Retribution (15 page)

‘How quaint. What's so scary about me?'

‘You look like you represent The Machine, that's what.' Rik did bunny ears with his fingers and drawled, ‘Like, Establishment, dude.'

Rik was pulling his chain. He changed the subject. ‘What about Koslov – anything new?'

‘Other than the details Deane gave you, no. No photos, either. He's either left the army and gone into private work, or he's gone off the grid for other reasons.'

Harry knew what that meant: Koslov was either using his military training and skills working for some rich oligarch, or was now employed by the Russian government in a quasi-military capacity. He'd already fed the number into his mobile along with Pendry's and Bikovsky's. He'd try him when he got a moment.

‘And anything out of Kosovo?'

‘Bits and pieces. Some repeat chatter about a dead girl from way back, but no specifics. The press are hinting at fresh claims against the UN, but it's all being played down. I get the feeling they're waiting for some hard evidence to come out. When it does, it'll be gloves off.'

‘Let's hope they're kept waiting.'

‘There's something else.' Rik scratched his head, a sign that he was nervous.

‘What is it?'

‘Did you know that every time you visit Clare, your name is sent to Six?'

Harry didn't rise to it. He had never told Rik about his visits to the Trauma Centre because he knew he didn't care for Clare Jardine. But Rik had found out anyway.

‘You checking up on me?' he muttered.

‘No. No. I just . . . wondered how she was doing.' Rik put his glass down. He looked sheepish.

‘You hacked into the records. Are you nuts? Ballatyne will skin you alive if he finds out.'

‘He won't. The system's wide open. Anyone could get in there – even you.'

‘Thanks. What else did you discover?'

Rik cleared his throat. ‘It was scary reading.'

‘Gunshot wounds usually are. She was lucky, though; she should pull through.' If she wants to, he thought, echoing the nurse's comment. She'll still be bloody dangerous.

‘I guess. There was a record of visitors. Well, one: you.'

Harry wasn't surprised that visits were recorded. Ballatyne would have requested it.

‘How come,' Rik asked, ‘she's not in a secure ward?'

Harry shook his head. ‘Where would she go?' In reality, he knew the answer to that. He'd pressured Ballatyne into dropping any charges against Clare. She'd saved two lives and nearly lost her own in the process, and that, he'd argued, was on the plus side of the balance sheet.

He left Rik in the bar and went to the reception desk for his key. The crowd had gone and the receptionist greeted him cheerfully, handing him his key and a message slip.

‘The earlier duty manager said someone was asking for you,' she told him, ‘but the caller wouldn't leave a name. With security here, she made a note.'

The call was timed at 2 p.m. It was probably Ken Deane wanting to know how it was going. He'd called him from the base earlier that morning, to add grease to the wheels and update him on events. He went upstairs to put through a call to New York.

Hovering by the hotel entrance under cover of a group of military family members, Kassim watched Tate take his key and a slip of paper from the receptionist and walk away. He noted the Englishman's stocky build and the way he carried himself. Not a man to underestimate, he decided, but given the right circumstances, not a problem. Minutes earlier, he'd observed him enter the hotel bar and order a drink, where he'd been engaged in conversation by another man. This one was younger, with untidy hair and wearing the clothing common to so many Americans: jeans and a T-shirt. There had been no exchange of greetings and Tate had looked almost offhand. Tate had eventually walked back to the reception desk to get his key.

After making his way back off the training area, Kassim had driven into Columbus and found a cyber-café. Remzi had not been pleased to hear from him. His responses were terse and poorly typed, the sign of a man in a hurry . . . or on the edge of his nerves. But he had complied with Kassim's request and told him that a courier would deliver the funds later that day. It had meant telling Remzi where he was staying, but there was no way round it. He would have to trust him.

Next Kassim had purchased a change of clothing and returned to his hotel, a cheap commercial place near the station, and taken a shower to wash off the dust and grime of the previous night. Then he'd fallen asleep for a few hours.

It was the middle of the afternoon when he was woken by a call from the front desk. A package to sign for. He drank some water, then went down and signed for a padded envelope. Next he found a local phone book and began dialling hotels near the airport. He was counting on Tate having booked one nearby rather than staying on the base, but it was a long shot. If that failed he would have to think again.

