Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (3 page)

“Deal,” Hughes smiled, offering
his hand to shake on it, but Tang ignored the gesture.

“If the money isn’t in my
account an hour after that phone call, you’d better pray that you’re already
dead.”

While Hughes digested the
threat, Tang rose from his seat and polished off his brandy.  “The ship
leaves at three tomorrow afternoon. It is the
Huang Zhen
on dock C6.”

With that, he took his large
frame down the gangway and climbed back into his vehicle, which left
immediately.

“Nice chap,” Len said,
sardonically.

“I didn’t realise it was going
to take so long to get home,” Vick said, not relishing a fortnight on board a
ship.  Having gone from sleeping in the jungle to the comparative luxury
of Hughes’ boat, she was reluctant to endure any further hardship, but there
was no way she was letting Tom Gray out of her sights.

“It’ll give us a chance to come
up with a plan,” Gray said. 

“So what do we take with us?”
Vick asked.  “I don’t want to sound stereotypical, but I’ve got literally
nothing to wear.”

“I’ll send the skipper into KL
first thing in the morning,” Hughes said.  “Let me know what you need and
he can pick it up.”

“KL?”
Len asked.

“Kuala Lumpur,” Hughes
explained.  “It’s about thirty miles from here.”

Vick began scribbling a list
while Sonny passed the beers around.  “We might as well enjoy these while
we can.”

*
* *

Arnold Tang sat in the back of
the SUV, his anger growing with every passing second.  Having built up a
small empire both at home and abroad, the last thing he needed was for it all
to come crashing down, which is what would happen if anyone found out about any
of his less than legitimate enterprises. 

He pulled his back-up mobile
phone from his pocket and inserted a SIM card with one hundred Ringgit of
pre-paid credit.  He then looked up a number on his main phone and
dialled.  When the connection was made he was very brief, speaking in his
native language.

“A consignment of four will be
delivered in three weeks.  Once they arrive, give them a phone and make
them call this number.”  Tang read off Hughes’ mobile number and got the
recipient to read it back. 

“After they make the call, get
rid of them.”  He turned the phone off and removed the SIM card before
opening the window and throwing it into the street.  As for Hughes, he
would wait until the money was transferred before deciding the man’s fate.

*
* *

James Farrar was in the middle
of preparing his Sunday roast when his mobile rang.  He wiped his hands
and checked the display, which told him it was Todd Hamilton, head of the team
watching Carl Levine. 

“What is it?” Farrar asked,
although the weekend interruption suggested it wasn’t good news.

“They’ve gone,” Hamilton said.

“Who’s gone?”

“Levine and
his family.
  We saw no sign of them this morning so we sent a
couple of team members in with Watchtower brochures.  There was no
answer.”

Farrar was puzzled, and a
feeling of dread beginning to build in the pit of his stomach.  “Have a
poke around, make sure they’re gone.”

“We’ve been all around the
ground floor and checked through the windows.  There’s no sign of any activity
in the lower rooms and they never sleep this late.”

Farrar put him on hold and
wondered what the hell could have had spooked Levine and caused him to up
sticks during the night.  He checked the call log with GCHQ and was told
that, as requested, they had been looking for contacts from the
Philippines.  There had been no calls or emails originating from that
country.  As they reiterated the criteria he had specified, the thought
struck him that he hadn’t updated the monitoring information following Gray’s
disappearance.  All he had been expecting over the last year was for Gray
to contact his old friends from his new home in Manila, but now that he was on
the run he could be anywhere in the region.

“Alter the search to check for
any and all calls, regardless of origin.”

It was a few moments later when
he got the bad news.  “There was a call on Friday the twentieth to Levine
from Singapore.”

As the number was read out
Farrar was already moving to the living room.  He sat down at his laptop
and entered his password before loading the file belonging to Timmy
Hughes.  The number he’d just been given matched the one on record.

Damn!

