Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) (7 page)

He and his companions were seated in the corner of the Park Room in the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. It was mid-morning and reasonably quiet, but a suitable tip to the service manager had ensured that nobody else would be seated near them, guaranteeing privacy.

And they needed it. Having dealt with Roman Tobinskiy, a relatively simple matter for men with the right skills, they were now faced with a much more urgent one: the disappearance of a patient in a room near Tobinskiy’s, who may have heard everything that had happened and could, if pushed, explode her news onto the world’s stage. That, as Gorelkin had warned them more than once, simply could not happen.

Alongside Gorelkin were Lt Votrukhin, the team leader, and next to him, toying uneasily with a sugar bowl, Sgt Serkhov. Gorelkin’s question, however, was addressed primarily to the fourth man at the table, who seemed unaffected by the senior Russian’s rancid mood.

‘We look in all the right places, Sergei.’ George Henry Paulton looked cheerily back at him and tapped the table, commanding attention. ‘You asked for my help in tracking someone down, and that’s what I’m here for.’ He shifted in his chair and gazed out of the window over the morning traffic in Park Lane, across to the green swathe of Hyde Park. He would have preferred being out there, feeling the springiness of the turf beneath his feet and breathing in the crisp morning air, rather than doing a grunt job of looking for some missing woman. But he had to be here with these three FSB thugs instead. It wasn’t the best start to any day, but he’d had little choice when the phone call had come through. There were some people you didn’t say no to. And Gorelkin, an unwelcome echo from his own past which right now he could not afford to be made public, was one of them.

‘Did you know, gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘that London has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV cameras anywhere in the civilised world?’

‘What of it?’ Gorelkin murmured. ‘You British are paranoid. How does that help us with our problem?’

‘Let me give you an example: I could tell Corporal Serkhov here to walk a mile from here in any direction and, given a couple of hours, I could track him every step of the way. I could tell you what he was wearing, what the traffic was like, if the sun was shining – even when he looked rather too closely at a pretty girl along the way.’

Sergeant Serkhov muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath at the implied demotion, but it wasn’t entirely directed at Paulton. As a long-time FSB operative, he had no love of cameras.

‘We have them in Moscow, too.’ Votrukhin put in, sounding almost defensive. ‘Are you saying you can use them to find this woman? That will take forever!’

‘Not all of them, no. Just a few key locations to show us which direction she took, beginning with the area around the hospital. From there we track her progress, playing leapfrog.’

Serkhov looked puzzled, and Votrukhin explained what it meant.

‘It’s quicker than going through them all. Once we have one sighting, there’s a new piece of body recognition software that takes care of the rest.’ He smiled at their doubting expressions. ‘It acts like a template, picking out any figure with similar characteristics, even in a football crowd.’

‘You sound very sure of yourself,’ said Gorelkin.

‘I am. This is my turf, don’t forget. I can use that to my advantage.’

Serkhov frowned. ‘Turf? What is that?’

‘He means it’s his back garden,’ Votrukhin muttered sourly. ‘He knows it like he knows his home.’

‘Quite right, Fyodor.’ Paulton was indifferent to the lieutenant’s tone. ‘I have a feel for this city. I also know how frightened people think . . . how they react when they’re on the run. I know all the likely places they’d run to.’ He tapped the table again. ‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You still haven’t told me the name of the person you’re looking for.’

Gorelkin gestured at Votrukhin to go ahead, and the lieutenant said, ‘The name on the hospital chart was Jardine. Clare Jardine.’

A few moments went by, and Paulton felt the air contract about his head as the name came whistling back out of the past. But he kept his face carefully blank as his mind raced over the possibilities. A giant coincidence? Or the playful hand of fate?

Jardine – if it was the same one – was just a name; he’d never had the dubious pleasure of meeting its owner. But clearly something these Russian clowns weren’t aware of was that the woman they had mislaid, the same woman who had been in an adjacent room to where the troublesome Tobinskiy had breathed his final breath, could in all likelihood be a former MI6 operative who had killed her own boss with a concealed knife blade. Given half a chance, she would undoubtedly like to add his name to the list, too, if she ever laid eyes on him. The thought made his bowels twitch.

