TimeSplash (22 page)

* * * *

“Holy shit!” Jay could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You know where he is?”

“Yes.”

They were walking in the sunshine beside the Thames, heading almost due south into the fast-climbing sun and the bright glare from the river. Jay had persuaded Sandra onto a Jubilee Line tube at Canary Wharf and, with a change at Cannon Street to the Circle Line, had brought them back up into the light at Westminster. From there they had walked through Victoria Tower Gardens to Millbank while Sandra filled Jay in on the past six months.

“But this is… That’s…”

Sandra looked at him sideways. “A big surprise, obviously.”

“Big? It’s mega! My God, we’ve been looking for him everywhere. And he’s here? In London?”

Sandra nodded.

For a moment Jay was just overwhelmed by the news. He had to tell Holbrook. He’d tell Bauchet too, of course. Bugger protocol. Then the implication of what she’d said hit him.

“Jesus!” He stopped walking. His hand went to his mouth and he looked at Sandra, stupefied with the shock of it. “He’s gonna do London. Oh my God, he’s gonna do London. That’s why he’s here. It’s the only reason he’d be here.” He studied Sandra’s eyes, looking for confirmation.

“When’s it going to happen? Do you know?”

She shook her head. “That’s why I need your help. I’ve been tracking him but I can’t get close. I had a…a guy who was helping me, but he’s dead.”

“The friend who gave you the gun.”

“I think ‘friend’ was a bit of an exaggeration. His name was Flash. You probably knew him.”

Jay goggled. “Flash? You mean the number one brick in the UK? That Flash? He’s your friend?”

“Was. Sniper shot him about two weeks ago.”

Jay’s head was reeling. There was a bench nearby and he went and sat on it, pressing his palm against his forehead. All of this was news to him—and therefore to the British and European intelligence agencies and police forces. “Flash is dead? And Sniper killed him? And you’ve been trailing Sniper for months? And you know where he is but you don’t know what he’s up to?”

Sandra sat down beside him. “Yep.”

Across the river, beside Vauxhall Bridge, was the Secret Intelligence Services Building where Jay worked. Originally built in the 1990s to house MI6, Five had moved in just twenty years later when Six had lost the argument that Europe was foreign, not domestic territory. Six was downsized and shunted off to a smaller building in Wapping and Five rode triumphant into the vacated space. Jay had planned to tell Sandra all this and show off his eccentric-looking workplace. Now his mind was full of her incredible revelations, and the time for casual chatter had gone.

“And Flash was helping you trail Sniper? But, now he’s dead, you can’t?”

“Yep.”

“And that’s why you need my help, to get you close to Sniper?”

Sandra didn’t reply. She looked out at the river as if she were waiting for him to catch up.

“But why the hell have you been trailing Sniper all this time anyway?”

“Because I’m going to kill him.”

Jay looked at her calm, beautiful face. He remembered last night, her saying, I’ve been taking lessons. Lots of them.

“Jesus,” he said, unable to think of anything more appropriate.

* * * *

Klaatu could hear the screams as he walked down the corridor. He was still straightening his clothes from the excessively thorough searching the security guards at the door had given him. There was another armed man at the door to the gym and he made Klaatu wait while he spoke on his compatch. Inside the gym, the screaming stopped and a few seconds later, the door was thrown open.

“Klaatu! Old friend! Come on in!”

Sniper wore tight trunks, a silk robe hanging open, a feral grin, and nothing else. His sculpted body looked hard and tough. The well-crafted bones of his handsome face were more prominent than ever, giving him a hungry, energetic look. His grey eyes fixed Klaatu with a fevered excitement that made the young teknik glance across the room to see what the crazy bastard had been up to. He wished he hadn’t.

A naked woman hung from a square frame, arms and legs pulled taut, head lolling, like a big pink X. Her long blond hair covered most of her torso but the bits that showed had cuts and gouges visible, some of them dripping blood. He watched her in shocked fascination. She lifted her head and looked back at him. Her face was puffy and bruised and blood ran from her mouth and nose. To his horror, he saw her lips stretch into a smile.

He turned quickly back to Sniper, but whatever he had come there to say had gone completely from his mind.

“How do you like my little pet?” Sniper asked, his eyes sliding round to look briefly at the naked woman. “Camilla found her for me.”

“She’s…” Whatever she was, Klaatu couldn’t find the words to describe it. This was sick, even for Sniper.

“You can have her when I’m finished, if you like. Camilla can get me another one.”

Klaatu looked again at the smiling, bleeding woman. She might once have been beautiful. There was a time when Sniper’s cast-offs had been worth having. Not any more.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” he lied. “We’re still decrypting Flash’s files.” He remembered why he had made the trip out to Sniper’s little Surrey hideaway. “But we know the target now.”

Sniper’s eyes flashed but he didn’t comment. “We’re getting the whole thing. It won’t be long. We should start assembling the rig. I’ll be able to spec the lob properly in just a day or two, I think.”

Sniper’s grin broadened. “Tell Camilla. She’s organising things.”

“What? Since when?”

The grin disappeared in an instant but the eyes stayed the same. Sniper’s hand shot out and grabbed Klaatu around the neck before the teknik had even realised it was coming.

“Tell Camilla,” Sniper repeated in a soft, reasonable tone, as he pushed Klaatu up against the door frame with irresistible force. “She’s organising things.”

Across the room, the naked woman giggled. Unable to speak with Sniper’s hand crushing his throat, Klaatu nodded as best he could. Sniper held him there several seconds more, studying his face as Klaatu’s alarm mounted toward panic. Then he released him.

Klaatu fell back against the door frame, gasping for air. Relief and the urge to run mingled with cold fury inside him. He kept his head down so Sniper wouldn’t see it.

