The Operative (49 page)

Stratton did as he was ordered and looked into Hobart’s eyes, recognising the man he had seen only once before.

Hobart also recognised Stratton from somewhere and took his time trying to remember. ‘Santa Monica courts,’ he finally said, mainly to himself, looking forward to interrogating Stratton and filling in the many holes in this case. ‘Before I search you, you got anything? Guns? Explosives?’

Stratton shook his head.

‘Hendrickson. Give me your gun, then search him.’

Hendrickson handed his gun to Hobart and moved in behind Stratton, a hint of nervousness showing through.

Stratton looked several yards beyond Hobart to see Seaton staring at him. They locked eyes as Hendrickson ran his hands thoroughly over Stratton’s body.

‘He’s clean,’ Hendrickson said.

A police car arrived and came to a halt further up the street. Two officers climbed out, guns drawn, and crouched behind their car doors.

‘FBI,’ Hendrickson called out as he held his badge up for the cops to see.

‘Cuff him,’ Hobart told Hendrickson who produced a pair of handcuffs.

‘Hands behind your back,’ Hendrickson said to Stratton.

Stratton obeyed and Hendrickson fitted the cuffs around his wrists and tightened them.

Hobart lowered his gun and closed on Stratton, taking a good look at the man who, up until seconds ago, had been the most dangerous in the state.

‘Sir,’ Hobart’s driver called out.

‘What?’

‘That’s the stolen pick-up.’

Hobart glanced over at it. ‘Anything in there we should be worried about?’ he asked Stratton.

Stratton shook his head.

‘Take a look,’ Hobart said to the driver. ‘And be careful.’

The agent looked in through the pick-up’s windows before he opened the door slowly and peered inside, his confidence growing at seeing nothing that he con sidered dangerous. He searched under the seats and in the glove compartments. ‘Just a bunch of blueprints, sir. No weapons or explosives.’

Hobart eyed Stratton. ‘So where is it? I know you have around ninety pounds of pure RDX. Why don’t you just make it easier for everyone and tell me where it is?’

Stratton held his gaze.

‘Don’t tell me it all went up in the mine because I won’t believe you,’ Hobart said. ‘Yeah, I understand you’re the strong silent type. Well, that’s okay with me. I can play that game too. Officer!’ Hobart called out and the two cops came forward. ‘I want a lock-up truck here as soon as you can. This guy’s going downtown to the Federal jail, a top-security cell, the toughest in the state. We gotta keep him nice and safe while we find his toys. Hendrickson

– you go with him, and I don’t want him speaking to anyone,

you understand. No one. You stay outside his cell until I get there.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ Hendrickson said. Hobart put his gun back in its holster, feeling a little better
about the situation although there were a lot of loose ends to tie up, most of all finding the explosives. But it looked as if the case was at last coming under control.

Stratton had no emotions about Hobart. The man was just doing his job. Stratton was too consumed by his own failure to think about anything else. He’d made a terrible mistake in failing to take account of all the factors lined up against him. He’d developed tunnel vision. He’d seen only Skender and his people.

‘You have any idea where little Josh is?’ Hobart asked.

Stratton looked into his eyes. ‘Only that Skender or Cano has him.’

‘Cano?’ Hobart said, quizzically. ‘Cano’s dead. You should know – you killed him.’

‘His brother. You know him as Ivor Vleshek.’

A clang reverberated in Hobart’s head as another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. Hobart glanced over his shoulder at Seaton and wondered what else the Agency knew that he didn’t. When Hobart had arrived in LA and been handed the Skender case file one of the first requests he made was to the CIA for any information they had on the Albanian, knowing that terrorists were using Skender’s international smuggling conduits and that the CIA had their own file on him. They’d given him nothing more than he’d already had with an assurance that he would be updated. Lying sons of bitches.

‘How do you know the Albanians have the kid?’ Hobart asked Stratton, not doubting him but thinking that some proof would be nice.

‘Cano wants to trade me for Josh. Listen to me. You lock me up, they’ll kill Josh.’

‘And your conscience will be clear because that makes it my fault, right?’ Hobart suggested.

Anger flashed through Stratton and he leaned towards Hobart, his stare on fire. For a second Hobart was reminded why this man
in front of him was con sidered so dangerous. Hendrickson grabbed Stratton’s arms, helped by the two cops, but Stratton had no intention of striking Hobart.

‘I take full responsibility for Josh’s situation,’ Stratton said. ‘But right now his life is in your hands. You can play this by the book or you can do something about it.’

‘What do you expect me to do? Let you go? Or maybe I can call up Skender and ask him if we can exchange you for the boy?’

‘Let me go and I swear I’ll come back to you when this is over,’ Stratton pleaded.

‘Please. I don’t have the right to make those kinds of decisions and if I did I’d have to say no. You’d die and God only knows how many others you’d take with you. Put him in the squad car until the van arrives,’ Hobart said to Hendrickson. ‘And don’t leave his side for a second, you understand me?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hendrickson said as he pulled Stratton away.

Seaton watched as Stratton was placed in the back of the squad car, reflecting on how it had all turned into such a damned mess and was as much his fault as Stratton’s. He had felt a pang of guilt when Stratton had looked at him but that slowly disappeared as he watched the Englishman being marched away in handcuffs to a certain future behind bars. The change of feeling had something to do with a loss of respect and Stratton not being as invincible as Seaton had always thought of him: the great John Stratton a failure, handcuffed, captured by an FBI agent, Skender the overall winner and Josh probably never to be seen or heard of again.

Seaton did not feel comfortable about the fact that his own inferiority complex had been soothed somewhat. It was all a mess and he wished that he had been on the other side of the world that day when Stratton had called him at his home.