He also knew that Jardine had helped Harry Tate not so long ago on a job that had very nearly ended with Paulton’s capture. He’d been lucky to escape that by the narrowest margin. Jardine, however, had been shot and very nearly killed by a Bosnian gunman working with Paulton. He hadn’t given a thought afterwards about where she had gone to. Now, it seemed, he had a possible answer. How many Clare Jardines could there be, after all, being treated for gunshot wounds in specialist medical units?

He swore silently while pretending to run the name through his mental database. He could kid himself that if he’d known from the outset who he was being asked to trace, he would have refused to come. But deep down he knew that was a lie. In spite of staying below the radar, Gorelkin had been able to get in touch with him quite easily to make this demand. It would have been simple, had Paulton refused, for the FSB man to have passed on details of his whereabouts to MI5 and MI6, both of which had his name on search-and-detain lists.

In any case, he had to confirm first of all that it was the same woman. Even knowing something deep down wasn’t enough; always check and double-check, a basic rule of intelligence work.

‘Can you do this?’ Gorelkin interrupted his thoughts. The Russian sounded excited. In his senior position in the Division for the Defence of the Constitution, he undoubtedly received a regular flood of information culled from all over the world about new technological advances, much of it aimed at security, surveillance, espionage and law enforcement. He would have heard of this latest digital development, might even have seen it working.

‘I don’t actually have access to it myself,’ Paulton told him smoothly. ‘But I have a contact in the Metropolitan Police who can arrange for a search to be made.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘It would take a small fee, of course, but I’m sure that’s not a problem, is it?’

‘How much?’ Gorelkin’s sour mood had evaporated, as if fanned away by the promise of positive action, and he was now almost jovial, like an indulgent parent being asked for pocket money by a child.

‘It depends how badly – and how quickly – you want to find her.’

Gorelkin gave a cold smile. ‘Very badly and right now. Good enough?’

Paulton nodded and took out a mobile phone. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He excused himself and walked away, leaving the three Russians staring at each other.

‘Can we trust this pompous little shit?’ asked Votrukhin sourly. He was still smarting from being held responsible for not seeing a possible threat from the Jardine woman. And now this Englishman with the all-knowing attitude was making the job look like a walk in the park across the way. ‘Where does he get his expertise and contacts?’

Gorelkin looked at him. ‘There was a time, Votrukhin, my friend, when that pompous little shit, as you call him, would have been tracking
you
right now through this city. He would have had a discreet mobile team around you the moment you stepped off the plane and would have known where you went, who you saw, when you scratched your arse and on which side. And you wouldn’t have known they were there. And all that without this –’ he waved a circular finger in the air – ‘fancy camera technology. Paulton used to be an operations director for MI5. And he was very good at what he did.’

‘So why is he helping us now?’ asked Serkhov.

‘He’s a capitalist at heart; he joined the private sector. I believe it pays better and he gets to choose what he does.’

‘So we’re paying him?’ Serkhov looked puzzled by the idea. He was more accustomed to telling people what to do; if they complied, which was nearly always, it was because he had the means and information that left them with little choice. Life was simple that way.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Gorelkin considered the matter for a moment. ‘Let me put it this way: Paulton owes me one or two favours. I helped keep him out of jail once he left his position in MI5, and he performed certain . . . tasks for me in return. Tasks his former masters would almost certainly not approve of. Paulton knows I like bargains to be kept, and his payment for helping us now is that he gets to live a little longer.’ He glanced at Votrukhin as Paulton walked back into the room, slipping his mobile into his pocket. ‘As to your question about whether we can trust him, not in a million years. He’s a traitor born and bred. You should bear that in mind.’

Paulton sensed, as he returned to the table, that the Russians had been talking about him. It didn’t bother him; he’d have been amazed if they hadn’t. He was, after all, a former enemy, even though he was now helping them out in their dirty hour of need. Suspicions would be natural on both sides. But he was determined that this would be the last time Gorelkin crooked his finger at him like a master summoning a servant. He’d do this one job, but not merely because Gorelkin had demanded it. He had a much broader plan in mind; one which would see him triumph over adversity. He hadn’t yet finalised the full details, but the framework was there.

