Who Dares Wins (41 page)

And what a conversation it was going to be. This was turning into the biggest balls-up the service had seen for years. They could issue all the DA notices they wanted, but with so many witnesses to the shootings it was probably all over the Internet already. And things were going to get worse. A major hit, Dolohov had said. Political. Jacob Redman was their only link. Without him they were blind men in a dark room. If things were bad now, they were going to get a whole lot worse.

Gabriel Bland headed towards the door, steeling himself for the encounter to come. It promised to be ugly. He knew that if anyone was going to take the rap, it would have to be him.

Five minutes later, the Chief of MI6 was staring up at him with a look of blank astonishment.

Bland had never appreciated the experience of taking orders from someone his junior. He had seen the service’s chiefs come and go. He had disapproved of none of them quite so much as this one, with his ridiculous ideas of making the service more ‘open’ – interviews with the media and advertising for posts on the Internet. This obsession with image, however, was just a distraction from the nitty gritty of their day-to-day work.

But right now, Bland had to put all that from his mind as he stood in front of his boss, who could quite clearly see an early retirement looming. ‘Who’s your agent on the ground?’ he demanded.

‘Toby Brookes, sir.’

‘Fire him. Fuck-ups don’t come bigger than this, you know. I’ve already got the PM asking me why he can’t take a leak without one of our guys looking over his shoulder. Now you’re telling me our only lead is missing and our collateral’s dead on the ground at Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Yes.’

The Chief banged his hand on the desk. The coffee that was sitting there sloshed out of its cup. ‘Our analysts are crying into their files,’ he fumed. ‘None of them can tell me why the Russians would order a hit on one of our politicians. Things are frosty with Moscow, but there’s no
point
to it. Nothing to be gained.’

Bland cleared his throat. ‘The Russians are a law to themselves, sir,’ he said. ‘Especially after Litvinenko . . .’

The Chief’s face hardened at the memory of the former Russian spy assassinated on British soil – another big embarrassment for the service. ‘That’s what happens when you put a former KGB hood in charge of the fucking country, Gabriel,’ he said, neatly batting the implied criticism away. ‘Moscow’s a liability at the moment. God knows what they’re trying to do.’ He frowned. ‘These Redman brothers. They’re our only chance of getting some sort of clue as to what’s happening. Where the
hell
are they?’

Bland didn’t reply. He had nothing to say.

The Chief gave him a dark look. ‘Listen to me carefully,’ he said. ‘You’ve got every asset this agency can throw at it. Find them, Gabriel. And when you’ve found them, do whatever it takes to get everything they know.
Whatever it takes,
Gabriel. I’m sure you understand what I mean. No comeback.’

Bland nodded, his eyes dead. ‘I understand, sir.’

‘Good. Now get the hell out of my sight. I don’t want to hear from you unless it’s to tell me that you’ve got one or other of those bastards in custody. And if
you
haven’t done it within twenty-four hours, I’ll find someone more capable who can.’

In another part of London, far away from the bloodshed of Piccadilly and the panic at MI6 – and completely oblivious to both – Jamie Spillane was breaking into a house.

It was a small house. In order to make his way up to the back door, the young man had climbed through several adjacent gardens. His fingers were splintered from climbing up and down wooden fences – he felt slightly foolish for not having worn any gloves and made a mental note to do so in the future – and the contents of his rucksack jutted uncomfortably into his back.

There was a small patio outside the back door. It was a bit of a shit heap – bags of rubbish, an old barbecue, a rusty bike. The paintwork on the door was peeling and the wooden frames of the two external windows were rotting away. Each window was covered from the inside by a blind, and the glass of the back door was mottled and frosted. The young man couldn’t see which room he would be entering. He looked at his watch. A quarter to one. Silence from the house and no lights from the upstairs windows. The occupier was fast asleep.

He felt inside his jacket pocket. The lock picks and tension wrench were there. The young man licked his lips and bent down to the lock. As he prepared to insert the picks, he gently tried the door handle.

It moved. He pushed the door open. Nobody had thought to lock it. He shrugged slightly and mastered a little twinge of disappointment as he realised he had rather been looking forward to picking the lock, to using one of the skills he had learned.

No matter. He quietly stepped inside and shut the door behind him, then stood perfectly still for a few seconds while his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

He was in a kitchen. It smelled of food that he didn’t recognise and imagined he wouldn’t find very good to eat. There were dirty plates in the sink and most of the work surface in this small room was crowded. How strange, he thought to himself, that someone working in an embassy should live in such squalor. An archway led into another room. A street light from the front window illuminated it. There was a thick carpet in here, and a tiny table at one end, pressed against the window – one of those that looked out on to the back garden. At the other end, a two-seater sofa in front of a television, with a coffee table in between the two.

A creak. He jumped.

Beyond the sofa was a door, closed, that he assumed led upstairs. He found himself staring at it, half-expecting someone to burst through. But no one came. The creak was just that, he realised – the joists of the house relaxing. Still, his breath came in deep bursts. His skin felt hot and cold at the same time. He dragged his eyes away from the door and looked at the object lying on the coffee table.

The object he was looking for. The brown briefcase.

He forced his muscles into movement, removing his rucksack from over his shoulder and starting to undo it. His fingers were shaking slightly; it seemed to take an age to unbuckle the straps. The more he hurried, the slower he seemed to go, but eventually he got it open. Next he pulled out the replica suitcase and opened it. The original case contained a few papers. He flicked through a few of them. They were written in an alphabet he couldn’t understand, but as he scanned through, his eyes fell upon the words
Kakha Beridze
in English lettering. He nodded with satisfaction. There was also a pen clipped to the interior and a used paper napkin, crumpled and stained where its owner had wiped their mouth. The young man meticulously removed each of these objects and transferred them to the replica case. He then rifled through the original to check there was nothing he had missed. It was empty, apart from a few crumbs, which he carefully picked up and dropped into the replica. Then he closed both cases, placing the replica back on the table in exactly the same position that the original had been and stuffing the original into his rucksack.

