Nemesis (18 page)

But Purkiss knew she was beyond that.

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J
ust as the dawn was delayed this far north, so the dusk arrived earlier. The day had been overcast, and the failing light merely deepened the existing gloom.

Rossiter climbed to the top of the broch again, as he’d done in the early hours of the morning. This time, the ground below was silent, not teeming with activity. The sea all around was restless, discontented. Even the circling gulls sounded troubled.

It was a serious setback. Rossiter was nothing if not honest with himself. And it would make next time that much more difficult.

But setbacks were just that. Obstacles to be overcome, or circumvented.

He’d watched a few of the news reports down below, in the modified caverns. A suspected terrorist incident had been thwarted at King’s Cross Station. Depending on how much information was allowed to leak out, over the next few days the
incident
would be upgraded to
major catastrophe
.

Saburova had called him at three ten in the afternoon to report that she’d collected the item, at the rendezvous point in Barnet, North London.

Half an hour later, she’d rung to confirm: the package was in place at King’s Cross.

And she was meeting Purkiss, together with the Russian who had apparently survived the attack last night.

At just after five, the intuition Rossiter had honed over the decades, the one every operative of his experience learned to cultivate, began to tell him something was amiss.

He called Saburova’s number.

And got a dead tone.

Less than five minutes later, his phone rang.

‘She’s been terminated. The item has been found and is in the process of being deactivated.’

And so it ended.

Rossiter said, without emotion: ‘What happened?’

‘Purkiss. I don’t know how, exactly, yet. But he took her down.’

‘Are we compromised?’

‘No. He had no opportunity to interrogate her. She was struck by a train. Dead before the medics arrived.’

Rossiter thought for a moment.

‘I’ll close up here,’ he said. ‘No point in taking chances.’

‘We’ll need a period of cooling off.’

‘Agreed.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’m hardly going to tell you that.’ Rossiter ended the call.

*

B
y seven o’clock, preparations for the exodus were almost finalised. Rossiter considered striking out immediately. But he knew it would be better to wait until darkness had fallen completely.

He’d worked down below, co-ordinating his men – all six of them – and allowing himself a brief glance at the clock at six p.m. That was when the timer had been set to go off. The remainder of the caesium he’d obtained from the Iranian, the Locksmith, would have been seeded throughout the Underground system.

And London would have become a dead zone. If not physically, necessarily, then certainly psychologically and symbolically.

And the old enemy, Russia, would have been to blame.

Disappointment was an emotion Rossiter no longer experienced. He’d cauterised those particular nerve endings a long time ago. It was the only way to survive life.

From the broch, he watched the Eurocopter crew make their way to where the chopper squatted on a flat stretch of land, a hundred yards from the caverns. He would leave with the crew. The rest of the men would take the boat moored to the small jetty.

It was a pity, Rossiter reflected, that McCammon was no longer with him. He’d been useful, and shrewd. But he’d been cut down on the Merseyside docks along with the others, part of a ruse which had, it appeared, failed to work.

Still. One learned from one’s mistakes.

High above, the thin drone of an aircraft, presumably on its way to Scandinavia or across the Arctic, cut through the vast silence.

Saburova was a loss, too. She was on the opposite side, and yet on the same side as Rossiter. She, too, resented the way the great adversaries of the Cold War had become bit players on the world stage. And she, like Rossiter, wanted to see her organisation assume its rightful prominence in her country’s life once again.

They still had Mossberg, Rossiter thought. He would be useful. He was now in Teheran, being pumped for his nuclear expertise. In reality, what he would be giving the Iranians was disinformation, designed to impede their progress towards developing weaponry rather than speeding it up. Perhaps there was a way of working him into future plans.

Rossiter closed his eyes, inhaled deeply of the wild sea air.

It was time to get moving.

He climbed down the side of the broch, taking care in the gloom.

At the base, he glanced across to the southern edge of the islet.

And saw the figures closing in, silent and black.

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T
he four men with Purkiss hadn’t given their names, nor had he offered his. They’d said nothing to him during the flight.

They were paratroopers, but he didn’t know from what division. They wore no insignia, no identifying marks. He recognised their weapons, though. L85A1 assault rifles.

Vale had come through.

When Purkiss had emerged into the hubbub of the station, the delays down below significant as the armed officers had tried to detain him, he’d headed for the exit, his phone already in his hand.

‘The bomb’s secured and Saburova is dead.’

A slight pause was all the relief Vale offered. ‘First class, John.’

‘I know where Rossiter is. I need you to procure military transport for me with full urgency. Plus some personnel. And Quentin.’

‘Yes.’

‘You need to do it yourself. Don’t involve the Service.’

Purkiss waited for an objection, or at least a question. But Vale said, ‘That should be within the bounds of possibility.’

*

B
y six o’clock, little more than an hour later, Purkiss was boarding the transport plane at an airfield in Hertfordshire, north of the city. The four men aboard gave him the once over before ignoring him.

He strapped the pack onto his back. He’d made night-time jumps as part of his Service training, but that was more than a decade ago and he hadn’t used the skill since. He hoped it was like riding a bicycle. Once learned, never forgotten.

A spare assault rifle had been provided for him. He declined it. In a shoulder holster he carried the SIG P226 and a spare magazine.

He waited until they were airborne before issuing the scant instructions that were necessary.

‘Creag Innis is an islet on the western edge of the Shetlands, without a civilian population. Approximately one kilometre by two in area. Mainly rock, but with some woodland.’

He’d gleaned the information on the way to the airfield.

‘The number of hostiles is unknown,’ he continued. ‘As is the nature of their training. We have to assume it’s military. The primary target is this man, Richard Rossiter.’

He held up his phone. The four men studied the image in turn.

‘Capture where possible, but it’s not essential. That goes for everyone there.’

