He bit back a snort.
If it went wrong, they’d all be looking for new jobs.
And a new country to live in if they wanted to avoid spending the rest of their lives in a remote prison with no prospect of release.
‘Time is evidently of the essence,’ said Knox, folding his hands under his chin and leaning his elbows on the desk, ‘so spit it out.’
‘Here’s the thing. We knew whoever was behind all this was anticipating a replacement shipment of four Hellfire missiles. We know they’ve used three from the original shipment, and potentially have one left. They have a drone – my team have narrowed it down to one that was downed in Syria two years ago and was likely sold on the black market through Russian arms dealers––’
‘––Whereupon Elliott Wilder got his hands on it,’ interrupted Knox, ‘and probably for a special price if what you’re telling me about him is true.’
‘It’s true,’ said Miles, his voice firm. ‘We’ve gone through some back channels to obtain access to MI6’s files at the time. Leavey’s right – they had a watching brief on him for nearly fifteen years before placing him on a reduced threat list.’
Knox frowned. ‘How did they miss the fact he’d been activated? Surely someone was reviewing that file from time to time.’
‘Understaffed, and not enough funding,’ said Miles with a shrug. ‘Same old story. We’re trying to liaise with security services in the countries along the route we’ve got agreements in place with to try to intercept it.’
‘How close are you?’
Miles grimaced.
‘It’s going to be tight. After all, Wilder’s had a week’s head start on us – as soon as he heard the original shipment had been intercepted, he likely organised replacements to save face. And our negotiations with those other countries’ security services are ongoing. They need reassuring that they’re not going to be Elliott’s next target if we can’t stop him.’
‘Where is Elliott at the moment?’
‘In hiding after leaving London. We believe he might be at one of his homes along the Mediterranean coastline so we’ve got teams on that. As soon as we locate him, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘And Delacourt?’
‘She and her team – including Leavey – are on their way to Algeria. They’re leaving Lisbon now, and should be in place within thirty-six hours. As soon as they’re at the GPS coordinates we’ve agreed, we’ll encrypt a message through the dark web about where Patrick Leavey can be found.’ Miles sat back, adrenalin already kicking into his veins, as it did before every mission. ‘Elliott won’t be able to resist. As soon as that rogue drone of his is within the range of our counter-measures, we’ll strike.’
‘What’s the fallout likely to be?’
‘We’ve got people in Algiers ready to start spreading disinformation via the news wires within ten minutes of mission completion. The ambassador will be prepped in time for his meeting with the Algerian foreign ministry, and our intelligence suggests that it’ll be old news within twelve hours.’
‘All right. Good.’ Knox pushed back his chair, gathered his papers together, and reached for his desk phone. ‘I’ll get onto the Prime Minister’s office and request an urgent meeting with her tonight.’
Miles rose to his feet and straightened his tie. ‘Do you think she’ll agree to it?’
‘She has to, doesn’t she?’ Knox pursed his lips. ‘If Elliott isn’t stopped from handing over that drone, we’re going to be at war within a matter of months. She won’t be able to stand by if the Middle East disintegrates, along with all the NATO accords and agreements our government has negotiated since World War Two. It’ll be an unmitigated disaster.’
Miles sighed. ‘I’m glad you’re having that conversation with her, and not me.’
Knox opened his briefcase, shoved the paperwork inside, and then tucked his mobile phone into his jacket pocket. ‘In the meantime, get yourself back to the ops room and let them know to be in position and await further instructions within twenty-four hours. We have assets in Tunisia and Libya who can help them, haven’t we?’
‘One or two that I might be able to rustle up if we need to.’
‘Contact them as well. Just in case.’ Knox frowned. ‘We’re only going to have one shot at this, Miles. We can’t afford to screw it up.’
‘Understood.’
Miles turned away as the Section chief murmured instructions into his phone and requested that Harris be ready with a car outside within two minutes, his thoughts already turning to the strategic decisions that would have to be made in order to mobilise their North African team.
Given the plan, he would have to keep them at a safe distance while ensuring someone was ready to whisk Eva and her team out of the country if it all went wrong.
Or if they succeeded and needed to be repatriated before the locals found them.
Either way, it would be risky.
‘Miles?’
‘Chief?’ Miles paused at the door, his hand on the frame.
Knox had his hand over the receiver, his brow furrowed. ‘This Patrick Leavey fellow – is he all right with this?’
‘Seems to be.’
Chapter Forty-One
Spain
* * *
Eva peered between the front seats of the dilapidated Land Rover at the reflection in the rear-view mirror of the bruising to Decker’s face.
At least his lip had stopped bleeding before they had left Leavey’s house.
The punch had come from nowhere, the old MI6 agent taking Decker unawares before clutching his own hand in ill-disguised pain.
‘Bait? Is that what I am now? How fucking dare you––’ he’d raged.
After calming him, Eva had explained the rest of the plan while Nathan patched up Decker’s split lip and tried to persuade the assassin not to kill the man who posed the one decent chance they had to stop the rogue drone.
Leavey had dressed his own knuckles, cursing under his breath while they finalised details with Miles in hushed tones.