He asked about all calls to Jeff
Campbell and his Sunday got a whole lot worse.

Farrar ended the call and took
Hamilton off hold.  “What about Campbell?  Have you been in touch
with the other team?”

“Not yet,” was the reply, and it
wasn’t the one Farrar wanted to hear.  He hit the End button and found
Matt Baker’s number.

“What’s the situation with
Campbell and his family?” Farrar asked once the call was answered.

“All quiet here,” Baker said
nonchalantly.

Farrar was furious at the man’s
casual attitude to the situation, despite Baker not being aware of all the
facts.

“Where exactly are you now?” he
asked, as calmly as he could.

“I’m parked at the end of their
street.  I can see the house from here.”

“I want you to go to the house
and make sure they are still inside,” Farrar said.

The phone went quiet for a while
before Baker’s voice said: “Just did a walk-past and I can’t see any movement
in the house.”

“I didn’t ask for a fucking
walk-past!  I want to know, in the next two minutes, if there is anyone in
that house!”

Baker began spluttering but
Farrar cut him off.  “I don’t care how you do it: just find out if they
are home.  Knock and ask for a cup of sugar, try to sell them
double-glazing, just
let me know if they’re still there
!”

At times he regretted having
made Baker a team leader.  The man was young and keen, never shirking his
duty, and he executed the end game skilfully.  It was just a shame that he
often focused all of his efforts on the kill at the expense of the operational
fundamentals.

Baker was back on the line
ninety seconds later.  “There’s no answer,” he said. 

“Did you try the windows?”

“I looked through but couldn’t
see anyone.  No sound from the TV or radio, either.”

Farrar couldn’t believe what he
was hearing.  Just a few days earlier he’d been looking to wrap up the
operation by the end of the month, and now he had five fugitives and no idea
where to start looking.

He told Baker to remain where he
was and report in if the family came back, but he wasn’t holding out much
hope.  A year ago Levine and Campbell had managed to evade the authorities
despite a nationwide search, and Farrar had just six men under his immediate
control.  It was nowhere near enough, and his options were limited. 
There was one person who could help, but it was a phone call he didn’t want to
make.

He paced the room, trying to
come up with an alternative, but there was nobody else who had the
infrastructure he needed.  Reluctantly he picked up the phone and dialled
her number.

*
* *

Veronica Ellis concluded the
meeting and sent the staff on their way.  She was sitting at the head of the
conference table contemplating the notes she’d taken when her cell phone rang
and she looked at the caller ID.

It was the last person she’d
expected a call from.

“Hello James.  To what do I
owe the pleasure?”

Their break-up two years earlier
hadn’t been the most amicable.  The relationship had been deteriorating
for some time, both blaming each other for focusing more on work than each
other.  However, the clincher for Ellis was finding Farrar in bed with one
of his interns.

“I need access to one of your
resources,” Farrar said.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said
sarcastically.  “Thanks for asking.”

“Veronica, this is a
professional call on an urgent matter.  I need help in finding two
individuals and their families.”

Same old James Farrar, Ellis
thought.  What she ever saw in the man, God only knew.  Still, it
made her response all the more satisfying.

“Impossible.  We are
stretched as it is, and we have more work coming in every day.  Why else
do you think I’m in the office on a Sunday?”

“Veronica, either you find
someone to help in my search or I get the Home Secretary to order you to assign
someone.  It makes no difference to me, but I’d prefer this to be handled
in the spirit of co-operation.”

Ellis was not normally one to
succumb to threats, but she knew that Farrar had access to the minister and
would use that influence if necessary.  Having taken over from John
Hammond as Assistant Director General of MI5 following the Tom Gray fiasco, she
was well aware that the service was still under the microscope.  The last
thing she needed was more scrutiny from the upper echelon.

“I can give you one man, that’s
it.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,”
Farrar said, his voice more pleasant having gotten his way.

“Send me the details and I’ll
get someone to work it up.  What’s the rush, anyway?  Is it something
we should know about?”

