Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) Read online

  Harry shook his head, about to deny it, but was interrupted by his mobile ringing. He excused himself and took it out.

  It was Rik. ‘Don’t want to cause panic, boss, but two blokes in a blue Focus just did a couple of slow drive-bys, eyeballing the flats. Might be coincidence but I don’t think so. I got their number.’

  ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Meet us round the back. We’re heading out.’ He shut off the phone and looked at Alice. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, but we have to leave. Now.’

  ‘Why?’ She blinked like a startled doe. But she stood up and reached for her bag, her security training taking over.

  ‘Two men in a car showing an interest. They could be from Six, but it would be best not to risk it. They’re probably looking for Clare. Do you have somewhere you could go until you hit work tomorrow? Ballatyne will fill you in then.’

  ‘I have an aunt in Uxbridge.’

  ‘Good. Show me the back way out and we’ll see you safely to a taxi.’

  Alice turned left out of her flat and led Harry through a narrow door leading onto some back stairs, concrete and unfinished. The air was cool and musty. At the bottom, she turned right at a glass-panelled security door leading out to a small enclosed area with parking spaces and garages.

  Rik was standing with his back to the door, watching the entrance off a feeder road from the street. If the men were the Russians, they would come in the back way through the feeder road. They hadn’t got much time.

  Harry opened the door and Rik nodded before heading off at a brisk walk.

  Alice stared at Rik’s right hand, held close down by his side. ‘He’s armed.’

  ‘I know. I keep telling him about it but he’s addicted.’

  ‘You’re carded, then?’

  ‘Yes. Is there a footpath away from here?’

  She nodded. ‘Turn right and through a style at the end. We can double back towards the station. My God, what kind of work do you two do?’

  ‘Most of it’s boring and repetitive. But every now and then we get to shoot people. Come on.’ He hustled her along, and she gave directions, showing the entrance to a narrow alleyway between rear gardens. Bordered by trees and wooden slat fencing, it was concealed from the road, and Harry called a halt long enough to send a text to Ballatyne.

  Did you put watchers on Alanya?

  No. Why?

  He got the car registration number from Rik and texted back to Ballatyne: Two men in blue Focus followed by the number.

  Four minutes later, as they left the path and entered another residential street, a reply came through.

  Not mine. Suggest avoiding action. Talk later.

  Harry put the phone away. Ballatyne was going operational. The time to talk would come once they had got clear and lost the watchers. For now they had to focus on staying out of sight.

  Alice led them back towards the station by a roundabout route, with Rik and Harry alert and ready to duck into cover if the car with the two men should return. As they entered Station Road from the north, Harry spotted a passing cab and dialled the number on the roof panel. The despatcher told him two minutes and asked for the passenger’s name.

  Harry led Alice to the doorway of a closed store to wait, while Rik wandered along the pavement to keep watch.

  ‘Go to your aunt’s and don’t contact anybody,’ he told her. ‘In the morning, go to the office as usual, but keep with the crowd. When you’re out, stay on the move and go straight to see Ballatyne. He’ll brief you.’

  Her eyes looked huge with worry, but she remained calm. ‘OK. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Try to find Clare before anybody else does.’

  She nodded and shivered, her first real sign of nerves. Then she said quickly, ‘Do you know why she was posted to that place in Georgia – why they sent her there?’

  ‘The basics, yes. Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t just a mad fling in the middle of an operation, you know. It was serious – on both sides.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ According to Mace, the station chief in Georgia, Clare had become the victim of a reverse sting. It had cost her her job and nearly her life.

  ‘Yes. She told me all about it. I know, she shouldn’t have, but she had to talk to somebody. She was gutted when they found out. She’d managed to control it at first, hoping she could find a way of breaking off the assignment as unworkable. But they realised what had happened and pulled her out of the field. She was marked as unreliable. I suppose they had no choice. You know the rest.’

  A cab approached and pulled into the kerb. Rik checked the passenger name and gave Harry a nod.

  As Alice ducked into the car, she turned and gave them both a wan smile. Seconds later, she was gone.

