Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (9 page)

“First we confirm that Farrar is
behind this,” she said.

Harvey nodded.  “How do we
do that?  If Farrar is involved, he’ll just deny any knowledge of Sam
Grant.”

Ellis smiled.  “To catch a
rat, you have to become a rat.”

*
* *

James Farrar was wading through
the reports his team had produced.  So far they had checked hundreds of
bed & breakfast establishments for cash-paying families checking in on the
22
^nd
of April, but there were still thousands to be done. 
There were also numerous camp sites, caravan parks and boat rentals to be
eliminated, and all of this in the next few days.  At the current rate,
his targets would die of old age before he found them.

He wished he could bring in the
police, but that was out of the question.  The last thing he wanted was
this hitting the newspapers, and all it would take would be one loud-mouthed
copper to open his mouth to the wrong person.

He was still fumbling for ideas
when his mobile rang.  The display told him it was Ellis and he prayed
that she had some good news.  He answered using the most pleasant voice he
could muster.

“Veronica, how are you?”

“Tired,” Ellis said wearily.

You and me both, Farrar thought,
though he didn’t say as much.  “I hope you’re calling to let me know
you’ve found what I’m looking for,” he said, not wanting to be too specific
over an unsecure line.

“Not yet, but we have been given
a lead, a name.  Trouble is
,
we can’t follow it
up.”

“Why the hell
not?”
  Farrar asked, dropping the pretence of amiability.

“I can’t access his file,” Ellis
said.  “
It’s
password protected.  I was
calling to ask if you could have a word with the Home Secretary and persuade
him to release it to me.”

“Whose file is it?”  Farrar
asked as he prepared to enter the name into the search engine.

“Sam Grant,” she said, and
Farrar almost dropped the phone.  Where the hell did she get that name
from?

“Are you there, James?”

“Uh...yeah,
just doing a search now.”
  He brought the screen up as he tried to
figure out who the hell knew about Grant.  He did, of course, and the Home
Secretary.  Besides them, there was the request from the CIA a few weeks
earlier.  Farrar had been on a plane back from Manila when the request had
come in, otherwise he would have handled it himself and sent them a completely
different name.  In his absence, all they had been given was a photo,
which was what they had in the first place.  Giving them the name should
have been no big deal, either:  It was a fictitious name in a sealed file
that was only accessible to a handful of people, and the CIA had been given
explicit instructions not to share with anyone.  Unfortunately, it seemed
that the Americans hadn’t been as tight-mouthed as they should have been.

 “I’m getting a password
prompt, too,” he said.  “Looks like I’ll have to ask the minister for
access.  I can’t promise anything, though.  If I can’t see the file,
there must be a good reason.”

Ellis sounded disappointed as
she asked Farrar to do his best.

“I will,” he assured her, “but I
need to know what information you have about this man.  If it can lead us
to Levine and Campbell I can put that forward as a case for releasing the
file.”

“Nothing beyond the name,” Ellis
told him. 

“Okay, then who gave you the
name?”  He asked, hoping to confirm that it had come from the CIA.

“One of my operatives got it
from an undisclosed source.”

“Which
operative?”
  Farrar pressed.

“That’s not important,
James.  Please just let me know when you’ve spoken to the Home Secretary.”

The phone went dead in his hand
and Farrar swore half a dozen times before typing his password into the box.

Whatever was in this file, he
had to find it quickly.

*
* *

Ellis still had her hand on the
receiver when the key-logger began spitting out new characters.  She
copied and pasted them into the password dialog before hitting the Enter
key.  A moment later a picture appeared, underneath which was the name Sam
Grant.

“James Farrar, you’re a lying
shit!”

They read through the brief
biography and found nothing out of the ordinary.  In fact, it appeared
decidedly sterile.  Born in London during the early seventies, worked for
a few small companies after leaving school, single, no driving
licence,
lived in rented accommodation until his sudden move
to Manila a year earlier.

