He went round and opened the rear doors. “All out.”
He put a hand up and helped Hannah. She said in Hebrew, “Where are we, or am I being naive?”
“Not really. We’re in the depths of rural Sussex. This used to be a Lancaster bomber base during the Second World War. Notice the lengthy runway, still usable in spite of the grass and weeds. We need a long runway.”
Engines started up, and a moment later a Citation jet moved out of one of the hangars. It stopped close by and the door opened, steps dropping down.
“Do I get to know our destination?” Hannah asked.
“Magical mystery tour. Take her on board, Moshe.”
Moshe urged her up the ladder, and one of the pilots pulled her in and seated her. Outside, Aaron said to Brown, “On your way. We’ll be in touch.”
“I suppose if I was an Arab fundamentalist I’d say, ‘God is good,”’ Brown told him.
“But he is,” Aaron said. “Our God, anyway.”
He went up the steps, pulling them up behind him, and closed and locked the door. The Citation taxied to the end of the field and turned. It paused, thundered down the runway, and lifted. Brown watched it go, then got into the ambulance and drove away.
In one of the control rooms of the Ministry of Defense, Ferguson, Dillon, Riley, and Blake Johnson sat back and watched as the operator ran the relevant section of the video through.
“All right, enhance the image and work through the crowd.”
The operator did as she was told, bringing up a larger image, concentrating on faces, and Riley cried out, “That’s him there in the raincoat with the briefcase.”
“Freeze where possible,” Ferguson urged.
There were a number of views of Brown from the front and from the side, all different perspectives.
“That should do,” Dillon said. “Now print.”
In a matter of seconds the machine had disgorged several colored prints of various views of the man calling himself George Brown. Dillon passed them to Blake one by one.
“There’s our man.” He turned to the operator. “You can go now.”
“But how do we find him, Dillon?” Ferguson glanced at his watch. “And where the hell is the Chief Inspector? It’s six-thirty.”
The mobile Judas had given Dillon sounded in his pocket. Dillon pulled it out and switched on. He held it up, face expressionless, and handed it over to Ferguson.
The Brigadier said, “Ferguson here.”
“This is Judas, old buddy. I figured you might have hung on to that special mobile I gave the late, lamented Sean Dillon.”
“What do you want?”
“I thought you might be short one Detective Chief Inspector.”
Ferguson had to breathe deeply to stay in control. “What are you saying?”
“She’s winging her way toward me at this very moment at thirty thousand feet in her very own private Citation jet.”
“But why?”
“Just to make sure you don’t step out of line, Brigadier. It’s not one, but two of them now. One wrong move and they both die. Have a good night.”
The line went dead and Ferguson switched off the mobile, his face pale. “That was Judas. He says he’s got Hannah.”
There was a heavy silence and Blake Johnson said, “I suppose I’ll have to inform the President.”
“Yes, by all means. Use the phone in my office.” Blake went out and Ferguson said, “What in the hell are we going to do?”
“It alters nothing,” Dillon said and took a deep breath to combat his rage. “Our task’s still to find Judas.”
“And how do we set about that?”
“With these.” Dillon held up the photos. “We find Brown.”
“Well, we can’t put him on bloody television,” the Brigadier said.
“Then we’ll have to find another way.”
The President switched off the Codex in his sitting room, sat there for a while, and then buzzed for Teddy, then he went and poured a whiskey. He was drinking it when Teddy came in.
“Anything I can do, Mr. President?”
“I’m beginning to think there’s nothing anyone can do. I’ve just spoken to Blake. The good news is that Riley has put a face to the phoney lawyer on the video.”
“That’s great,” Teddy said.
“The bad news is that Judas has kidnapped Chief Inspector Bernstein. Not one, Teddy, but two to worry about now. He told Ferguson it was to keep him in line.”
“The sadistic swine,” Teddy said.
“Which is true, but doesn’t help at all,” the President told him.
“One thing we do know,” Dillon said. “He’s a lawyer, because he told Riley that he was, isn’t that true, Dermot?”
“Definitely.” Dermot frowned. “He knew his way round, knew the system. I had a sod of a prison officer in charge of me and Brown sorted him with no trouble at all. Anyway, what about me? Anything more I can do?”
“Not really,” Ferguson said. “Go and wait in the outer office. I’ll have someone arrange a bed for the night. We have rooms here for special circumstances. I’ll see you’re on your way back to Ireland in the morning.”
“Thanks.” Dermot turned to Dillon. “Sorry, Sean.”
“Not your fault. Good luck, Dermot.”
Riley went out. Ferguson said, “What in the hell do we do?”
Dillon smiled suddenly. “I’ve just had a thought. We could go to the man who has the widest knowledge of criminal lawyers of any man I know, because he’s used them so much.”
“And who in the hell do you mean?”
“Harry Salter.”
“Good God, Dillon, the man’s a gangster.”
“Which is exactly my point.” Dillon turned to Blake. “Are you game?”
“I sure as hell am.”
“Good, we’ll get a car from the pool and I’ll show you something of the murkier side of the London underworld.”
“Harry Salter,” Dillon said to Blake as they drove along Horse Guards Avenue, “is in his late sixties, a dinosaur. He did seven years for bank robbery when he was in his mid-twenties. Never been in prison since. He has warehouse developments, pleasure boats that show you the delights of the Thames, and he still hangs on to his first buy, a pub on the Thames at Wapping called the Dark Man.”
“And he still works the rackets?”
“Smuggling mainly. Illegal duty-free cigarettes and booze from Europe. Big business since the Common Market has exploded. Diamonds from Amsterdam are a possibility, too.”
“You haven’t mentioned drugs or prostitution,” Blake said. “Could we possibly be into an old-fashioned gangster here?”
“Exactly. Mind you, he’ll blow your kneecap off if you cross him, but that’s business. He’s your kind of people, Blake.”
“Well, I look forward to meeting him.”
As they moved down Wapping High Street, Blake said, “I wonder why Judas didn’t snatch Hannah at the same time he took you in Sicily?”
“He needed her to go back to Ferguson as a witness to what happened is my guess. Sure, he could have taken her, too, and got in touch with Ferguson personally, but leaving it to her made it stronger. It meant that Ferguson knew beyond any doubt that what had happened was true.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” Blake nodded. “But I think we have an unstable guy here. He likes to play games.”
“He certainly does.”
“You’ve used Salter before?”
“Oh, yes, he helped me out on a little gig I had a while back where I had to prove I could breach security at the House of Commons and make it to the terrace by the river front. He doesn’t run much of a gang these days, just his nephew, Billy, a real tearaway that one, and two minders, Baxter and Hall. The rest is accountants and an office, all legitimate.”
They turned along Cable Wharf and pulled up outside the Dark Man. It was an old-fashioned London pub, a painted sign of a sinister-looking individual in a black cloak swinging in the wind.