Absence of Mercy

by Joe McCoubrey

  Devon was about to argue, but realised the man sitting opposite was probably the only true friend he had managed to hold onto for more than five minutes. Doyle was, of course much more than that. Devon doubted if he could have continued pushing his limits had it not been for the presence of the likeable and lethal ex Special Air Services sergeant. They had shared many a scrape, saved each other’s hide in a dozen fucked-up scenarios, and developed a bond that few men get to experience.

  Devon decided to tell all, including his decision to leave the agency.

  When he had finished, Doyle frowned. “Let’s get one thing straight. The General would be dead by now if it had not been for your quick thinking. Stop trying to second-guess yourself that ten years ago you could have shaved a second or two off your reaction time. That’s a mind-game for idiots. The fact is the General has a good chance to pull through because it was you who was there. Who’s to say any of the rest of us would have been able to do anything differently?”

  Devon was about to cut in but was stopped by Doyle’s upstretched palm. “And another thing. It was your instincts that got Emma and young Michael out of harm’s way. It has been those instincts that have made this agency what it is. Without you, we would be nothing.”

  “Am I not entitled to a normal family life?”

  “C’mon, Mike. We don’t do normal around here. Give Emma some credit. She knew what she signed up for when she said I do to that ugly mug of yours. I agree we need to do more to protect our people. We need to make sure that nothing can touch our private lives and those of the other people who work here. Let’s clear up this mess first and then sit down to overhaul the way we do things. If you still feel the same way, I’ll back you one hundred percent in whatever decision you take.”

  Devon forced a smile. “Is that the pep talk finished for the day?”

  “Yeah, how’d I do?”

  This time there was nothing forced about Devon’s smile. “I wouldn’t make a career out of it if I was you, but for an old Army grunt you do show a surprising sensitivity now and then.”

  “And fuck you too!”

  The two men burst out laughing. The mood had lightened considerably, but both knew they would be returning to the subject in the not too distant future.

  Chapter 15

  CHARLES NIGHTINGALE SLAMMED the hotel telephone receiver back onto its cradle and cursed about having to check out of the penthouse suite at such short notice. He had insisted on having his bill ready and a taxi waiting outside the door in five minutes. There was not a second to lose.

  He finished cramming the last of his clothes into a suitcase, ignoring his usual fastidious packing habits. When it came to his weapon, however, he took extra care to ensure a round was chambered and ready to go. He might have need of it before this night was over.

  “Fuck, fuck!” The cursing erupted at regular intervals as he stared again at the email blinking at him from the opened laptop on the dressing table. How could someone have been so careless as to include his name on a list that was now accessible on a half dozen machines?

  Nightingale prided himself on being a careful individual. He had a healthy respect for intelligence agencies around the world. These people were not exactly dummies when it came to using the vast array of sophisticated spyware at their fingertips. Why make their job any easier?

  And yet this latest email, with an open list of names, including his own, was now bouncing around cyberspace and multiplying by compounding factors the chances of somebody, somewhere zeroing in on him.

  It was time to cut and run.

  Just an hour earlier Nightingale had been congratulating himself on a job well done. He had checked his Swiss bank account to confirm the addition of one million euros, the promised payment for his elimination of one of the names on the LonWash Securities contract.

  Nightingale got lucky when he picked the name of Dave Carpenter from the list. At the time he didn’t know his chosen target was not an active operative. That much was clear from the ease with which he had lured his subject to the deserted airfield and dispensed with him at no loss of sweat.

  His decision to prearrange a private charter flight to pick him up from the airfield was a masterstroke. After killing Carpenter all he had to do was make a quick call to a pilot he had used on many occasions and who was on standby less than fifteen minutes away. Had Carpenter refused to take the bait, the call would have been cancelled until another day.

  But Nightingale was born lucky. It had always been like that, although he tended to agree with the South African golfer, Gary Player, who said, “the more I practise, the luckier I get.”

  Meticulous planning, that’s what it was all about. The Carpenter job was a model of precision. Locate the target, devise a plan and execute. Job done. Home and clear, and on his way to Paris in less than a day.

  But now this!

  Nightingale knew the chances of his name being discovered had now risen a hundredfold. His photo would be dredged up from some intelligence directory or another and circulated to co-operating agencies across Europe. If someone tied in the private charter to Paris, his time in the French capital was extremely limited.

  He decided to take a taxi across the city to a hire-car agency where he would use one of his fake identities to grab a set of good wheels and hightail his way east towards Germany or Italy. He would work out his final destination as he drove through the night.

  Thirty minutes after leaving the hotel he was settled behind the wheel of a Mercedes, careful to observe the speed limits as he passed the Charles de Gaulle Airport on his way to Saint-Soupplets, an obvious gateway to Berlin.

  For the first time that evening he dropped his shoulders and relaxed.

  Claude Bartran also considered himself a lucky individual. As the former head of France’s premier security service, he had recognised on many occasions the need for a bit of good fortune when it came to protecting himself and his country.

