A Mercedes S-class was the first car to be pulverised, mashed into an equally expensive BMW in a chaotic melding of German engineering. Eddie tried to steer away from the other vehicles, but the tug skidded on, carving a destructive swathe through Jaguars, Range Rovers, Audis, Lexuses and Bentleys before the sheer weight of crumpled metal finally dragged it to a standstill.
Relieved, he pushed himself upright. Nina sat up and shook off broken glass. ‘There’ll be a lot of pissed-off company directors when they get back from their flights,’ she said, surveying the wreckage.
‘Serves ’em right for not taking public transport,’ Eddie replied. They clambered out. ‘There’s a road over there.’ He indicated a set of exit barriers.
‘Where are we?’
‘North of Heathrow — place called Harmondsworth. We should be able to get into London pretty easily, so long as we’re clear before they surround this place.’
They hurried to the gate. A security guard stared in disbelief from his hut at the automotive carnage that had just occurred on his watch. ‘Oi!’ he cried at the couple. ‘Someone’s got to pay for all this! I want your names!’
‘John Brice, Secret Intelligence Service,’ Eddie shouted as they ran past. ‘Send the bill to MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross!’
31
The real John Brice was indeed at the SIS building on the southern bank of the Thames. His shabby, dissolute cover persona from the Democratic Republic of Congo was gone, the MI6 officer now shaved, washed and clad in a clean, sharp suit. His presence there was known to very few people, however, and the number who knew why he was there was even smaller.
The bunker-like basement levels contained numerous operations centres; they were designed to allow controllers in London to monitor and coordinate activities across the globe, but on this occasion the focus of attention was much closer to home. ‘Looks like the police lost them, sir,’ reported one of Brice’s small team, a young but ambitious woman called Staite. She was overseeing the hunt for the fugitives, while at the same time making sure MI6’s involvement remained as discreet as possible. The Secret Intelligence Service’s remit was to conduct operations outside British soil; anything on it was the province of its sister/rival agency MI5, the Security Service, and to say that each fist of British intelligence resented interloping on its own turf by the other was a major understatement. ‘They’ve started to search the area around the car park, but haven’t found anything yet.’
Staite’s partner, an equally youthful Cambridge graduate named Waterford, shook his head. ‘How could they lose them? They were driving something that could be outpaced by a Segway!’
‘Don’t underestimate them — especially not Chase,’ Brice told them. One of the op centre’s many video screens displayed the passport photos of their targets, the images already acting as reference for MI6’s facial recognition software as it scoured London’s extensive network of surveillance cameras. ‘He’s former SAS, and has an annoying talent for survival.’
‘Is it wise to let the woodentops handle this, sir?’ asked Staite. ‘Once we locate them, maybe we should put GB63 on to them instead.’
‘I don’t want to draw attention, especially not from Five, unless absolutely necessary. All anyone outside this building needs to know is that Chase and Wilde are wanted for reasons relating to external security. What those reasons are, we’ll decide once we catch them.’ His phone rang. ‘Yes?’
‘Morley here, sir.’ One of the two officers he had sent to collect the fugitives and their possessions. They had failed the first part of their task, but at least the second had been achieved. ‘We’re leaving Heathrow now. We’ve got everything you told us to expect.’ He ran through a list of assorted electronic items and storage media, but it was the last that most concerned Brice: ‘And a laptop — with a bullet hole right through it.’
‘Does it boot up?’
‘No, sir. I tried, but it won’t even turn on.’
‘As soon as you get back to Vauxhall Cross, take everything to the techies — Evans is in charge of this operation. When will you arrive?’
‘About three-quarters of an hour, traffic permitting.’
‘Good. Carry on.’ He disconnected and looked back at the screens. One displayed a satellite map with Heathrow at the centre, extending as far as central London on the right edge. Somewhere on it, Eddie Chase and Nina Wilde were on the run…
And he had no direct leverage to apply. His watchers were still monitoring their daughter and her grandparents in Southampton, but with no way for him to contact his targets — their phones were amongst the items Morley and his partner had collected — he couldn’t use the threat of violence against her to force them to surrender.
What were they doing? It was possible they would head to Southampton to rescue their family, but the watchers were not merely an observation unit; he had already issued orders for them to take down Wilde and Chase should they show up. And GCHQ was still monitoring all communications with every person they might possibly contact for help, in addition to the agency’s standard filtering of the country’s news outlets. So far, nothing.
Whatever their plan, he was certain he would figure it out. Wilde might be a PhD, but she was just an archaeologist, not a seasoned covert agent. And as for Chase…
Staite gave him a quizzical look. It took a moment before he realised why; he had unconsciously drawn his lips into a dismissive half-smile at the mere thought that some yobbish Yorkshire squaddie might outwit him. Chase relied on brute force and luck, that was all — and both were finite, while he had the considerable resources of one of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies at his disposal. ‘We’ll get them,’ he said, as much to himself as the young woman. ‘We’ll get them.’
‘Do you see her?’ Nina asked as she and Eddie made their way through Hyde Park. Their journey into the capital had been lengthy and convoluted as they tried to minimise their exposure to the ubiquitous CCTV cameras. Appropriately for the setting of George Orwell’s 1984, London was the most heavily surveilled city on the planet. The degree to which its tens of thousands of cyclopean glass eyes could be accessed by government agencies had been exaggerated by Hollywood and BBC spy thrillers, the intelligence services not — yet — having real-time access to the security feeds of every pub and corner shop at the click of a mouse, but there were still plenty of official cameras overlooking the streets.
Eddie spotted a familiar figure on a bench near a sculpture of a heron. ‘Yeah, there she is.’
They cautiously surveyed their surroundings for signs of anyone paying them undue attention before finally joining the waiting woman. ‘There you are!’ said Tamara Defendé, in both relief and concern. ‘I’m so glad to see you both. When you got off the plane, I had no idea what had happened to you! We heard shots, but nobody would tell us anything.’
‘Yeah, it was a bit of a wild ride,’ Eddie replied, embracing her. ‘But we made it, and I don’t think we’ve been followed. What about you? Did you have any trouble?’
‘An African woman travelling alone, having trouble at British customs?’ said the Botswanan bush pilot with a sarcastic eye roll. ‘They questioned me for thirty minutes about why I was here and how soon I planned to leave — that was the part they cared about the most — before finally letting me go. I’m glad I had a return ticket to prove I was going to leave. If I’d arrived on a one-way ticket, I would probably still be at the airport, waiting to be deported on the first flight back.’