs. Schooling his expression, Marc walked calmly on to the landing and found two teenagers blocking his path. They eyed him, lazy and feral.

  “Here to do business,” he told them. To show willing, Marc peeled off a ten-pound note and paid his toll to pass.

  Another doorstop met him on the next floor up, outside the flat, but this one had a lot more threat about him. He was a heavy-set Asian man, a Sikh in a dark blue tracksuit that did nothing to conceal the obvious bulge at the waist where a fat revolver was holstered.

  Marc gave the Sikh the Glock without complaint and submitted to a pat-down. Then he was in through the door, and the first thing that hit him was the smell of cooked lamb. His mouth flooded with saliva and there was an answering rumble from his stomach.

  Only the living room and the kitchen of the apartment were occupied. The rest of the flat was vacant, emptied down to the wallpaper. The smell came from a young man working at a camping stove, who threw Marc a slow, disinterested look as he peered into the room in passing.

  The forger was an older man with skin the color of weathered teak and salt-and-pepper hair. He rolled toward him across the concrete floor on a chair mounted on castors, and gave Marc a level look.

  “What service can I offer you?” he asked, with a politeness that seemed incongruous.

  Marc took in the dining table before him, piled high with carefully ordered suitcases, each filled with blank paperwork and unused official documents. He spotted a high-definition laser printer, digital cameras and a portable computer set-up that looked more suitable for a corporate office than this decrepit domestic setting.

  “The full set,” he said. “Passport, driver’s license, identity card…”

  “I have German, Czech, Canadian and Belgian.”

  He nodded. “German.”

  “Two days,” said the old man.

  Marc shook his head. “No.” He dropped his backpack on to the bare floor and fished out the counterfeit IDs Sam Green had prepared for herself. “I’ll give you these as a sweetener.”

  The forger took them and flipped through the documents. He made an appreciative noise, admiring the workmanship. “I can offer a … A recycling discount for this lot. But still, forty-eight hours.”

  “How much for right now?” Marc insisted.

  “You’re in a hurry. Everyone is in a hurry these days.”

  “I don’t disagree. But I still need this now.”

  “Four thousand pounds.” It had to be twice the going rate, but Marc had no time to quibble. He returned to the backpack and laid a thick wedge of fifties on the table.

  “Half now, half when you’re done. I’ll wait,” he told the old man, wandering into the kitchen.

  Marc helped himself to a little of the rogan josh in the cook pot and found a corner of the flat where he could eat in silence.

  * * *

  The Nissan’s lights flashed once as a panel van slowed to a halt and parked in front of it. The rain was a steady drumming on the roof of the sedan, a dull and monotonous sound that only served to help erode the man’s patience.

  He looked up as a figure jogged back across the road from the shadow of the housing estate, and opened the door.

  The severe-looking woman climbed into the driver’s side, and flicked rainwater off her coat. “Took a while, but I found him. He went into one of the blocks,” she reported. “There’s a couple of louts in there, maybe some more.”

  He nodded. “No residents listed on the council tax database. More rats in a rat hole, then.”

  She looked up. The rear doors of the van opened slightly and through the crack a group of men in black coveralls and tactical vests became visible. They carried shotguns and close assault weapons.

  Her partner smiled coldly.

  * * *

  Lucy moved carefully down the length of the elevated terrace, counting off the apartments until she reached the number in her head. She had parked the Ducati near an old trash chute on one of the raised walkways, unwilling to leave the bike where it could be seen.

  At the right door, she halted and used the diamond-hard edge of a military combat knife to lever open the metal security panel. She made a big enough gap to slip through and forced open the door within.

  The apartment was damp and heavy with the musky stink of mildew, and a rotting gray-brown carpet gave under her boots as she threaded through to the back room.

  Cold air and trickles of rain blew in through windows that had fallen open. Lucy crouched, opening her bag, looking for a good angle. Across the grassy space far below was the block that Dane had disappeared into, and from this vantage point Keyes had a view of the whole north side.

  She found a broken chair and used it as a prop for the Heckler & Koch PSG-1 in the long-bag. Lucy calibrated her scope and peered down the length of the rifle, scanning across the balconies until she found the Sikh man. He was sitting on a stoop, smoking. Every once in a while, he would scowl at the clouds as if they were personally spiting him.

  The sniper panned away, turning in a tight arc until the view through the scope found the road and the silver Nissan. She had chosen a good location. Lucy could see both hunter and hunted from here.

  The laser microphone wouldn’t work at this distance—the signal garbled by air attenuation and moisture from the rain—but she didn’t need it to understand what was going on down there. The arrival of the van confirmed her suspicions.

