Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) (35 page)

Harry checked the cleaning lady wasn’t looking, then drew his gun and followed Rik through, closing the door behind him.

They were at the bottom of a flight of stairs piled with cardboard boxes and stacks of floor tiles. At the top was another door with the Yale lock and handle on this side.

The door opened onto a polished tiled hallway. To their right another flight of stairs led upwards, and beyond that, the hallway ran down to the front of the building.

The stairs to the upper floors were wide, carpeted down the centre, with a wood and metal bannister polished with years of use.

‘Straight up?’ whispered Rik. He drew his gun and slipped off the safety.

‘Might as well. Knock and wait.’ In Harry’s experience, pretending to be a water official or a delivery man only worked if you had sight of the people you were calling on and their suspicions were low to zero. Anyone armed and in hiding on the other side of the door would take any such pretence to be just that, and were likely to start shooting instead.

Rik reached the door first and knocked a light rat-tat, then stood to one side and waited, with Harry on the other side.

No answer. He knocked again. A door slammed down the hallway, to the rear of the building, followed by the sound of footsteps. Another door banged.

Harry stepped out from the wall and looked down the hallway.

‘It’s them – they had a back way out.’ He began running, while Rik took a step back and kicked the door open and disappeared inside.

Harry reached a door at the end of the hall, down a short flight of steps. It was part of an extension to the main building, with a side window giving a narrow view to the rear, and he guessed it gave out onto the street he and Rik had seen at the back. He tried the door. Solid and unmoving, opening towards him. It would take an axe to get through it.

He ran back to the apartment and found Rik standing in a living room littered with discarded pizza boxes and beer cans. A huge plasma television was on with the sound muted, showing a children’s programme.

‘If it was them,’ said Rik, ‘they travelled light.’

Harry bent to one side of an armchair. He picked up a small can of Birchwood Casey gun oil lying on its side, dripping its contents onto the parquet flooring. Near it, just under the edge of the chair, something shiny caught his eye.

It was a single round of 9mm ammunition.

H
arry put down the can and called Ballatyne. The MI6 man answered immediately. ‘Where’s your watcher? The targets are on the move out the back. We’re blocked and need some eyeball backup.’

‘No problem.’ Ballatyne sounded unnaturally calm. ‘We’ve got a live map of the area on-screen. Make your way to the front. Bruce will be waiting for you. His controller will guide you from there. Out.’

Harry turned and ran through the building and down the stairs, with Rik hard on his heels. Going out of the front door, he remembered to put away his gun in time before coming under the curious gaze of the press pack.

The blue BMW was still there, the engine ticking over quietly. The chauffeur lifted a hand. ‘Tate and Ferris? Jump in and buckle up. The name’s Bruce.’

‘I’m Harry, he’s Rik.’

The BMW tore away from the kerb, narrowly missing a photographer being artistic outside the besieged embassy. As he came to the end of the road, Bruce hit a button on a central console, and a stream of radio chatter came out over the powerful hum of the engine.

‘Targets on foot . . . could be heading for a multi-storey right behind. No, wait. Targets approaching dark saloon . . . an Astra, in Pavilion Road. Getting in and heading south, south, along Pavilion. Stay on that heading.’

Harry was amazed. ‘You’ve got a helicopter up there?’

‘Good timing, huh? Your boss thought they might come out like rats from a burning barn. They cruised into position five minutes ago.’ He calmly steered the BMW through the narrow streets and locked onto the course provided by the controller’s commentary.

‘They’re going south,’ said Rik.

Bruce nodded. ‘Chelsea Bridge, I reckon.’ He squeezed through a gap between a builder’s lorry and a taxi, shifting skilfully through the gears and playing the brakes and accelerator for maximum effect. All the time he sat back as though in an armchair at home.

‘How do you know it’s them?’ Harry asked.

‘Your two subjects were in all night and they were using the Astra yesterday. It’s a hire car but we haven’t got the name yet.’

‘It’ll be false, anyway,’ said Rik.

‘Makes sense. They popped out earlier for breakfast. We didn’t have the resources for a full box surveillance, so I stayed on them all the time. Easy enough job, though.’

‘Just you?’ said Harry. He knew well that mounting a full, round-the-clock surveillance was very heavy on man-power and resources, but Ballatyne had said nothing about the level of commitment given to this operation.

