Run and Hide

by Alan McDermott

  Sanders ended the call. In two hours, Carl Huff would be waiting on the bank of the Potomac just off George Washington Memorial Parkway in Lady Bird Johnson Park. It was only an eight-mile journey from Langley, which gave Bill Sanders plenty of time to respond to his superiors and prepare a file for the man who would deal with Eva Driscoll.

  CHAPTER 14

  Colback woke with a start as the events of the previous day gatecrashed his dream. He sat up and shielded his eyes from the sun that had crept over the horizon.

  Eva was gone and so was her bike. She had even taken the backpack he’d been using as a pillow, which proved how tired he must have been the night before. He got up and relieved himself, all the while reflecting on how things had turned upside down so abruptly. One minute he’d been heading for a steak dinner; now here he was with his dick in his hand, waiting for some shadowy organization to track him down and kill him.

  A twig snapped, and Colback spun to face the danger.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Eva said, looking at his crotch while holding out a disposable cup, “but I prefer coffee first thing in the morning.”

  Colback turned away and put his dick back in his pants, annoyed at having let her sneak up on him.

  “I hope you take it black with no sugar,” Eva said.

  Colback avoided eye contact as he took the cup. “That’s fine.”

  The coffee was barely warm, but he drank greedily, grateful for the caffeine hit.

  “Time to go,” she said, heading back down the trail without checking to see if he was following.

  Colback followed in her wake and a minute later saw their new transport. “You think that’s going to make it to Ohio?”

  The Chevy Impala was at least ten years old, judging by the rust patches on the doors and wheel wells and the fading paint job.

  “It’ll have to do. I wasn’t going to blow the entire budget on something we might have to abandon. It runs well enough, so quit moaning.”

  Eva got behind the wheel. Her backpack was on the seat beside her, and she took a blonde wig from it and used the rearview mirror to ensure it sat properly.

  Colback got in beside her and put on his seatbelt.

  “There’s a cap in the bag,” she said. “Put it on. There’s also a new T-shirt.”

  “This one’s fine,” Colback told her.

  “You might think so, soldier, but I have to live with the smell. Besides, it’s about changing your appearance. There are cameras all along the highway, and the agencies can feed footage into facial recognition software, so get changed, pull the cap over your eyes, and keep your head down.”

  “And your wig is going to defeat the software, is it?”

  “No,” she said, “but this is.”

  She pulled a pair of joke glasses from her pocket, complete with a large false nose and black mustache.

  “You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Billions of dollars’ worth of technology defeated by a couple of bucks’ worth of plastic.” Eva smiled. “It’s not the perfect solution, but they must have spotted me when we left the underground garage in New York. The makeover didn’t work, so hopefully this will.”

  She started the engine, which caught first time. Within a few minutes they were on the highway heading west, the road and sky both clear.

  “This guy we’re going to see, Farooq. How do you know you can trust him?”

  “He owes me,” Eva replied. “He had a family issue and I helped straighten it out.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s the version you’re getting,” she said, her eyes never leaving the road.

  Colback knew Eva well enough by now to realize there was no point in pushing the topic. If she wanted to share details, she would. She’d told him plenty about being Jeff’s sibling, but now she was keeping things close to her vest. A little consistency would be nice . . .

  “We’re going to need help,” she said a few minutes later. “Our first task is finding out why they want you dead. Once we’ve done that, we need to get to them before they get to you. Neither of us will be able to get close enough, so we need fresh faces. I’m talking people who are not on any watch lists.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “One,” Eva said. “A guy I met ten years ago. If he’s still in the business, he’d be a good place to start.”

  “Still in what business?”

  “The British security services. MI5.”

  Colback laughed. “Seriously? You’re going to turn this into an international incident?”

  “That’s not the plan. I just need him to put me in touch with the right people.”

  “People like you?” Colback asked.

  “If possible. Failing that, anyone with a military background in covert ops.”

  “I could give you a couple dozen names off the top of my head.”

  “Nope,” Eva said. “Anyone you’ve ever worked with will be under surveillance. The moment you contact them, they’ll be all over us. No, it has to be someone neither of us has any association with. Hopefully my old contact will be able to find the right people.”

  “Do you want to stop and give him a call?”

  “No, we have to get to Farooq first and then we’ll see if Andrew is still with MI5.”

  “Again, pardon the paranoia, but what makes you feel you can trust this Andrew character?”

  Eva considered the question momentarily. “As you’re never going to meet him, I guess I can tell you. When I was doing my training, one of the assignments was to create a legend. It’s basically a fabricated background. I had to pretend to be someone else and see if I could get away with it. The thing is, we’re not just talking about using a fake license to buy liquor. My task was to get close to a foreign national who was working for the security services. The harder the assignment, the better the score, so I chose London. MI5 and MI6 are meticulous when it comes to vetting their staff’s potential partners. I contacted the local station at the US embassy and got a list of possible candidates, and I went for Andrew Harvey. A few days later, after watching his movements, I met him in a bar. I bumped into him and spilled his drink, bought him another one, and we got talking.”

  “It was that easy?”

