‘Roger that,’ Jamie had replied, attempting to sound military.
Make sure you know where you’re going. Work out your route in advance.
Jamie had known his route for days. An anxious father-to-be, plotting the fastest way to the hospital, couldn’t have been more fastidious.
He walked faster. On the other side of the street he heard somebody shout at him: ‘Wanker!’ He ignored it. He didn’t need a kerbside brawl to get his kicks any more. He had something else. Something better.
Looking at his watch again, he saw that it was only two thirty-five. He bit his lip, turned and then headed back to his bedsit, where he would wait out the remaining hours. His fingertips continued to roll the fifty-pence piece round in his pocket. Faster and faster. It dug into his skin.
How amazing, he thought to himself, that you can kill a man using just a coin…
18.30 hrs.
It grew dark. Sam visited each of the observation posts. The men had reattached their NV goggles. They were like statues in the gloom and about as talkative as they watched out of their windows.
‘It could happen at any time,’ Sam told each of them. And from each of them he got only a brief nod in return.
Back in the main room, Beridze was pacing. He gave Sam an irritated look as he entered, then muttered something under his breath. His wide-eyed assistant remained crouched on the floor.
Silence in the room. The incessant barking of the dog outside.
And at the edge of Sam’s mind, the shadows that wouldn’t go away.
He tried to concentrate. To remain professional. But his mind wandered, no matter how much he tried to steer it back on course. He thought of his father. At that very moment Max would be lying frail in his bed, perhaps reliving old glories in his head, perhaps rejoicing in the son that had come back to life. Jacob was a real soldier, he heard the old man saying. If it wasn’t for your brother, God knows where you’d have ended up.
‘Movement!’ Hill’s voice on the comms. Sam stood up quickly, pointing his gun towards the door. He sensed Davenport training his M16 at the black tarpaulin that covered the window.
‘What is it?’ Beridze whispered. Sam heard the two men shuffle into a corner. ‘What is it?’
Neither SAS man moved.
A breathless few seconds. And then, over comms: ‘It’s nothing.’
Sam lowered his gun, but only slowly. ‘False alarm,’ he stated. He looked at his watch. 18.56. Beridze spat something in his own language. Sam felt like doing the same. The shadow on the edge of his mind grew darker, but no more distinct.
If it wasn’t for your brother, God knows where you’d have ended up.
20.15 hrs.
Jamie Spillane had put his hooded top on fifteen minutes ago and spent the intervening time looking at himself in the cloudy mirror. The hood hung over the top of his face by a good couple of inches. In the dark, he satisfied himself, it would be almost impossible to make out his features.
Keep your face hidden. CCTV cameras are hard to spot.
He walked over to his bed. From under the mattress he pulled one of the boxes that had been supplied to him. Inside was the small, black handgun. He placed it in the pocket of his hooded top. Back in front of the mirror, he noticed that it bulged slightly; but no one would know what it was. He smiled to himself. It felt good carrying a weapon. He liked it.
20.19. Forty-one minutes to go. It would only take him ten to get there, but he didn’t want to be late. He tugged the hood one final time down over his face, then left his tiny bedsit, making very sure to lock the door behind him as he went.
Sam paced.
He’d lost count of the times he had walked through the darkness of the safe house, checking each observation point and receiving nothing but curt responses from the watchful guys. They could sense he was on edge. That much was clear.
Back in the main room, the two Georgians were arguing. About what, Sam didn’t know. Their voices sounded harsh and guttural. Davenport was looking at them like they were mad; when they saw Sam, however, they quietened down.
‘Anything?’ Davenport asked.
Sam shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ the ambassador announced. ‘Nobody knows where we are. How can anybody find us?’
Neither of the SAS men replied. But Sam could tell from the look Davenport gave him that he was thinking a similar thing.
And maybe he was right.
Sam looked at his watch. 20.36. Damn it, he didn’t even know what he was waiting for.
Thoughts collided in his brain. He tried to organise them. Jacob had told him to stay away. You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.
Think, Sam, he told himself. Just think.
Davenport was looking at him again. So were the Georgians.
His brother wouldn’t let this fail. Sam knew him too well. He was clever. Just because he was dead – and the very thought twisted inside him – it didn’t mean he hadn’t trained his red-light runners to think like him.
You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.
Sam tried to think what he himself would do. But as he stood in that room, his mind was suddenly flooded with other things: images of his brother. As a kid, playing. As a young man, joining up and persuading Sam to do the same.
A fizzing sound. Davenport had opened a can of Coke. He downed it, looking at Sam over the can as he did so.
Sam blinked. Then he stared. Not at Davenport, but at the can of Coke.
The shadow on the edge of his memory had suddenly grown more distinct.
He saw Jacob again; but this time it was in Iraq, six years ago. The day when it all went wrong.
Suddenly Sam was in the Al-Mansour district of Baghdad again. He, Jacob and Mac were preparing to storm a house, to apprehend a wanted Ba’athist. Their tout had dropped a tracking device outside the house in question, hidden in an old fizzy drink can, so they knew where it was. But they needed a diversion. Something to distract the guards while they raided the building.
Standing in that room, with Davenport and the Georgians, Sam heard his dead brother’s voice as clearly as if he was right there with them. Tense. A bit self-satisfied. The very words he had spoken that day so long ago.
I gave the Coke can a bit of extra sugar.
They’d needed a diversion outside the house. Thanks to Jacob’s forward planning, there was an improvised explosive device already there.
An IED, already there.
‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘We’re fucking sitting on it.’
Davenport looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong, Sam?’ But Sam didn’t answer. His eyes had fallen on Beridze’s assistant, Gigo. Jacob had mentioned him, but why? Bland’s analyst had assumed he was a target, like the ambassador. But he was a nobody. Why would they target him?
Like a balloon being burst, the shadow on the edge of his vision disappeared and Sam saw clearly. His assistant. Jacob had been trying to tell Sam something. At the moment of his death, he’d been trying to warn him. The assistant was the shooter. He strode over to the younger of the two Georgians and with one tug of his clothes yanked him to his feet before pressing him against the wall.
‘Where is it?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s your fucking weapon?’ He pressed the gun up against the man’s head.
Gigo’s eyes bulged. He tried to speak, but was mute with fear.
From behind him, Davenport’s voice. ‘For fuck’s sake, Sam, what are you doing?’
Sam hurled the assistant into the middle of the room. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said. Then, over his shoulder at the boss, ‘Tell him to take his fucking clothes off!’