Execution

EIGHT

‘I don’t know if Jardine’s got herself involved in something, but you’d better find her before somebody else does. The dogs are being let out.’

Ballatyne didn’t wait for Harry to sit down, but spoke urgently. He was seated at a rear corner table in Richoux’s restaurant along Piccadilly, across from the Burlington Arcade. For once his minders were nowhere in sight, although Harry guessed they wouldn’t be far away.

He looked around at the gilded interior of the restaurant and said, ‘A move up in the world from Wigmore Street, I see. Is that promotion?’

Ballatyne grunted. ‘It’s closed for renovations. I got tired of the decor.’ He nodded at the coffee pot. ‘Help yourself.’

Harry shook his head. ‘Not for me. What did you find out?’ It was barely eight in the morning and he’d already had his quota by the time Ballatyne’s call had come in, suggesting the meeting. He’d sounded stressed, cutting the connection immediately.

‘Jardine’s gone on the lam. She walked out of the hospital in the middle of the night without telling anybody, dressed pretty much in the clothes she arrived in. Silly girl’s going to kill herself if someone doesn’t get to her first.’ He frowned. ‘I spoke to the consultants. You’ve no idea what hoops I had to jump through to do that. Anybody would think I’d asked for the Queen’s medical history, not that of a former employee. Anyway, upshot is, she was very lucky. The bullet slipped by any critical organs, so no life-threatening damage was done. But she’s going to be on a boring diet for a long, long time. And no strenuous exercise.’

Harry nodded. It confirmed what one of the nurses had told him. Fortunately, Jardine was a born fighter and made of tough stuff, which had helped.

‘What happened to make her leave?’

Ballatyne sighed. ‘There’s only one reason. A bloody sound one for her, too. She might have a hole in her but she hasn’t lost her instincts. Have you heard of a man named Tobinskiy?’

‘No. Should I?’

Ballatyne explained briefly about the Russian and his connection with Litvinenko, and how a section of MI6 had confined him to King’s College Hospital for his own protection. ‘It didn’t work too well — he was found dead in his bed two days ago.’

‘Did they check the radiation levels?’ It was a reference to Litvinenko’s death.

‘First thing they did. No more ticks than you’d get off your grandma’s second-hand wristwatch. The Russian desk people are now pedalling fast beneath the surface to protect themselves. Fact is, there are those in the know about Russian affairs who think Tobinskiy might have been the primary target in 2006, and Litvinenko happened to get in the way.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that it makes much difference; the Kremlin was undoubtedly going after both of them, anyway. The Brighton shooting confirms that.’

‘I take it they didn’t get the shooter?’

‘No. Probably back in Moscow the following morning; one of their wet job specialists.’ He dropped a black-and-white photo on the table. ‘Tobinskiy’s on the left.’ It showed two men in uniform, grinning into the camera. One he recognised immediately from press photos. It was Alexander Litvinenko, former FSB officer and later journalist, broadcaster and stated enemy of his former employers. He’d never seen the other man before. The photo was grainy and dated and, Harry guessed, probably taken from official files. Both men looked healthy, happy and full of life, and so similar in appearance they could have been brothers.

‘To answer your question, we still don’t know what caused Tobinskiy’s death. But it certainly wasn’t through falling out of bed.’

‘A hit.’

‘Bloody certain of it. Finishing what they started. His wounds wouldn’t have killed him; he was over the worst, apparently, although he was carrying a fever and rambling quite a bit, according to reports. Kept waking other patients with his shouting.’ He stared up at the ornate decor. ‘Unfortunately, there are those among my esteemed colleagues who have conveniently jumped on the idea that Jardine being on-site at the time, as it were, means she must be in league with Vladimir’s boys and girls. They know she went rogue in the first place, although not the details, ergo two and two makes five. Her going after Bellingham didn’t help. Vanishing on the same night Tobinskiy gets bumped off has just about put the ribbon on the cake.’

‘That’s crazy. She wasn’t in a fit state to kill a fly.’

‘You know that and I know it. But she was clearly fit enough to get out of bed and disappear. She’s got no money or cards, though; her stuff’s still in the hospital lock-up.’

‘That won’t stop her.’ Clare Jardine was a trained survivor; somehow she would find the means to keep her head above water. ‘Could she have been taken?’ It wasn’t beyond the bounds of reason, although why the killers would do so was a puzzle. Lifting somebody from the hospital and taking them out into the street presented risks, even at the dead of night.

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t fit, somehow. Look at it from the other side’s point of view and you’d make the same assumption — that she bugged out under her own steam.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever. We need to find her. Correction — you need to find her. If she’s out there too long, she’ll get scooped up. I’d rather that didn’t happen.’

Harry felt a needle of cynicism. ‘You’re all at it, aren’t you? Secrets within secrets. Who are you protecting?’

Ballatyne brushed the comment aside. ‘I’m not. Unlike the others, I cleared Jardine’s treatment in that unit with higher authorities. But placing a targeted Russian — and a former FSB man at that — in the same hospital was certifiably insane.’

‘Are you worried about her safety?’ Harry knew what Clare was capable of. ‘She’s no school kid. And she stayed under cover perfectly fine before she got herself shot.’