He struck lucky on the seventh try. Tate had a room at the Holiday Inn, but had left before breakfast; on his way, the receptionist thought, to Fort Benning. The irony of how close he might have been to the man yet again didn't escape Kassim. When the receptionist asked who was calling, Kassim had rung off.

Next he'd called the training base and asked for Mr Tate, saying the call was from UN headquarters in New York. As he'd hoped, the Englishman's presence was known and the answer had been immediate. ‘I'm sorry, sir – Mr Tate's not available right now. Can I ask him to call you back?'

Kassim had rung off with a satisfied smile. Perfect.

He'd gone out to look for a replacement, no-questions-asked vehicle, and tried three backstreet garages before finding a ragged Toyota pickup in a chop shop. The owner had let it go for three hundred dollars. By the time he'd driven back out on to the road running past the training camp and crossed the extensive tract of countryside used by the military, news of the killing had spread to the outside world. It had pulled a gaggle of onlookers, press people and television crews to the area, and he'd found it easy to blend in with the crowd and watch for developments.

When Tate had come out in the back of an army vehicle, Kassim had followed, biding his time.

Now he decided to make his next move.

A new group of arrivals had just entered the lobby and were crowding the desk. Kassim went over to a house phone on one wall and dialled reception. It took a while but a receptionist eventually excused herself to answer the phone.

‘Mr Tate, please.'

‘One moment, sir.' As he'd hoped, the receptionist sounded rushed. ‘You can dial his extension direct.' She gave him the room number with a prefix digit.

Kassim made his way towards the rest rooms, where he found a room number locator. Tate's room was on the ground floor at the rear. His stomach was tight with anticipation, and he felt for the reassuring weight of the hunting knife he'd been forced to buy to replace the lost one. He paused at the end of the corridor to consult the binder one last time, then snapped it shut and slipped it into his pocket.

Soon it would be over.

The air-conditioned quietness of his room did little to lift Harry's sense of frustration, caused by all the pointless questions he'd faced earlier. In typical military fashion, things had gone in circles, accomplishing little and serving only to delay him getting off the base and in pursuit of the killer of Orti, Broms, Carvalho . . . and now Lloyd.

He dialled Deane's number in New York. The phone rang twice before he answered. ‘Harry? What's up – can't sleep?'

‘Not yet. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Things got a little hectic.'

‘I'm not surprised. The brass give you a hard time?'

‘Not too bad. Your call this morning helped smooth things over. I'm flying to LA in the morning to see Bikovsky. No point in hanging around here . . . I think our man's backed off for now.'

‘Good. How's Pendry?'

‘He wants blood for whoever killed the trooper, but he's dealing with it.'

Deane grunted. ‘You think he's clean?'

Harry had already dismissed any idea of the Ranger being involved in anything in Kosovo. ‘As sure as I can be. He doesn't feel right. I think the guilty man's still out there.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Because I know who he isn't.'

‘Huh?'

‘It wasn't Orti because the killer went after Broms too, then Carvalho. Now he's tried Pendry. Unless he really is planning on wiping out the whole team, he hasn't yet found his target. Do you have any information on the other two?'

‘No. Bikovsky's dropped off the radar and Koslov's somewhere in Moscow. Even our reach only extends so far. Keep in touch, Harry.'

‘Wait,' Harry stopped him. ‘What was it you wanted?'

‘Me?'

‘You called me earlier.'

‘Not me, bud. I've been in back-to-back meetings.'

Harry felt a chill crawl up his back. ‘You didn't call at two p.m.?'

‘No. Pendry, perhaps?'

‘He was on the base with me.'

Deane was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Jesus. He knows where you are.'

Harry thought about the photo Deane had got from MI5. It would now be on the UN records. ‘And he knows what I look like.'

Deane swore softly. ‘Do you need backup?'

‘No. I'll be in touch.' He clicked off and reached for the Ruger.

