Wanted (22 page)

Melville: ‘Where is she?’

Jackal: ‘Somewhere safe.’

Melville: ‘I can talk to people. We can attempt to explain to them what really happened. We can bring you in.’

Jackal: ‘No.’

Because, yes, it was possible that certain elements in the US and even the UK government might be willing to believe Danny, but there were others whose driving motivation would be to hang the London massacre on someone fast: all the hard evidence pointed at him, so why would they look anywhere else?

Melville: ‘I’m here to help in any way I can.’

The offer, Danny knew, was huge. Not only in terms of how it compromised Crane, making him an accessory, but also in terms of scope. Crane’s network of contacts and intelligence resources was unrivalled in Danny’s experience.

But he had to be careful. Even though he was now satisfied that this truly was Crane, the possibility remained that Crane had already told the authorities about this contact and that the entire conversation was being monitored. He needed to find a way to get Crane to mine him the information he needed, without Crane or anyone else listening in and being able to work out from that information where he was heading or where he’d surface next. He needed to give Crane a jigsaw to work from, but with enough pieces missing so that he’d never see the full picture.

Jackal: ‘OK, here’s what I want you to do.’

Danny took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and started to thumb the carefully constructed sentences written there into his phone.

Even being this close to London, where his pixellated face had been glaring out from every phone screen and TV shop window since the hunt for him had begun, was bringing Danny Shanklin out in cold sweats.

And seeing London laid out before him like this from a distance, as a vast concrete labyrinth, more than fifteen miles wide, reminded him of how trapped he’d been – and how lucky to escape.

Much of the city remained sunk in shadow, but already the first rays of sunlight were flaring across the towering tops of the Centre Point building and the recently completed Shard.

Danny craved some of that heat right now, as he had throughout the long night he’d been positioned there, lying flat on his stomach beside a humming industrial extractor fan on top of a tall refrigerated storage facility on Pier Twelve at the docks.

Still fearing that the lead he’d been given by Commandant Sabirzhan might be a set-up, and knowing that if it was the whole area would be under surveillance prior to any attempted sting, he had arrived early.

Nearly twenty-four hours ago, to be precise. A decent enough safety measure, of course, but the downside was that the adrenalin that had fuelled his breaking into the docks compound and preparing his exit strategy had long since faded, leaving him at first lethargic and now in a trance-like state.

In the old days, in the field with the CIA, he’d used amphetamines to keep himself alert, but since he’d sworn off all that, he had only the same taurine- and caffeine-rich drinks that helped clubbers stay up dancing all night. And the big problem with these, Danny had discovered, was that, on top of making his breath stink, they perpetually made him want to piss.

He thought of his phone in his pocket. How many times a minute had he been doing that? It was like an addiction. No, not
like.
The desire to call Lexie
was
an addiction. Was she OK? Dammit, this was what his whole life now boiled down to. He knew nothing about what he cared for most.

At least he’d heard back from Ray. Danny had contacted him again and this time Kincade had messaged him to say he was suspending any further investigation into the whereabouts of the PSS Killer until Danny gave him the go-ahead.
With me at your side,
he promised himself.
To make sure no one makes the same mistake I did the last time. To put that fucker in the ground for good.

He readjusted the flattened cardboard box and tangle of plastic sheeting that covered him, slipped the last piece of his energy bar into his mouth and chewed it as he rolled sideways, crouched close to the extractor fan block and urinated into the gutter there. He was badly dehydrated, he saw. Which meant he’d be slow to react, if anyone did show.

Just keep alert. Concentrate.

Only forty minutes remained until the meet between Glinka’s people and the terrorist cell was supposed to take place. Just forty minutes until he’d find out whether this was a set-up designed to eliminate himself, a chance for him finally to nail Glinka and the others or just another dead end.

He felt his eyelids beginning to droop.

Footsteps.

Danny woke, sweating. He blinked in the sunlight. Jesus, what time is it? Panic raced through him. He twisted his wrist to check his watch. How the hell could he have fallen asleep?

Six fifty-two. He nearly spewed with relief. Eight minutes remained until the meeting was meant to happen.

He wriggled forwards to the edge of the roof. Stretched out before him, this part of the port was a ghost town of warehouses, container stacks, storage facilities and transportation depots, fronted by a mile-long quayside, where stationary crawler cranes stood sentry, like giant herons, against the blushing London skyline and the dark, fast-flowing waters of the Thames.

He edged forward and peered over the building’s guttering at the security foot patrol passing below. A man and a woman. Both had radios clipped to their utility belts, but there were no signs that they were anything other than the rent-a-cops their uniforms declared them to be – no telltale bulges of concealed weapons.

They weren’t conducting counter-surveillance either. They didn’t inspect the doorways they were passing, much less look up. Which again implied that they were genuine Docklands Authority employees and nothing more sinister.

Getting into the docks at night had been easy. This was no military base. The security outfit running the place was there to fulfil the freight companies’ insurance requirements and check transportation dockets. They certainly weren’t looking for lone intruders like him.

There’d been plenty of CCTV at ground level, though, but if anyone was searching for him now, using its hard-drive records, they’d have a problem tracing him to this roof: the first thing he’d done on entering the compound had been to disable the cameras along the route he’d taken, before doubling back and climbing up here.

He’d watched the cameras being repaired yesterday by electricians. He’d even listened to them bitching below. ‘Some stupid kid,’ was what they’d reckoned. With the CCTV restored, Danny would be filmed, of course, the moment he set foot back down there. But he’d made sure to take precautions already to deal with that eventuality.

Even better, shortly after he’d scaled the Docklands Authority’s security fence and had entered the compound, he’d got lucky. A laundry van with its rear doors open had been idling outside one of the administration buildings. As its two complaining drivers had lugged the heavy fresh-uniform bags inside, it had been a simple enough task for Danny to take what he’d needed, before fading back into the dark.

He was now wearing the same blue rent-a-cop uniform as the foot patrol below. Not that it would help him explain what he was doing up there if anyone spotted him now, of course. But on the ground? Well, it might make all the difference between him being hauled up and detained, or being ignored and allowed to go on his way.

A waterproof pen and pad hung from a lanyard around his neck. The pad was littered with markings: timings, tithe marks and more esoteric symbols. It was a record of each and every movement he’d witnessed in the network of alleyways below over the twenty-four hours he’d been hidden there.

It confirmed that the two-person patrol passing now was the same half-hourly patrol that had been running like clockwork all night. Nothing out of the ordinary, then. Still nothing to indicate that any other pros, like himself, were staking out the area.

Turning his attention to the maze of alleyways and buildings to the west of his position, Danny zoomed in on Building 17. Two hundred yards away, it was there that the rendezvous between Glinka and the terrorist cell was due to take place. The double gantry doors remained shut. Nothing moved. There wasn’t so much as a wharf rat in sight.