‘As you say, that was before she got shot and because she wasn’t important enough for us to go looking seriously. Now she’s walking wounded and it does matter, because on the one hand she’s a useful scapegoat in the event of an enquiry, and on the other they’ll want to stop her blabbing about what she saw or heard.’ He looked sombre. ‘I mean it, Harry; our people aren’t going to mess about. They’ll put some sub-contract ex-military attack dogs from one of the more iffy agencies on her trail until they get her. And if the people who knocked off Tobinskiy are still out there and looking to do the same, she’s as good as stuffed.’

‘Russians, you mean.’

‘Who else? Nobody else cared about him. I don’t have a line on who they are because it doesn’t really matter. But I’ll bet they’ve got the FSB oath of allegiance tattooed inside their eyelids.’

‘Why should they care about Clare? If it was a Moscow hit team they’ll be long gone by now.’

‘Maybe. Thing is, she might have heard something, put two and two together. And after the Litvinenko scandal, the last thing Moscow needs is someone leaping out of the woodwork proving they’re a ruthless bunch of bastards who’d murder a helpless man in his hospital bed to stop him talking.’

Harry pushed his coffee away. He had a feeling Ballatyne was being unusually frank about Clare. Rik had already come up against one brick wall on the HM Prison Service transfers database, but was currently trying other ways in. Unless her name had been deliberately kept off any official list, she must have gone to ground for her own reasons.

‘So you want me to find her?’

‘No. I don’t.’

Harry was surprised. ‘Then what are we doing here?’

‘We’re not. We didn’t speak, you haven’t seen me.’ He swept a hand out. ‘None of this took place. If you say it did, I’ll have you taken out and shot.’

It explained the absent minders. Ballatyne was being very discreet.

‘So this is off the books?’

‘So far off, it’s on the other side of nowhere.’ Ballatyne looked grim. ‘I’m not kidding, Harry. You and I don’t know each other.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give me your mobile.’

Harry did so, and Ballatyne keyed in a number and handed it back.

‘That’s how you contact me, but by text message only. It’s an untraceable number. If you need to speak, say so and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

Harry stared at him. He had never known Ballatyne to be so cautious before. Whatever was worrying the MI6 man had to be internal — something that he couldn’t talk about. Whatever it was, to be using ‘black’ phones and numbers, it was serious.

‘Find Jardine and make it toot-bloody-sweet,’ Ballatyne concluded. ‘If only to prove I wasn’t wrong in putting her in that hospital in the first place. I’ll work out a way of paying reasonable expenses, but it’ll be right under the counter, so keep the costs down.’

Harry nodded. ‘In that case I’ll start here and now. First off, I’d like some clear photos from her personnel file, in case we need to show them around.’

‘Agreed. What else?’

‘Her home address. I doubt she’ll go back there, but it’s a start.’

‘You’d be wasting your time. She sold her flat through a solicitor after the Georgia business; took the money in cash and went underground.’

‘I’d still like the details.’

‘Why — because of friends, drinking buddies, the man at the corner shop remembering her for her cheery hello? That’s a hell of a reach.’ When Harry said nothing, he sighed. ‘Fair enough. You know best. And I owe you that, I suppose. What else?’

‘CCTV in the hospital?’

‘I’ve asked, but they’re playing silly buggers, citing invasion of privacy. It might take time, so work on the basis that you’ll have to do without.’

Harry frowned. ‘It’s a murder enquiry at the very least. Doesn’t that trump those issues?’

‘I thought so, too. But our legal brains say because of other personnel being treated there, it’s rather delicate.’ Ballatyne pulled a sour face. ‘Bloody silly if you ask me, but there you go. Is that it?’

‘Who were her buddies around the water cooler at Vauxhall Cross? You know she had some.’

Ballatyne looked wary. It was a sore point. Following the Red Station debacle, it had become apparent that Clare Jardine had been receiving information from inside MI6, helping her to stay out of reach of the authorities. The friends responsible had so far remained hidden, but Harry was willing to bet that some still worked in the MI6 building.

‘That’s never going to happen,’ Ballatyne said at last.

‘Why? I’m hardly going to make their names public.’

‘I’m sure you’re not. But under the circumstances, having you galloping around London after members of Six isn’t going to help matters — and I’d never get it sanctioned, anyway.’

Harry breathed easily. In spite of his words, Ballatyne hadn’t made an outright refusal. He’d become used to the MI6 man’s language, and he had a way of showing when he was amenable to persuasion. All it needed was the right kind of pressure.

‘I’m not after the entire department. Just one person.’

Ballatyne looked wary. ‘Christ, please don’t tell me you actually have a name.’

‘No. But it had to be a woman. Someone she worked with and trusted, although not necessarily in the same section.’

‘Why a woman?’

‘Because she doesn’t trust men.’

Ballatyne stood up, a flicker of something on his face which might have been understanding. ‘I have to go. I’ve got a round of meetings to stop this thing going global. I’ll see what I can find out. In the meantime, let’s just hope Jardine doesn’t bump into any of Moscow’s bogey-men.’