Now, the small group travelled in silence as the four-by-four travelled along a rock-strewn narrow road twisting its way south towards Tarifa, the sun setting to their right across an undulating landscape.
The headlights cut through a dusty twilight, moths smashing into the windscreen as Decker changed gear and powered the vehicle up another incline.
Leavey sat behind Decker, his jaw clenched while he stoically ignored the three of them.
‘Another couple of miles and we should start dropping back down to the coast,’ Nathan murmured. He rummaged in his backpack in the footwell of the passenger seat, then held four British passports over his shoulder. ‘Spares, all with your photos in. Patrick – your photo is a composite from ones I could find on file, but it should pass muster.’
Leavey took it from him without a word, thumbed through the pages, then grunted under his breath. ‘This is good. Better than anything they used to give me.’
Eva noticed Nathan straighten in his seat.
What the intelligence officer lacked in brawn, he more than made up for in his ability to support them in other ways, and she wouldn’t trust anyone else.
With Nathan’s skills at creating new identities, their passage to Morocco and then onwards to Algeria would hopefully go unnoticed by all except the Section team in London.
She hoped.
‘Why was Jeffrey working undercover in the Foreign Office?’ she said.
‘He had this notion that someone there might be involved to start with,’ said Patrick, twisting in his seat. ‘It didn’t take us long to create a backstory for him, and Adrian knew someone who could rustle together the paperwork he needed. Once he was in, he realised it wasn’t a government traitor but one of the contractors that was involved.’
‘How many people knew about him?’ said Nathan. ‘I mean, knew that he was under cover?’
‘Obviously one person too many,’ said Decker. ‘Otherwise, he’d still be alive.�
��
‘We were working alone,’ said Patrick, rubbing his chest while he turned his gaze to the window. ‘The likes of me, Jeffrey and Adrian are considered dinosaurs these days. We couldn’t even get a meeting with the head of MI6 organised if we wanted to. That’s why we decided to pool our resources and gather as much evidence as we could before we tried to raise the alarm.’
‘How did you find out about the drone?’
‘Adrian heard a rumour while working for his NGO in Aleppo about a Reaper that was retrieved from the hills after a coalition attack on Syrian forces. The place was remote, and we can only assume whoever was in charge of that mission assumed – wrongly – that it had been destroyed.’
‘And Elliott Wilder?’
‘It took us a while to trace the eventual drone purchase and the missile thefts to him – that’s when we discovered he was trading on the black market as well as managing his legitimate arms business. We were trying to find out how Elliott has been ransacking the shipments,’ said Patrick. He looked sickened for a moment, and sighed. ‘We had no idea we’d become targets ourselves.’
‘Face it – you had no idea where Dukes was, or that he was dead.’ Decker looked in the rear view mirror at Eva and raised an eyebrow. ‘What a fucking disaster.’
‘It is, you’re right. Although…’ Patrick frowned.
‘What is it?’ said Eva.
‘Jeffrey was seeing someone – one of the women who work in the office at the Department for International Trade. I wondered… I mean, I’ve heard nothing from Jeffrey even though he assured me he would keep me up to date about his movements once he left Ankara. Adrian never reported hearing from him again either, which is why we suspected the worst.’
‘Do you think Jeffrey might have contacted her?’ said Nathan.
‘It’s a long shot, I know…’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Charlotte Hughes.’
‘We’ll let the Section know,’ said Eva. ‘Let’s face it – we need all the help we can get at the moment, and if Jeffrey managed to get information to her without Elliott Wilder finding out, it’s the best chance we’ve got of stopping him.’
‘I’ll put a call through to Knox,’ said Nathan, and sighed. ‘At least if we get blown to smithereens in the middle of the desert, they’ve still got a way to get to him if Patrick’s right.’
‘Do it.’ Checking her watch, Eva raised her voice over the engine. ‘Decker, the next ferry for Morocco leaves in an hour. Reckon we can make it?’
The vehicle surged forward as he stomped on the accelerator.
‘I don’t see why not.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Miles paced the thin carpet at the top of the staircase and watched while Emily crouched in front of the door to Charlotte Hughes’ apartment, her jaw set in concentration.
Behind her a matching door remained closed, ignored by the Section analyst as she drilled the second of two deadlocks the parliamentary administrative assistant had fixed to hers and swore under her breath.
He fought down the adrenalin and tried to ignore his rising heart rate, then peered at his wristwatch.
Charlotte’s neighbour had left the building two minutes ago.
A team of four was now tracking the man’s movements towards Finsbury Park station, ready to raise the alarm if he turned back before Miles and Emily had concluded their business.
‘Why couldn’t he have a normal job like everyone else?’ he muttered under his breath.
Discovering that the neighbour ran an IT consultancy from home, the entire group of analysts had groaned with frustration – until Jason created a diversion by way of a new client who required an urgent meeting that afternoon in a Southwark café.
They had an hour at most before the neighbour discovered his prospective client didn’t exist and turned back home.
‘We’re in,’ Emily hissed.
