Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (35 page)

off the face of the planet, or do the same to Dublin; it is all the same
to me. Now I ask you again, and for the last time my friend, what
weapons do you want?”

Jack reached into his jacket and he
quickly
produced a
sheet
of
paper. He handed the fictitious shopping list
over to the General. The
General quickly scanned the list before handing it back to Jack.

“This is all
easily
done,
my friend,” said the General.
“You bring
me the cash tomorrow and I will arrange for the goods to be delivered
to whatever part of the UK or Ireland that you wish.”

“A
s simple as that
my friend,” repeated the Russian. “So,
do we
have an agreement?”
Jack stood up and then he reached across the
desk to shake the
General’s
hand. The
General
stood up and took Jack’s
hand. They
shook on the deal.
“We have an agreement,” Jack said.
Jack turned to leave the office.
“One last thing my friend,” said the General.
Jack turned around slowly to face him.
“And what’s that?” Jack asked.
“I want to be paid in US dollars.
America is soon going to be the
only superpower on Earth. The dollar will be the world’s new currency
and I want to see as much of the world as possible.”
“It will take two days to arrange that,” Jack said.
“One
day, two days, it’s all the same to me. I will have someone
pick you up in two days. If you have the cash then we will proceed
from there.”
With that Jack left.
The ease with which the deal had been concluded was suspicious;
yet at the same time Jack felt that if the deal was genuine then the
world was
on the brink
of a heap
of trouble. What started
out as a
simple fishing
expedition
had
quickly
turned into something
much
more immediate. It was a
huge risk,
lowed,
but Jack felt that
he had no
especially if
he was
being folother
option—he had to get a
message through to London and the
only safe way to do that was

through the British Embassy in Moscow. The staff at the Embassy
were more helpful than he had hoped.
Arrangements were made to
transfer the money to a bank in Moscow. Jack was then to meet with
a member of the ambassador’s staff at a house in the countryside a few
miles outside of Moscow. It was a large house with a high wall keeping the unfriendly locals at bay. The building was old and it somehow
seemed to give off a Royal vibe to Jack. That wasn’t to say that it had
been around since the time of theTsar as many of the leaders in Soviet

times viewed themselves as the new ruling class who were entitled to
all of the trappings of privilege that designation entailed. Whatever its
history, the building was now in the hands of the British government.

Jack took a taxi to the building as an embassy car would have been too
obvious. He was met at the front gate by an armed guard. They
walked across the large cobbled courtyard to the front entrance to the
building. Two ornate pillars stood guard on either side of the door.
They were white marble and somehow looked out of place when set
against the weather beaten sandstone of the main building. The guard
knocked threetimes on the large black door andafter a short pausethe
door swung open. The guard walked in and Jack followed him automatically. That was all that Jack recalled about that evening. The next
thing that heremembered was waking up two days later on the floor
of
the front hallway of the building. His left arm was sore and bruised. He
was to learn later that he had been injected with tranquillisers to
keep him under for a few
days.
Although he remembered nothing
from that time he did remember waking up. He checked his arm
before rolling over on the floor to come face to face with the young
guard who had let him into the house two days earlier. The guard was
dead. He had been shot through the head. Jack never learned what
had really happened in those few days.
All that he did know was the
money was gone and the General and his driver had vanished. Jack felt
humiliated and angry by the experience.

As he lay under the bed in South Africa he felt those same feelings
welling up inside him once again. He had been trained to set aside his
personal feelings. He had been trained to keep a lid
on all
emotions
until after the mission was over. But as he lay
on the floor looking into
the eyes
of the dead man he couldn’t help himself.
An innocent
man
had just been murdered right in front
of him. It was pointless and

senseless and sorely in need of a just resolution. Jack slipped out from
under the
bed
determined to attain justice for the
dead
man lying
on the floor
of that bedroom. Jack went to the door and he opened it
carefully. Satisfied that the coast was clear,
he slipped
out into the
hallway.

Jack knew deep down in his gut that everything that had gone on
over the last forty
eight hours was connected, from the bomb in his
building to the sudden appearance
of
Barry. He also knew that the
man at the centre of it all, the man who could provide him with the
answers he so desperately sought, had just murdered a man. Jack was
coming for Deeley and he was leaving all civility in that bedroom next
to the body of the guard.

An Embassy on high alert was no place for an armed man hell bent
on revenge, but that was the hand he had to play with and Jack was
determined that
one way
or the
other
he would succeed. He knew
the
protocol
better than
most; in that
kind
of situation the security
staff were trained to shoot first and then deal with the fallout. Judging
by the way Deeley
had spoken to the guards, and in particular, the
lies that he had told them, it was
quite clear that they
had no idea
what
was really
going
on. In
many
respects it would
have
made
Jack’s task a hell
of a lot
easier had they all been in
on it as it was
much
easier to
kill a
man
than
it
was
to incapacitate him without
causing permanent
damage—too little force and the man would wake
up much too soon and once again pose a risk to Jack; too much force
and there was a real danger than Jack could cause the man permanent
damage or
even
kill him. Good guys and bad guys were
easy; good
guys
inadvertently
working
on
behalf
of
a
bad
guy
was
an
uncomfortable grey zone, and Jack hated grey zones. Ultimately if he
had to take
out
one
of the guards then that is what he would do, and
he was confident that there would be no comeback from London for
doing so,
but that was not
what he wanted, not
even if it
made his
life a hell
of a lot easier. The
political rhetoric about those men being
soldiers and how they knew
what they were signing up for when they
joined the service didn’t seem