Run for Home (16 page)

He was impatient to get moving and gunned the Land Rover hard. It leapt forward, as if it had been waiting all its life to be part of some kind of emergency. As he left the village he flipped on the high beams and floored the accelerator. It was ten or fifteen miles to the junction where the road to the village left the A1. Quarter of an hour, he hoped.

The road wound its way through dark and dripping woodland. No snow yet in this part of the world, but plenty of winter rain. The tarmac shone bright in his headlamps and the surface was slick with water and fallen leaves. He slowed down; no point going so fast he ended up in a ditch.

He wondered what they would do, how they would make their approach. So far as he knew, the road he was taking was the only way into the village. There would be other approaches, no doubt. Single-lane tarmac strips and rough tracks over the hills. But anyone reaching this part of the world having driven the best part of a thousand miles straight off, and arriving in the middle of the night in unknown territory, probably wouldn’t be looking for roads that were not on the satnav or whatever road atlas they were using. Their aim would be to get here, get the job done and get the hell out fast – in the unlikely event of them evading
Mayhew’s hounds.

His mind ran ahead to the turn-off from the A1. Flat land there, for a mile or so; fields surrounded by low hawthorn hedges. Difficult to surprise them there, if they ever got this far. Better to come inland a mile or so, to where the river wound through the hills, and the road ran high up on the hillside.

If he remembered rightly, there was a spot where you could see a little way down the road, and see what was coming. It was right on the edge of woodland, too: that would be a good place to wait.

He might not need to do anything at all, of course, he reminded himself yet again. It was unlikely that Jackson and Murphy would be able to travel the length of the country in an official car without being spotted and stopped. Mayhew would be exerting all his considerable influence on this one.

So all he was, really, was backup. He was the last-ditch defence, in case the improbable happened. He needed to be there, just in case. Lisa was his daughter. To Mayhew, her abduction or death would be unfortunate and regrettable; to him, it would be the end of the world. So he would wait until either Mayhew called to say it was over, or he saw Jackson and Murphy coming down the road.

He parked on a corner, on a patch of rough ground just off the road, where the highway authority stored a heap of grit for when the ice and snow came. Then he checked his phone. Nothing from Mayhew, or from anyone else.

He checked his watch next: 1.45 a.m. Going to be dark for the next five or six hours. Perhaps even longer, given the cloud cover and spasmodic rain. That meant any vehicle approaching from the A1 would have its lights on. He would see it in
good time. If it did come to that, his plan was to block the road with the Land Rover – and fight it out. Not very sophisticated, but it probably wasn’t going to happen anyway.

No good sitting here, he soon decided. He couldn’t see much of the road. He was going to have to get out and get wet. In the back of the Land Rover, he found a big plastic sheet and a rug that smelled as if it had known dog. He took them both. He needed anything he could find to keep the weather off him, and to keep the shotgun dry. A last look round. Then he got out and made his way to the corner, where he found a vantage point overlooking the road coming from the east. He settled down there to wait.

He positioned himself in the lee of a big boulder, trees on either side and above and behind to keep off some of the wind and rain. Under the plastic sheet it was dry enough but noisy. The plastic crackled with every little movement and the raindrops hitting it sounded like drumbeats.

It was stormy for an hour. Then the wind dropped and the rain stopped. The sky cleared a little. In places he could see stars. He pushed the plastic sheet back from his head with relief.

In the distance, he could see a constant stream of traffic using the A1, but no vehicle had turned onto the road he was watching. One time, he fancied he heard a vehicle engine labouring up a slope, but nothing came his way from either direction and he decided his ears were playing tricks. The constant dripping of raindrops from the surrounding trees made it difficult to identify any other sound.

He was cold and for a time had to fight off sleep as well. Much as he was determined to stay vigilant, it was hard to do. He resorted to little tricks and manoeuvres he had learned over the years. Push-ups increased the blood flow
and brought warmth. Counting to a thousand, breaking and then doing it again stopped him glancing at his watch every minute or two.

He tried to identify the sounds he could hear on all sides now the wind and the rain had eased away. There were creatures out here with him, even if he couldn’t see them. Small things that moved swiftly in little bursts of energy, and something bigger that was less worried about being noticed. Deer? Badger? Maybe a fox? It didn’t matter. The unseen citizens of the night helped keep him alert.

Just after 5 a.m. his phone buzzed. Mayhew. News?

‘No, nothing, I’m afraid,’ Mayhew said. ‘I guessed you would be up, and just thought I’d let you know. It’s not good, I know, but we’ll get them.’

Maybe, Harry thought afterwards. Maybe they would. But the doubts were beginning to grow. He was glad he was here, not in a warm bed in The Running Man. He wondered if Mayhew had called partly to keep himself awake. The man had been on the go a long time now without much sleep, if any. It was one of those times when the intelligence community didn’t work office hours, not even at Mayhew’s level.

Now the small hours were well past, Harry realized his own sleepiness had gone. He was tired but more awake. He glanced up at the sky, wondering how long it would be before a hint of light appeared in the east. Another couple of hours, probably.

