A Covert War (11 page)

Marcus shrugged. ‘I’m a quiet sort of guy. I like to be easy come, easy go. Enjoy life. You know the sort of thing. I just get very pissed off when people try to spoil my day, that’s all.’

Cavendish allowed himself a rueful smile; seeing Marcus ‘pissed off’ was indeed a sight to behold. One he decided he might be able to make use of.

‘As you say, Blake, they were not very good at their job. If they had been, neither of us would be here now.’

‘So who were they?’ Marcus asked again. ‘If they weren’t after me they must have been after you. That makes them Russian then, right?’

Cavendish laughed out loud. ‘You’ve been reading too many spy books. If the Russians had wanted to dispose of me they would have been far more discreet and far more successful, I can assure you.’ He let the laughter subside and shook his head. Marcus waited for him to continue. ‘I don’t know who they were,’ he went on, ‘but I will find out.’

‘How?’ Marcus asked.

Cavendish looked at Marcus in surprise. ‘You only killed one of them; the other one is still alive. He might have a few bruises, Blake, but he is well enough to tell us what we want to know.’

There was a knock at the door and Eric walked in. He placed a tray on the table, nodded at Cavendish and left the room. Cavendish got up and poured out a cup of tea for Marcus. He brought it over to him and then retrieved his whisky and soda. He then went back to the tray and lifted a first aid box from it.

‘Take off your shirt, Blake; let’s see what’s needed.’

Very little was needed, in fact. Cavendish cleaned the wound and rubbed some salve on to it.’

‘You’ll live,’ he said and returned the first aid box to the table while Marcus put his shirt back on. Marcus then lifted his cup and sipped his tea, which was surprisingly good.

‘Suppose he doesn’t want to tell you anything?’ Marcus asked referring to the comment Cavendish had made about getting information from the man who had survived Marcus’s show of anger.

Cavendish tilted his head a little. ‘Oh, he will; I’ve no doubt about that.’

‘What will you do, barter with him? You know, freedom for some information?’

Cavendish said nothing.

‘Or will you torture him?’ Marcus said, and lifted his cup to his mouth.

‘How we get the information has nothing to do with you; just be assured that we will.’ Cavendish sounded quite abrupt.

Marcus decided to push him a little. ‘Rendition,’ he said.

Cavendish screwed his face up. ‘What?’

Marcus put his cup down. ‘Rendition. It’s what the Yanks have been doing; sending their prisoners to other countries who don’t give a toss about extracting information under torture.’ He studied Cavendish for a while. ‘But you don’t do that kind of thing in MI6, do you?’

‘What we do and what we don’t do is not your concern,’ Cavendish told him levelly. ‘But what should concern you now is your own safety, and what we must do about that.’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t think I have anything to worry about,’ he told Cavendish. ‘They weren’t after me, so I’ll just get back to my business and leave you to get on with yours.’

Cavendish shook his head. ‘Don’t be so naïve; they will be back, and this time they will be more careful. So for your own safety you need to remain under my protection until we can nail the bastards who tried to kill us.’

‘I don’t think I fancy your kind of protection,’ Marcus told him. ‘It nearly got you killed.’

Cavendish laughed. ‘
Touché
.’ He drained his whisky and got up, walked over to the table and put his empty glass on the tray. ‘It is probably connected with the assassination of the Secretary of State, and until I can learn more, I suggest you trust me and my department to keep you out of their clutches.’

Marcus stood up. He put his empty cup and saucer next to the empty whisky glass. ‘No thank you. Just get me a taxi and I’ll be out of here. If you want to speak to me about any of this, you know where to find me.’

Cavendish accepted the rebuttal and offer of protection gracefully. ‘Very well, but I cannot be held responsible for your safety. There is one thing though,’ he added.

‘What’s that?’

‘I wouldn’t go back to your office if I were you.’

Marcus agreed. ‘I know; it wouldn’t make sense.’ He put out his hand and held it there for a moment. ‘Now, can you order a taxi for me?’

