66 Metres (21 page)

So, it worked. She'd been secretly hoping it was all some kind of shadow-play.

‘But surely he developed a counter-measure?'

Jake leaned back again. ‘That's the rub, I'm afraid. I mentioned he was an arsehole. He used to specialise in sleeping with his female researchers. Went through four a year, firing each one afterwards. But one of them was married to an Air Marshall, who happened to come home early after an airline strike was announced.'

‘The prof is… dead?'

Jake nodded. He looked at her. ‘How did you – your people – know it was being transported that night? There were five decoys over a period of several days.'

She shrugged. Janssen had gotten the intel, Sammy had said. But from where she had no idea.

He put his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘The point is, if it got into the wrong hands – not even necessarily IS, but some separatist group somewhere, or someone big with a twisted grudge… even if it was only used once on a major city, that's at least a hundred thousand people dead, and that's only counting the initial blast effects.'

She shuffled backwards on the bed until her back was against the wall, and brought her knees up to her chest. She imagined Katya there with her, listening to all of this. What would she say?

She'd say,
tell him, Nadia. Tell him everything
.

She started with Viktor, and ended with Janssen's double-cross, the ditching of the Rose, the two agents here, and burning down Kennedy's. It took twenty minutes. She felt almost dizzy by the end.

He said nothing during the entire sorry tale of her recent life. Then he spoke.

‘My money was on the Kolorokovs,' he said.

‘Are you an agent?'

‘No.' He cleared his throat. ‘Intelligence Analyst, MI6.' He chewed his lip for a moment, then asked a further question, during which he closed his eyes.

‘Have you ever killed anyone, Nadia?'

‘No,' she said.

He opened his eyes, his gaze soft. ‘That can't have been easy in your line of work.'

She braved a smile. But she felt as if she was in limbo. Jake now knew, and would have to tell his paymasters sooner or later. The Rose was still out there, as were Kadinsky and her sister, and two others of unknown allegiance on the island. And at the end of the day, Armageddon on account of the Rose was only a possibility, whereas Katya and her own death were a certainty if she didn't deliver. She couldn't just give up.

‘What now?' she asked.

He looked uncomfortable. ‘Last night,' he began, then stopped. He looked embarrassed, literally staring at his shoes.

She waited. Nothing came out. She guessed, but was a bit surprised. ‘Seriously?'

His turn to shrug.

And she decided. Because her future was shrinking in front of her eyes. She figured she'd be in prison soon, for a long time.

‘You want to know if it was real.' She caught his eye, smiled. ‘You're definitely not an MI6 agent, at least from the rumours I've heard about them.'

He smiled back, and she leaned across and kissed him. ‘This time, no lies between us, on either side,' she said.

Their clothes were on the floor in what she reckoned must have been a new speed record. He grabbed her wrists, pushed her down on the bed, then caught himself. ‘Sorry, I forgot.'

‘It's okay,' she said. Because finally it was.

But he'd already let go, and was moving down her belly, kissing her all the way, until he made her gasp. He didn't stop. Her knees came up, and then her thighs clamped around his head of their own accord.

She lay with her head on his chest, his arm loosely draped over her. Like she'd never let Viktor.

‘What you did today on the Excalibur,' she said. ‘Almost Russian.'

He half-laughed. ‘Whatever that means.'

‘You don't care too much about your life, do you Jake?'

He didn't reply.

‘I've told you everything. You've told me nothing.'

‘Do Russians suddenly believe in fair play?'

Fair point. But the key question hadn't gone away.

‘What now?' she asked.

He looked away from her, to the phone.

She figured the bonding was over. The sweat from the sex had dried and it was time to don their clothes and resume their roles. A shame. She got out of bed, began getting dressed. ‘I'm sorry we're not on the same side, Jake.' She moved to the door. ‘Do what you have to. As will I.' Her watch beeped. ‘I need to catch the nine o'clock news. In my room. Alone.'