He was right about that. Just after 7 a.m. he fancied he could see a lighter patch in the sky, just a faint suggestion that the blackness was beginning to fade. Then, as if on cue, he saw a vehicle turn off the A1 and onto the road to the village. He got to his feet. He had no idea what it was, but it was the first vehicle he had seen.

It was still utterly dark down below where he stood. He watched the vehicle’s steady progress for a full minute, still undecided what it was. Then he leapt round and slid down to where he’d parked.

The Land Rover started first go. He reversed it in a wide swing that took it out across the road, and blocked it. Then he pulled on the handbrake, switched off the ignition and got out. He moved into the trees at the side of the road, and waited. If the oncoming vehicle was innocent, he would just have to move the Land Rover and suffer the angry complaints, always assuming there wasn’t an almighty smash.

But it was the Jaguar. It rounded the corner and screeched to a stop.

There was a moment when nothing happened, and all was utter silence. Then doors opened. Jackson got out, looked around and leaned down to say something. Murphy got out.

‘That’s far enough!’ Harry called. ‘Stand still.’

Jackson wheeled round and opened fire with a pistol he was holding.

Harry pulled the trigger on the shotgun and blasted heavy-duty shot at them. Jackson was hit. He staggered, but stayed upright, and made it round the back of the car into shelter. Harry fired again. Then he reloaded and shifted position. Murphy spotted his movement and opened fire.

It was almost stalemate. Harry knew he couldn’t hit them while they were behind the car. Nor could they go anywhere without exposing themselves to his fire. Behind them, there was a narrow strip of tarmac and verge, and then the ground fell away in a precipitous drop to the river. In the dark, they couldn’t escape that way.

Their best bet, he thought, would be to try a pincer movement. If Murphy went one way and Jackson the other, both
maintaining fire, one of them might get across the road and behind him. Would they risk it? How badly was Jackson hit? Was he capable of taking part?

Almost stalemate. Then, while he was reloading again, something else came into the equation. He heard the boom of a powerful weapon fired from somewhere overhead. The Jag rocked with the impact of heavy-calibre bullets.

Within moments, Jackson and Murphy had reassessed the situation. In the growing light, Harry saw movement and heard the engine starting up. One of them got the car into reverse, and it started screaming backwards at speed. Harry fired and saw the windscreen explode. The Jag kept going. He fired again. It kept going.

Then the other weapon spoke once more and the car lurched and changed tack, as a tyre was blown off the rim. It spun round, kept going, plunged over the edge of the road and disappeared.

For a moment, there was the sound of an engine racing right off the monitor. Then came the sound of something very heavy crashing through trees, smashing branches and trunks, bouncing off the rocky slope and finally, thundering into the earth a couple of hundred feet below. An explosion followed and a ball of light lit up the morning sky.

Harry was stunned. For a moment, he simply stared, and listened. Then he got shakily to his feet and looked up at the hillside behind him. Had one of Mayhew’s people managed to get here in time?

He saw and heard nothing, and there was no way up there in the dark. Instead, he turned back and ran across the road to look down into the gully.

The Prague embassy was one Jag down. What was left of all that expensive metal and plastic was a huge fireball,
resting down near the river, broken trees indicating the route it had taken to get there. It was a safe bet that no one had got out.

‘Did we get them?’ a woman’s voice called to him.

He spun round and gaped. ‘Jesus, Ellie! Where the hell…? Was that you up there?’ he asked, incredulous, seeing the rifle she was holding.

‘It’s Dad’s old hunting rifle,’ she said, glancing at it. ‘He always said he wanted me to learn how to use it, as it might come in handy one day. I guess he was right.’

Harry shook his head, in awe of the woman standing before him. She walked towards him. He took hold and hugged her.

‘How on earth did you get here?’ he asked.

‘I thought you might need help,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t want to distract you.’

He chuckled with amazement and relief.

‘So,’ she added, ‘I took a forestry road that brings you out up above where I knew you were going to wait.’

‘God, Ellie!’ he said, hugging her hard. ‘You did so well. I can’t believe it!’

‘It was worth the wait, wasn’t it?’

There was no denying that.

‘What about down there?’ she added, motioning towards the gully.

‘Nothing we can do, or that I would want to do. Let the police sort it out tomorrow. I’ll just give the boss man a call, and let him know what’s happened here.’

‘Are you going to tell him we’ve done his job for him?’

‘I just might, at that,’ Harry said with a grin.

He watched Lisa playing in the garden behind the hotel. He sat down and watched her without calling to her. A dog was with her, a Border collie of Ellie’s that seemed as bright and athletic as Lisa herself.

When she turned and saw him, she looked stunned for a moment. Then her face broke out into a million smiles. She gave a little shriek and started running towards him. The dog watched, briefly puzzled, and then raced after her joyously.

‘Daddy, you’re home!’

‘Hello, sweetheart!’ He laughed and swept her up in his arms. ‘Yes, I’m back home – for good this time.’

Home, though? Was that the right word?