“It looks like a legend,” Ellis
commented.

“And a poor one at that,” Harvey
confirmed.  “I’ll have someone check these firms, but I’ll bet they’re no
longer trading, if they ever existed in the first place.”

Legends are cover stories
created when an intelligence operative is required to go under cover.  It
creates a believable personal background should anyone do any checks into the
operative’s history.

Ellis nodded and scrolled down
through the entries.  If the bio was brief, the last entry was even more
succinct:  Deceased.

The entry was dated Thursday the
19
^th
of April 2012, a day before the attack on Camp Bautista. 
Harvey wondered how that could be: According to Wallis, the three prisoners had
escaped during the attack, and he told Ellis as much.

“Then to paraphrase Mark Twain,”
Ellis said, “it looks like reports of his death have been grossly exaggerated.”

Harvey studied the picture,
which also appeared to be contrived.  It was like a collage of facial
elements, with a large flat nose that didn’t seem to naturally fit with the
size of the face.  Despite this, there was something familiar…

The image disappeared as Ellis
clicked the History link to see who had been responsible for each of the
entries.  The last recorded user, the person who had declared Grant dead,
was none other than James Farrar.

“So Farrar thinks Grant is dead,
but when the CIA requests his details, a team from the UK is sent to pick up
him and his friends.  We know that team wasn’t one of ours, so I’m
guessing Farrar is behind that, too.”

“It certainly looks like it,”
Harvey agreed, “which is why he doesn’t want you looking for Baines and
Smart.  He already knows where they are and has someone waiting for them
when they arrive in Durban.”

Ellis nodded, having come to the
same conclusion.  “I want you to go out there,” she said.  “Find them
and bring them home.”

Harvey told her that he was
happy to oblige, but was also aware that there could be some serious
fallout.  “I don’t think the Home Secretary is going to be too happy if we
interfere with one of his operations,” he warned her.

“I know,” Ellis said, “but when
I joined the service I vowed to protect Britain from all threats, foreign and
domestic.  We don’t know why Farrar is looking for these people, but
whatever it is they’re supposed to have done, they are still entitled to a fair
trial.  It isn’t up to the Home Secretary to decide who lives and dies.”

“Not even in the interest of
national security?”  Harvey asked.

“If it was national security,
we’d have heard about it,” Ellis said indignantly. 

Harvey suspected the real reason
she was taking this course of action was that she had been left out of the loop
by her superiors.  She might also be looking to settle an old score with
Farrar, but whatever her motive, they were reading from the same page.

“I’m going to need some help
over there,” he said.  “We don’t know if it’s just one man or a whole team
waiting for the
Huang Zhen
to arrive.  The only thing that we’re
certain of is that someone will be waiting to kill those passengers.”

“Then you’ll need to establish
that as your priority.  You’ll be looking for someone who’s just entered
the country and is booked into accommodation until the seventh of May. 
Cross reference flights from Malaysia with hotel reservations and run any
matches through the system.”

Ellis brought up a new screen
and searched for information on their people in South Africa.  She was
rewarded with the bio for Dennis Owen, whose cover was that of a senior advisor
in the UK Trade & Investment department. 

“I’ll let him know you’re
coming,” She said.  “Draw up a list of anything you’re going to need and
choose your legend.  Farrar may be watching the airport departure lists
and I don’t want to have to explain what you’re doing over there.”

Harvey nodded and went to his
station to book his flight.  He chose one the following evening to give
himself time to try to discover just who was waiting for Baines and Smart in
Durban.  He was too pumped up to sleep and knew an all-nighter was on the
cards, so he set the search running and grabbed his jacket before heading out
of the building.  He was back twenty minutes later with a large coffee,
two sandwiches and a selection of chocolate bars, once again thankful that
there was no-one waiting for him at home.

The list of passengers was ready
and waiting for him and he immediately filtered out those who were in transit
as well as all South African nationals.  It was entirely possible that
whoever he was looking for could be a resident but he had to focus on the leads
he had.  If Farrar was using a contractor, it was highly likely that they
would be British.