Then a great many people would find the tables turned.

He’d made a call to his contact in the Met, just as he’d told the Russians. It added slightly to the risk of exposure, but his choices were limited if he wanted to make this visit as productive as possible. What Gorelkin and his goons didn’t know was that he’d made a second call, this to a person high up the food chain, a person with the means and position in the intelligence community to assist his return to the UK – and not under a false flag and a silly beard, either.

That same person had also given him the information he was after: it was indeed former MI6 killer Clare Jardine who had been in King’s College until the other night. Not that he was about to tell the Russians just yet. Better to keep some things back and retain a home advantage. But the information made his next course of action quite simple: find Jardine, turn her over to Gorelkin and his thugs, then set about selling them all as part of his retirement plan to come back home for good.

It made using his contact in the Met Police even more urgent. It might burn the man if anyone caught him with his hands on the CCTV search button, but that was too bad. He’d have to make it worth his while.

He was tired of running. Tired of looking over his shoulder. Tired of wondering if Harry Tate – no,
knowing
– was out there somewhere, waiting to take him down.

It was time to come in.

All he needed was a bargaining tool that they simply couldn’t turn down.

‘She’s got nowhere to run,’ he announced as he sat down. ‘She’s the product of a care home. She got caught in a gang shooting in Streatham, south London and King’s College was the nearest unit.’

‘But she understood Russian,’ Gorelkin muttered. ‘How is that possible for a girl from a care home?’

Paulton thought quickly. ‘Simple. She was said to be running with a couple of Ukrainians at the time she was shot.’ The lie came easily. It was better than giving them anything they could fasten on and double-check, and was part of the trade-craft he’d learned many years ago: use elements of the truth for real colour, but sprinkled liberally with facts that were difficult or impossible to verify. The delay would give him time to engineer something himself. Part of the bargain for coming in. ‘Even Ukrainians go in for pillow talk, don’t they?’

‘Ukrainians.’ Gorelkin looked disappointed and Paulton knew why. In the Russian’s world, family members offered a bargaining tool; a leverage point. But gang members weren’t family and couldn’t be coerced – even assuming they could be tracked down.

‘Don’t worry,’ Paulton said smoothly, and indicated the two FSB operatives. ‘I have my resources. Your men can start looking and I’ll get things rolling. I should have some answers in a couple of hours. Perhaps I could have a mobile number to contact you?’

Gorelkin flicked a finger at Votrukhin to give Paulton his number. ‘You can talk to him. He will pass messages to me.’

Paulton nodded. Gorelkin was being very careful, using his man as a cut-out. It was standard cell procedure. If anyone locked onto Votrukhin, it would end there.

‘N
othing.’ Rik handed Harry a coffee and nodded at the laptop screen, open on his living room table. The air in the room was stuffy and the machine’s fan cooler was whirring busily, pointing to a long period of constant use. In the street outside, traffic noises signalled life in the Paddington area going on as usual.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No mention of any prison transfers of females below the age of forty in the last five days. Unless they dropped her into the system without a tag, which I suppose could be possible, she’s not in there. Knowing the way their bureaucratic minds work, they’d have had to provide her with a file, even if they’d given her a cover name. But the bio and physical details would have had to be similar, and I found nothing like a reasonable match.’

Harry agreed. Even given MI6’s possible involvement, the civil service minds would have demanded some appropriate, if false, paperwork for a prisoner transfer, if only for health and safety reasons. And there was only so much fudging of details possible before somebody noticed and shouted out loud.

‘What else?’

‘About Tobinskiy, the usual stuff, mostly going back some years.’ Rik pointed at a small stack of A4 sheets on a sideboard next to an inkjet printer. ‘I printed off what was relevant for you, just in case. Since Litvinenko got iced, Tobinskiy’s been keeping a low profile. He published some bits and pieces supporting calls for an investigation into the murder and Putin himself, but always through third parties. I trawled through photos as well, but they were all old, too. If the FSB taught him one thing, it was how to disappear. Until now, anyway.’