  As she watched, the rear doors opened and a well-drilled line of figures in black emerged, each of them carrying weapons. A tactical unit from MI5, she guessed, called in to do the dirty work for their sister agency.

  One of the masked men in the assault unit crossed to speak to the surveillance team, who had exited the silver sedan, and very distinctly Lucy saw the man with the shotgun make a throat-cutting gesture.

  A kill order. There was nothing else it could mean. They were going in to terminate Marc Dane, not to arrest him. But that didn’t make sense. A few hours ago, MI6 had wanted him alive …

  Without taking her eyes from the scope, Lucy tapped the Bluetooth headset looped over her
ear and waited for the connection.

  * * *

  “This morning we’re told to let him walk, now he’s classed as shoot-on-sight?” said the woman. “How did that happen?” She shot a look at her colleague, who continued to scowl, then back to the assault team leader.

  “Countermand,” said the man with the tactical shotgun. His voice was muffled slightly by the balaclava over his face. Only his deep-set eyes were visible, and they were as gray and cold as the rainfall. “From higher authority at Six. Target has been reclassified.”

  “Welles signed off on that, did he?” said the man with the broken nose.

  “Not his call,” said the team leader. He looked over his shoulder as one of his subordinates gave him a nod of confirmation.

  * * *

  “This is Delancort.”

  “Put him on,” said Lucy, without preamble. “We got a situation.”

  She watched three of the men in tactical gear break off from the main group and enter one of the other residential blocks to the west. The trio all carried scoped assault rifles—short-barrel G-36s by the look of them—and with quick, precise moves they emerged on the mid-levels and took up firing posts, aiming toward the eighth floor of the other block. The guard on the stoop was totally oblivious, talking on a cell phone, making loops in the air with a lit cigarette in his hand. The rest of the tactical team disappeared out of sight, vanishing behind a line of empty garages.

  “Solomon here. Lucy, what is wrong?”

  She swung the scope back to the apartment where Dane had to be. “You pay me for my professional opinion, right?” she said. “Well, my opinion is that our friend Marc Dane is going to be dead inside the next ten minutes.”

  “Explain.”

  “I’m watching a strike team taking positions around an apartment where he’s holed up. They’re armed for bear.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I know overkill when I see it.” Lucy waited for a reply but it didn’t come straight away. “Look, if you want this Brit alive, something’s gonna have to be done. He won’t stand a chance.” As she spoke, the rest of the black-clad figures reappeared near the entrance to the building, and crept inside.

  “Lucy,” said Solomon, his voice level and firm. “Listen to me very carefully. Rubicon cannot afford to alert British Intelligence to your presence there. Your operational directives remain as they were. You are to observe but not interfere.”

  “This guy Dane is a techie. I count five roughnecks coming to his door. Those odds do not favor him.”

  “I am aware,” came the reply, and she heard the frustration under his tone. “Report in when … When events have reached a conclusion.”

  The signal cut and Lucy frowned. She tightened the focus on the PSG-1’s scope and caught sight of something moving behind the metal security slats of the apartment. “You better be lucky, pal,” she said to the air. “Lucky or smart.”

  * * *

  The forger was good, he had to give the man that. Marc had resigned himself to waiting out the night in the grim confines of the dingy flat, but in less than three hours the work had been done.

  Marc’s glum, weary expression looked back up at him from the photo page of a German reisepass. “Complete with holographic foil,” said the old man, placing a pencil behind his ear. He rotated on his chair. “Impressive, yes?”

  “Yes,” agreed Marc. It chilled him to think that for a bag of cash, any self-styled troublemaker with an axe to grind could do what he had.

  “Marko Stahl.” He tried the new name on for size, saying it a few times to find the right inflection. “Ja. Ich heise Marko Stahl.”

  “Zer gut,” said the forger with a flat smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “So, then. The balance of your fee, if you please.” He held out his hand.

  Very suddenly, Marc became aware of the big Sikh standing in the corridor behind him, his tracksuit top unzipped and the thumb of his meaty brown paw resting on the elastic loop of his trousers, close to the butt of the revolver.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” Marc lied, carefully weighing out wads of notes in bundles of five hundred, from the depths of his backpack.

  The old man took the money and the false warmth in his face faded. “There’s also the bill for the curry my grandson cooked.”

  Marc tensed. “And how much is that?”

  The revolver emerged. “How much you got in there?” The Sikh spoke for the first time, snarling the words. Behind him, the boy—the grandson—made his way toward the front door, a flashlight in his hand, his head bobbing as he peeked through the tin slats.

  Marc frowned. “You’re gonna roll me? I thought we were doing business here.”