‘Just me. There were no stops, no drops and no contacts. Can’t tell what they were doing once they were inside, of course. The tall one’s in charge and shorty’s the driver.’ He paused to listen as the controller gave an update feed on the Astra’s location. ‘This driver’s good, whoever he is. Very good. I don’t think he knows we’re on him yet, but if he gets a sniff of us, we might have a chase on our hands. He must know the ground pretty well.’

‘He doesn’t,’ said Harry. ‘As far as we know it’s their first time here.’

‘Really?’ Bruce was even more impressed. ‘Good thing we’ve got eyes in the sky, then.’

Harry wondered at his calm demeanour, and sensed he was happier chatting, even when concentrating. ‘Do you do this a lot?’

‘As much as I can.’ He grinned. ‘I used to drive interceptors with Essex Police, in Subaru Imprezas. Then I got a transfer to this lot. This is a lot more fun.’

‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ Harry told him. ‘You know these two are armed, don’t you?’

‘So I noticed. Bad boys.’

‘Bad enough. How did you notice?’

‘The way they walked, the way they sat, holding one hand against their jackets. Classic signs when someone’s carrying.’

A burst of chatter interrupted to tell them that the speeding Astra had crossed the river and was heading towards the south-east. Moments later, it was crossing the A3, still heading in the same direction and using back streets which were less busy. Local police patrols were being warned to stay well clear and give the men in the Astra no reason to start shooting.

‘Where’s he going?’ Bruce mused aloud. ‘There’s Heathrow, Gatwick or the Channel – that’s all there is down this way, unless he’s got another hidey-hole.’

‘Blue One, the target’s picking up speed.’ The controller’s voice was cool, economical. ‘Estimates are he’s heading for Herne Hill, Dulwich and Catford areas, then further south.’

‘Why would he pick up speed?’ asked Rik. ‘He can’t see us.’

‘He doesn’t have to,’ said Bruce. ‘He knows we’re here.’ He accelerated again, whipping past a bus and two cars, slipping past a traffic island on the wrong side before slotting back onto the right side of the road. ‘The good ones have an instinct. If they’ve done this before, they pick up the signs somehow. Same as us when we see a suspect car; it doesn’t look right. Can’t tell you why, it just does. Nine times out of ten, we’re right. He might not even be trying to outrun us – he could be fixing to get some space between us so he can dump the car and walk away.’

Suddenly the controller uttered a mild curse. ‘
Signal’s going . . . we’re losing pictures. Trying to recover . . . Blue One, picture’s gone . . . last seen target was slowing down, slowing down hard. Be ready to decamp
.’

‘Why no picture?’ Bruce cried. ‘And why now?’

They were fast approaching a crossroads, with minimum traffic in sight. Then, just beyond it, they saw the Astra. It had almost stopped, and seemed to be idling in the centre of the road. They were now close enough to see two figures inside. Suddenly it sat back on its suspension and pulled away hard, blue smoke issuing from the exhaust.

‘He’s off,’ said Bruce. ‘Over to you. What do you want me to do?’

Harry considered the consequences. The longer this chase continued, the more likely it was that the Russians would either panic and start shooting, or they would get away. Without the overhead camera coverage, there were too many side roads the Astra could duck into, losing their pursuers in an instant.

‘Go for it,’ Harry said. He and Rik took out their weapons and did a quick check, then sat and waited for Bruce to find a suitable place to stop the Astra. This was his expertise and they were just along for the ride.

‘Hold onto your panties, girls,’ Bruce murmured, and tramped hard on the accelerator, sending the BMW streaking towards the traffic lights, which were green and clear. The row of houses and shops became a blur, and figures on the pavements seemed frozen in mid-step.

‘Look out right!’ Rik yelled a warning just as a dark shape loomed up on that side, filling the windows.

A large 4X4 had deliberately jumped the lights.

Before Bruce could react, there was a sickening blow against the rear wing, ripping the BMW off-course and sending it into a neck-wrenching spin. The tyres shrieked in protest and a shower of glass fell around the interior of the car as the windows gave way under the force of the collision.

