Even though her face was in shadow, he could sense an energy radiating from her, a fierceness that he hadn’t seen in months.
The skin on his forearms prickled as she stalked towards them, her jaw clenched as she emerged from the shadows.
‘Fresh coffee here,’ he said, keeping his tone light. ‘Thought you might need some. Figured we’re going to be in for a long night.’
‘Fine,’ she managed.
Marie forced a smile. ‘Thanks for the loan of some clothes. I feel better after a shower, too.’
‘How did you hear about us?’ said Eva, leaning against the worktop beside the sink. ‘You never said.’
‘In passing.’ Marie shook her head. ‘I think it was via a British agent who was observing a mission of ours a while back. He waited until everyone else had gone, and then thanked me for a job well done and told me that if I ever needed help, this was where I should come. He was the one that told me about the book you used as a code word, too.’
‘The movie was better,’ Nathan grinned.
‘Sacrilege.’ Eva scowled. ‘What was his name?
‘Sorry?’ Marie frowned.
‘The man who gave you the address and the code phrase. What was his name?’
‘I-I don’t remember, to be honest. It was a while ago, and––’ she choked out a nervous laugh ‘––as you’ll appreciate, we fly a lot of missions. A lot of people come and go.’
‘Would you recognise him again if you saw him?’
‘Um, maybe I suppose…’
‘Do you always fly with the same crew?’
‘Yes.’
Eva choked out a bitter laugh. ‘That’s all very well, Marie – except there’s problem.’
‘What?’
‘The RAF base commander at Waddington has never heard of you. Or your crew.’ Eva pulled out her gun and aimed it at Marie, ignoring the squeak of alarm that Nathan emitted. ‘So who the fuck are you really working for?’
Marie raised her hands.
The seconds ticked past, and Nathan took a deep breath, wishing his heart rate would stop rushing blood to his head.
Finally, Marie sighed.
‘I’m one of you. I work for the Section.’
Chapter Thirteen
Eva blinked, her mouth dropping open.
‘Give me that.’ Nathan pushed back his chair and snatched the gun from her grasp, flicked on the safety and slid the weapon onto the table.
It skidded across the surface, then clanged against the side of his coffee mug and stopped.
‘Can you prove it?’ said Eva, recovering from her shock.
Marie exhaled and rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously? Come on, Eva – I knew where to find you, I knew the code phrase. Hell, I’ve even heard of the Section. Of course I’m one of you.’ She crossed her arms. ‘You really think I’d be stupid to turn up unarmed if I was going to try to assassinate you? Have you forgotten that you’ve still got a reputation in Europe thanks to your last job for the Section?’
‘I didn’t do it for them.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Come on, Eva,’ said Nathan. ‘Enough. I believe her.’
‘You would say that – she’s your sister.’
‘Yes, and I also happen to know that she was approached by Special Intelligence Services when we were at university.’
‘Did you?’ Marie’s eyes opened wide.
He shrugged. ‘I used to have to vet all the people the Section wanted to approach about employment prospects. The fact you turned down MI6 six months beforehand worked to your advantage.’
‘And yet you didn’t know she was flying a Section-owned drone,’ Eva said.
He snorted. ‘I didn’t get paid that much. No, anything like that was passed up to another level. You forget I was only a mortal analyst.’
‘I’m still not happy about this.’
‘All right, all right.’ Marie turned away, walked a few paces and then stopped and peered over her shoulder at them. ‘You want evidence, I’ll give it to you. I know about the laboratory that got destroyed in Poland. Three years ago, wasn’t it? Just before Nathan called me to say he had to go away for a while.’
Eva’s mouth went dry. ‘How do you—’
‘Because we were the ones piloting the drone that blew the laboratory into the next century.’
Nathan raised his hands in the air. ‘She scores, she wins.’
‘Enough,’ Eva snapped, her attention catching his computer screen before she glared at Marie. ‘You try anything, anything at all that threatens me or Nathan, I will kill you.’
‘Understood.’
‘Eva?’ Nathan stared at her wide-eyed. ‘Calm down, all right? I realise this is a shock – it is to me, too – but come on. Give her a chance. At least let Knox corroborate her story.’
‘It’ll have to wait.’
‘Why?’
Eva pointed to his laptop screen. ‘Look at the camera feed. There’s a car two blocks away, with four men inside. We need to clean out the flat and move.’
‘Jesus.’ He crossed to the table, moused through the images, and then straightened. ‘What about all this kit?’
‘Split it up. We’ll carry what we can between us. Weapons are a priority, ammunition too.’
‘I need my laptop – and the encryption stuff.’
‘Fine, but no more than you can get away with, all right? We can source replacements once we find somewhere to get our heads down.’
‘Okay.’
Eva was already opening cupboards under the sink, pulling out wet wipes and other paraphernalia. She picked up a spray bottle then sprinted to the first of the two bedrooms and aimed the trigger at every surface, a thick stench of bleach causing her to cough and cover her mouth and nose with her arm as she worked.