  “Hell, no!” Eva chuckled. “I said I needed to use the restroom and left my handbag with him. It contained my driver’s license, including an address in London. That was all he needed to start researching me. When he dropped me back at my place, I tried to talk him into coming up for a coffee, but he asked for a raincheck.”

  Colback’s eyes narrowed. “Seriously? He turned you down?”

  “Yep. I’d plied him with drink and flirted enough to make a eunuch amorous but he was a professional. We met up three days later, by which time he would have gone through my personal history with a fine-tooth comb. The fact that we were allowed to spend a couple of weeks in bed together meant my legend had held up to the finest scrutiny.”

  “So you dumped him and came home, is that it?”

  “No. Having cultivated a bond, I thought it best to part on friendly terms. I told him my employer was bringing me back to the States for a promotion. I said I didn’t want to leave London but that I wouldn’t get this opportunity again. I wrote to him a few times and got a few replies, then eventually I told him about a man I’d met, and the letters stopped coming.”

  Colback could sense regret in her tone, a subtle softening of her persona. “You think he’ll help you after all this time?”

  Eva shrugged. “As I said, he might not even be with MI5 anymore. People move on. All I can do is try.”

  “If he is, won’t he be listed as one of your contacts?” Colback asked. “I thought you were trying to avoid known associates.”

  “They would expect me to contact people here in the States, but not someone in England. They’ll have the airports screwed down tight and think they have me confined, but there are ways . . .” When she fell silent, Colback guessed it was the end of that con
versation.

  A couple of hours later, they stopped for gas. Eva—minus her comedy disguise—filled the tank while Colback went into the store to get coffee and Danish to go.

  “You drive,” Eva said when he returned with their sustenance. “Just follow the highway and keep it under the speed limit. Wake me when we’re just outside Akron. I’ll take it from there. If you see anything suspicious, give me a shout.”

  Colback pulled back onto the highway, while Eva donned her Groucho glasses and closed her eyes. She was asleep within minutes.

  CHAPTER 15

  Tom Gray glanced at his watch as the buildings on the outskirts of San Giovanni in Fiore came into view. He was outside of his best time for the three-mile run, but that had been set two years earlier when the uphill climb hadn’t taken such a toll on his aging body. At forty-eight, he remained in great shape, but he would be the first to admit that he was well past his prime.

  His pace slackened as he reached the first of the multicolored four-story buildings, and he slowed to a walk as he approached the small panetteria, a bakery he frequented each morning.

  “Buongiorno, Tom. Il solito?”

  Every morning the baker’s wife asked if he wanted the usual, and his reply was always the same.

  “Buongiorno, signora. Si, per favore—il mio solito.” He took a seat at one of three tables set up outside the little store, and a minute later, a small espresso was placed in front of him. “Another beautiful day,” he said.

  “Come sempre.”

  Not quite always, Gray thought. The weather was much like England. Cold in winter, nice in summer, although here it felt a little more predictable.

  It was also quiet.

  Gray had always imagined he’d miss the bustle of London, but he was settling into the rural lifestyle nicely. Living a few miles from the small Italian town gave him the perfect excuse to exercise each morning, and the air was the cleanest he’d known.

  There were drawbacks though, and Melissa’s school fees were the biggest. His daughter had just turned five, and with no English-speaking schools in the area, he’d chosen to pay for private tuition rather than place her in a local Italian-language school. That was eating up a healthy chunk of his income, and with the state of his company’s finances, he wasn’t in a position to award himself a pay raise. He hoped that when Sonny and Len arrived for their bi-monthly meeting later that day, they’d have a new contract or two to tell him about.

  He certainly needed some good news.

  Stormont International, the Walmart of the security world, could afford to charge lower rates due to the sheer volume of clients on its books. It seemed that every week he heard of another small operator folding, and Gray feared his own firm would be next.

  Perhaps now really was the time to sell up. He’d revisited the option countless times in recent weeks, and the longer he delayed it, the less Minotaur Logistics would be worth. If he could sell it as a going concern, then at least the men working for him might have an income for a few more years, as opposed to nothing if he were forced to dissolve the company.

  The trouble was, finding a buyer wouldn’t be easy. He’d had to cut his rates to counter Stormont’s tactics, so his current contracts barely brought in a million a year. With personnel costs accounting for over 70 percent of that, there was just about enough left to cover office rent, insurance, upkeep of the training facility, and his own salary. Anyone performing due diligence would immediately see the perilous state of the company’s finances and walk away.

  Gray downed his espresso and resolved to discuss it with Len and Sonny. After all, it would affect them too.

  He took his empty cup inside and collected his bag of cornetti—similar to croissants but filled with fresh whipped cream.

  “Same time tomorrow,” he said, and began the brisk walk home. As it was mostly downhill, he made good time, and when he arrived back at the cottage he saw his daughter playing on the swing he’d hung from the branch of an olive tree in the garden.

  “Daddy!”

  “Good morning, darling. I’ve got breakfast.”

  He knelt down and held up the bag, and Melissa ran over to him, snatching it from his grasp before reaching up to deliver a peck on his cheek and disappearing into the house. He followed her inside and found Mina Hatcher preparing the table.