She opened the door, then paused. ‘Earlier, I thought of what Katya would want me to do. That's why I told you everything. I've shown you all my cards, though I've seen none of yours. I guess in reality I had little choice. But maybe you should ask Sean, whoever he is, what you should do next.'

As the door swung closed, she glimpsed that same sad face she'd seen on the rooftop first thing in the morning. She stood outside his door a moment, then headed upstairs to her room.

***

Jake lay there a long time, until the noise from the pub patrons downstairs rose loud enough to be heard through the rain and wind. When he'd been down on the wreck, he'd barely had time to think about dying there, and had only briefly thought about Sean. His son had once told him that he was the best dad when he was a diver. He'd agreed. And so after Sean's death he'd quit MI6, to escape the darkness there, to stop inhabiting the twisted, sick shadow world that most people thankfully never saw. And now he was back in the thick of it, this time literally sleeping with the enemy.

He got up off the bed and took a cold shower. Then he sat cross-legged on the bed and did the maths. Nadia had saved his life today. And he'd saved two complete strangers, but his actions might kill Nadia and her sister. Yet the Rose was effectively a weapon, a WMD. If he turned it in, he could save tens of thousands of lives, maybe more.

What
would
Sean say? Find a third way. Save the Rose, Nadia and her sister. Easier said than done. The only thing in his favour was the storm brewing, which might prevent anyone bringing up the Rose for a few days. But he couldn't be sure of that. And he couldn't let Nadia hand it over to the Russians or whoever. He'd never sleep again.

He snatched Lorne's phone off the coffee table, flicked it open, and clicked on her number. It rang. She always answered within six rings, even if she was fucking, to which he could personally testify. Second ring. He wondered what he was going to say. Third ring.

She picked up.

‘Jake, thank God. Where the fuck have you been? All hell's broken loose, and I don't have much time.' She sounded breathless.

Jake checked. Lorne had called seven times. He'd put it on
silent
earlier. He took a breath. ‘What's happ –'

‘Code Black,' she said.

He was suddenly on his feet.
MI6 had been hacked!
‘Is this line secure?'

‘Just about, but we go dark in three minutes. You know the prototcol.'

He did. All agents were considered compromised. They'd either have to return to base or find a safe haven. Ops would go into frozen mode for thirty-six hours while they did a system-wide purge. He wasn't back on the MI6 books yet, so was unaffected. MI5 couldn't help, either, for fear of contagion. It meant he was on his own.

‘Is the Rose there?' she asked.

‘Yes.'

‘You have to find it. Don't let it leave the Scillies.'

‘It's safe where it is.'
Deep underwater
.

‘No. Shrivenham was cyber-attacked as well. All Prof Laney's files. Everything. We don't know who the client is. More players may have picked up the scent. We need the original, Jake. Do you understand?' Her voice sounded urgent.

He was still trying to catch up. ‘Yes,' he said, trying to gear-up his brain.

‘I have to go.'

‘Wait,' he said. He was thinking fast, knowing there would be no more contact as soon as she clicked off. But she couldn't access any agents, any assets. And even sending in the Navy or the SAS would only serve to shine a huge beacon on the Scillies, a big sign declaring
it's here
.

‘Hurry, Jake, I really –'

‘Lock us in,' he said. ‘Tighten security at the mainland ports. People can get in, but make it really hard to get out.'

There was a pause. ‘You might be making it worse for yourself. Could end up a kill-zone.'

‘Do it anyway.'

‘Consider it done. You need to watch the news about Frankfurt. The guy is called Danton. Last intel I got he was headed your way.' She paused as if she wanted to say more. ‘Gotta go. Speak in thirty-six. Watch your back, Jake.'

She clicked off.

You too Sara
.

Jake paced around the small bedroom. MI6 hacked. In the spy world this was a tsunami-scale event. At any one time there were easily fifty or more ops ongoing in foreign parts. If the agents' details got released somehow…

He wondered how it had been done. Had to be an inside job, at least partly. Before he'd quit MI6 he'd visited the lab in the US that had orchestrated the Iran nuclear fuel enrichment facility virus. A work of art. Inserted via a USB key by an operative, it had laid dormant for months until a particular series of events occurred. Then it went to work, penetrated the centrifuge control systems, sent them haywire, pushed back the Iranian enrichment programme a year in a matter of minutes.