‘Thank Christ for that.’
He hurried across the landing as she placed her hand on the door and shoved it open and then peered down at his colleague.
‘I’ll go first. Just in case.’
She nodded, said nothing, and fell into step behind him as he eased through the door and into a modest sized living room.
The design of the apartment was open plan with the kitchen off to his left. Artwork covered the plain-coloured walls and he recalled from the briefing notes that Emily had put together prior to their visit that Charlotte was currently renting the property, and had been doing so prior to applying for her role with the Department for International Trade.
According to the financial audit that Greg processed that morning, Charlotte had never purchased a house – her previous home had been in her husband’s name only, and he had kept that house following their divorce.
The sweet smell of fresh flowers drew his attention to the kitchen worktop and the crystal vase filled with white lilies, a scattering of fallen petals on the granite surface beside a half-empty bottle of red wine.
An oak coffee table in front of two three-seater sofas was clear except for a tidy pile of magazines off to one side that had a distinct interior design flavour to them.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I'll take the bedroom and bathroom, as quick as you can, we're looking for anything that belongs to Jeffrey Dukes. And anything that might help us find out what earth he was up to. No longer than twenty minutes, so don’t hang around.’
‘Got it.’
While Emily wandered across to the bookshelf and began sifting between the pages of paperback titles, Miles turned on his heel and hurried along a short hallway into Charlotte’s bedroom.
A double bed took up most of the space, with fitted wardrobes along the far wall and a double-glazed window overlooking the neighbouring properties.
He froze for a moment, then realised that with the weak sunlight shining on the net curtains covering the panes he wouldn’t be seen. Galvanised into action, cognisant of the time passing, he pulled protective gloves from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and opened the wardrobe doors.
Charlotte was organised, that much was clear.
Work clothes were colour-coordinated and hanging from a rail to the left of the wardrobe, whereas the right-hand side was kept for casual wear. Her shoes – a variety of heels, running shoes and ankle boots – were lined up along the floor beneath the clothes.
Miles leaned closer and sank his fingers into each of the pockets of the shirts, jackets and jeans before reaching up and doing the same with the collection of handbags on the top shelf.
Nothing.
He closed the doors and turned to face the bed. There was a nightstand each side, but only one appeared to be in use, with a half-empty glass of water and a hardback first edition lying beside a small reading lamp.
He crossed to the unused nightstand, its bare surface clean, and pulled out the single drawer underneath.
Empty, save for an abandoned ballpoint pen.
Moving around the bed, he opened the drawer beneath and carefully lifted the contents, sifting through old birthday cards from colleagues whose names he recognised from Greg’s research and scribbled notes about holiday ideas and the like.
Frustrated, he pushed the drawer closed and straightened.
There was nothing in the bedroom belonging to Jeffrey Dukes, and nothing to suggest that he had even been there.
He cast his gaze around the room to make sure his presence would go unnoticed, then checked his watch.
Ten minutes had already passed, and he wanted them out of here as soon as possible.
‘We’ll give it another five minutes, Em,’ he called.
‘Okay.’
He pushed open the door into a compact bathroom and paused on the threshold to get his bearings.
There was no room for a bath – the apartment’s layout only allowed for a washbasin, toilet and shower cubicle. A single mirror-fronted cabinet hung on the wall above the basin, but after sifting through boxes containing tampons, painkillers and pl
asters, Miles realised the search had been a waste of time.
He shut the cabinet, and then jumped back with a start at the sound of a splintering crash from the kitchen.
Racing along the hallway, he found Emily standing beside the central worktop, her eyes stricken.
The remnants of the crystal vase lay in smithereens at her feet, water pooling towards the cabinets and the flowers strewn across the tiles.
‘I’m sorry, Miles,’ she managed. ‘I turned… my elbow must’ve caught it…’
‘Quiet,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘Don’t panic.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’
‘That’s something, then.’
‘Shit,’ said Emily, her eyes wide. ‘What do we do now?’
Miles cast his gaze around the room, resigned that there was no evidence to suggest Jeffrey Dukes had contacted Charlotte Hughes prior to his murder, and then turned back to his analyst.
‘Did you find anything at all to link this place to Jeffrey Dukes or what he was up to?’
‘No.’
‘Right. Time to improvise, then.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Eva rested her elbows on the stainless steel railing encircling the upper deck of the crowded ferry and watched as the lights from Tarifa twinkled on the fringes of the pitch black coastline.
A breeze tugged at her hair, a salty taste to the air clinging to her lips. Diesel fumes wafted from the ship’s exhausts, so she tilted her head away and took a deep breath.
She wouldn’t move from here, though.
Not yet.
Raising her gaze to the night sky, she took in the splash of stars and checked the ferry’s direction of travel before glancing over her shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps.
‘Thought I might find you out here,’ said Nathan.
‘How are Decker and Leavey getting on?’
‘They haven’t killed each other yet, although Decker refuses to let him smoke and confiscated his cigarette lighter. Meanwhile, Leavey’s complaining about the food – reckons he’s got the worst case of indigestion he’s ever had.’
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