Ghost Flight

89

Fortunately, Malabo had a handful of internet cafés. Under Boerke’s guidance, Jaeger chose one and managed to send the briefest of messages.

Even in civilian life, Jaeger tended to live by the old soldier’s adage: ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail.’

Before leaving Cachimbo, he’d set up alternative travel and communications arrangements, just in case of such an eventuality – the hunt being resumed. He figured the enemy would be working to a dual agenda now: either to have the documents returned, or to kill all those who knew of their existence. Ideally, they’d want to achieve both ends.

Via an address to which his core team – Narov, Raff and Dale – had access, he proceeded to post a draft email. They would know to read the draft without it ever having been sent – hence making it all but untraceable.

The email detailed the time of a proposed meeting a couple of days hence, at a prearranged location. If the draft box received no message saying otherwise, the meeting would be on. And under the ‘travel as arranged’ instruction, Narov, Raff and Dale would know to fly back to the UK using passports provided courtesy of Colonel Evandro’s partners in Brazilian intelligence.

If necessary, they’d move under Brazilian diplomatic cover, so determined was the colonel to get them home safely and get the riddle of the Ju 390 solved.

Jaeger caught his flights from Bioko to London as planned.

There had been zero point in changing them, especially as they had been booked under the ‘clean’ passport that Colonel Evandro had provided him with, one that should be untraceable.

Upon arrival in London, he caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington and jumped in a black cab. He got the cabbie to drop him a good half-mile distant from Springfield Marina, so he could walk the last leg to his London home. It was one more precaution to ensure he hadn’t been followed.

Living on a boat had several advantages, one of which was the lack of a traceable footprint. Jaeger paid no council tax, he wasn’t on the electoral roll or the property register, and he’d chosen not to have a mailing address at the marina.

The boat itself was registered to an anonymous offshore company, likewise the mooring. In short, his Thames barge was as good a place as any to schedule the meeting.

En route to the marina, he called in at a grotty-looking internet café. He ordered a black coffee, logged on and checked the draft box. There were two messages. One was from Raff, postponing the meeting by a few hours, just to give them time enough to get there.

The other message was blank, but it had a link embedded in it. Jaeger clicked through and it took him to Dropbox, an on-line data storage system.

The Dropbox file contained one image – a JPEG file.

Jaeger clicked on it.

The internet connection was slow, and as the image downloaded it hit him like a series of savage punches to the guts. It showed the figure of Leticia Santos – kneeling naked and with her hands and feet tied, her eyes staring wide into the camera and red with terror.

Behind her was what looked like a torn and bloodstained bed sheet, on which were scrawled the now familiar words:

They were crudely written in what appeared to be human blood.

Jaeger didn’t bother to log off. He sprinted from the café, leaving his coffee untouched.

Somehow, even their draft email communications system had been penetrated. That being the case, who knew how quickly a drone unleashing a Hellfire might arrive overhead? Jaeger doubted the enemy had the wherewithal to deploy one over east London, but presumption was the mother of all screw-ups.

Instinctively he knew what the enemy was about here.

They were deliberately taunting him. It was a tried and tested means of waging battle, one that the Nazis had named Nervenkrieg – mind warfare. They were torturing him by careful design, in the hope that they could provoke him into remaining at a traceable location for long enough for them to find and kill him.

Or failing that, in the hope that he might be provoked into going hunting, solo.

And in truth, the Nervenkrieg was working.

Having watched that sickening image download, it was all Jaeger could do to resist the temptation to go seeking out Leticia Santos’s tormentors right here and now. And alone.

There were any number of leads he could follow. The C-130 pilot, for a start. Carson would have his details on file, and that would be enough for Jaeger to start tracking him down. Plus Colonel Evandro had promised a whole caseload of new leads from his own investigations.

But Jaeger needed to hold off.

He needed to regroup his forces, learn from whatever it was they had discovered, study the ground, the enemy and the threat, and strategise and act accordingly. Somehow he had to reclaim the initiative – to make proactive decisions, not reactive heat-of-the-moment ones.

It was the old adage again: fail to plan, plan to fail.