Gray Salvation (6 page)

Andrew Harvey watched his captors dining on home-made soup and had to admit that it smelled delicious. He was tempted to ask for some, if only to delay the inevitable, but had the feeling they weren’t in a sharing mood.

Scarface dunked a piece of bread into his bowl and stuffed it into his mouth. ‘You not scared? You think your friends will save you in “nick of time”?’ he asked Harvey, making air quotes.

It was indeed something Harvey had been thinking about for the last thirty minutes.

‘If I was back at the office, I’d have you surrounded by now. There are over eight thousand CCTV cameras covering Britain’s roads, taking over twenty-five million pictures a day, so our journey here will have been recorded. They’ll have helicopters up soon, and the entire area will be cordoned off. It’s over.’

Scarface looked thoughtful. ‘You think they track our vehicles?’

Harvey nodded. ‘Don’t be surprised if you get a knock on the door any minute now.’

A smile appeared on the scarred face. ‘Then it was good idea to send cars to Scotland, no? Your people will be looking in wrong place, Andrew Harvey. When they find out drivers live here, we are already gone. Vanish.’

For the first time, Harvey thought about the owners of the farm. They’d driven the Russians’ cars north? Why would English farmers be in league with Russian criminals? His puzzlement must have shown.

Scarface laughed. ‘You think I am so stupid? You think this is my first mission in the field? No, we go soon, after Vasily practises on you.’

The conversation was interrupted by a phone, and Vasily answered it. He listened for a moment, then gave the handset to Scarface. The conversation that followed was brief, and Scarface tossed the phone on the table.

‘Change of plan,’ Scarface said to Harvey, then spoke to the others in the room in Russian. Three of them disappeared and returned five minutes later with their bags, accompanied by three others who looked like they’d just woken up.

Harvey assumed they’d be moving out immediately, but after gathering their belongings, the men simply sat around. Vasily dismantled his rifle and put it back in its case, while the newcomers helped themselves to the remainder of the soup.

It gave Harvey a modicum of hope. The longer they waited, the better the chances of Ellis containing the area and sending in a rescue team. The silence dragged on for minutes, until a shout came from one of the men near the kitchen window.

Scarface jumped up to take a look, then went to the door and opened it. Through the gap, Harvey could see two vehicles approaching – an estate car and a minibus. When they parked, two men climbed out of each vehicle and walked towards the building.

Scarface had an automatic in his right hand, hidden behind his back. He challenged the four men, but when they responded he waved them inside. Three of the visitors were young, no more than teenagers, while the other looked to be in his fifties and wore a suit under his heavy overcoat. He was carrying a leather bag that looked to be of the kind doctors used when they travelled.

‘I’m going to prepare you for your journey,’ the older man told Harvey, setting his bag on the table. Unlike the others, this man was English. He reached inside the bag and produced a hypodermic needle, which he filled with a clear liquid from a small bottle. He barked some instructions, and Harvey watched four men head out to the car and open the trunk. They pulled out a large, rectangular box, about seven feet in length. One climbed into the back of the car and retrieved a green case. The items were brought inside and laid out on the floor.

‘What journey?’ Harvey asked, his voice cracking ever so slightly. ‘Where are we going?’

A bead of sweat appeared on his brow and lazily meandered down between his eyes, which were focused on the needle in front of him.

One of the men opened the box, and Harvey could see it was empty. As he looked at the box, the man with the needle slipped around behind him. He felt a sharp prick in his neck, followed by pain as a bolus entered his bloodstream.
A bolus of what, exactly?
he wondered. He turned to the English doctor to ask, but his tongue refused to obey his mental commands. His vision started to blur and he shook his head in an effort to counteract the drug, to little effect.

The last thing he saw was the doctor opening the green case and removing a tank of oxygen with a facemask attached, before his eyes finally gave up the fight.

Chapter 10

20 January 2016

The needle on Sarah Thompson’s speedometer crept past ninety as she barrelled along the M40, her windscreen wipers working furiously to counter the spray thrown up from the vehicles in front of her.

She eased over to the inside lane as she saw the first markers for junction eight, then pulled off at the exit and killed her speed. At the roundabout she took the same route the SUVs had, her eyes peeled for roadblocks.

She found none.

Thompson’s phone was synched by Bluetooth to the car’s computer. She hit the Call button on the steering wheel and told the on-board system to dial Ellis’s number.

‘Where the hell are the local police?’ she asked when the call connected. ‘I’m seeing cars everywhere driving out of the area!’

