Gray Salvation (7 page)

He almost dropped the cup when the scarred man poked his head inside the room and barked a single word.

‘Come.’

Fletcher got to his feet and followed the man into the kitchen. ‘What is it?’

‘You expect visitors?’ He led Fletcher to the window and pulled back the corner of the curtain to reveal a Ford easing up the approach road.

‘No,’ Fletcher assured him.

‘Get rid of them.’

Fletcher was pushed towards the door, and as he looked back, he saw the man pull the slide back on his automatic.

‘You tell them we here, you get first bullet.’

Fletcher swallowed, despite his mouth being dry as a bone. He took a deep breath, then opened the door and marched out to meet the car. He could see just one person in the vehicle, a rather striking woman with long blonde hair and green eyes set above high cheekbones and a sumptuous mouth. On any other occasion he would have greeted her with a welcoming smile and invited her inside, but he knew the importance of getting her off the property as soon as possible.

‘Yes?’ he said brusquely as the woman began to get out of the car.

‘Sarah Thomas, DEFRA.’

Fletcher glanced at the woman’s identity card and felt his heart miss a couple of beats, then race double-time to catch up. Plan A had been to simply tell her to piss off, but that was no longer an option. Instead, he tried his best to smile.

‘What can I do for you?’

Thomas told him about a case of foot-and-mouth disease in the county and asked if she could look around.

‘Sure,’ Fletcher said, and gestured towards the milking shed. He hoped to get her as far from the house as possible, but the woman wasn’t in the mood to comply. She stood her ground and looked at the minibus.

‘That yours?’ she asked.

‘My son’s,’ Fletcher said. ‘He plays for the local football team, and he brings his mates here to train. They do a lot of cross-country work.’

Now looking towards the house, the woman asked a question that almost made his heart stop.

‘Do you mind if I use your toilet?’ Thompson asked.

She was desperate to get inside the house, to have a look around. There was something about the farmer that didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t the cow shit on the bottom of the man’s wellingtons. When she factored in the fresh tracks leading up to the building, the minibus and the twitching curtains – which were drawn in the middle of the day – she was certain she had the right place.

‘I’m afraid it’s backed up,’ the farmer said.

Was it coincidence, or did he just want to prevent her from looking around inside?

Thompson had seen enough. She was convinced she had the right place, and decided the time was right to call in backup. She made a note of the minibus’s licence plate, then put her hand in her pocket to activate the phone, looking to make an excuse to back away from the area and let the armed response units do their job. But the phone rang before she had the chance, startling her. She glanced at Fletcher, who was watching her carefully, then dug the phone out and saw Ellis’s name on the screen.

‘Please tell me the roadblocks are in place,’ she said quietly as she walked away from the farmer.

‘I’ve pulled them back,’ Ellis told her. ‘The SUVs were spotted just north of Wigan on the M6.’

‘When?’

‘An hour ago.’

‘An hour! And we’re just hearing about it now?’

‘Greater Manchester Police chose to get their assets in place first. They only contacted us as an afterthought, and a junior analyst who wasn’t aware of the significance took the call. I’ve ordered the chief constable to contact me directly from now on.’

An hour meant at least another seventy miles, so they would be approaching the Lake District by now. ‘Keep me updated,’ Thompson said as she climbed back into her car, the farmer already forgotten. ‘I’m on my way.’

Scarface watched the exchange through the tiniest gap in the curtains, his index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic in his hand. The woman seemed to be paying too keen an interest in the house, but he was prepared to deal with her if she made a move towards the door.

He watched the woman take a phone call and climb back into her car and, once she’d disappeared from view, he opened the door and let the farmer back in.

‘Who was it?’ he asked.

‘DEFRA. They do inspections now and again.’

‘That was quick inspection.’

The farmer shrugged. ‘She got a call and buggered off.’

Scarface peeked through the window once more and, satisfied that the woman was gone for good, ordered the nervous farmer to go back and sit in the living room.

What followed was a tense hour as he waited for Bessonov to call with news of the roadblock. His men were ready to go, but until they knew the roads were clear, they had little choice but to sit it out.