Cavendish sighed. ‘Very well, if you insist; I’ll ask Eric to call one.’ He shook Marcus’s outstretched hand. ‘Where can I reach you if I need to ask you anything?’

Marcus rummaged through his pockets and pulled out his wallet. He took a business card from it and handed it to Cavendish.

‘My mobile number’s there if you need it.’

Cavendish thanked him and left the room. Ten minutes later Marcus was in a taxi heading back to London, and happy to be away from the dark world of the secret service. But there was one thing Marcus had promised himself: he would do his level best to trace the number plate he had seen on the Mercedes and try and spoil someone else’s day.

Five minutes after Marcus had left, Eric walked into the room where Cavendish was waiting.

‘Are we in touch with the taxi?’ Cavendish asked.

‘Yes sir, same firm as usual.’

Cavendish seemed satisfied. ‘Good. Whatever else happens, I don’t think we want to lose that young man.’

NINE

Susan Ellis was beginning to regret not keeping in touch with Marcus. Although he had frightened the life out of her the night he fought with the two knife wielding thugs, she wondered if she had over-reacted to his show of inherent violence. She had made the decision that night, and told Marcus so, that she did not want to see him again. Marcus had been visibly disappointed, and she thought it was rather sweet of him to show that disappointment. But her mind was made up and she had been determined to display her own feminine character and individuality by refusing to see him again. She had been kind to Marcus and had let him down gently, but he had left her at her front door looking rather disconsolate.

The doubts had set in within twenty four hours. Marcus was such a warm and generous person; a fun guy to be with. And she had been drawn to him the moment she saw him in his office. She had tried to put him out of her mind, trying to add determination to the effort. And then something happened that blew her plans out of the water: she had received a letter from her brother.

She found the letter on the mat as she opened the front door of the house. Normally all mail was sorted by the tenants, there were only four of them, into neat little personal piles that lay on a convenient table in the hallway. But this letter had no stamp, which meant it had been delivered by hand, probably while none of the tenants were in, which was why Susan found it there when she arrived home.

Now Susan was standing at the entrance to Guard Right Security at Oliver’s Yard, the letter from her brother in her handbag, wondering if she should resurrect her brief encounter with Marcus.

She pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway. Immediately she sensed that there was something different about the place. There was no longer the musty smell she had noticed on her first visit to Marcus’s office. Now it was as though a cleaner had been in to clean up and used a lot of disinfectant because there was a hint of it in the air.

She let the door swing closed behind her, its hinges groaning noisily. She stepped on to the first step, which creaked as her weight came to bear on it. Something teased at her senses and she felt a little uncomfortable as she climbed the stairs, one at a time.

She kept looking up towards the opaque window on the door at the top of the stairs. It still bore the legend ‘Guard Right Security’ and naturally, Susan expected no less.

But there was still a sense of something being wrong. Susan told herself to stop being silly and shook herself. Then she breathed in deeply and held herself upright as she reached the top step.

She gripped the handle of the door and pushed it down gently. The door gave to the pressure and swung open. Susan stepped into Marcus’s office and stopped abruptly. There was nothing there.

Susan felt herself going weak at the knees and thought she was going to faint. But what she could see, or couldn’t see for that matter was the fact that Marcus’s office had been completely stripped. There was no furniture, nothing on the floor, nothing on the walls, no grubby tea towel tossed on to a dirty draining board. There were no cups, no kettle, no coffee and no milk; but still the slight odour of disinfectant.

Susan stood perfectly still for several seconds, feeling a little scared. It wasn’t for herself, but for Marcus.

And then a voice said, ‘Who are you?’

***

Marcus had concealed himself on the edge of a small copse of silver birch trees that overlooked the house. He had been there for three hours now, since dawn, and had kept as still as he could while he peered down at the property through the binoculars he had borrowed from his father, his bird watching binoculars.

Marcus had plagued the life out of his father to come up with another favour, much to his disquiet. What Marcus had asked his father to do was to help him trace the Mercedes that had been used by the men who had tried to kill Cavendish. His father had ruled it out of the question when Marcus had first asked him, but eventually he was able to persuade his dad that he would not ask him for any more favours. He said nothing of what had happened.

