The portly man spread his hands in a nicely-judged and entirely false mixture of regret, embarrassment and sympathy. ‘My dear fellow, I only wish we had more! This is really exasperating, of course, but we must find some way of satisfying our American colleagues.’
I leaned over to Richards and murmured, ‘get him to ask a direct question. This guy is too controlled to let anything oblique worry him.’
Richards nodded and picked up a small microphone. I could see the back of portly man’s head and spotted the small wire of an earpiece. Richards talked quietly into the microphone for a moment.
‘I’m sorry to have to be blunt,’ the interviewer said, ‘but have you ever had contact with any of the anti-Western groups in Saudi Arabia?’
Derek waved dismissively. ‘Of course not,’ he said confidently.
‘Liar.’ I said to Richards. ‘He is hiding something serious and is getting worried.’
Richards nodded and murmured again into the microphone.
‘Well, that’s that then.’ Portly man sounded relieved. ‘Unless the Americans can come up with something more definite, I think we can forget all about this.’ They left the room, still chatting amiably.
I turned to Richardson; ‘What happens next?’
‘Nothing. He’ll be slipped into a suitably prestigious job where he can do no harm.’
‘You’d do that because of one word spoken by me?’
‘Well, not only that,’ he smiled wryly, ‘there is the small matter of why someone wanted you dead. The fact that you were attacked just before witnessing that interview is highly unlikely to be a coincidence.’
I mulled over that for a moment. ‘Then you’ve got a leak, somewhere.’
‘So it would seem.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Could you locate him for us?’
‘With pleasure. But first I’d like to take a look at my assassin’.
Richards nodded and led me down into a substantial basement and through a very solid and well-insulated door. The man lay on a bare, steel-framed bed, the two men who had brought him there sitting to one side. They stood up as we entered. ‘Hasn’t moved a muscle sir.’ One said.
I walked over and looked down at him. Now I could see him clearly in a bright light, I was not surprised to see that he was of Middle Eastern appearance. His eyes gleamed with terror at his paralysis.
‘Any chance of finding out who sent him?’ Richard’s voice was like his mind; the epitome of studied calm.
I reached down and touched the man’s head, freeing his vocal cords. I hesitated for a moment, reluctant to inflict pain even on a killer such as this, then thought of another way. I closed my eyes and concentrated on his mental pattern, extending my sensitivity past his conscious mind and into the subconscious. I burrowed deeply, heading for the horror zone, where all nightmares lurk. I filled him with a nameless, formless dread, which reached up and swamped his conscious control, drowned his beliefs in a sea of terror.
‘Who sent you?’
His mind gibbered back at me, but I didn’t need to hear the answer – it was writ clearly enough in his emotions for me to see.
‘He doesn’t know. I sense that he has had training in killing – he has the mindset of a soldier – but I suspect he was given his instructions anonymously.’
Richards grunted again. ‘More or less what I expected.’
‘Do you want him active or paralysed?’
He considered for a moment. ‘Might as well leave him paralysed for now. He’ll be less trouble that way.’
I spent the night in a nondescript room in the nondescript building, after phoning the hospital to warn that my stay would be a little longer than expected. The next morning, the process of spy-hunting was simple. Richards led me through his organisation, passing through a large and surprisingly ordinary open-plan room; it could have been any commercial office. I had made no attempt at disguise and monitored the various emissions of surprise and fascination radiating from the minds of the staff. Suddenly, there was a flare of alarm and guilt. I turned and followed it to its source, wading through the growing panic as I approached. I stopped at the desk and looked at her, saying nothing. She was staring open-eyed, her pulse beating wildly in her throat.
‘Miss Samuelson, would you come with us please?’ Richards was courtesy itself, but the iron command was unmistakable.
She got up rather jerkily, spilling some papers, and followed numbly behind us as we left the room, accompanied by waves of intense and speculative interest from the staff.
This was no hardened killer, and my specialised interrogation techniques were not required. All I had to do was sit silently facing her, commenting, ‘that’s a lie,’ from time to time, and she soon cracked under Richards’ persistent questioning. It was a predictable tale of a single, rather lonely woman approaching middle age, who had been swept off her feet by a handsome and wealthy Arab.
After she had been taken away, Richards sighed wearily. ‘Terrible shame, she was a competent officer. You’d think that a woman in this business would know better than to fall for a classic honeytrap, but it keeps on happening. I’m beginning to think that we shouldn’t employ staff unless they are always engaged in at least one active sexual relationship that we know all about.’
I smiled wryly, ‘I can just see that one getting past the Equal Opportunities watchdogs in Human Resources!’
The journey back to the hospital later that day was conducted in a more sombre mood, with elaborate precautions being taken to ensure my safety. I left the building via a service tunnel, emerging heavily disguised into another street before being bundled into a car – and switched to another one a short distance away. The rest of the journey was uneventful but despite the bright sunshine my mood was dark. A newspaper had been left in the car for me and I read through it in the hope of gaining some distraction, but it was full of stories about environmental deterioration, water shortages and mass-migration from famine areas in Africa. I thought of Luke and wondered what he was doing.
I was left with much food for thought. I had been identified as a target by a hostile organisation, which meant not only that my life was in danger, but that others around me could be as well. The hospital was a fine place for keeping out the idly curious, but a trained killer was a different matter. I would have to be much more careful.
I was used to shutting out the mental signals from those around me, unless I had to focus on a medical case, as they caused too much distraction. The situation had changed drastically, however. As the car dropped me off close to a rear entrance to the hospital, I tried extending my sensitivity and scanned the area. The babble of mental noise from the hospital roared like surf, containing all of the varied emotions of humanity. I tried to tune that out and swept my attention outwards, towards the surrounding countryside.
Contact! The mind was cold, clear and deliberate, the attention focused on me, the pressure on the trigger tripping the sear NOW! I dived to one side as the bullet cracked past, instantly followed by the flat ‘bang’ of the muzzle blast. I was immediately on my feet and racing towards the gunman who was concealed in a small copse less than a hundred metres away. I sensed his dismay and growing alarm as I hit a speed which Olympic sprint champions would have traded years of their lives for. He fumbled with the rifle’s bolt action, chambering another round and hastily taking aim as I rushed towards him. This time it was easy, I jerked to one side as he fired and came straight on. He was now in a complete panic and dropped his rifle, pulling out a pistol as firing almost blindly as I hurtled through the air, sending him into oblivion as I knocked him to the ground.