Then he caught sight of Ellie heading towards them with a tray of drinks. Yes, he decided happily. Home was exactly the right word.

He spoke once or twice by phone to Mayhew, tying up loose ends, accepting the need for some sort of debriefing.

‘We need to look at ourselves,’ Mayhew said, ‘and that’s what I’ll do when I get back to London. There’s no way Jackson and Murphy should have been able to make a
journey like that without us stopping them.’

‘They got lucky,’ Harry said mildly.

‘Until the very end, from what I hear. Then their luck ran out altogether. A pity, really. I would have liked the opportunity to debrief them.’

Harry was having none of it. They had met a bad end, but they had caused bad ends for too many people he knew for him to be upset about that.

‘Did you find anything more about who Mason did the deal with?’ he asked cautiously, curious to know how far Mayhew had got with his enquiries.

‘Only up to a point. We’re still working on that. We believe it started with one of the émigrés while Mason was working in London. As to who, ultimately, was behind it, who knows? We may find out, or we may not. Russia is still an opaque country to us, as you must know as well as anyone.’

Yes indeed, Harry thought. Anywhere as big and complex as Russia was bound to be hard to fathom. Give him the Czech Republic any day!

He said nothing about Kurst. Or Kuznetsov. Without their intervention, the story would have ended very differently. They had helped him, and he was grateful to them. He wouldn’t risk compromising them. His loyalties were more nuanced now than they had been in the past.

‘You were right about Mason being shacked up with the Czech woman, by the way,’ Mayhew added. ‘His assistant has confirmed that.’

‘Has he told you why, or how, it happened?’

‘More or less. Mason wanted to locate Unit 89 members even before he knew Landis was onto him. But Callerton had set things up so that the team was unknown to the embassy. Mason knew you existed, of course, but not where you were
located. He thought the Czechs probably knew where you were, though. So he targeted what he believed was a weak link in their outfit.’

‘Novotná?’

‘Yes, Novotná. He believed he could find you through her.’

Harry grimaced. In a sense, Mason had been proved right, but due more to luck than anything else. Lenka had been no weak link. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the rest of us, he thought sadly.

‘And you haven’t changed your mind?’ Mayhew added. ‘You’re still intent on resigning?’

‘I already did,’ Harry said, managing a wry chuckle. ‘I’m out of it now.’

‘Then good luck for the future.’

No attempt to dissuade him, Harry thought afterwards with approval. Mayhew was too good at his job to want to pursue lost causes.

‘Just let me get this straight,’ Ellie said thoughtfully. ‘This man, Mason, had your team assassinated, murdered, because…?’

‘Because he knew that our contact man, John Landis, was about to tell us and London what he’d discovered.’

‘Which was? I know you’ve told me once,’ she hastened to add, ‘but tell me again.’

‘Mason had made a deal with certain London-based, Russian business interests – oligarchs, if you like. In return for a small share in a new Siberian gasfield, Mason would be their man inside MI6.

‘But Mason knew that if London found out about this he would no longer be of value to the Russians. The deal would be taken off the table. He couldn’t allow that to happen.’

‘So he took action to stop it.’

Harry nodded.

Ellie got up to move the tray of drinks closer and pour them both refills. He watched her intently. She did everything so elegantly. He loved watching, and being near her.

When she sat down again, she said, ‘It was a bit drastic, wasn’t it?’

He shrugged agreement, and tried to explain – as much as he could understand Mason’s perverse thinking.

‘The deal on offer was very important to him. Mason was a disappointed man. He hadn’t got the job he believed should have been his, and the job he did have was being downgraded. He would be made redundant and forced into early retirement.

‘His career was coming to an end, with very little to show for it. He resented that. So he decided to look to his own interests. When Kurst approached him with an offer, he jumped at it.’

Ellie thought it over. ‘But it wasn’t the Russians who eliminated your team?’

He shook his head. ‘That was all Mason’s own work. The Russians have been helpful, actually – both their secret service and the oligarchs in London. They didn’t want us dead, and once they knew what was happening they were as interested as anybody in stopping Mason. He had become a mad dog.’

Ellie stood up again and reached for the coffee jug she had brought along with the long, cool drinks. Then she paused, jug in hand, as a new thought came to her.

‘Would Mason have been a rich man, if things had worked out for him?’

‘Very.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘Colossally
rich, probably.’

‘Harry,’ she said wistfully, ‘have you ever thought of contacting those people – those oligarchs?’

‘Too late,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’d be no good to them now. I’ve resigned.’

There was one other thing Mayhew had told him that Harry pondered and felt glad about. Although Lenka had not survived Mason’s attack, her brother somehow had. He was now back home in Brno recuperating. In time, Harry felt, he would mourn Lenka properly and visit Brno to see Josef. But not just yet. The wounds, for both of them, were still too fresh.

So this is my new life, he thought wonderingly, looking around the garden at the back of the hotel. Lisa had her arms around the dog, which kept making half-hearted attempts to wash her face with his tongue. And without looking, he knew Ellie was by his side. He could feel her presence all around him. He reached out, took hold of her hand and felt her smile.