But MI6 had far more secure systems. Who could have done this? Nadia had mentioned Kadinsky, but this was way out of his league, and that also included outfits like the Kolorokovs, who occasionally did black ops for the Kremlin and FSB. Something bigger was going on. As a pattern recogniser, he knew when a piece of the puzzle was missing.

He paced around, then sat down and picked up a pencil and a single sheet of white vellum paper. He jotted down various types of organisations or governments who would have the capability to steal the Rose and launch an attack on MI6. They were mainly governments – his money was on China and Russia – and a few sophisticated criminal organisations and Mafias, none of whom would actually
use
the Rose, as Nadia had argued, except for leverage. But there was always a residual risk, an outlier, maybe someone they didn't know about yet, who might have the capability, and might mean to actually use the Rose to launch a nuclear attack.

Lorne had said he should watch the news. He switched it on, and then he wished he hadn't, because suddenly all he wanted to do was protect Nadia.

Chapter Twelve

The TV screen flashed images into the darkness. Like being at the cinema. A horror movie. The scenes gruesome. A body found in an apartment in Frankfurt. A young Irishman identified by Interpol as Samuel O'Rourke, of no fixed address, wanted in connection with former IRA activities.
Sammy
. Police in white plastic suits swarming like termites all around the apartment block.

Nadia couldn't move. She barely breathed as she stared at the screen long after the news had moved onto the next item. Sammy had been tortured, and then had his skull smashed in with a hammer. In Frankfurt. He'd never made it to Moscow. It must have been days ago. She closed her eyes, saw him clear as day, walking away from her in Penzance as if he didn't have a care in the world. She remembered him laughing as they got out of that unholy mess in Sebastopol. He'd always given the world the finger. It wasn't right he should end like this.

Only twenty minutes earlier she'd been in Jake's room discussing hypotheticals, but here was Sammy's death, not a probability or even a risk, but a fact cold as a marble headstone. She wanted to find the motherfucker who'd done this to him, and… And what? Put a bullet in his brain? Yes. But could she? She knew this was how her father had started. He'd wanted revenge. But he hadn't just taken off with his gun. He'd plotted it carefully, and taken a long time to exact full revenge. He'd told her one day, while out hunting, that you needed a cold eye to kill. Much later she realised he'd not only been talking about animals.

But with Jake now in full knowledge of her secrets, and Sammy dead and Kadinsky saying nothing about it, she felt the world was closing in around her, walling in the Scilly Isles. She needed to act, to regain some kind of control.

She grabbed her phone and began searching internet sites, including some of the more paranoid ones. One caught her eye. An unofficial source said premises nearby had been used once before for a CIA-instigated interrogation, four years ago, to break a terrorist cell. The interrogation had led to arrests and prevention of an attack, but had been unorthodox, involving extreme measures. Water-boarding, for sure. But also a hammer. There was no hint of an official rebuttal, but a few US Government comments had been posted to ridicule the allegation.

A CIA kill was her best guess. Russian mobsters would have taken Sammy back to Russia. Technically the CIA didn't do this sort of thing, but as recent history had proven, they were quite happy to get a third party to do their dirty work. Yet something didn't quite fit. It had been messy, and some of the adjectives the journalist had used –
horrendous
and
macabre
– suggested the torturer had been sadistic. They all were of course, but this one had let his true nature show more than a professional. A hammer, for Christ's sake. And the body had been found, the lair compromised, the torturer on the run. That had been sloppy.

She took another moment for Sammy. In truth she'd not known him that well – no one talked much about their history on missions – but he'd been the closest thing to a friend she'd had in years. He'd been a professional killer, that was for sure, and he'd had dealings with the IRA in former times. But this? Tortured, and then his skull bashed in? She recalled lying next to him just days ago. He'd looked out for her, saved her from Janssen. If he'd taken the Rose, it would at least have been quicker for him.