He had listened to Jack’s story with a great deal of interest and not a small amount of sympathy, and whilst he had nodded thoughtfully at Jack’s talk of ensuring Amanda’s safety, he understood that the boy’s true motivation, the real nature of his mission, was revenge. Revenge for his father’s death, revenge against Sir Clive for threatening the life of the woman he loved. It coursed through him like an electrical current. He didn’t seem to care about what the man had put him through personally.
“You must play this carefully Jack. You are dealing with a very experienced and ruthless operator. He won’t be easy to stop.” He reached for a cake, paused, hand wavering over a custard tart as if suddenly distracted. “Something occurs to me though,” he said, opening a drawer in his desk and extracting what looked like a memory stick from it, holding it up for Jack and Amanda to see.
“Sir Clive’s deception was so complex,” he said thoughtfully. “So much time and effort to build the devices. To leak the information. For a bluff to be convincing it does not always need such elaborate props.” He threw the memory stick at Jack.
“What do you want me to do with it?” Jack said, catching it one-handed.
“I want you to be careful, Jack. It’s my Internet bomb, could go off anytime,” his voice full of contempt. Jack frowned.
“Seriously?” he asked. Monsieur Blanc smiled.
“No, no it’s not an Internet bomb. It’s whatever we want. This is our bluff.”
“So we turn the tables. Make him think we have something on him. Beat him at his own game?” Jack said.
“Exactly. I take it you’ve played poker?” Amanda looked alarmed.
“The last time he played poker he ended up…” she paused, thinking of the clinical trial Jack had taken part in to repay the money lost, the madness that had descended on their lives since then. “The last time he played poker he ended up here.” She said quietly. Jack reached over, squeezed her hand.
“With a good bluff we can draw Sir Clive in. Position him where we want.” Monsieur Blanc continued. “We’ll convince him you hold information that compromises him. That you have the best hand.” He bit into the custard tart, “the fact that you’ve risen from the dead is a pretty good start,” his eyes filled with mirth, laughter suddenly catching the back of his throat, his whole body starting to shake.
“Sorry, I am sorry,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks, reaching for a serviette. Jack and Amanda looked on, surprised at his sudden outburst. He managed to regain control of himself, took a sip of water, sat back in his chair. He sighed.
“My apologies. Where was I? The memory stick. In my experience, intelligence officers are a very jumpy bunch, quick to believe the worst, paranoid bordering on sociopathic. We will let him know it contains sensitive information, get him where we want him. Set him up. And once we have him you may do with him as you wish.”
Jack looked at the memory stick, pale, white, nondescript.
“Good.” He said coldly.
84
Sir Clive had spent the morning briefing the Defence Select Committee on the success of his operation to remove Nbotou from power. He advised them he’d taken out a major threat to the UK’s cyber security, said it was unfortunate this success hadn’t been achieved without the loss of British lives, but that he was confident those brave men didn’t die in vain. The Committee had given him a grilling, rightly so, the death of ten soldiers was not something to be taken lightly, but his military background meant his operational decisions were rarely challenged. He was back in his office by midday reading through e-mails when he saw the message:
Leave Amanda alone.
That was all. No sign off. No greeting. Sent from a Hotmail account. Sir Clive read it. Read it again. Drummed his fingers on the desk then reached into the top drawer. He pulled out the report he’d received from Nick Clarke. A nasty thought snagging at the back of his mind. Had the bodies been officially identified? There was no mention of it in the papers he’d been sent. He called the High Commission in Kampala. Nick wasn’t there. Tried another number.
“Patrick Little speaking.”
“Patrick, hello. This is London, Sir Clive Mortimer. Nick’s been helping us out with a rather tricky operation we’ve been running in the region.” Patrick stared miserably into the distance, wishing he hadn’t picked up the phone. He didn’t want to get involved in whatever ugly mess Nick had been asked to clean up.
“Nick’s not available at the moment, how can I help?” He said, voice smooth as a silk cravat. One thing he was good at was sucking up to his superiors.
“I just wanted to know if you’d officially ID’ed the bodies of those two unfortunate tourists caught up in the blast.”
“Not as far I’m aware. Bits of one of them have been,” he tried to think of a way of putting it delicately, “reassembled. There should be something to send home. There’s nothing on the man with him, but it was a powerful blast, he might have borne the brunt of it.”
“I see, thanks Patrick. Tell Nick to give me a call when he gets back.” He might have borne the brunt of it. Might have. Then again, he might just have sent him an e-mail.
He checked the message again. The e-mail address. He hadn’t noticed it before: Coltan80@hotmail.com. The coltan part was obvious, you didn’t have to be a Cambridge student to work out that the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was rich in the stuff, whoever had sent the message had obviously put two and two together, but why had they come up with 80? Surely there can’t have been 79 e-mail addresses that already contained the word coltan?
He stepped away from his desk, eyes on the river, determined to work out the significance of the number. So little information in the message he was certain it must have a meaning.
The sky was grey and the river the same dull brown colour as a farmyard puddle. A man with a metal detector made his way slowly towards the water’s edge, tiny from this distance, sweeping the detector in careful semi-circles over the silt. Sir Clive wondered if he ever found anything, settlements had existed on either side of the river for thousands of years, must be all sorts of debris amongst the stones, Victorian coins, Roman pots. .
He stopped, walked quickly to the bookshelf. The number 80, the Roman army, a distant memory from Latin lessons at school. He picked an encyclopaedia from the shelf and flicked through it.
Although a Centurion (Centurio) in the Roman army initially commanded a centuria of men (100), that number later changed to 80.
Sir Clive closed the book and slid it back onto the shelf. Was the number 80 really an oblique reference to Centurion? To his involvement with them? He couldn’t quite believe Jack had made the connection, but then again he couldn’t quite believe how difficult it was to kill the boy. He reached for his coat and hat. He was going to reply to the e-mail, but not from the office. An Internet café under the railway arches would do.
Jack, I know it’s you. Let’s not play games. Why don’t we meet? I’m sure we can come to some form of agreement. Best to leave the ‘80’ out of it. They’re not as open to discussion as I am.
C.
He read it through, pleased with the tone. Authoritative but somehow confiding, on the boy’s side, then clicked ‘send.’ He pulled out his mobile. Time to call Harvey, let him know he’d need to send a team over sharpish. Things might be about to get messy. An e-mail pinged straight back. He put the phone down on the desk.
Paris. Pere LaChaise cemetery. Midnight tonight. Wait in the phone booth outside the gates. I have some files you might be interested in.