The filtered list contained just
over seventy promising matches and Harvey began the process of comparing them —
one by one — with names held on their system.

*
* *

Tom Gray stared at the ceiling
of the container and for the umpteenth time he wondered what he was going to do
to James Farrar once he got his hands on him.  Vick was having yet another
nap, while Baines was busy cheating at a game of patience and Smart was once
again engrossed in the new Kindle he’d purchased in Kuala Lumpur.

“What are you reading
now?”  Sonny asked.

“
The Bones Of The Earth
by Scott Bury.  It’s a historical fantasy.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’d say it was closer to
exceptional,” Smart said, and returned to his book.

Vick woke and stretched, doing
her best to stifle a yawn in case she breathed in too much of the fetid
air.  She got up to get the circulation moving in her legs before sitting
back down and rummaging in the bag for some food.

“What time is it?”  She
asked.

“Three in the morning,” Sonny
told her.  “That means about a hundred and thirty something hours until we
get to Durban, so go easy on the food.”

Vick soon realised what he
meant.  They had brought along enough tins and drinks to last them well
beyond the two week journey, but boredom had seen her snacking constantly and there
was barely enough left for the next couple of days.  Despite this she
broke open a tin of peach slices and tucked in with a fork.

Her actions hadn’t gone
unnoticed by one of her fellow passengers.  A young Chinese man stood and
walked over to her, gesturing at the food and pointing towards his own
chest.  Vick instinctively cradled the food close to her chest while
turning her back on him.  This did nothing to dissuade the man and he
began to raise his voice, gesturing towards the bag.

“What’s he saying?” Grant asked
Sonny.

“How the hell should I know?”

“I thought you took language
lessons in the Regiment.  I know I signed off at least three of your
requests.”

“That was because the teacher
was so pretty.  During the lessons I only picked up the most important
phrases.”

“Which were?”  Len asked.

“‘Give me a beer’,
obviously.”  This brought appreciative nods from the other two former
soldiers.  “There was also ‘fancy a shag’, and of course, ‘kill him’.”

“Why do you need to say that in
other languages?” Vick asked.

Sonny grinned:  “I don’t.
 I just need to know when someone is saying it in my presence.”

Their idle chit-chat was
beginning to incense the Chinese passenger and he stepped in among the group
and reached down into the bag.  Baines grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled
it towards him while at the same time getting to his feet, twisting the arm as
he did so.  The hungry stranger lost his battle with gravity and landed on
his back, and Baines was on him in an instant. He put one knee on the man’s
chest and grabbed him around the throat.

“That’s not very polite,” Baines
said, as he squeezed with just enough force to bring some colour to the
face. 

A howl erupted behind Baines and
Gray touched him on the arm, indicating towards a woman who was quite clearly
pregnant. “Let him go, Sonny.”

Baines hesitated for a moment
but then climbed off.  Gray handed the man a tin of Spam and gestured for
him to disappear.

“Wonderful,” Baines said. 
“That takes us about ten hours closer to starvation.”

“Don’t be daft,” Smart said
,
his eyes still focused on his book.  “They’ll be
serving breakfast in a few hours.”

“Don’t get me wrong, but while
highly original, curry for breakfast does lose its appeal after a while. 
I’d rather eat a Pot Noodle.”

To change the subject, Smart put
down his Kindle and asked Gray if he’d decided on a plan of action.

“I’m still torn between two
options, but I’m swinging towards public exposure.”

“We dismissed that idea a couple
of weeks ago,” Baines pointed out.  “They’ll have DA notices out and no
paper would dare run the story.”

“I agree that if we just called
the BBC or a newspaper they wouldn’t run the story, but there are other ways.”

He explained what he had in mind
but the others were not totally convinced that his plan would work. 
However, they’d had the same reservations a year and a half earlier but had
come so close to pulling off a masterful plan.