  ‘She’s clear,’ said Rik, coming to join him. He blew out a puff of air. ‘Now what?’

  Harry was thinking about what Alice had said, wondering if he wasn’t grasping at straws. It wasn’t just a mad fling in the middle of an operation. It was serious.

  But the words were bouncing around in front of him, loaded with meaning. Bloody hell. It was obvious. If Clare couldn’t go to friends, there was possibly only one person she could go to.

  He texted Ballatyne. Need talk.

  Rik had been watching him. He gave a start. ‘Hey – I forgot, I got the details of that subscriber you asked for; the misdial.’ He took out his own phone and scrolled to the notepad function. ‘His name’s Fortiani; he’s a trader of some kind in an office near Victoria.’ He handed over the phone and Harry read the details. ‘You playing the markets now?’

  Harry shook his head and dialled the number.

  It rang out and went to voicemail. A man’s voice. ‘This is Ray Fortiani. I’m unavailable right now. My apologies. Please leave a number and I’ll call you back. Thank you.’

  Harry stared at the screen. Fortiani, whoever he was, sounded educated and confident. A businessman. Not the sort to misdial, but if he did, he would apologise and not leave someone hanging.

  He checked Rik’s notepad and saw another number, this one a landline. Home or office. He dialled the number.

  ‘Fortiani.’ It was the same voice.

  Harry apologised for calling so late and asked Fortiani if he had recently lost a mobile phone.

  ‘What? Yes, I have, actually.’ He sounded excited. ‘Have you found it?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Harry explained about the call he’d received. ‘Have you reported it lost yet?’

  Fortiani sounded sheepish. ‘No. To be honest, I don’t know for sure if I left it in the office or if it was stolen. I didn’t want to have it cancelled in case it was handed in by the cleaners at work. There’s a ton of material on there that I’d like back, though.’

  Harry asked where else it might have gone missing if not at the office.

  ‘Well, the only place I can think of is a place in Pimlico: The Grove. It’s a wine bar I go to a lot with a group from work, and it’s the last place I remember using it. I mean, if that’s where it happened, it was done so smoothly I couldn’t actually recall having it with me. You know how it is when you’re with a bunch of friends and colleagues? The place is always packed and half the time you can’t hear yourself speak. But I can’t imagine any of the usual clientele stealing phones; it just doesn’t gel.’

  Harry didn’t have such reservations about other people’s honesty being guaranteed by the places they frequented, but he didn’t bother enlightening Fortiani. ‘When was that?’

  ‘I was there the evening before last until late, and again yesterday afternoon. I have a work mobile, too, so I’ve been working with that. I guess I should report it, for the insurance.’

  ‘Can I ask you not to do that yet? If I can, I’ll get it back for you. But it’s important that we don’t alert whoever has it that we know.’

  Fortiani sounded puzzled. He said, ‘Are you police?’

  Harry cut the call. It saved having to explain the unexplainable.
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  Then he looked around and spotted an Indian restaurant along the street. It reminded him that they hadn’t eaten properly.

  ‘You hungry?’

  Rik nodded. ‘Could eat a horse. What’s going on with the phone?’

  ‘It wasn’t Fortiani who called, trying to sell some bonds.’ He explained about the trader’s phone lifted from a café table in Pimlico.

  Rik’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think it was Clare? That’s a reach.’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone else. She’s resourceful enough.’

  ‘True. Maybe she’ll call back.’

  ‘Maybe. In the meantime, it tells us where she is. Or was.’

  They were well into their meal by the time Ballatyne called back. He didn’t sound happy.

  ‘My wife’s going to kill me for this. We’re supposed to be at dinner.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a wife,’ said Harry, and gave him a brief report, avoiding names. He finished by asking, ‘Clare’s target – the one she got canned for.’

  A cautious pause, then, ‘What about her?’

  Her. So the target had definitely been a woman. His response was too instinctive to be a mistake. But Ballatyne was too experienced not to have read the files. He’d have brushed up on all their histories as a matter of course, the moment this business began.