  “Can I have orange juice please, Nana?”

  “Of course you may, sweetheart,” Mina told Melissa.

  Mina and her husband Ken were in fact the aunt and uncle of Gray’s late wife Vick, but to Melissa they were the grandma and granddad she would otherwise have never had. The couple were delighted to take on the role and had jumped at the chance to have Tom and Melissa share their home. In their sixties, the Hatchers seemed to enjoy some young blood around the house.

  “Do I smell bacon?” Gray asked.

  “If you’re ever going to finish that annex, you’ll need to build your strength.”

  The annex had been Gray’s idea and had seemed a good one at the time. The three-bedroom cottage, its white plaster walls and terracotta roof typical of the region, seemed to get smaller as Melissa grew. Gray had offered to build an extension onto the side of the house, comprising a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, a playroom, and a small kitchen area. That would free up one of the upstairs bedrooms for Mina to pursue her cross-stitch hobby.

  The problem was, Gray was no builder. Laying bricks one on top of the other was a doddle, but the plumbing and electrical requirements were beyond him. He’d had to hire professionals to complete those aspects of the work.

  Yet more expense.

  “I’ll have the south and east walls finished by the end of the week,” Gray promised.

  Then it’s just two more walls, the roof, final-fit electrics, plastering, windows, doors . . .

  Next time, Gray, keep your big mouth shut.

  He ate his fill of bacon, eggs, and toast, then supervised Melissa as she brushed her teeth and combed her hair in preparation for another day in school. Gray usually cycled to the private lessons with his daughter, but as Mina was heading into town, she offered to give Melissa a lift.

  Once the girls had left, Ken went out to tend to his garden while Gray donned a sun hat and began mixing mortar.

  “You didn’t have to get dressed up, especially for us.” Sonny Baines grinned as he stepped out of the rental car. “Still not finished, I see. What has it been, three years?”

  “Six months,” Gray said, removing his gloves and shaking hands.

  Len Smart, Gray noticed, didn’t seem so jovial.

  “I’m guessing you’re not here to bring me good news.”

  “We lost Naylor Resources.”

  A knot grew in Gray’s stomach. Instead of landing some new fish, he’d lost his whale. “Do I need to ask why?”

  “Not really,” Smart said.

  Gray led them indoors and they took a seat at the kitchen table while he sought refreshments. He returned from the refrigerator with a six-pack of beer. “I was hoping to use these for a celebration, but we might as well drown our sorrows. How bad is it?”

  Smart took some papers from his leather briefcase and laid them before Gray. “As of next month, when the Naylor contract ends, we’ll be running at a loss. Unless we manage to land a replacement, the money in the bank will run out at the start of next year. That’s the rose-tinted version. If we lose another client, we’ve probably got until November, and two more contracts are coming up for renewal.”

  Gray opened a can of Peroni and took a long drink. “Thanks for not sugarcoating it.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the ultra-sweet version,” Smart said. “I spoke to the two companies whose contracts are about to expire. The Oman job is ours for another year, but the telecoms outfit in Iraq received a Stormont prospectus and they’re considering their options.”

  It wasn’t as if he could lay people off to stave off the inevitable. Apart from the three men around the table, the only other full-time employee was Gill, th
eir receptionist. All the men doing the security work were freelance, hired on when contracts came in.

  Gray stood and walked over to the sink, staring out of the kitchen window as if inspiration lay in the grounds of the smallholding.

  It didn’t.

  The moment he’d been dreading had arrived, and it was time to face facts. “I’ve no choice. I have to sell up,” he said, his eyes still on the olive trees outside.

  “We expected as much,” Sonny said. “Want us to put the word out when we get back to London?”

  Gray returned to his seat. “If you could, that would be great. I guessed this day might eventually come, so I asked my accountant to put the feelers out. I haven’t heard from him, but I’ll follow up later today.”

  “No worries,” Smart said. “I’ll get in touch with Hereford and see if anyone is interested. Private security is the natural progression after leaving Two-Two, and hopefully someone coming to the end of their stint will want to take it on.”

  “Thanks,” Gray said. “Be honest with them though. Let them know it’s not going to be easy. The last thing I want to do is screw over one of our own.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, what about you guys?” Len and Sonny had been uppermost in Gray’s mind over the last few weeks, and leaving them without an income was the main reason he’d delayed the inevitable.

  “Len here reckons he’s the new Mickey Spillane. He’s gonna be a rich and famous author.”

  “Spillane wrote American crime thrillers, you philistine. Besides, I haven’t decided if I’m going to write anything yet.”

  “You should,” Gray said, finishing off his beer. “Better you than Sonny, anyway.”

  Laughter broke the tension, and the men chatted about which of their exploits should be included in Smart’s upcoming masterpiece, but the conversation inevitably returned to the subject of finances.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had to worry about money,” Gray told them, swigging his beer. “It isn’t a nice feeling.”

  “You should have written your autobiography when it was fresh in people’s minds,” Len said. “That would have set you up for life.”