‘Subhi,’ Joanne corrected him. ‘His name’s Subhi.’ Her voice was flat, on the verge of confrontational, and it was clear that she, too, was reaching the limits of her patience.
Harry said nothing. The waiting was always the worst. It would get to each of them in different ways. That and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
Rik said, ‘Why don’t we turn the tables and ring him? For all we know, he’s spent the last hour having us traced and spotted.’
Harry reached into his pocket and tossed Rik his mobile. ‘You think he’ll tell you, go ahead.’
As Rik dialled the number, Joanne stood up, thrusting her hands in her pockets. She did a nervous jog on the spot and flexed her neck and shoulders, her rucksack on the ground at her feet.
Rik switched the phone to loudspeaker and waited. After ten rings, it was answered by a man with a gravel voice. ‘Yes?’ No identity, no indication of who he worked for.
‘Is Major Marshall there?’
‘Marshall isn’t available. Who shall I say is calling?’
‘He said he’d be in touch. . him or someone called Ballatyne.’ Rik rolled his eyes as a voice rose in the background and the line became muffled. Then the speaker came back. ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to call back later.’ The connection was cut.
‘Bloody hell.’ Rik stared at the phone in disgust. ‘Is that what we pay our taxes for — to call back later?’ He tossed the phone back to Harry, who reached out and plucked it from the air without moving from his position.
After five more minutes, Harry stood up and looked around. Rik was right to be impatient. This was all taking too long. Marshall should have got back to them by now. Every minute they stayed out in the open, they were at risk.‘Let’s move,’ he said. ‘Back to the car.’ He looked at the other two. ‘If anything happens, we split up and meet in two hours at the Kensington Hilton.’ It was the first place he could think of, but well placed if they were forced to split up and regroup, and busy enough inside to keep a low profile.
They were halfway back to the car when Harry’s patience finally folded. If Marshall was serious about helping Joanne get her life back and pinning down Jennings, he should have been in touch by now. He dialled the number on the card.
‘Yes?’ A man’s voice answered after a few rings.
‘It’s Harry,’ he said. ‘Is Marshall there?’
‘Wait one.’ The voice disappeared abruptly and Harry guessed the man had pressed the mute button. He waited, counting off the seconds, and was about to switch off the phone when the man came back on. He sounded sombre. ‘Get to a secure location and wait. You’ll be contacted shortly.’
‘Wait. What’s the-?’ But the phone was dead. He slipped it in his pocket and looked at the other two. ‘Something’s up. They want us to find somewhere secure and wait for a call.’
‘No way.’ Joanne looked edgy. ‘We’ve waited long enough. Why should we trust any of them?’ She stopped, forcing the two men to do the same, and clutched her rucksack close to her chest. ‘You’re putting too much faith in Marshall. Don’t forget he’s in the same department as the people who left me to rot. Why should I trust him just because you do?’
Harry studied her carefully. He was puzzled by her change of mood. She had reacted with less anger or emotion when faced with Marshall than he’d expected. In most people it would have conjured up at least some degree of heat. But not her — until now. Delayed reaction, maybe.
‘He’s all we’ve got,’ he pointed out. ‘If you have any better ideas, let’s hear them.’
She didn’t reply, but turned and walked quickly away along the path.
Rik watched her go. ‘You know who she reminds me of?’
Harry nodded. ‘Clare.’ He’d been having the same thoughts. Young, prickly and aggressive, Clare Jardine had exhibited the same kind of impatience and lack of trust.
He hoped Joanne didn’t show her annoyance in the same cold, ruthless manner.
FORTY-NINE
Harry’s mobile rang fifteen minutes later. They were seated at a corner table of a deserted lounge in a four-star international hotel along the Bayswater Road. The Saab was out the back, tucked discreetly behind a laurel bush. A porter had departed to get them some coffee. Harry glanced at the screen, but the number was withheld.
‘Major?’ he replied.
‘I’m afraid not. Who is this?’ The voice was hard-edged, the accent neutral.
Harry hesitated. If it wasn’t Marshall, there was only one person it could be: his deputy, Richard Ballatyne. ‘My name’s Harry,’ he replied, and glanced at his watch. Anything over a minute was pushing their luck; if Marshall was leading them on, he could have an active unit abseiling down around their ears before they knew what had hit them.
But the caller had anticipated that. ‘Relax, Mr Tate,’ he said brusquely. ‘Nobody’s playing tricks here.’
Damn. They had his name. Harry was stunned. ‘We know about Ferris, too,’ the man told him. ‘Marshall recognized your face from that business in Red Station, Georgia, and we ran a search of known associates. Harry — if I may call you that? — I’ve got some bad news.’
‘Go on.’ Christ, he thought, what was worse than knowing you were no longer invisible and that the massed forces of the State could pick you up whenever they felt like it?
‘Andrew Marshall is dead.’
The words took a long moment to assimilate. Dead? But how? They’d only been speaking a short while ago. The waiter chose that moment to arrive, and Harry signalled at Rik to get rid of the man. Even just one side of this sort of conversation was hard to disguise. Rik caught on quickly, taking the tray before the waiter could begin to unload it and hustling him out of earshot with a hefty tip.
‘How did it happen?’ Harry finally managed to ask.
‘He was knifed in the back about a hundred yards from this office. He died instantly.’ The words came with the unemotional tones of a newsreader, but behind it Harry detected a restrained sense of anger.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing how lame it sounded. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Within the last hour. The people who found him thought he’d had a heart attack and got him to a hospital. He’d been dropped off by his driver to walk the last couple of hundred yards to the office, something he liked to do. We’re running CCTV footage of the street right now. I don’t hold out much hope of seeing anything to help us, though. Someone said they saw a biker on the same stretch of pavement, but it’s not much to go on. Whoever did this was a pro.’
‘Dog.’ Harry uttered the word dully, thinking of the crackle of exhaust at South Acres.
To his surprise, Ballatyne agreed. ‘We think so. We’re circulating pictures of him to all agencies. We believe he also killed another of our men earlier today, near Victoria Station. A knife in the ear. Our man had tracked him to a hostel. He got too close.’
‘You actually had him located?’ Harry felt a surge of anger at the idea that they had traced the man and had let him get away. To do this.
Ballatyne didn’t try defending the decision and Harry guessed he was already feeling as bad as a man could do over missed opportunities. ‘We messed up. At the time we didn’t know for sure what Dog’s involvement was, only that he’d dropped out of a contract assignment in Iraq while under investigation. He was on a watch list and appeared on the radar a couple of days ago. We’ve now got him on a Code Seven.’
‘What the hell is that?’ He was no longer familiar with all the security warning levels or their meanings. The world was changing too fast.
‘Locate and neutralize.’
‘You mean kill.’ He guessed from the man’s reticence that it was a Special Order, which needed neither Cabinet nor MOD approval to carry out.
‘It means what it says.’
‘What do we do now?’ Harry asked. ‘Did Marshall speak to you?’
‘Yes. Where are you?’
‘It doesn’t matter where we are. You just need to get Dog off our backs. We’ll do the rest.’