Rossiter opened his door and stepped out, the cold striking him instantly, making him catch his breath. He’d been provided with an overcoat by his captors, but he’d ditched it back at the escape point in case it too was fitted with a tracker. His men had thought to bring along a new set of clothes for him, and he’d wrestled his way out of his prisoner’s garb and jettisoned that, too. But the sheepskin jacket he wore filed to protect his neck and his face from the cutting wind.
He ducked and strode towards the ring of men, though the rotor was winding down.
A man stepped up to meet him. A narrow face, clean shaven. Hooded eyes, like a predator’s. This man wasn’t visibly armed.
Rossiter recognised the face, though he hadn’t met the man before.
The Locksmith.
They shook hands.
Without a word, the Locksmith nodded at the helicopter behind Rossiter. Rossiter turned slightly and raised a hand.
The men poured out of the helicopter’s rear, hustling the captive, Mossberg, between them. He stumbled a little, his legs unaccustomed to solid ground after the long flight, and two of them caught him under the arms and righted him.
Rossiter felt the group of men draw nearer, the anticipation in their postures unmistakeable.
The Locksmith watched Mossberg as he was brought forward. His hawk-like eyes didn’t waver.
With a flick of his fingers he motioned for the hood to be removed.
One of Rossiter’s people pulled back the hood, just as the SIS contingent had done with Rossiter himself two hours earlier.
There was a reaction this time, in the Locksmith’s face. Nothing tangible, just a shadow that passed across the thin features and was gone.
He gave a single nod, and transferred his gaze to Rossiter once more.
‘Your turn,’ Rossiter said.
The Locksmith tilted his head a fraction. From behind him, out of the shadows thrown by the arc lights, two men strode forwards. Carbines were slung across their chests.
Between them, they held a flat, rectangular case. Carrying it required considerable effort, Rossiter noted.
He looked at the Locksmith. Looked into his half-hidden eyes.
‘I trust you’re giving me what was agreed,’ he said. ‘Of course, I have no way of knowing at this moment whether you are or not. But if that case turns out to be filled with bricks, or pieces of scrap metal, or even gold ingots — if it contains anything other than what was agreed — then your prisoner will be killed. Along with everybody in his immediate vicinity.’
The Locksmith’s eyes searched Rossiter’s. There was wonder in them.
Rossiter said, ‘I’ll be in a position to analyse the contents of that case within ninety minutes from now. The man I am handing over to you has an explosive device hidden on his person which will detonate in precisely two hours. If I satisfy myself that you’ve honoured your end of the deal, that you’ve given me what I requested, I’ll send you the instructions for deactivating the device immediately. But if I find you’ve tricked me, or if I have any reason at all to be suspicious about what’s inside the case, the explosive will go off. You’ll lose the prisoner, as well as whichever analysts and torturers and surgeons are working on him, desperate to locate the device and remove it.’
The Locksmith’s upper eyelids had retracted a couple of millimetres, which made his stare even more piercing.
‘You won’t find the device beforehand, by the way. Not that that will stop you from trying. And even if you did, it’s primed to detonate if any attempt is made to remove it by force. Oh,’ he said, as if an afterthought had struck him, ‘and don’t waste your energy asking Mossberg where the device is. He doesn’t know. I gave him a short-acting anaesthetic agent as soon as we took him aboard the helicopter. He’s awake now, but he has no recollection of what happened on the journey.’
Rossiter peered off into the darkness.
‘I saw your boat out there,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see what kind of hardware you had aboard. But I have to assume you’re packing anti-aircraft firepower. You’ll understand now when I advise that any plans you may have had to shoot us out of the sky as we were leaving, are to be abandoned. If you kill us, you lose your prisoner. In two hours from now.’ He made a show of checking the watch he’d been given in the helicopter, along with his new clothes. ‘One hour and fifty-eight minutes, in fact.’
Behind him, he heard the sounds of his men loading the case onto the Eurocopter.
The Locksmith eased closer to Rossiter. He managed the feat without taking a step forward.
He said, very quietly, very carefully: ‘If you destroy our asset before the time you have specified, before two hours are up… I will find you. And you will be subjected to a torment beyond anything you are capable of imagining.’
Rossiter didn’t laugh in his face. He said, in the same tone of solemnity, ‘I won’t do something like that. You have my word. I owe you a debt already. Without your assistance, I wouldn’t be standing here now.’
They held one another’s stare for a full ten seconds.
Rossiter broke it, because there was nothing more to be said. He raised his hand, made a quick gesture.
The engine of the Eurocopter growled into life. He felt the sweep of air against his back as the rotor blades began their circuits.
Rossiter ducked and trotted back to the chopper.
He was aware that his turned back might be taken as a mark of disrespect, but he didn’t think the Locksmith would see it that way. The Locksmith was an intelligent man, from a sophisticated culture.
This was nothing other than a business deal.
The helicopter rose, swinging slightly in the growing wind. Below, Rossiter watched the assembled party making its rapid way towards the moored boat.
Only the Locksmith lingered, his form dwindling as he stared up at the receding aircraft.
Six
It was a facility the popular imagination had already given form to in countless television programmes, though few people probably really believed in its existence.
The hospital wing was deep below the superstructure of the Vauxhall Cross building, beneath the level of the adjacent Thames River. Purkiss had been down there a couple of times before, during his time with SIS. He was struck by how it had changed in the last nine or ten years. Gone was the slightly makeshift appearance, the drabness, which had made it resemble a typical ageing National Health Service facility. Now it was all sleek chrome and glass, the offices he passed kitted out with huge flatscreen televisions and computer monitors, the lighting softer and more akin to that of a high-end hotel.
Rupesh Gar touched his palm against a featureless square panel on the wall. A door opened silently, sliding back into its frame.
Inside, two staff members, one female and one male — they might have been nurses, or security personnel, or both, but it was difficult to tell from their plain cream-coloured scrub outfits — rose from their chairs and walked out past Purkiss and Gar without a word or a sideways glance. Purkiss followed Gar into the room, hearing the door slide shut behind them.
The man in the single bed against one wall of the windowless room was perhaps thirty-five years old. He had the fair hair and the vaguely melancholy face of a lot of Russians Purkiss had encountered.
He lay on top of the covers, in an outfit comprising a long-sleeved top and loose trousers that wasn’t quite hospital pyjamas and wasn’t quite prison garb. One leg was propped on some kind of support at the foot of the bed.
He wasn’t cuffed to the bed, or restrained in any other visible way. He didn’t need to be. He was an FSB officer in the heart of the British Secret Intelligence Service’s headquarters. He would know he had no chance of escape.