‘Y
ou sure this is the place?' The cab driver eyed Rik in the mirror. They were in Phenix City, Alabama, across the Chattahoochee River from its bigger neighbour, Columbus. ‘There are better places to eat, my friend.' His tone suggested that passengers from England didn't usually find their way to this part of town.

‘I'm positive, thanks.' Rik peeled off some notes and passed them over. The man took the money with a nod and gave him a card with a cab company logo and a number in big, black not-drunk-enough-to-miss typeface.

‘Call that number when you're ready to leave and I'll tell you if I can make it or not. Things get busy later.' He peered over his shoulder and added, ‘I'd keep the British accent down a little, you hear? Ain't that they don't like you folks, just some of 'em don't like anyone
different
. You take care, now.'

As soon as Rik's feet touched the grit of the car park, the driver was gone, leaving a trace of exhaust fumes in his wake.

Rik stood and looked around. A hundred yards away the late traffic on Phenix City's 13th Street was a constant buzz, the sound washing over the surrounding buildings, streets and alleys like a gentle flood. This part of town was strictly commercial, with auto repair shops and small engineering units every few yards, and signs offering marine engine servicing, panel work and paint spraying alongside grill restaurants, bars and barbecue joints.

Rik's contact had been wary of meeting anywhere too open, insisting on a place he called Mooney's Bar. ‘Any cab will get you there,' he'd said enigmatically. ‘Tell him Mooney's off Thirteenth. He'll know. You'll know me, too, when you see me.' He hadn't explained why.

Mooney's was a narrow-fronted, brick-built, single-storey building sandwiched between two auto repair yards. It stretched back a hundred feet with parking spaces along the front and down one side. There were several vehicles around and the sound of country music drifted from the open door. Neon signs advertised nachos, chicken wings and several brand names he'd never heard of. Across the road were more industrial units with floodlit yards and shadow-filled spaces lined with silent vehicles and piles of car parts, and further along, a scattering of trees and bushes with more buildings poking aluminium vents into the night sky, one of them lit by floodlights.

Rik walked up the steps to the door and stepped inside. Mooney's layout was simple; it had a long bar down one side and tables down the other. The music was coming from speakers up on the walls, and he counted twenty customers, mostly couples. A group of four men in plaid shirts and work jeans turned to look but without great interest. A pasty-faced young guy in a black T-shirt and jeans and his hair tied in a ponytail was sitting at one of the tables. He had his nose buried in a computer magazine and was picking at a plate of fries, stabbing them with a fork and feeding them in an abstract manner into his mouth.

Rik wandered over. ‘Ripper?' he said.

The ponytail nodded and dropped the magazine, gesturing at the chair opposite with the fork. Seconds later the barman arrived with two beers and stood waiting.

‘Give him ten bucks,' said Ripper.

Rik handed over a note and sat down. He studied the man opposite. Some of his fellow hackers wore suits and lived a conventional life, concealing their passion behind an outer veneer of normality. Others did not. Ripper clearly belonged to the darker side. He was as pale as a Goth and the amount of face piercings on view would never have allowed him through an airport scanner on the first try. He probably had more that Rik didn't like to think about, and a flurry of tattoos crawling up his neck and throat. He was trying to look cool but looked nervy and sniffed a lot. Rik wondered if he'd made a mistake coming here.

‘So you're Blackjack?' It was one of Rik's tag names. His voice was a surprise; it was soft and melodic, not at all what Rik had expected. ‘I heard some good stuff about you.' When Rik didn't respond, he said, ‘Not too talkative, huh? Yeah, I'm cool with that. What do you want from me?'

‘I was told you can get into court records. That if I give you a name, you can get me the details. Is that right?'

Ripper nodded. ‘Damn right. Hazell tell you that?'

‘No. Never heard of Hazell.'

‘Rodeoboy, then.'

Rik nodded and sipped the beer. It was fizzy and thin. Ripper was testing him. It was common practice, dropping sly verbal traps for anyone asking questions who shouldn't. Rodeoboy was a contact of Rik's from years ago, before he'd joined MI5. He still didn't know where the hacker lived – it could have been on the far side of the moon. But Rodeoboy was reliable and knew a lot of useful people. People like Ripper.