It wasn’t perfect, but the oxygen-producing liquid worked better than any detergent-based bleach, and would slow down anyone trying to trace their fingerprints.
Eva had used the flat sparingly in the past few months, and Nathan accepted the rules she set in place without hesitation. Every surface was wiped down daily, and their possessions were sparse so as not to draw attention to who they really were.
He knew better than most what her history could conjure, and so even the wardrobes contained little by way of clothing.
They had lived a frugal existence, always ready for the possibility that they would have to run one day.
She dropped the empty bottle onto the bed, then gathered the meagre clothing they kept on hand and marched back to the kitchen. Turning the dial on the oven, she shoved the bundle inside, slammed shut the door and twisted the heat setting up to maximum.
Marie watched with her eyes wide open. ‘Do you do this every time you think you’re being watched?’
‘God, no.’ Eva stood with her hands on her hips, appraising the bare flat and calculating what else she could do in the time left. ‘But this is more than being watched. No-one sends a car with four men inside to watch. They’re a hit squad, no doubt about it.’
‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have come here.’ Marie closed her eyes. ‘I didn’t know where else to go… I don’t know who else to trust.’
‘It’s not your fault. If you hadn’t turned up, someone else would’ve done at some point.’ Nathan forced a smile. ‘It’s why we set up the code word.’
Marie opened her mouth to speak, but Eva held up her hand.
‘Save it for later. We’re getting out of here now. Nathan – which mobile phone are you keeping?’
‘This one.’ He held it up. ‘It’s got the most up-to-date encryption software on it, and…’
‘Marie, are you carrying a phone?’
‘No – they took them from us before flying us out to Belarus.’
‘Fine.’ Eva swept up the other two phones from the table, fished hers from her jeans pocket and strode over to the microwave. ‘Bring that spare laptop over here as well.’
‘You’re not going to microwave all of that, are you?’
said Marie, her voice incredulous.
In response, Eva pressed the buttons on the front of the microwave, set the heat temperature to the highest point, and stepped back as the machine whirred to life.
Eva pulled across a chair to the centre of the kitchen, climbed onto it and then removed a nine volt battery from the smoke detector.
Within moments, sparks shot against the heat-proof glass door before flames shot out from the melting phones and laptop and a stench of melting plastic filled the kitchen.
Seconds later, the equipment exploded with a short, sharp bang.
A cheerful ping echoed off the kitchen cabinets while the innards of the microwave sizzled and smoked.
‘You never did like cooking, did you?’ said Nathan.
Chapter Fourteen
‘We’ve got a problem, sir.’
Miles’s attention jerked away from the report in his hand, his other clutching the third cup of coffee he’d wrested from the vending machine since returning from Waddington two hours ago. ‘What?’
‘Message received on a closed channel from Nathan Crowe,’ said Greg, the analyst’s eyes never leaving his screen. ‘Their safe house has been compromised. Marie Weston was followed. Four men in pursuit in a car registered to a local hire company. I’ve already run the plates – they were stolen.’
‘Shit.’ Miles threw the sheaf of paper onto the nearest desk, swigged the last of the coffee, grimaced at the burnt aftertaste and then moved to where the team of three analysts sat facing identical computer screens. ‘Where are they headed?’
‘He only had time to tell us the street name before they made a run for it – we’ve got movement in the city centre. I set up facial recognition software on the CCTV cameras around Platnérská and Kaprova streets to get us started.’
‘Bring it up on the main display. Everyone – pay attention.’
The large wall-to-wall display opposite flickered to life, twelve panels that together created one huge screen.
‘Satellite feed, Emily. Now.’
‘Onto it, sir,’ replied a young voice to his left.
The analyst toggled the controls and the satellite angle zoomed in from several thousand metres down to a point where they were hovering over the cobble-lined streets of Prague, the manoeuvre completed in under four seconds.
‘Where is she, Greg?’ he barked.
‘Coordinates being entered now.’
‘Did Crowe say where they’re headed?’
‘Negative, sir. He said they’re just trying to stay alive at the moment.’
‘Jason?’ Miles spun around to face the analyst next to Emily. ‘I need you to go through all known safe houses on our list. The dark list – not the one we share with MI6. I don’t need to tell you all that at the present time, we don’t know who our enemy is, where the threat is coming from, or who we can trust. Understood?’
A murmur of responses came back in reply but he was already moving to the command desk at the back of the secure room, pushing paperwork aside and cursing under his breath.
Eva was on the run with two other targets who were untrained and certainly inexperienced in escape and evade tactics.
And who the hell was going after them?’
‘Any sign of their pursuers?’ he said, looking up at the large display. ‘Anyone keeping an eye on the wider routes around those streets?’
‘Establishing that now, sir.’
He bit back a retort, knowing Greg was experienced enough to have already thought of that himself, but unable to prevent the adrenalin surge coursing through his veins.
This was the worst part of what he did in his role as a Section manager – being so far away that he couldn’t react, couldn’t help, couldn’t––
‘I’ve got the hit team.’ Emily’s voice cut through his thoughts. ‘Bringing up a screen capture now.’