  What else could he call it when he happened to drive up to the fifth hotel on his itinerary for visits, and there fleeing from the lobby was the man he had come to track down?

  Bartran had spent the past two days meticulously going over everything he could find on his files about Nightingale, and had surmised that the best way to start a hunt for the man wanted by his old friend Mike Devon was to show a mugshot around the ten best hotels Paris had to offer. If he drew a blank with the upmarket places to stay, he would simply start into another list comprising some of the city’s less ostentatious flea joints. After that, he would circulate the photo to all his old law enforcement contacts.

  For now, Bartran was prepared to be patient. No need yet to raise a general alarm that might spook Nightingale and send him deeper undercover.

  Retirement had provided Bartran with a lot of time on his hands. He could afford to be patient, despite the obvious urgency in tracking down the assassin. He would give it forty-eight hours before sparking an all-out manhunt.

  And here he was. Less than six hours into his allocated time for sweeping the top hotels, he’s watching his quarry walk down the steps of La Parisienne, a five-star mecca for those who can afford the cost and convenience of laying down their heads less than a stone’s throw from the Champs-Élysées.

  Bartran knew a fugitive in a hurry when he saw one. He had chased enough men and women to recognise the awkwardness of their movements, the familiar dip of the shoulders, and the furtive glances as they hurried along. People who were trying hard to blend in, but by their very actions stood out like sore thumbs.

  He didn’t need to glance at the mugshot lying on his passenger seat. The image was burned into his brain. There was no doubt that the man he was watching from his car, parked across from the hotel entrance, was Charles Nightingale.

  A master of counter-surveillance techniques, Bartran kept his little Renault a safe distance from the taxi as it shouldered its way through the notorious traffic build-ups for which Paris was noted. Ten minutes later the taxi pulled into a Hertz
hire compound.

  Bartran knew he had to act quickly. If Nightingale was intent on leaving Paris by road, there was little chance of pursuing him over long distances in his 1200cc runaround. He swung the Renault off the main driveway and headed to the rear of the large office complex.

  It took a minute of pounding on a large rear door for someone to respond. Bartran produced his security credentials, which were still active despite his retirement, and ordered to be taken to the manager.

  By the time Charles Nightingale completed the rental paperwork and climbed into the Mercedes, Bartran had fixed a magnetic GPS locator to the inside of the car trunk before it was driven to the reception area pick-up point.

  Chapter 16

  TIM HALLORAN LOVED MESSING ABOUT with the inner secrets of computers. Even allowing for his obvious exaggerations, it was hard to argue with his standing boast that given enough time he could discover what someone had for breakfast, just by taking a look at their hard drive.

  He had proved it over and over again, starting with his work as a troubleshooter for some of London’s major banking institutions, and continuing into his early career as a leading cyber security expert with GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters based at Cheltenham, northwest of London. It was here that Halloran blossomed, rewriting existing data capture techniques and devising new SIGINT software that became the benchmark for signals intelligence-gathering throughout Europe.

  His boast was that everyone who switched on a device, be it computer, tablet or smartphone, for the purposes of getting online, was opening a door to his world and in doing so ran the risk of him watching what they were up to. The layers of cryptanalytic spyware, which he had continually updated, had reached levels of intrusion that even he himself had found disconcerting at times.

  Halloran had already left the organisation when whistleblower Edward Snowden went public with his claim that GCHQ was acting outside its remit by amassing all UK online and telephone data through a programme known as Tempora. The Great British public had gone apeshit at the thought of this unwarranted intrusion into their private lives, little knowing that Tempora was perhaps the least invasive of the many programmes Halloran and his erstwhile colleagues had dreamt up and implemented.

  Lured to LonWash Securities by General Sandford’s promise of a higher salary and an unlimited budget, Halloran had continued to tap into these programmes, refining them to new standards that had yet to be reached by GCHQ.

  He was enjoying life in the private sector, but right now he was feeling cheated.

  He had tackled with relish the confiscated laptop belonging to the assassin, Alexei Baronova, believing that its trail of emails would offer a cyber-hunt challenge worthy of his skills. He had set aside six hours for the task.

  It took him less than an hour.

  He grabbed his papers and went in search of Devon, finding him as usual in the middle of his team, issuing orders and looking like someone who wanted to be out of the office and into the field.

  Devon looked up. “Tell me you’ve got something.”

  Halloran knew better than to start explaining his morning’s algorithmic exploits. Better to just wade in with the bottom-line information. “I can tell you the server address where the second email originated from. I think we’ve found the sender, or at least someone who ought to know what’s going on.”

  Devon looked like someone had just told him his lottery ticket had come up. He beamed a wide grin at Halloran. “Great work, Tim. Who did you find hiding under the stone?”

  “The IP address is registered to one Felix Hoffmeier at an office in Vienna. My guys are currently putting together a dossier on him, but what we know so far is that he is some kind of billionaire industrialist. He’s involved in a myriad of businesses across the world and is known as something of a philanthropist when it comes to charities and good causes. To all intents and purposes he’s a model citizen.”