The young man stood up. As he did so, his attention was caught by something he hadn’t noticed before. A picture on the wall. In the foreground a meadow, green and dotted with little yellow flowers; behind that, a line of snow-capped peaks. The sky, deep blue and dotted with puffy white clouds. Below the picture, in bright, tacky writing, the words
Beautiful Georgia
.

He looked at that picture. Not for the first time, he wondered why he was being asked to do this. He was not into politics and he struggled every time he tried to work out the consequences of this operation. But, as he had done so many times before, he let it go. He was just a small piece in the bigger intelligence jigsaw, he knew that. Maybe if he did his job well, if he proved he could be trusted . . . well then, maybe something else would come his way.

Hoisting the rucksack over his shoulder, he stepped back towards the kitchen. On the table at the end of the room, something caught his eye. A wallet. He approached it and saw several notes peeking out.

Somewhat unnecessarily he looked over his shoulder. It would be so easy to steal the contents of that wallet. Just a couple of notes. Who would notice? He struggled with himself.
Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to steal anything. It’ll raise suspicion. You mustn’t do anything to give away the fact that you’ve been there.

He took a deep breath. The temptation was difficult to control, but he managed it. Just. He stepped through to the kitchen, then out into the back garden, closing the door quietly behind him. Squeezing his splintered hand open and closed, he prepared to scale the garden fences again. He allowed himself a brief smile. It had gone well. In an hour he would be back home and then there was just one more part of the operation to complete.

And
that
would be the easy bit.

*

Sam sat in the unwelcoming surroundings of his hotel room. He looked numbly at the bag Mac had brought with him. How long would it be before they found his body? Hours? Days? Weeks? Every impulse urged him to go to Mac’s family, explain to his wife what had happened. But he couldn’t do that. He was a wanted man. Rebecca was going to have to suffer her husband’s unexplained absence a bit longer until she heard the news that would turn her world upside down. It sickened him to think about it.

And it sickened him to think about his brother. He didn’t doubt that Jacob was the shooter. The whole scenario had his fingerprints all over it. The ribbon. The decoy. It was the way his mind worked. Sam knew that better than anybody.

And better than anybody he knew what a mess he’d made of things. He should never have got Mac involved. Dolohov’s death was just the beginning. Jacob’s red-light runners were planning something. Something big, but he didn’t know what and he was no closer to finding out. Go to the Firm now and they’d stick him in the deepest hole they had. They’d be panicking. They’d know they had to find Jacob and they’d know Sam was their only link. Half the fucking service would be out there looking for him. Anywhere they thought he might be – his flat in Hereford, Clare’s place. And of course, he couldn’t show his face at SAS headquarters. His passport would be flagged and his mobile phone bugged.

All this because of his brother.

Jacob’s dark features flashed before his eyes.
Jacob was a real soldier
, his dad had said.

‘We’re all real soldiers.’ Sam muttered out loud the reply he had given his father. We’re all real soldiers, and sometimes we do things we’re not proud of. He thought of the red-light runners in Kazakhstan, turned from unknowing stooges to cold corpses at the squeeze of a trigger. In the darkness of the night, when it was just Sam and his conscience, he knew he would be haunted by those young men. He was a soldier, but he wasn’t without feeling.

Was Jacob proud of what he had done? Was his own conscience pricked? Was he without feeling? Could he kill one of his closest friends and not be haunted by it for the rest of his days? Or was he too far gone for that?

Sam felt himself sneering at the thought, the anger welling up in him once more. Half of him wanted to see his brother; the other half didn’t know what he’d do when he caught up with him.

He looked over at Mac’s bag once more. Solitary. Ownerless.

His dad’s voice echoed in his head.

Sam stopped. His brow furrowed. Through the fog of his tired mind he remembered the last time he had seen his father. It had only been a few days ago, but it seemed like half a lifetime. Fragments of that conversation seemed to float in the air around him.

Sam hadn’t answered. He hadn’t had the heart. He knew too well that nothing would have kept Jacob away.

Nothing would have kept Jacob away . . .

Nothing would have kept Jacob away
 . . .

And suddenly, in that dingy hotel room, it was crystal clear what Sam had to do. He looked at his watch: 3 a.m. The night was slipping away. He only had one chance to catch up with Jacob. If he missed that, he knew, without any doubt, he would never see his brother again.

His ops waistcoat was on the bed. He strapped it to his torso, secreted the Browning pistol into it, then covered himself with his hooded top. He looked around the room. Nothing to take. Just Mac’s bag, and he didn’t need anything from that. It would only slow him down. He left it there as he slipped out of the room and surreptitiously left the hotel. In the hotel car park, he felt as though a million eyes were watching him. He ignored them. They were imaginary.
Kill the paranoia, Sam. You haven’t time for it.
He started examining the cars on offer. Nothing modern, he told himself. Nothing with an alarm or immobiliser. Get your collar felt by the Old Bill now and you’ll have some serious explaining to do.

He walked. He kept alert.

It was an old Fiesta that caught his eye. A dent on one side, with rust creeping round it. A shabby, unkempt interior. Sam looked around to check that he was alone. Nothing. Nobody. He walked round to the passenger’s side where, with a sharp jerk of his elbow, he smashed the window in. The glass shattered onto the passenger seat. Leaning in, he stretched out to open the driver’s door, then walked round and climbed in.