A second display overlaid the main image, and Miles saw a beige-coloured four-door car race along a narrow road beside the river before disappearing from sight.
‘Where the fuck did they go?’ He cleared the space between the desk and the display in seconds, peering up at the images, his eyes searching frantically for the vehicle.
‘Under a bridge,’ said Emily. ‘Here we go – I’ve got two men on foot now.’
‘Get their faces in the system.’
‘Sir.’
‘Shit.’ Miles scratched his jaw as he watched the two figures run up a flight of stone steps leading from the river’s edge to the street above. ‘Wait – Nathan reported four people in the car. Where are the other two?’
‘Still under the bridge with the vehicle, I think,’ said Greg. ‘They must’ve split up because it’s too hard to get a car around those streets in a hurry.’
‘Jason – how are you doing with that list of locations?’
‘Working on it.’
‘Work faster. We need to send Eva somewhere to keep their heads down until we can get them out of the city.’ Miles turned to Greg. ‘Have we got any other assets on the ground to assist?’
‘Negative, sir.’
‘Christ. What weaponry has Eva got? Does anyone know?’
Silence.
‘What about vehicles? Have we got any vehicles in the city they could use?’
‘Only a motorbike,’ said Emily. ‘No good with three of them.’
‘We’ve got reports of gunshots near the river,’ said Greg, pressing his finger to his earpiece. ‘Two shots fired – a phone call just went through to Prague police.’
‘Can you find Eva and Nathan anywhere?’ said Miles, unable to keep the urgency from his voice. ‘Where the hell are they?’
Chapter Fifteen
Eva jerked her head back as shards of brickwork exploded a few metres from where she stood, and closed her eyes for a moment.
Only a moment.
A split second later, she shoved Nathan’s shoulder. ‘Go, go!’
She swung out from her position behind a concrete pillar, fired two shots in quick succession and then peered over her shoulder.
Two silhouettes raced away from her along the river, both Nathan and Marie keeping away from the water’s edge and hugging the brickwork archway of the bridge as they ran to lessen the chances of being killed.
Eva turned her attention back to the beige-coloured car now parked at a skewed angle.
Although they had plenty of firepower, the two men sheltering behind it were amateurs.
The taller of the two peered over the roof at her, taking too long to line up his next shot, and she fired before he had a chance to know what had happened.
The bullet pierced the window nearest to her, travelled through the vehicle’s upholstery and out the other side.
The man’s chest exploded as the force of the shot sent him backwards, disappearing from view.
She gritted her teeth as sirens wailed, coming closer.
‘Fuck.’
Three years of solitude, gone.
Now she was fighting for her life against an unknown enemy, and responsible for two people who had very little experience in how to survive being hunted.
Swiping the empty magazine from the gun, she pulled a replacement from her back pocket, slammed it into place, then aimed at the second figure that emerged from behind the car’s bonnet.
She fired twice, the echo of the shots thunderous within the confines of the bridge’s deep arch, then threw herself behind a stone pillar as the man returned fire.
A pause.
He was out of ammunition.
In a split second, Eva was running.
Towards the car.
Crouching, she waited until she was only a few metres away before she started to squeeze the trigger. Any sooner, and the bullets would have been embedded in the engine block, and not her intended target.
She heard a cry, the sound of a body hitting the pavement.
Sliding to a standstill, Eva edged around the back of the vehicle, weapon ready.
There was no need.
&n
bsp; The second man lay slumped across the body of his compatriot, part of his face missing where a chunk of metalwork had pierced his jaw before embedding itself in his brain.
Eva checked her weapon, then blinked as blue lights flashed from the street above the river walk before two Czech police cars tore down the concrete ramp towards her.
‘Shit.’
She turned and ran, long strides driving her along the river embankment, away from the car and up a landscaped slope on the other side.
Nathan was waiting at the top beside his sister, his face pale.
‘I thought you were gone,’ he managed as she drew closer.
She didn’t stop. Instead, she tugged at his sleeve and ignored Marie’s shocked expression.
‘Keep up,’ she yelled. ‘We’re not out of danger yet.’
Chapter Sixteen
Miles paced the floor, the only sounds in the room that of the air conditioning and the frantic scrabble of fingertips on keyboards.
The sour stench of body odour filled the enclosed space as he reached the far wall and turned back, his gaze falling to the large screen as new information blinked onto the display and CCTV camera angles flashed back and forth.
‘Delacourt just broke cover from a side street.’ It was Jason this time. ‘That’s Crowe and his sister behind her. I think I’ve got somewhere they can go short-term, too. East of their current position.’
‘Greg, get hold of Nathan and patch him through to Jason. Talk him through the plan,’ said Miles.
Seconds later, Nathan’s voice came over the speakers in the room.
The man was out of breath, and Miles wondered how much longer the three fugitives could keep ahead of their pursuers.
‘Nathan, we’ve got a place for you to hide. What’s happening there?’ he said.
‘Two hostiles down,’ came the breathless response. ‘We’re all okay. Eva’s just doubled back on our route to see if she can take out the others.’
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