  “You’ll get what you paid for,” said the forger, unsmiling. “I have standards. But it strikes me that someone in a hurry has little choice about making additional—”

  Whatever thin justification the old man was going to give him was broken by the sound of the front door opening and a sudden, brutal crash of gunfire. The grandson came spinning back down the short hallway as if he had been kicked by a horse, and crumpled into a heap with an ugly red bloom growing large across his chest.

  The front door swung open and the big Sikh was already turning, swearing under his breath, bringing up the revolver. Outside, across the way, Marc saw a flicker of yellow-white flashes in the rainy gloom and threw himself at the ground.

  The air sang as rifle rounds cut across the gap between the apartment blocks and tore into the forger’s bodyguard, the walls and the doorframe. The revolver gave off a sound like thunder as the Sikh jerked the trigger in his death throes. The noise reverberated, and it was a signal for the rain to come down.

  Suddenly, a salvo of silenced assault rifles out there were discharging, ripping through the tin casements over the windows and shattering the glass behind them, driving holes into the fiberboard walls, smashing the forger’s expensive computer gear. The naked light bulb overhead fragmented, plunging the space into gray shadow.

  Marc rolled over on to his back as the room hazed with plaster dust, scanning for another exit. He came face to face with the blunt barrel of his Glock semi-automatic, gripped in the old man’s hand.

  “You brought this upon us!” he spat. “Son of a whore—”

  For the second time, the forger’s words were interrupted, but this time it was the wasp-buzz of a stray round that silenced him once and for all. The shot met his face just inside the orbit of his right eye and punched a divot of brain matter and bone out the back of his skull. The old man’s legs gave out and he collapsed, falling back into his wheeled chair with a grunt of expelled air. The Glock clattered to the floor and Marc scrambled toward it, staying low, snagging it with his outstretched fingers.

  The cascade of bullets halted as suddenly as it had started, and he strained to listen over the sound of his blood rumbling in his ears. Marc caught the scrape of boots against concrete out on the walkway, coming closer.

  There would be a second team, he reasoned. A shooter unit dialed in to soften up the target, and an approach unit to go in and neutralize any survivors.

  Marc felt sick, and suddenly the meat in his stomach wanted out again. He swallowed hard, tasting bile in his mouth. He knew this kind of operation by heart. How many times had he and Leon and Owen sat in the van and directed the same mission profile? Only this time he was experiencing it from the sharp end.

  Was there someone just like him down there, out of sight in the back of a truck, watching a grainy video feed and directing a squad of killers? He shook off the thought and tried to calm his breathing.

  If he knew the play they were making, then he could figure out how to avoid it.

  Marc looked back toward the kitchen, where a door led out to a narrow balcony. Someone would be covering the rear of the building, that was a given, but if he could give them something else to think about, there was a chance he could create a gap he could escape through. They would expect him to go down, to head for the groun
d floor, and make a break for it through the front door.

  He turned back and saw the forger’s corpse lolling in the wheeled office chair. Drawing up his leg, Marc kicked out with a short, sharp motion and struck the frame of the chair. The blow sent it spinning and moving, describing a curving pirouette as it trundled away from him, castors rattling over the concrete floor. The chair and the slumped body sailed right past the line of the damaged windows, providing the shooters outside with a moving target.

  Immediately, the heavy coughs of shotgun discharges sounded, bracketing the dead man. Each impact made the chair spin and judder, showing the gunmen on the walkway the illusion of life.

  Marc was already in a crouching run, heading back toward the kitchen. He fired blindly into the ceiling of the living room as he ran, to prolong the pretense.

  Metallic objects tumbled through the broken windows and clanked against the walls behind him. He didn’t look back. He knew the sound, and ducked low under the kitchen table, eyes screwed shut, mouth open and the heels of his hands pressed into his ears.

  A heartbeat later the flashbangs went off with a flare of brilliant white fury and Marc’s nostrils stung with the hot discharge of chemical smoke. Even a room away from the stun-grenade explosions, he was still dazzled and partly deafened. Blindly, Marc rose up under the table, carrying it with him, throwing it at the whitewashed windows. Glass shattered on to the balcony.

  He found the dented camping stove where it had fallen and slammed the valve joint against the wall. Propane under pressure hissed back at him from the new break in the nozzle, and Marc rolled it away, back down the hallway like a bowling ball.

  A figure in black, face hidden behind a scowling filter mask and ballistic helmet, appeared in the open doorway with a shotgun at the ready. The armed man saw Marc moving and fired at him without hesitating.

  He was at the broken back window as the sparks from the shot ignited the propane, and a hot blast of fire channeled down the flat’s narrow hallway. A plug of smoke and flame slammed Marc in the back, shoving him out on to the balcony. He heard the man with the shotgun scream.