Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (51 page)

9:14 a.m. Eastern Time – Friday

Constitutional Condominiums

6
th
St. & Maryland Avenue – Washington D.C.

The few hours of rest he'd managed to get hadn't helped his state of mind any. As he poured another cup of coffee from the brewer on his desk, David Kemiss sighed and leaned back in his chair again, sipping from the cup. He'd been up for most of the night again and had been staring for hours at every piece of paper intelligence they'd managed to gather on Declan McIver. He was convinced that somewhere in the documents was a clue to where the man was heading. If they could figure that out and get ahead of him, then it would be game over. Wherever he lived, Colin Bellanger was doing the same thing. Two brains were better than one, Kemiss reasoned, and Bellanger was much more used to paperwork than he was.

He sat up as his phone rang. "What?"

"Senator, it's Robert Evers."

"Oh. Mr. Evers. Good. Thank you for calling. What have you got?"

"Some good news and some bad news, sir. The good news is that we've had what we're pretty sure is a confirmed sighting."

"And the bad news?" Kemiss felt his face flush.

"The news came in the form of a phone call from the Dyfed-Powys police."

"The
what
police?"

"He's in Wales, or at least he was a few hours ago."

"In Wales? How the hell did he get to Wales?" Kemiss slammed down the coffee mug, slopping hot liquid onto his mahogany desk.

"I'm not sure, sir. I'm as surprised as anyone."

"I mean, you've got the airports sealed up, right? His name's on the 'no fly' list. How could he have possibly gotten out of the country and all the way to Wales?"

"Sir, with the information you've helped to uncover about McIver I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that he has a fake identity, maybe even more than one. Being as he's from the United Kingdom originally, that identity could very well have been that of a British citizen. With a minor change in appearance and what appeared to be legal documents, he could've slipped through the TSA pretty easily."

"And they're sure it's him?"

"Apparently he convinced some kind of wildlife worker in a place called Pembrokeshire to take him in. He stayed there the night and took off in their car when they recognized him. That was early this morning. The Chief Constable there called me as a courtesy. He's already notified his superiors and they're preparing a Task Force of some kind to track McIver down and apprehend him. While it's surprising news, it's really good news all around. The Brits have a much tougher system of policing than we do here in the States. With the amount of CCTV in that country I'd lay down a wager that they'll have him by the end of the day. They've been tracking his kind for over forty years."

Kemiss willed himself to calm down. While he considered the news to be anything but good, he couldn't let Evers know that. "Fine, then, let me know if there's any updates."

"You'll be my first call, sir."

Kemiss listened as Evers hung up and then tossed the phone across the desk, where it flew off the other side and pulled the STE's base unit off the desk with it, the two landing on the carpeted floor with a soft thud.

He took a moment to compose himself. Slowly, he stood and walked around the desk to pick up the phone. Returning it to the desk and straightening some other items, he considered the new development in the situation. He felt like he was losing control. He had lost control. If Declan McIver was in Great Britain then any influence he had over the direction of the manhunt was at an end. Evers would keep him up to date, but he was no longer in charge and the information would be just that; information, not intelligence. Not the kind of thing that Kemiss needed to insure that instead of being arrested, McIver was eliminated.

Maybe it doesn't matter anymore
, he thought, as he ran a hand through his thinning hair and retook his seat behind his desk, closing his eyes. McIver's name had been so bloodied that maybe it didn't matter what he said when he was caught. Nobody would believe a word of it. But then if he was proved eventually to be correct, which Kemiss knew he would, then these things had a way of coming back. There was always some investigative reporter or some lawyer hungry for a book deal that would believe it and try to piece together exactly what had happened. The American public loved a conspiracy theory, and while nothing came of most of them, many of the government's secrets had been outed in just such a way. Whether it was the existence of the Navy SEALs, the lack of WMDs in Iraq, or the blow by blow details of the Osama Bin Laden raid, the media had a way of exposing things that nobody wanted exposed. While he couldn't be sure that an exposé would link back to him, he wasn't willing to risk it either. He had been careful, but the web that had been created was even beginning to confuse him. Had he made a mistake somewhere that might leave him exposed? It was possible and for that reason things would be far better off if Declan McIver were dead.

He leaned back in his chair and tried, for a moment, to put himself in the shoes of a man fleeing the law, a man fleeing a conspiracy. Where would he go? What would he be trying to accomplish? If McIver had wanted to disappear, then he would have done it. He never would have come back to the security company and put himself in harm's way, nearly getting himself caught. No, everything he had done had either been an overt move to try and expose the forces against him or a reaction to those forces' continued pressure. Now, in a different country, he had to believe that he had more room to breathe, to search for whatever it was that he was looking for. But what or who was he looking for?

Simard.
The name hung on the edge of Kemiss' mind for a moment. He opened his eyes. Lane Simard was in London. But how could McIver know about Simard? He couldn't. The Agency didn't publish the names of its employees, but that was the only connection that he could think of in Great Britain. He shook his head. Maybe McIver was just a desperate man on the run. He had a past in the British Isles. Maybe he was just running hard and fast, hoping that he wouldn't be found. Still, Kemiss had a nagging feeling that that wasn't the case. If McIver had somehow learned of Simard then there was a definite connection back to him. He had met with Simard personally and tasked the man with finding out everything the Brits had. He knew that Simard wouldn't break easily; the man was a trained spy. But that didn't matter. If he broke at all, then Kemiss was finished…but not if Simard was finished first.