Hobart looked around at Seaton, wondering what the man was thinking. It was evident from his expression that he had demons of his own to deal with. Seaton had turned in his friend and
could not be feeling great about it, especially since, short of a miracle, it pretty much hammered the last nail into the kid’s coffin. That was the one thing they were all certain about, that Stratton had been the boy’s only hope. Hobart wasn’t feeling very good about himself either at that moment. Stratton had been wrong in every conceivable way but so was the way it had ended. Skender and his people were scum, evil bastards who should be paying for their crimes not just against the laws of America but against the whole of humanity. Stratton had only been partially right when he’d said that the rest of this was in Hobart’s hands. An innocent young boy was out there somewhere and although Hobart rather than Stratton was now his only chance there was much more than his life at stake.

Hobart reminded himself who he was, what he stood for, and that now was perhaps the time to be counted for the core of those beliefs. He did not outwardly show it but deep inside he was angrier than he had ever been in his life. It was partly because he had never felt such a pawn as he had since he’d been given the Skender case, a tool to be used by those above him. That was not what he had joined up for. He had once believed there was only one way to do anything and that was the right way. He had grown complacent over the years, hoping that one day it would all be put right but by someone else. He’d lived in denial about everything that was wrong with the administration and its selfish motives. But things didn’t get put right by doing nothing and waiting for someone else to do them. It took people to make a stand, people like Stratton, and if you were going to close down men like him, well it had better be because you could do the job better.

‘You did a good job, Seaton,’ Hobart said to him, straightening his back and feeling suddenly determined.

‘You need me any more?’ Seaton asked, looking like a lost child.

Hobart still wondered what kind of a man Seaton was, unable
to figure him out. Was he a loyal friend doing the right thing, or was he a career man looking to keep his record clean? ‘Why don’t you stick around?’ Hobart decided. ‘This show ain’t over yet.’

‘What more is there?’ Seaton asked.

‘You forgotten about the kid?’ Hobart asked as he walked past him.

Seaton wanted to say that he’d done the job he was sent here to do but he chose to keep his mouth shut. There was no point. He might as well play this one out and keep Hobart happy.

A police lock-up van pulled up. Seaton watched as Stratton was led out of the squad car and into the back of it, along with a police officer. Hendrickson handed his weapon over to one of the officers and climbed inside.

‘Hey. What about my waiter suit?’ Grant complained as he watched the police officer lock up the back of the van. ‘I gotta go to work.’

‘Can it,’ Hobart’s driver said.

Grant gave up with a philosophical sigh. ‘So who’d he photograph that everyone’s so pissed off about?’

The driver gave him a quizzical look as the lock-up van pulled away.

Stratton sat chained to a bench that ran the length of the lockup van as it bumped and creaked along, his hands cuffed in front of him, Hendrickson and a police officer on the bench opposite. He could not believe that it was over, not like this. He had been a move away from holding Skender’s building to ransom, the only chance he’d had of getting Josh back alive, and now the boy was doomed. There hadn’t even been a fight.

Stratton didn’t even want to think about Jack and Sally who were probably looking down on him at that moment with untold disappointment – although they could never be as angry with him as he was with himself. He looked around, at the two men opposite, the chains, the iron box they rode along in with its door bolted from the outside, the key with the driver. If there was a way out of this he could not see it. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes and he would arrive at the Federal lock-up where his life behind bars would begin. This was not how he had expected to end his career. Dead, perhaps, at the hands of crazed terrorists in some godforsaken corner of the world. That would have been acceptable, though he would of course have fought to stay alive. But at that moment this seemed far worse than dying. At least if he was dead he would not be tormented by feelings of guilt and failure.

He lowered his head into his hands and looked down at his feet, the clean metal floor beneath them. Then his eyes focused on something on the side of his boot. It was a tiny piece of some white substance, poking out of the tread of his sole. He stopped
breathing while he willed it to be what he hoped and not a piece of chewing gum.

Stratton looked up at Hendrickson and the police officer who were staring ahead at nothing. He sat back, crossed his legs, looked away and let a hand wander to his heel where he could feel the substance, a glance revealing that it ran into the tread for an inch or so. He picked a tiny piece off and casually wiped his nose while sniffing it. It was indeed RDX and must have got stuck there while he’d been in the mine. Interestingly, RDX was sensitive but not overly so. For instance, he would have had to jump off a three-storey building and land directly on his heel to detonate it. The fall would probably have killed him anyway.

He sat for a moment, the tumblers of his mind turning through the possibilities for its use. A plan quickly fell into place. Without further hesitation he popped the tiny fragment of RDX into his mouth, swallowed it and then sat back to wait. He remembered reading somewhere that RDX was not lethal if ingested in small amounts and had symptoms similar to those produced by cordite, which had on occasion been used by soldiers in the past who had wanted to avoid duty. He only hoped that his memory served him correctly and that he had taken a small enough dosage. Within a few seconds the cramps began and he started to feel hot and feverish. But he kept himself from throwing up for as long as possible to make the most of it. The pain grew steadily worse and the bile began to rise in his throat as his breathing quickened and his hands began to shake.

The police officer was the first to notice Stratton’s distress but did nothing initially. In his line of work he had seen it all, from prisoners feigning injury to actual suicide. It was his experience that some would do anything to avoid going to jail but on the other hand he had a responsibility to ensure their safety and well-being. Even if a prisoner had been sentenced to death it was his duty to save him so that he could suffer his legal fate. Making
sure that a prisoner stayed alive technically took precedence over his responsibility to keep them incarcerated.

Stratton started to shudder as his eyes rolled up into his head and a white, frothy mucus oozed from his mouth.

‘Holy shit,’ the officer said, lunging forward as Hendrickson looked to see Stratton lean over and moan.