‘They’re moving as many people into position as they can,’ Ellis replied. ‘They’re also dealing with a pile-up at junction twelve, and that’s drained their resources.’

‘Then ask the Met for some men,’ Thompson said. ‘We’re going to lose him!’

‘They’ve already got four teams on the way,’ Ellis assured her. ‘ETA six minutes.’

‘What about the chopper?’

‘No point sending it up until containment is in place,’ Ellis said. ‘We’ve got nationwide surveillance systems looking for them, so even if they manage to leave Oxfordshire, they won’t get far.’

Thompson hit the button to end the call. Her satnav was programmed with the location of the farm nearest to the motorway, and she followed the directions. Trees were a blur as she sped down the narrow country road, and she reduced her speed to fifty as she approached a little village. She was through it in seconds and, back on the empty roads, she pushed the needle past seventy.

‘Turn left,’ the electronic voice told her, and Thompson slammed on the brakes as the turning appeared in front of her. She spun the wheel and took to the dirt road, which rose ahead of her and disappeared over a rise.

She brought the car to a stop and climbed out. If Harvey were being held here by an unknown number of armed men, blazing into view would do neither of them any good. She locked the vehicle and drew her Glock. Satisfied that it had a round in the chamber, she placed it into her shoulder holster, then hugged the bushes as she crept up the hill.

At the top, she could see a long building made from corrugated iron, and to the right of it a detached house. A man came into view, wearing a heavy jacket and waterproof leggings, and she watched him wheel a barrow towards a huge pile of manure and empty the contents at the base. She saw him go back the way he’d come, and waited to see if anyone else showed their face.

Minutes passed, and the only person she observed was the one assigned the job of mucking out the horses as he made another journey to the dung pile.

It looked like business as usual, but Thompson wanted to be sure. She opened her phone and found the settings for the ringtone, then put it back in her pocket and crept back to the car. She drove over the rise and into the courtyard, just as a woman appeared from the house, wearing wellington boots, jodhpurs and a windcheater.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

Thompson removed her wallet from her pocket and flipped it open.

‘Sarah Thomas, DEFRA,’ Thompson said, showing an identity card bearing the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs logo. It was a legend she’d created before leaving Thames House, one that would allow her to inspect any farm without rousing suspicion.

‘I’m Jennie,’ the lady said, looking concerned. ‘We had an inspection two weeks ago. Was something wrong?’

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Thompson told her. ‘This is an unrelated matter. Do you mind if I have a look around?’

‘Sure, but I’d appreciate it if you could tell me what this is about.’

‘We have a case of foot-and-mouth disease less than thirty miles from here,’ Thompson said. ‘At the moment, we believe it’s an isolated incident, but just in case it spreads, we’re checking all nearby farms to make sure you have procedures in place to combat it.’

The woman’s face was a mask of horror. ‘Please tell me you’re joking!’

‘I wish I was,’ Thompson said, ‘but so far we have four infected cows and we’re conducting further tests on the other livestock on the farm.’

A shell-shocked Jennie agreed to show Thompson around the farm, and explained her concerns. ‘Back in 2007, my husband and I had a farm near Pirbright. We lost three hundred head of cattle due to that testing facility’s damn negligence.’

Thompson nodded mechanically as she led Jennie to a Land Rover and inspected the wheels.

‘How many vehicles do you have here at the moment?’

‘Just this and my estate,’ Jennie said.

Thompson had been looking for side roads and fresh tracks during their brief walk, but she’d seen nothing to suggest that Jennie was being anything other than honest.

She mentally crossed this farm off her list as she put her hand into her pocket and hit the button to test her ringtone.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, and held the chiming phone to her ear. She pretended to listen for a moment, then turned to Jennie.

‘Sorry, but I’ve just been told about another possible infection. I’m going to have to cut and run.’

She walked quickly back to her car and sped off. The first farm had been a bust; six more remained in the area.

Andrew was in one of them, she was sure, and time was running out.

The Spetsnaz veteran with the scarred face picked up the chirping mobile and pressed the green button.

‘
Da.
’

‘What’s your situation?’ Bessonov asked.

‘He’s packed up and ready to go. We’ll be at the airport in a couple of hours.’

‘Just send the doctor,’ Bessonov said. ‘Tell him Polushin will meet him at the freight terminal.’

‘What about the rest of us?’

‘The news is reporting roadblocks in your area. There’s no confirmation of what they’re looking for, but we have to assume it’s you. They have no reason to detain an English doctor, but ten Russians are a different matter.’