  ‘Do you have a name and a location?’

  Another silence, this one lasting several seconds. Finally Ballatyne said, ‘You must be bloody joking.’ The phone went dead.

  Harry put his phone down with a wry smile. Ballatyne’s obtuse way of not saying no.

  Rik looked up from his chicken korma, one eyebrow raised. ‘I bet he didn’t like that. You’re not serious, though, are you? She wouldn’t go there, surely?’

  ‘Why not?’ Harry repeated what Alice had told him before getting into the taxi. ‘What would you do if you were that desperate?’

  ‘I don’t know. Find a friend – any friend, I guess.’ He frowned. ‘But her target was a Russian, wasn’t she? If they find out she’s gone there, she’ll never see daylight again.’

  ‘Maybe she knows that and figures she has nothing to lose.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Clare awoke suddenly, her heart pounding. A loud noise had ripped into her subconscious, like the crash of a door bursting open. She sat up, panic overtaking her, and was on her feet without thinking. Somebody trying to get in! Then she bent over as pain creased across her middle, an unsubtle reminder that she wasn’t in any fit state for gymnastics.

  She breathed in and out, allowing her heart rate to settle. The room was silent and chill, smelling of damp. A gloomy space but not dark. The sickly glow of a street light filtered in across the floor. She’d been dozing in a battered old armchair. She recalled the building work further down the street earlier; tips being filled with rubble, workmen shouting, a cement mixer chugging constantly. Like a small war going on. Then silence when they packed up for the day. And sleep.

  She’d been woken by a delayed playback, that was all. The mind playing tricks. She forced herself to relax further and assessed her surroundings. She was alone, the garden door locked and jammed shut against outsiders. The connecting door to the rest of the building had been nailed up by whatever previous tenant had isolated him or herself down here in the basement. There was nobody in the room and she felt angry at herself for losing her grip. This wasn’t her, not this jittery, disconnected heap of jelly who jumped at every slight sound.

  She straightened up by stages, like unfolding an old newspaper, stopping at each ragged tug of pain, until she was more or less upright. It took a while. Then she breathed in and out, the taste in her mouth sour and bitter.

  Jesus, was this what it was like to be old? If so she wanted none of it. She checked herself over, a slow examination of her physical extremities first. Legs stiff, arms ditto, stomach burning but not as bad it had been. Sleep had helped. She peeled back the bandage under her waistband. Hissed at the redness of the skin around the gunshot wound, but it was better than it had been. Maybe the effort of getting here had helped, forcing her body to flush with healing power, to fight off infection.

  But where was here?

  Her inner senses took over, remembering the hospital. Images came to her slowly, an unravelling film reel of her rush from the building and through the shadow-filled streets, overhead lights harsh and painful to the eyes, her feet sore from not having worn shoes for a while. She’d met a German girl – Mitzi? – then gone to a squat, followed by the outdoors again and more walking. Until she found this place.

  Pimlico. She remembered now. Near Victoria Station, busy streets, residential and businesses cheek by jowl. Lots of people.

  Safety, of sorts.

  Other images forced their way in from further back. The hospital smell, night-time, the sound of the men in her room; before that the man across the corridor, Tobinskiy, shouting in Russian, angry and at times incoherent, but according to the nurse, never fully conscious. Educated, though, she would have known that by his use of words, even if she had never heard of him before. Raging at the state, the persecution and murder of his friend, they were trying to kill him, he’d gabbled; sending assassins just like they did with Alexander. Why could nobody see it? Why would nobody believe him? The torrent of words had at times been unintelligible.

  He would be next, he’d moaned once. Then they would believe.

  She’d wondered for a while who Alexander was, her mind still foggy. She had known, once, she was certain. It lurked on the edges of her mind, a vague whisper of sound, from a briefing or the news . . . maybe something she’d read. But it wouldn’t come. Then suddenly it did, in a rush like a floodgate opened: Alexander Litvinenko, former FSB officer, asylum seeker in Britain, journalist and hater of Vladimir Putin. Polonium 210. Radiation poisoning. Photos of Litvinenko in hospital, hunched and dying. Grey going on white.