When the call finally came, he ordered his men into the minibus and called the farmer through to the kitchen.

‘Hide this well,’ he said, pointing to the case containing Vasily’s sniper rifle. ‘Someone will collect it soon.’

The soldier joined the others on the bus and they set off for Heathrow. Once they cleared the area, he would gather the rest of the small arms, put them in plastic bags and dump them in a bin at a service station.

He felt a little sad that he hadn’t had the opportunity to take part in the assassination, one that would have enabled his team to command a higher price on their next outing. But that was the way things went sometimes.

Two hours and some heavy traffic later, the minibus pulled into the long-stay car park and he led his men to the departure area. He found the Concord Air charter counter, where they picked up their tickets and made it through security without any issues.

Within the hour, his team and he were wheels up and on course for Moscow, where they would wait for the next contract to come along.

Chapter 11

20 January 2016

Dan Fletcher sat at the table next to the kitchen window, the open curtains giving him a view down the approach road. The sun had set just before 4.30 p.m., and he’d been staring into the darkness ever since.

He sipped a cup of tea that had grown tepid as he waited nervously. He expected the police to turn up at any time, and he went over his story once more, just to make sure the answers sounded credible in his own mind.

A set of headlights finally pierced the darkness, followed by two more sets, and Fletcher got to his feet and headed to the door. He opened it and squinted as the glare assaulted his senses.

‘They’re gone!’ he shouted, raising his hands as high as he could. Armed police piled out of the first two vehicles, and Fletcher could see the outline of a woman approaching, her silhouette striding confidently, almost menacingly, towards him.

When the policemen ordered him to the ground, Fletcher eased himself onto his stomach and stretched out his arms. Two men patted him down and pulled him away from the door as four others crept into the house, their MP5s up and ready.

Fletcher was taken to a police car and told to sit in the back seat, his legs hanging out the side.

‘Where are they?’

He looked up at the figure leaning over him. It was the woman who’d been at the farm earlier in the day.

‘You’re not really DEFRA, are you?’

‘Where are they?’ she repeated.

‘I told you, they’re gone.’

‘When?’

‘About two hours ago,’ Fletcher told her. ‘They tied me up and left. I eventually managed to free myself and call the police.’

The woman eyed him suspiciously. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this when I was here earlier?’

‘They threatened to kill me. You too. If you’d gone inside the house, we’d both be dead now.’

The armed officers emerged from the house and declared it safe. The woman turned and called over the scene commander and told him to get a forensics team in as soon as possible. She then pulled out her phone and brought an image up on the screen.

‘Did you see this man among them?’

Fletcher studied the photo of a man in his forties, smiling as he posed on a beach somewhere. He shrugged. ‘They had someone with them, but he had a bag over his head. I never got to see his face.’

The woman gazed off into the distance, as if searching for someone. Then she turned back to Fletcher. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘From the moment they arrived.’

Fletcher went over his concocted story, telling her that they’d arrived early and surprised him as he answered the door. He and his boys had been having breakfast when the Russians arrived and forced them all into the living room, where he was tied up and the boys ordered north. From that point on he’d been left alone, apart from the time he’d been freed to get her off the property. The rest of the time had been spent in isolation, and after they’d left, it had taken a couple of hours to free himself and make the phone call.

He hoped the woman swallowed the story, and that his nervousness would be put down to his recent ordeal.

‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here tonight,’ she said. ‘Forensics will need to go over the place thoroughly. Is there someone you could stay with?’

Fletcher assured her he could stay at a neighbouring farm, but his main concern was for his sons. ‘What about my boys? Did you find them?’

‘They were stopped just south of Carlisle. They didn’t do themselves any favours by failing to stop for the police.’

Fletcher told her about the scarred man’s threat – that his boys were only fleeing to protect their father. The woman seemed to accept it but got an officer to come over and take his full account of the episode.

As she walked away, Fletcher had a feeling the man she was looking for was someone special to her, someone very close. Deep down he wanted to tell her that yes, he’d seen the man tied to a chair, and that he’d been taken away a couple of hours before the Russians left. If he did, though, his whole story would unravel, and as much as he wanted her to have her man back, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his sons.