And that was the extent of their interaction.

*

T
hey dropped into the darkness, the suddenness of finding himself suspended thousands of feet above the ground profoundly disorientating to Purkiss.

At first, the cluster of islets below was bewildering, and Purkiss was concerned that they’d miss their target and be stranded on some obscure rock. But as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the tiny lights below.

The helicopter took shape, far beneath them. Purkiss used it as an anchor point.

His landing was rough, the jolt as he made contact with the earth shaking though his hips and his spine. He wrestled with the ’chute and collapsed it before the wind could start to tug it away. He stowed it and dropped the pack on the ground.

The four other men were already on the move.

They’d landed on a slope of scrubland, near the edge of the water. As they reached the ridge at the top of the slope, they flattened themselves.

Over to the right, a hundred yards distant, the helicopter’s rotor blades had started to sweep in a slow arc. Ahead, and slightly to the left, a hillock rose to some kind of ancient structure at the summit. In the base of the hillock there appeared to be some kind of door, a light shining dimly above it.

Beyond the hillock, the spikes of pine woodland formed a ragged skyline.

Purkiss had to assume Rossiter was on board the chopper.

He signalled silently to the other men. The one nearest nodded.

Rising from their bellies, the five of them began to advance on the helicopter at a crouch.

Purkiss saw the glint of movement at the same time as the others and flattened himself once more as the explosion of light along the helicopter’s side was followed by the staccato crash of automatic fire and the air around them teemed with the whine of projectiles. The rock and soil chipped and spattered and Purkiss curled into a ball, minimising his exposed surface area.

From their prone position, the four men began to return fire, the hammering of their weapons as relentless and methodical as a drill. The helicopter’s machine gun started up again, its roar louder than the assault rifles.

One of the men gasped and rolled and jerked.

Purkiss crawled so that he could keep the hillock in his line of vision. The door remained closed.

He saw two of the men scramble for cover behind a cluster of boulders. They pressed themselves on either side of it and loosed off bursts at the helicopter.

The remaining man raised a hand, looking at Purkiss, and gestured towards the hillock.

Purkiss nodded.

At a stoop, they ran towards the door in its base.

The other man was ahead. He was almost at the door when it was flung open.

He didn’t hesitate, opening fire in a short burst. Purkiss saw a figure lurch backwards.

He reached the door.

And heard a sound, off to the left. Distant but unmistakable.

The noise of an outboard motor starting up.

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P
urkiss ran, stooping again, the SIG held low and in both hands.

Behind him, the chatter of submachine gun fire echoed inside whatever chambers or tunnels were in the base of the hillock. Further back, the helicopter’s gun had fallen silent.

He followed the rasp of the motor, its sound like a chainsaw. Heard it growing louder as he approached the tip of the islet.

He reached the lip of a shallow cliff and looked down.

A narrow cove with a patch of rocky beach lay below, a twenty-foot drop. A single boat was just beginning its turn away from the shore.

The figure at the tiller was indistinct. But Purkiss knew.

He looked down. He could scramble to the beach without difficulty, but it would cost him time.

Bracing his gun arm by gripping his wrist in his left fist, Purkiss took aim with the SIG P226.

He fired. Twice. Three times.

Four.

The boat continued on its path out to sea.

Purkiss slid down the rock face on his backside, the SIG as level as he could hold it. As he hit the ground at the bottom, he fired again.

Three more shots. Four.

He ran down the short length of beach, slowed, took aim.

Fired the last two rounds.

For a moment he thought he’d made a hit, because the boat listed a little to one side. But it corrected itself, and went on its way.

Purkiss slammed the spare magazine in and began advancing into the water, feeling its freeze rising up his legs.

He pulled the trigger as he waded through the black water.

Six shots, in groups of two.

Two more.

The boat was becoming smaller, the darkness swallowing it up.

Purkiss drew breath.

He had two shots left.

If he used them, and succeeded, he’d be effectively unarmed.

If the man in the boat had a gun, he’d turn it on Purkiss.

But at least Purkiss would have achieved his main goal, which was to stop him from getting away.

He sighted down his arm and along the smooth length of the pistol.

Felt himself become one with the gun.

He squeezed back on the trigger.

The boat veered wildly, its nose arrowing upwards and sideways, its motor roaring as if in protest.

Then the sound cut out, and momentum carried the boat sideways and forwards a few feet before it ebbed to a standstill.

He saw the figure in the boat twist to face him.

*

T
he waves lapped and churned against his torso. He’d waded far enough that he was in up to his waist. Any deeper and his footing would be compromised.

Purkiss watched the man place both hands on the edge of the boat as it bobbed, adrift, on the surface of the sea.

The man swung his legs over the side, and sank into the water.

He struck out towards Purkiss, swimming strongly. Purkiss backed off a little, feeling the suck of the tide and compensating for it.

When the man was twenty feet away, he rose from the water, the level at the height of his chest.

He tipped his head back, gazing at Purkiss, his face pale in the dim glinting light from the surface.

‘So here it ends,’ he said.

It was the first time Purkiss had heard Rossiter’s voice since he’d visited him in the one-man prison, the Box, two summers ago. Then, their conversation had been almost urbane.

Distantly, far behind, the sounds of gunfire punctuated the night.

‘In the water,’ said Rossiter. ‘Just like before.’

Yes. Just like that October morning on the Baltic Sea.

Like two sparring partners sizing one another up in the ring, they began to move towards each other.

Purkiss had the advantage, he knew. He wasn’t as deep in the water as Rossiter, which afforded him more mobility, more control over his actions.

He was more than a decade younger than the other man.

And he’d been active in the field continuously, while Rossiter had been a prisoner for more than two years, permitted exercise but hardly subject to the kind of physical challenges Purkiss had faced and overcome.