The accusation hung in the air.
Tyler deserved to know the truth. They all did. But that meant telling them about Jacob and Sam couldn’t bring himself to do that. He walked over to the weapons stash and, almost absent-mindedly, picked up a Sig. ‘Get the others,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Cullen, Andrews, Webb. Get them.’
‘They’re on stag.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Get them now.’
Tyler shrugged, then disappeared. Two minutes later the others filed silently in, all of them wearing NV goggles up on their foreheads and with comms earpieces on one side of their heads. Only when they were all assembled did Sam speak. ‘Sounds to me like Hereford’s turned into a WI meeting.’ He looked at each of them in turn. Tyler, lairy and aggressive. Webb, a vicious fire in his eyes. Cullen, his lips pursed in an expression of mistrust. Andrews, his black skin glowing despite the early morning chill, his face calm but watchful. And Davenport, older than the others, but no less wary.
‘Craven’s dead,’ Sam continued. ‘You think I know something about it that you don’t. Well you’re wrong. You really think the Firm are going to confide in me?’ He let that thought sink in before he dropped the bombshell. ‘Mac’s dead too.’
The men looked at each other. Someone hissed the word ‘shit’, but Sam didn’t see who it was.
‘Shot,’ he continued. ‘Point blank. Night before last. Mac was my best friend. So while you’re all throwing your toys out of your pram, you might want to give that some thought.’
The men looked a bit less sure of themselves. ‘What’s the craic?’ Cullen asked. ‘What the hell happened to him?’
‘The Firm haven’t told me much. Just that he fell foul of the Russians. Like Craven.’ He pointed at Beridze. ‘And just like our man here will, if the FSB get their way.’ The unit looked towards the Georgian. At the mention of so many deaths, the ambassador had grown a little paler. Sam wondered how much he should tell them – about the missile base and the Iranians. Nothing, he decided. All that meant very little to these guys. Craven and Mac were dead and they wanted to pay someone back for it. Sometimes it paid to keep things simple. And sometimes it paid not to tell the whole truth.
‘They’re sending someone,’ he continued. ‘Tonight, we think.’ He looked them each in the eye. ‘Someone good. I asked for you lot because I knew you’d want this chance.’
A thick silence in the room. The two Georgians shuffled nervously.
‘Who knows we’re here?’ Davenport asked.
‘The Firm,’ Sam replied. ‘No one else.’
Davenport glanced over at the Georgians. ‘Our friends didn’t tell anyone?’
Sam shook his head.
‘Then the chances are we’ve sidestepped the hit, that no one’ll come.’
Sam was about to answer, but Tyler got there first. ‘Unless the same person who tipped off Spetsnaz decides to shoot his mouth off about where we are. That what you’re thinking, Sam?’
Sam didn’t know what he was thinking. Bland’s words kept coming back to him. There’s no mole, Sam. You’re seeing shadows. Jesus, he thought to himself. I probably am. It would make sense for Spetsnaz to have been guarding the FSB’s little secret in Kazakhstan. With a flash of insight he suspected he’d been wrong. But mole or no mole, one thing was sure: if this hit had Jacob’s fingerprints on it, things would be complicated. Very fucking complicated. It was a dark thought, but Sam couldn’t shake it.
‘Someone will come,’ he said, somehow very sure that he was right. One glance at the men and he knew they took him at his word. And one look at the Georgians did the same. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Back to your positions and keep your fucking eyes open. These bastards have already nailed two of ours. Let’s make sure they don’t make it a third, hey?’
Daylight came, and with it the ability to walk around the house without alerting anyone outside to their presence. Sam was glad to leave Beridze and his assistant under Davenport’s protection to check the place out. It ticked all the boxes. Exits at the front and the back in case they needed to leave in a hurry – there was a gate at the bottom of the garden and from behind the net curtains in the top-floor toilet he could see an alleyway winding back round on to the street. All the exits could be clearly surveyed from the watch points where the men stood guard with their sniper rifles pointing directly at the windows. Sam’s pep talk had done the trick – they were alert and watchful. Even Tyler’s previous sarcasm had been replaced by a crisp tension. These men were like loaded weapons, ready to be discharged at any second.
Back in the main room, Beridze was sitting on the bare floor while his assistant propped his abundant backside on his briefcase. ‘I demand that you find me a chair,’ Beridze instructed when Sam walked back in.
‘I’m not a furniture removal man.’
‘I am the Georgian ambassador…’ Beridze flared, but he was interrupted by Sam.
‘If tonight’s festivities don’t go the way we want them to, Beridze, you won’t need a chair. You’ll need a box. Now shut the fuck up and let us get on with our job of keeping you alive.’
Beridze scowled at him, but he fell silent.
10.00 hrs. They ate chocolate and drank sugary Coke from the stores the unit had brought with them – and which Beridze, from the look on his face, found distasteful – and waited. Sam attached his own comms, then continued to wait. Long stretches of silence filled the house, broken only by the occasional cough from one of the guys over the comms and the incessant barking of a dog nearby. Sam knew that the buildings on either side of the safe house would be empty, so whenever the silence was disturbed by some indistinguishable noise, everyone jumped. As morning became afternoon, even Beridze had stopped his brusque comments. Something had changed in him. Tiredness? Or had the fear notched up a level as evening approached?
Sam looked over at the ambassador. It was probably a bit of both.
He crouched opposite the two Georgians, his back leaning against the wall as he turned the Sig round in his fingers. The fear, he realised, was rising in him too. Not fear of a fight. Far from it. But a different kind of fear. He felt there was something on the periphery of his vision. Off to one side. And when he tried to turn his mind to see it, it slipped away again. He closed his eyes and tried to zero in.
‘Something wrong, Sam?’ Davenport asked. Sam opened his eyes to see his colleague checking him out.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
But it wasn’t true. The shadow on the edge of his vision was there. He knew he should be able to see it, but he couldn’t.
All the entrances and exits were covered. He had the cream of the crop guarding the Georgians. But despite all that, despite everything, Sam Redman couldn’t help thinking he was missing something.
14.20 hrs.
Jamie Spillane wasn’t far away. He paced the streets, the faint nausea of excitement churning inside. He kept one hand in his pocket and, with his fingertips, turned the fifty-pence piece that he was carrying over and over. It was stupid, he knew, but like a kid making sure he had his lunch money, Jamie had been holding on to this coin for the last two days. He liked to know that everything was arranged as it should be.
As he walked, his mind replayed his instructions. 21.00 hrs. Do nothing till then.
How many times had he performed the calculation in his head, just to be sure? 21.00 hrs: that was nine o’clock in the evening. He looked at his watch. Half-past two. The intervening hours seemed like days, an impossible bridge to cross before he could finally complete his operation.
Make sure your face is hidden. Wear a hood, a balaclava, something like that.