Sarah Thompson walked back to her car and called Ellis with an update.

‘It looks like they were here, but we missed them by a couple of hours. There was a white minibus parked here earlier. That’s probably how they left.’

She gave Ellis the licence plate of the vehicle and told her to alert all forces to keep an eye out for it.

‘Solomon got some hits on the inbound flights,’ Ellis said. ‘We’ve got six matches on the Interpol database. I’m sending the images to you now.’

Thompson waited for the pictures to arrive, then went back over to the police car and showed them to the farmer. ‘Recognise any of them?’

Fletcher slowly scrolled through the mugshots, his head bobbing nervously. ‘This is their leader,’ he said, showing her the scarred face of Anatoly Potemkin. ‘I didn’t really get a good look at the others.’

That was enough for Thompson.

‘Give the officer your contact details. I may need to speak to you again.’

She left Fletcher and climbed into her car, calling Ellis to confirm that they were on the right track. ‘Put the names on the no-fly list as soon as you can, and notify all seaports and private airfields. These guys don’t leave the country.’

She fired up the engine and sped off down the driveway, throwing up a shower of gravel as she took the turn onto the main road. For the first time, they had positive identification of the enemy, and she wanted to be back at Thames House when the sightings came in.

Traffic was light by the time she hit the M40, and she ate up the miles quickly. A set of roadworks temporarily slowed her progress, but she still made it back to headquarters in record time.

It was after seven in the evening when she entered the office. Howes and Solomon were engrossed in their work, and Thompson could see Ellis in conversation in her glass-walled office. She knocked on the door and entered just as the director put down the phone.

‘Any sign of them?’

‘Anatoly Potemkin and nine others boarded a chartered flight from Heathrow. It took off for Moscow thirty minutes ago.’

‘Can we call it back?’ Thompson asked.

‘We tried that,’ Ellis said. ‘Air traffic control instructed them to turn around and land, but the pilot isn’t acknowledging.’

‘Then send a couple of fighters after them and force them to land.’

Ellis sighed and sat back in her seat. Thompson thought she suddenly looked a lot older than her fifty years.

Losing a couple of agents will do that to you
.

‘I just got off the phone with the home secretary,’ Ellis said. ‘The MOD won’t scramble jets until we have concrete proof that Andrew is on that flight, and according to the flight manifest, he isn’t. I even had Elaine check every passenger at the boarding gate against facial recognition, but no hits on Andrew.’

‘But surely placing Potemkin at the farm is enough,’ Thompson protested.

‘It’s enough for the home secretary to start extradition talks with the Russians, but not to send the air force after them. I tried explaining that Potemkin is our main lead to finding Andrew, but apparently the PM prefers to take this one through diplomatic channels. Tensions with Moscow are already strained to breaking point, and interfering with a legitimate flight is not going to make matters any better.’

Thompson knew the director general was just regurgitating the message passed down by her superiors; she could almost hear Ellis choking on the words.

‘I say we bring Bessonov in and lean on him until he tells us where Andrew is.’

Ellis stood and folded her arms, pacing behind her desk. ‘Bessonov is not to be touched,’ she said, anger evident in her tone. ‘I tried ruffling his feathers earlier today, and the message from on high is that unless we have evidence that he was on the scene at the time of Andrew’s disappearance, we are to cease harassing him.’

Thompson put both hands on Ellis’s desk. ‘Are you serious? Bessonov and Potemkin are our only leads, and we can’t get to either of them?’

‘I’m afraid that’s the situation as it stands.’

‘Can you see it changing anytime soon?’

Ellis shook her head.

Thompson sighed and stood back. ‘So what is the team working on?’

‘Tracking the movements of the minibus Potemkin used. Andrew must have been dropped off somewhere before they caught their flight. We’re checking every camera along the route.’

There was little else the team could do right now, not with Bessonov enjoying his diplomatic protection and Potemkin homeward bound. Thompson contemplated going home, but with Andrew missing, she knew she would drive herself crazy with worry.

‘I’ll go and see how they’re getting on with the search.’