He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and dialed a number.

"Lukas," he said, as the line was answered. "I have a problem that I need you to help me with."

9:26 p.m. Local Time – Friday

Cairngorms National Park

Six Miles Northwest of Ballater, Aberdeenshire – Scotland

"Aye, that's it, the B976." Shane said as he turned on the overhead light in the late '80s model Range Rover and looked at the map he had unfolded in his lap. "Middle of nowhere, innit?"

"Aye," Declan said looking at the signs on the side of the three way fork in the road. The SUV's headlights shone over a weathered metal sign with a brown background and white lettering that pointed west and gave directions to Balmoral and Braemar Castles, tourist attractions that wouldn't begin their open seasons for nearly a month. "Are you sure about this?"

"Aye, that's Gairnshiel Lodge," Shane said pointing to a smallish, Gothic era castle that sat a short distance off the road behind an ancient looking rock wall. "According to my source the drive's just another few miles down this road on the right."

"According to your source? You mean you've never been here before?"

"Like I said, Dec, I'm not exactly on the guest list when it comes to your lordships and ladies. I have an informer in Falkirk that's rather decent with a computer. He found the location and provided the directions."

"Grand. We've hacked our way to the secret location of the MI5 director's weekend home."

"Looks like a single track road. It's gonna be hard to spot the drive in the dark."

"Oh, what do ya mean?" Declan said, in a mocking tone. "I'm sure there's a bright neon sign."

"This was your idea," Shane said, as he shifted the Range Rover back into gear and the engine made a whining sound as he piloted the vehicle down the roughly paved, one lane road. From the passenger side, Declan watched as the ancient rock wall surrounding Gairnshiel Lodge passed by. In the distance he could make out the barren looking peaks of the Cairngorm mountains up ahead. In a matter of minutes they'd not only be in an extremely remote and forbidding wilderness, they'd be there in the pitch black of night.

After a mile, the rock wall ceased and a quickly flowing river joined the road on its right hand side, a metal guardrail preventing what little traffic probably traveled the road from accidentally taking a swim. The road continued on over small hills and valleys until the river retreated away into the distant fields on the right and finally the headlights of the SUV fell over a hollowed out stone building that looked like it had been standing since the days of Robert The Bruce, if not longer.

"There," Shane said, pointing to the building. "The drive's gotta be right here somewhere."

As soon as he said it, they passed a rough dirt road. Shane braked hard and shifted the SUV into reverse. Backing up, he turned right onto the road and slowly proceeded past the old stone building. Declan noted two knee high metal poles on each side of the drive as they entered.

The vehicle's shocks squeaked loudly as the Range Rover bounced through deep potholes filled with water that sloshed audibly as the tires passed through. The road wound down a hill between two fields, a waist high barbed wire fence on either side, before entering a cluster of trees. Declan looked left and right, but couldn't see anything through the tree cover; what little bit of light there was, was blocked by the thick forest. He could see his breath on the cold glass of the window as he strained his eyes. This place was dangerous, he could feel it.

"Supposedly Greumach Manor was originally built in the fourteenth century after the end of the First War of Scottish Independence," Shane said as the forest ended and the vehicle moved again into open terrain. "Robert The Bruce deeded the lands to his supporters in the Clan Graham and they've held them ever since."

Declan looked left at two more ruined stone buildings. "Aye, looks old enough."

"Rumor has it that the RAF built a base nearby that included a bunker for the Royals during World War II. It was supposedly an evacuation point for Balmoral Castle if the Royals happened to be in residence when the Germans attacked. The existence of the bunker has never been verified, but the possibility is enough to keep every chattering conspiracy monkey frothing at the mouth at what goes on there now that it's no longer needed. Just like Rudloe Manor in the south with all the rumors of aliens and such. Blarney, if you ask me."

The SUV bounced and groaned as it passed over a rickety bridge spanning a ten foot gap in the terrain where a small creek flowed. "Looks like the end of the road," Declan said, as the headlights fell over a metal gate that blocked the way, about twenty yards ahead of them.

Shane stopped the SUV. "I guess we knew it wouldn't be that easy."

Declan opened the passenger's side door and stepped out.

"Where're you going?"

"We passed several security sensors along the drive in. They know we're coming."

Shane's expression changed to one of concern. "What do we do?"

"Stay here and hope they don't shoot you on sight," Declan said, flashing a smile. "I'm going to make my way out and about a bit. See if I can't get a look at what's coming at us."

He quietly closed the door and moved away from the vehicle, the damp cold of the Scottish evening attacking him suddenly now that he was away from the heater inside the SUV. Having been in the car for over eight hours as they made the journey north, his joints popped and his muscles stretched now that he was moving. He ran into some tall grass beside the road and crept along a narrow ditch towards the metal gate. It wasn't a security gate, but rather the kind of gate you'd see on a cattle ranch or horse farm. What could be either a storage shed or guard house stood on the right hand side of the driveway, its wood blackened by the moist weather and harsh temperatures. Along both sides of the gate was a rock wall that amounted to a pile of stones about eight feet high, held in place by wooden posts and mesh fencing. It was clear that whoever lived here wasn't expecting any visitors, nor were they prepared for any kind of security needs. Had he not seen the hastily placed sensor poles when they'd pulled onto the drive, there wouldn't have been any sign of security at all.