Harry managed to stuff his gun inside his jacket and hold on, grabbing hold of the door handle and the seat belt to stay upright, while feeling the sharp torque of the whiplash effect as the car spun and rocked on its suspension, with Brice fighting the wheel to keep it upright.

Then the world stopped moving just as suddenly as it had started, and they were left in total silence as the engine stuttered and died.

‘He’s gone!’ Bruce shouted furiously, twisting in his seat for a sighting of the vehicle that had hit them. He spat out a mouthful of blood. ‘Damn, I bit my tongue.
Bastards
!’

Harry unhooked his seat belt and climbed out, followed by Rik, nursing his elbow from the collision. Bruce was right, there was no sign of the other car, and the Astra had also disappeared.

‘It was a set-up,’ Bruce muttered sourly, joining them on the side of the road and stretching his neck with a wince of pain. ‘They had another car waiting to run interference.’ He looked at Harry. ‘Who the hell are those people?’

‘Foreigners,’ Harry told him. ‘They all drive like that.’

‘Blue One . . . come in. Blue One . . . you OK?’

‘W
hat a shit hole.’ Serkhov shivered and pulled his jacket collar up around his chin. He and Votrukhin were standing outside an abandoned cottage with a corrugated iron roof, set against a grey, sludgy expanse of the Thames where it spilled out into the sea.

After being forced to flee the apartment in Knightsbridge, they had taken a prearranged route through south London, using small hotels for one night each while awaiting further instructions, aware that this mission was now almost certainly over.

Votrukhin in particular had been shocked at coming so close to being caught by the two security men, and had angrily asked Gorelkin how they could have been traced to that address. Gorelkin had expressed no specific opinion, suggesting in a roundabout fashion that he and Serkhov must have been careless. It had been enough to leave the atmosphere between them soured and distrustful.

The next time Gorelkin called, it was with orders to make their way north to a point on the coast of Essex, just across the Thames.

‘What about the hire car?’ asked Serkhov.

‘The car doesn’t matter,’ Gorelkin insisted. ‘You won’t be returning it, anyway.’

Their destination was near Canvey Island, on the Thames Estuary. The car’s satnav guided them along a winding lane lined with houses and fields. Then the houses stopped, leaving nothing but scrubby fields and what looked like mud flats. It looked bleak and unwelcoming, driving both men into an even more sombre mood than before.

‘Wait right at the end, on the point,’ Gorelkin had told them earlier. ‘A deep water channel runs close to the shore. A trawler will pick you up and take you to Ostende, where you’ll be picked up.’

‘Why can’t we fly out?’ Serkhov had queried. He was past caring what Gorelkin thought of his questions and just wanted to get the hell out of this godforsaken country any way he could.

‘All airfields are being monitored, that’s why,’ Gorelkin had replied tersely. ‘You go anywhere near one and you’ll be picked up. Nobody is watching trawlers leaving the coast.’

It made sense and Serkhov had shrugged it off. As long as the trawler didn’t sink, he could put up with a few hours at sea. Anything was better than sitting around waiting for the British security services to pick them up.

‘We’d better wait inside,’ Votrukhin murmured, and walked over to the cottage and kicked open the door. The interior was a ruin, the brick walls bare of plaster, the floor a concrete slab riddled with cracks and littered with old bricks and planks, the roof a mass of holes. But it would do until they could leave.

‘What about the car?’

‘Leave it. People come down here to walk dogs and watch birds. By the time the boat comes it will be almost dark.’ Votrukhin piled two stacks of bricks and placed a plank across, forming a rough bench. He sat down gingerly, then pulled out a packet of mints. He took two and offered the packet to Serkhov, but the sergeant shook his head and sat beside him.

‘I still don’t get how Gorelkin arranged for us to dodge those security people,’ Serkhov murmured. ‘They nearly had us, then suddenly, gone.’

‘Don’t question it,’ Votrukhin replied. ‘We followed instructions, it got us out of a jam. End of subject.’ Even he, however, had been left wondering how their boss had managed it. From having no support whatsoever, they now had someone watching their backs and intercepting a close pursuit. All it had taken was a phone call instructing them to slow right down at a particular set of traffic lights along their route, then take off the moment they saw the other car coming.

All he knew was that it was the best piece of stage-management Gorelkin had ever managed.