Henry Blake still had contacts within the Diplomatic Corps and the Foreign Office, and it wasn’t unusual for people within that clique to ask for favours in return for favours previously rendered. Blake asked one of his ex-colleagues in the Foreign Office to run a check on a licence plate. The description of the car matched that which Marcus had seen, and the address at which it was registered was in Suffolk.

Marcus had travelled up to his father’s home by train and found himself in need of a car, so he had borrowed one of his father’s collection of ‘runabouts’ as his dad liked to call them. But rather than use one of the more upmarket models, Marcus had taken a Ford Focus. He did this deliberately because he wanted to preserve a sense of anonymity.

He located the house on Google search and drove to the village of Elveden, close to Thetford Forest. The house was about a mile or so from the village on the Thetford Road. Marcus drove past it a few times before deciding to drive into Thetford and find a pub where he could have a meal and a room for the night.

The following morning, Marcus drove to a small, supermarket car park and left his car there. Then he used the cover of Elveden forest and walked to the area where he was concealed now, in the copse of Silver Birch trees.

Marcus couldn’t see the Mercedes there, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t; it could have been inside one of the two garages Marcus could see in the grounds of the house. But what intrigued him was the fact that there was a Dodge pick-up truck in USAF colours parked out front. And shortly after making himself comfortable, Marcus had seen an American airman come out of the house and climb into the truck. The airman had driven away from the house and taken the road to Barton Mills, in the direction of the American base at Lakenheath.

Marcus turned his attention back to the front door of the house. It was set deep into a portico type entrance with columns either side. It meant that the main door was set back from the lip of the porch by about five feet. It also meant that anybody who called at the front door would be virtually unseen from the road. He gave it some considerable thought and filed it away in his memory bank.

About an hour after the airman had left the house, one of the garage doors swung open. Marcus focussed his binoculars on to the door as a Volvo Estate was driven out of the garage by a woman. The garage door closed behind her as she swept out of the drive and on to the road to Thetford.

Marcus spent the next three hours monitoring the house, but all that happened was the woman returned, the garage door swung up and over and the Volvo disappeared into the garage. The door closed again and this gave Marcus the beginning of an idea. All he needed was the balls to carry it out, but it meant waiting until he was confident he would be undisturbed, and that his estimation of what he had seen meant he had a good chance of carrying it off.

***

Susan almost leapt out of her skin when Maggot spoke to her. Because her mind had been drawn to the unexpected emptiness of Marcus’s office, she hadn’t seen him. He was standing by the door that led into a small toilet. He had been on the point of opening it when he heard Susan open the main door. And when he spoke to her she visibly jumped.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Susan cried putting her hand to her mouth. ‘You frightened the life out of me.’

Maggot apologised. ‘I’m sorry, but if I had said nothing, you would still have jumped when you turned round.’

Susan looked at the stranger. She guessed he was from India or Pakistan although he spoke excellent English.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.

Maggot shrugged. ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he pointed out.

‘I’m a client of Marcus Blake,’ she told him.

Maggot tipped his head back as something dawned on him. ‘I see; you must be Susan Ellis then.’

Susan was surprised that the stranger knew her name. ‘How did you know that?’ she stabbed at him. Doesn’t Marcus understand client confidentiality?’

He smiled at her. ‘Marcus mentioned that you are no longer a client; that is why I know who you are.’

‘Well client or not, I am here to see Marcus.’

He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘But, as you can see, Marcus is no longer here.’

Susan looked round the empty room as though it might make some difference and Marcus would suddenly appear.

‘Are you his business partner or something?’ she asked.

Maggot shook his head. ‘No, I am just a friend. The only one in the whole of London, I think.’

‘Well where is he? Has he moved or something?’ she demanded to know.

He pursed his lips and gave a little shake of his head. ‘I’ve no idea. But why don’t you and I go and find a coffee shop and we can talk about what we know and what we may be able to find out?’