“Was that all?” Sniper asked. “I’m rather busy.”

Klaatu nodded and staggered out into the corridor. Sniper turned back to the naked woman who was watching him with wide, eager eyes. The guard closed the door without a word and stood like a statue, watching Klaatu.

It took Klaatu a while to recover his voice. When he did, he said, “I need to see Camilla. Is she here?”

“Yes, Mr. Gomółka.” From his respectful tone and expression, you would never guess the guard had been a witness to the scene in the gym. He spoke into his compatch again, then said,

“Ms. Vergara is in the conservatory. Would you like an escort?”

Klaatu scowled at him. “I know the way.”

* * * *

Camilla Vergara was an attractive woman in her middle thirties, a little over average height, well over average curvaceousness, and she favoured tight pencil skirts and severely cut jackets. She had a lot of cleavage and liked to show it. Her lips and nails were always scarlet. Her eyebrows and lashes always black. “MILF” as Klaatu liked to think of her. She was at a desk, working at a computer when he walked in. Seeing him, she made a last couple of gestures, and took her hands out of the sensor field. She rose from her seat with a practised elegance and took a couple of steps toward him, heels clicking on the tiled floor, hand outstretched in greeting. Her red lips formed a professional smile. “Klaatu. How nice to see you.” Her tone had something matronly about it, as if Klaatu were a little boy in her care whom she was humouring in his pretence of being grown up.

Klaatu eyed her sullenly. “Sniper says I should tell you we’ve located the target.”

“Excellent!” She showed him a chair and went to take one herself. He watched her hips and arse in the tight skirt as she sat and, to his annoyance, she caught him watching her. “Would you like something to drink? I’ll have one of the boys bring something.” She tapped her compatch and ordered coffee, not waiting for Klaatu’s reply. She brought her dark brown eyes to rest on him.

“We should have a chat. In all the rushing about we haven’t really made time to get to know one another.”

Klaatu ignored her. He let his eyes roam around the conservatory. It was now, quite clearly, Camilla’s office. “I see you’ve made yourself at home,” he said. She smiled. “I like to make myself useful and that means being here twenty-four-seven. This is such a lovely room, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. The conservatory was very large, built onto the south side of a very large house. Its glass walls commanded a multi-million-euro view across extensive lawns to the rolling hills beyond.

If his rudeness annoyed her, Camilla didn’t let it show. “The investors have been reviewing the new management situation,” she said. The “new management situation” was Camilla-speak for Sniper having killed Flash and taken over his splashteam. The “investors” were the bunch of Chinese gangsters who were putting up the money for the splash. “As you know, the investors were not happy with the progress being made by the previous management. They feel they should give Sniper an opportunity to prove himself.”

“You mean they don’t have much choice. They either let Sniper do it or their investment so far is down the drain.”

Her pleasant expression didn’t falter. “Sniper would not have been our first choice. After what happened in Berlin, his reputation is not what it once was.”

“That’s why you’re here, huh? To stop him fucking up again? Well, good luck with that.”

Her smile broadened. “Ah, the boy genius. So sharp. What an asset to the team.” The coffee arrived and nothing was said for the time it took for the tray to be set on a table and for the armed guard delivering it to leave again. “Shall I be mum?” Camilla asked, reaching over to pour from a silver coffee jug, thighs straining at her skirt, breasts almost falling out of her blouse. Klaatu forced himself to look away.

“The thing is,” Camilla went on, “we’re all a bit worried about Sniper’s state of mind. He doesn’t seem to trust anybody any more. He keeps all the lights on all the time, you know, because he says someone might hide in the shadows and try to kill him. And the money he spends on security! Well, you’ve seen it.” She handed him his coffee in a fine bone china cup and saucer. He took hold of it but for a moment she held on, not letting him take it. “He doesn’t seem to trust you, either, Klaatu. He seems to think you want to leave the project.”

Anger bubbled up in him. “Fuck you,” he snarled.

He turned to go, disconcerted by the fact that she was still smiling, that she had clearly expected his reaction and was not bothered by it.

“Just to be absolutely clear,” Camilla said to his retreating back. “The investors don’t want anybody leaving the project until it is successfully completed. You know what that means, don’t you?”

He stopped by the door and turned to look at her. She leaned back in her chair, smug and relaxed, absolutely confident that she was in control. His thin lips twisted into a sneer. “I know what it means, all right. It means you need me, you stupid cow. More importantly, it means Sniper needs me. And as long as Sniper needs me, you can’t touch me, bitch.”

He took a step back toward her and for the first time he saw her smile waver. “You don’t know what he is, do you? You think he’s just another thug in the pay of your ridiculous ‘investors.’ Well, let me tell you this. Every fucking cop in the world is out looking for me, every intelligence agency. The people we worked for in Berlin have a contract out on me. Daft bastards. And now you’re threatening me with some jerk-off diamond smugglers who have no more clue than to employ a dumb little tart like you as their mouthpiece.”

He took another step toward her and was pleased to see her hand move toward her compatch, ready to call security. “There are so many people who would like to see me dead, I’ve lost count. And you know what? The only person in the world I’m actually scared of is that fucking headcase in the gym. And you know what else? I’m going to ask him to call me the day he has you strung up on that scaffold of his, and I’ll be there to watch him cut little pieces out of your tasty little hide, and to fuck what’s left of you when he’s had his fun.”

He glared into her eyes for a moment, letting her see his contempt. Her smile had gone completely now, and her face was pale beneath the makeup. “I’m so glad we had this chat,” he said. “We must do it again.”

“She’s a what?” Denzil Porterhouse shouted. He was a big man, square-jawed and broad chested. He looked more like a boxer than an MI5 section leader and Jay swallowed hard before replying.

“An escaped mental patient, sir.”