  Devon smirked. “I’ll bet when your people start peeling back the layers they’ll find Herr Hoffmeier’s skeletons. Keep them at it, Tim.”

  Halloran nodded in acknowledgement. “There’s one more thing. I know you don’t want to hear the techie stuff, but the bottom line is that this was too easy. As I mentioned at the earlier briefing, the encryption levels were a hotchpotch of brilliance mixed with stupidity. For someone who clearly didn’t want to be found, they left a trail of crumbs that a child could follow.”

  Devon patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t do yourself down. These things might come easy to you, but not everyone can operate at the levels you do.”

  “No, Mike, believe me this is not something I can take credit for. This just doesn’t smell right.”

  “Okay, Tim, let’s cut to the chase. What’s your gut telling you?”

  Halloran held Devon’s gaze. “It looks to me like someone not only wanted us to find the email sender, but also the recipients. I can tell precisely where these emails were accessed from.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  Halloran smiled. “Yes, three of the emails were opened right here in London. The fourth was opened at an address in Paris.”

  The room was still buzzing five minutes after Halloran left. Devon had to admit that he didn’t have a clue about the significance of his tech chief’s statement, but that would have to wait for another day. Halloran and his team would work non-stop to find out what they could about this Hoffmeier character, and would launch immediate SIGINT surveillance on everything going into and out of the offices in Vienna.

  He had no doubt that he would know all he needed to know within the next thirty-six hours. After that, he intended to have a less than friendly chat with Herr Hoffmeier.

  Right now, his sole concentration was on four assassins who were still at large, and seemingly intent on killing his people. That simply wasn’t going to happen.

  He banged the table for attention. “We need four separate teams for overlapping missions. Here’s how it’s going to play out. Cheadle is with me and Alan will pair up with Agent Horgan.”

  He paused to watch Doyle and Horgan exchange swift glances. There’s definitely a spark there, he thought.

  He turned his attention to two men seated at the end of the conference table. Terry Hunt and Jim Cross had been brought in less than an hour ago and introduced to the group as new members of the team. Former SAS buddies of Doyle, he didn’t doubt their expertise and had no qualms about throwing them in at the deep end.

  “Hunt you’re with Bob Mortimer and Cross goes with Bill Carlisle. I’ll assign targets in a moment, but there’s one thing I want to stress. We go in hard and fast. I don’t care about messy. We haven’t time to mount surveillance-and-follow procedures. We find these people, we take them out. Nothing else matters.”

  No-one spoke, so Devon continued. “We can assume at least three of the targets are still in the UK, probably within the Greater London area. They have still not fulfilled their contracts and, judging by the emails they received, they will be getting jittery about hurrying things along. We’ve got to flush them out.”

  Doyle interrupted to announce to the group that dossiers on the three men had been completed and that a general alert was going out to all agencies. “Their photographs have been circulated to MI5 and the Metropolitan Police, but now we’ve also got a starting point from the work of our techies, who were able to pinpoint locations where the second emails were opened. It they’re smart they will have already moved on, but you just never know.”

  Devon walked to the whiteboard at the head of the room and began scrawling the names of the four targets. Then he added an arrow alongside each and wrote in the names of his team. He turned back to the group. “That’s how our assignments are going to go down. Any questions?”

  Doyle nodded. “I see you’ve selected Charles Nightingale for yourself. We know he’s fled to Paris, but is it a good idea for you to be out of the country at this time?”

  “This one’s personal. I owe him for Dave Carpenter and I
want to look him in the eye when he realises he made the biggest and last mistake of his life the day he came after one of us.”

  “I’d sure like to be there when you catch up with the bastard.”

  Devon glanced at his sidekick, realising for the first time that this was the kind of mission he usually wouldn’t contemplate without his right-hand man. “I know how you feel, Alan, but you’re needed here. We can’t afford to leave any of our targets running free for a day longer than is necessary.”

  Doyle hid his disappointment with a smile. “Could be you want to take the out-of-country assignment just to try out the new Dassault jet?”

  “Yeah,” Devon replied, “and I can’t wait to see old Claude’s face when I roll into Paris in that.”

  Chapter 17

  AT THAT PRECISE MOMENT Claude Bartran was more than a hundred miles from Paris. He glanced down at the GPS tracking screen and estimated he had already lost about twenty miles on the high-performance Mercedes being driven by the assassin Nightingale.

  Until ten minutes ago he had not been concerned about the growing gap between the two cars. But something had suddenly clicked in his mind.

  It was the realisation that if Nightingale abandoned the hire car, he would not arrive at the location in time to be able to pick up a trail.

  Bartran cursed at his own complacency. How could be have been so stupid?

  The pursuit had already taken him past the city of Reims in the Ardennes, and as they headed towards the France-Germany border just outside Saarbrucken, Bartran realised the route ahead offered too many chances for the assassin to disappear off the radar.