  Now dead.

  She eased herself carefully down in the armchair. The elbow crutch was nearby but she ignored it. Sighed with relief when the pain subsided. Felt the mobile phone jammed down between the cushion and the arm.

  She picked it up, switched it on. Waited while the icons flickered into life. Checked the amount of power left. Three bars. Not bad but not great. The time on the small screen said 23.15.

  There were several missed calls and eight voicemail messages. Jesus, she’d stolen the phone belonging to a talk freak. She ignored them all. Didn’t want to waste power by deleting or checking them.

  Tomorrow, she’d call . . . who? Still couldn’t recall Alice’s number. Pointless asking directory enquiries or 192; MI6 didn’t encourage easy access for any of their personnel.

  Harry Tate? She saw his number in her head, floating past with perverse immediacy, tantalising. Why was that?

  She switched off the phone, put her head back. She was hungry, her stomach tight with the need for food and fluids. She should hit the street and find an all-nighter, get something inside her. Maybe in a while. When she felt better.

  Seconds later she was fast asleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘We need to step things up.’ Sergei Gorelkin was annoyed, but holding his mood in check. Getting pissy with Votrukhin and Serkhov would serve no immediate purpose other than to make him feel better. He could save that for later. Right now they had to find the Jardine woman and silence her before she got to the press with anything she knew.

  He had called them in early to the office in Mayfair. He dispensed with the sweep for bugs; he didn’t have time. Neither did he allow them any breakfast, a distraction from the main topic. He had, however, arranged strong coffee, to ensure they were wide awake and listening.

  ‘How?’ Votrukhin queried. ‘We don’t have enough feet on the ground, we can’t use the embassy and we’re not allowed near any of the residents.’ These last were deep cover agents unknown to the embassy, but supported at arm’s length in their legends and daily activities. Deeper still and even more remote were the gol
d standard of spies, the sleepers, although, as some wags in Moscow had been heard to claim, since the fall of communism not even Moscow knew who they were anymore.

  ‘We hit the streets.’ Gorelkin reached down and picked up a cardboard box from the floor. It was twice the size of a shoe box. He tore off the lid and tipped the box up, spilling out some of the contents, which skidded across the table in a fan.

  They were a mix of two shots. Half were photos taken inside a plain corridor, the flare of overhead lights reflecting off a shiny tiled floor. The subject was a woman walking beneath the camera. The format was clearly from CCTV footage, the best few frames frozen for all time. The others were file shots, face-on and serious, like passport shots, but larger and better quality, provided by Paulton, although he hadn’t disclosed where he had got them.

  Clare Jardine.

  Votrukhin and Serkhov picked up samples and scanned them quickly, committing the images to memory. They hadn’t seen the CCTV stills before, but had handed over the hard drive for Gorelkin to process the moment they got back from the hospital. The images weren’t perfect, but good enough. They showed a young woman in her thirties, possibly older, gaunt in the face and pallid, walking with one hand clasped across her middle, the other holding a metal crutch. She wore dark trousers and a jacket over a white top, and if she was aware of the camera above her head, seemed unconcerned.

  ‘She’s on the street,’ Gorelkin told them, ‘most likely in central London. As the Englishman told us, she has no family and nowhere to go. She’ll have joined the rabble. So that’s where we look for her, using the people she mixes with.’ He tapped one of the photos. ‘And that crutch is going to make her stand out.’

  Votrukhin fanned his face with one of the photos and nodded. ‘I get it. Use the rabble to find her. But which ones?’

  ‘All of them. But concentrate on illegals from the east; them we can talk to.’ Illegals had more to lose, and far more to gain by earning any kind of reward. And those from the east had a much stronger network of their own kind to use and mobilise. In addition, if Votrukhin and Serkhov had to lean on anyone, the last thing an illegal would do was complain to the police for fear of compromising their position.