“It’s nothing to concern you or
your department.  I just need information as to their whereabouts. 
We know they were in London in the last twenty-four hours.”

Ellis knew she wasn’t going to
get anything more from him so she ended the call without a goodbye and dialled
Andrew Harvey’s internal number.

“My office,” she said when the
call was answered, and set off to meet him.

Harvey had been the section lead
when Hammond had handed in his resignation, taking full responsibility for the
service’s failure to end the Gray saga in a manner which put the government in
a good light.  She had stepped into the hole that had been left at the top
of the organisation on what was supposed to be an interim basis, but her
ambitions reached beyond being a stop-gap. 

Her first act had been to deal
with the others responsible for the debacle, and while there was no evidence of
Andrew Harvey, Diane Lane or Hamad Farsi being guilty of negligence at the
disciplinary hearings, Ellis was quick to ensure they were never given anything
more important than analysis work for a while.  This hadn’t sat well with
Lane, who resigned within a few weeks, but Harvey and Farsi still reported to
their desks dutifully each morning.  Ellis knew that they were very
capable operatives, as their performance over the subsequent months
proved.  There did, however, seem to be some resentment towards her, as if
it were her fault that Hammond was ousted.  It wasn’t something that
concerned her, though.  Adding yet another string to her considerable bow
was far more important than making friends with the staff.

This latest request had piqued
her interest, though, and if anyone could dig deep enough to get to the real
story it was these two.

Harvey knocked on the door and
walked in when called, standing at ease in front of her desk.

“What’s your workload like at
the moment?” Ellis asked.

“Manageable,” he replied.

“Good.  I have something
extra for you.  We need to locate a couple of people.”

“What are their names?” Harvey
asked.

“We don’t know yet.  The
details will be with us shortly and I’ll pass them on to you.”

“What’s the urgency?” Harvey
persisted.

“I don’t know that,
either.  I’ll pass the information on as soon as it arrives.”

Harvey nodded, her last
statement telling him that this was an external request. He left the office
wondering why she had bothered asking about the amount of work he currently had
assigned to him.  Normally she would just dump things in his lap
regardless of his other commitments, and this suggested the new task needed
someone’s full attention.

He resumed his seat and from the
opposite desk Hamad Farsi asked why he had been summoned.

“The Oberstgruppenführer wants
me to find two people.”

“Who?”

Harvey gave a replay of the brief
conversation and asked for his colleague’s opinion.

“Sounds very strange,” Farsi
said, but clammed up when he saw Ellis approaching with a printout in her
hand.  She asked them to follow her as she passed their table and led them
into the conference room, closing the door behind them.

“I’ve just been told who you’re
looking for,” she said.  “It has come through as eyes only, so it doesn’t
go beyond the three of us.”

She placed the sheet of paper on
the desk and Harvey read the names before passing it to Farsi.

“I know these people,” he
said.  “I interviewed them after the attack last year.”

“Yes, they jumped out at me,
too,” Ellis admitted.

Farsi studied the names. 
“You just want us to find them?” he asked.

Ellis’s eyes betrayed a
conspiratorial glint.  “That’s the request that came in, but I’d like to
know
why
someone wants them found.  I don’t like being kept out of
the loop, and if these people are involved in something I think we should know
about it.”

“So let’s start with who made
the request,” Harvey said.

“His name is James Farrar,”
Ellis said.  “I don’t know who he works for, though.”

“Yet you’re granting his request
for information?  Isn’t that contrary to every protocol we have?”

Sharing her past with her
subordinates was not something Ellis was comfortable with, but she had little
choice if she wanted their help in getting some answers.

“We used to work together over
the river,” she said, referring to the Secret Intelligence Service building on
the opposite bank of the Thames.  “We were… involved for some time, but
shortly after we broke up he left Six to join another organisation.  Our
paths have crossed a few times since but he’d never tell me who he is working
for now.”