‘We have that covered,’ the soldier said. ‘We sent the vehicles north on the motorway. Once they’re spotted on camera, the police will send everyone to intercept them.’

He’d instructed two farmhands to get as far from the area as they could and, if spotted by the police, to flee for as long as possible.

‘Good. I’ll send someone to monitor the area. As soon as the police leave, get to the airport. We have a charter plane waiting to go.’

The soldier ended the call and told his men to load the crate into the back of the doctor’s estate car. It took four of them to lift it, the MI5 agent’s body making for a heavy load.

‘Now what?’ Vasily asked.

The leader gave the doctor his instructions and watched him climb into the vehicle and drive off.

‘Now we wait,’ he said.

Sarah Thompson negotiated another tight curve on the narrow country lane and stamped on the brake as she saw a green estate coming the other way. Both cars had to ease onto the grass to crawl past each other, then she hit the accelerator, following the directions for the third farm on the list.

When the satnav’s electronic voice told her she’d reached her destination, Thompson pulled over and climbed out. Over a hedge, she could see an array of buildings and several head of cattle grazing in a nearby field, oblivious to the spitting rain. A two-storey house sat off to one side, and in front of it sat a minibus.

She immediately got the feeling something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the kind of vehicle she’d expect to see on a farm, and adrenalin started coursing through her veins as she realised she might have the right place.

Her first thought was to call for backup, but she hesitated. That would mean pulling one of the police cars off a roadblock, and if she were wrong, she’d be offering Andrew’s abductors a way out of the area. She couldn’t wait for a team to arrive from Thames House, either. There was no telling what they’d do to Andrew when they realised they were surrounded.

But what could one agent accomplish alone? Torn, she decided to take a closer look and get proof before making the call for backup.

She prepped her phone once more, then climbed back into the car and took the turning onto yet another dirt road. As she approached the main residence, she saw curtains twitch in the window, and when she pulled up a large man opened the front door of the house and made straight for her car.

Dan Fletcher stared into the teacup he was grasping tightly and wondered exactly how long the thugs were going to hang around.

It had been two years since he’d accepted the deal brokered by his brother-in-law from the City, and since then he’d made his payments on time, every month without fail. The twenty grand had been enough to satisfy his creditors and stop them declaring him bankrupt, which meant he got to keep his farm and had enough to tide him over during what had been a lean period.

The man he’d met seemed decent enough, and his English was very good. Fletcher hadn’t cared that he was Russian, and he hadn’t felt the need to do a background check on his benefactor. Had he done so, he would have steered well clear of him.

At first, the deal had seemed superb. He got the cash as well as a contract to provide milk for several of Bessonov’s businesses. The price paid was better than the supermarkets were offering, and for the first time in years his business was showing a healthy profit.

Everything was rosy.

Until the phone call.

Why he had to provide temporary accommodation for ten men, he didn’t know, but he guessed they weren’t on holiday. He’d told Bessonov that there simply wasn’t room to house them all, and that was when he’d learned the truth about his benefactor: if he didn’t want to see his farm burn to the ground, he’d house the men.

The phone on the side table caught his eye yet again. He was tempted to call the police, but what could he say?
I accepted a business partner’s request to let ten men into my home
. He hadn’t seen anything on the news about a band of marauding Russians terrorising the country, but as soon as they showed up at the house he knew they weren’t boy scouts. Still, what was he to do? Test Bessonov’s threat?

The leader had treated him like a servant from the moment they met, ordering him to make tea for everyone and then get out of their way. His scarred face was terrifying enough, but when he’d produced an automatic weapon to emphasise his point, Fletcher decided it was a role he would happily play, if only temporarily.

They’d been in the kitchen for hours now, allowing him in only to refill his cup and make them something to eat, and their presence would have been fine if they’d let him carry on as normal. His cattle needed to be milked, but the scarred one had pulled his sons off that duty and sent them up to Scotland in the Russians’ SUVs. His guest had made it clear that the police would be looking for the vehicles, but they were to lead them on a merry chase as long as they could. Otherwise: ‘
If police come and I still here
, boom,
father dead
.’

With Scarface’s threat ringing in their ears, the boys had hugged their father and set off, the younger one with tears in his eyes. That had been hours earlier, and Fletcher was still trying to think of a way to explain his part in it without mentioning Bessonov’s name.
Well, officer, these ten men just turned up, asked my sons to go on a two-hundred-mile joy ride and I thought nothing of it.
He knew it wouldn’t fly, but if he revealed the truth, he could kiss his livelihood goodbye.