Stop at Nothing

1

Mark Cole closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling his heart rate. The shark was close now.

There had been a group of four of them swimming near the coral wall; there always were at this time of day. They were Caribbean reef sharks, and the species had been known to attack humans only rarely, with no attack proving fatal. They were large though, eight feet in length with powerful bodies.

But these sharks all but ignored Cole, as he treaded water thirty feet below the surface of the warm, crystal clear Caribbean Sea. He had no mask, no oxygen tank — in fact, no equipment at all, using merely the volume of his lungs and his own mental strength to stay submerged. He had learnt to free dive whilst in the SEALs, the elite naval special forces group of the US military, and still practised regularly. There was nothing better for developing concentration and willpower.

Part of his daily training involved swimming amongst the sharks, whilst trying to control his heart rate. Sometimes they approached him, bumping and nudging him. He put his mind elsewhere, in order to help retain his presence of mind while under stress.

But the shark that now approached him was not a reef shark. Those four were still swimming nearby, attacking the bright, multi-coloured coral. This shark had come from the other side, directly towards him. It was bigger — at least twelve feet in length — and heavier, more powerful. It was also considerably more dangerous. It was a tiger shark, a species known for its voracious appetite. There was nothing that it would not eat.

And yet as the huge fish swam towards him, Cole knew that he would be safe if he remained still and calm. That was the conflict — his inner voice, the deep, instinctive, untrained side of his psyche, told him to flee, to get out of there at once, as quickly as he could, while his hormones tried to raise his heart rate, to prepare it for action. Normally he could use breathing techniques to control his heart rate and his emotions; under the water, this was not an option.

His eyes still closed, he had to concentrate even harder to regulate himself, until his heart rate dropped low, and he relaxed.

He opened his eyes, seeing the gigantic head right in front of him, the lifeless eyes staring right at him. His heart rate didn’t increase at all. The two predators just stared at each other.

Cole could feel his breath finally running out, but he knew that he couldn’t swim up yet — the tiger shark would react to the sudden movement. He knew that if he didn’t get oxygen soon, panic would start to creep up on him, until he would be unable to stop opening his mouth to breath; the seawater would then rush in, drowning him.

His mind focused harder, and he held the gaze of the shark in front of him, its massive jaws open, teeth inches from his face. He could feel himself starting to black out, but still he held its gaze until finally, mercifully, the fish just turned around and swam away, retreating back out into the depths.

Cole had been submerged for over five minutes now, but still didn’t panic; he simply watched the fish swim away and then slowly let himself drift to the surface.

Breaking out of the waves into the brilliant sunshine, he looked across the azure waters to the nearby beach, and his house that sat upon it. Breathing deeply, he started back for home.

2

Cole walked out of the warm water and onto the private beach of his Colonial-style manor house, situated in a small cove of Cayman Brac. The island was situated just short of ninety miles north-east of the much larger Grand Cayman, and was a lot quieter than the main island, which suited Cole perfectly.

As he walked through the fine white sand, he heard laughs and shouting off to the right hand side. His head turning, he saw his wife Sarah and his two young children standing and staring into the line of palm trees that bordered the house.

Sarah was looking beautiful as always, her long brown hair — much lighter now, after years in the Caribbean sun, than when they had first met — cascading down her tanned back, the firm muscles of her long legs visible underneath her denim shorts.

She was teaching Ben and Amy how to shoot a bow and arrow, Cole saw, and couldn’t help but smile. A scuba diving instructor by profession, she was as physical as he was — indeed, this was one of the first things that had attracted him to her, and they both now ran a small diving school on the island.

He looked into the tree-line and saw a circular target hidden amongst the palm trees that swayed gently in the breeze. Cole held back as she gave the bow to Ben, helping him to get into position. She knelt at his side, angling his arms to get a better aim.

Ben was six years old now and Amy was four, and Cole’s heart filled with warmth as he looked at them with their mother, Ben allowing her to position himself correctly whilst Amy looked on in fascination.

Eventually Sarah backed away, and Cole saw Ben take a deep breath — hold it — and then release the arrow.

Cole monitored the flight of the arrow as it sailed through the air, its path true. It missed the bulls-eye by a mere inch, and his wife and children squealed with delight, Sarah doing a little victory dance for them.

Cole started to clap, and their heads twisted round immediately. ‘Daddy!’ cried Amy, rushing towards him across the beach. Ben ran over too, and they both hugged him, Amy’s arms around his legs, Ben’s around his waist.

‘Did you see me, Dad?’ Ben asked excitedly as Sarah joined them, kissing Mark on the lips. ‘Did you see me?’

‘I sure did!’ Cole told him. ‘What a shot! Fantastic!’

‘Do you want to have a go?’ Ben asked. He loved watching his father shooting; he never seemed to miss.

‘Sure!’ Cole said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll be able to beat that.’

Ben laughed, and then Sarah turned to him. ‘I’m glad you’re back; the turkey’s not going to baste itself. Can you stay with them while I bob inside?’

Cole smiled. He knew his wife could kill a turkey as easily as baste it. Her father was a wealthy financier based out of New York, but much of Sarah’s formative life had been spent on her father’s sporting estate up in the Catskills, where she had often shot what she ate — but she was equally proud of her ability in the kitchen, and allowed nobody else to cook there. They could easily have afforded a live-in chef, but Sarah simply wouldn’t hear of it.

‘You try and stop me!’ Cole replied, racing off towards the bow and arrows lying on the sand, Ben and Amy giggling as they tried to catch him.

‘But don’t stay out too long!’ Sarah called after him. ‘You don’t want them to get sunburnt!’

Sarah sighed as he merely gave her a thumbs up and blew her a little kiss, knowing she would probably have to go back out before long to drag them inside.

3

Eventually, Cole and his children did come back inside, and Cole decided to carry on his training routine with some callisthenics as he put the television on to catch up with the news — today was the day of the treaty signing, after all. His profession meant that he had to be constantly up-to-date with world affairs — his life sometimes depended on it.

As he stretched deep into a wrestler’s bridge, he thought the image on the television set was rather strange; it was upside down though, he conceded, as he rolled onto his forehead, feet flat on the floor and back arched like a bow.

In all his years of active military service and preparation, he had found the bridge to be the best single overall exercise for his body, helping to strengthen and protect his neck and his back, which he appreciated all the more now that he was approaching the age of forty. The exercise was made even more strenuous by the weight of his two young children, who giggled excitedly as they attempted to balance on his flexed abdomen.

As the tip of his nose touched the floor, he let his eyes close as he relaxed into the position fully.

A sudden piercing shriek from the television made him open his eyes just instants later, but the screen was now eerily blank and silent.

‘Ben, where’s the remote?’ he asked his six year old son.

‘We don’t have the remote, Daddy,’ said Cole’s daughter defensively, instinctively defending her older brother.

‘Okay, okay, get off,’ their father cajoled, levering himself upright as they jumped off onto a large Persian rug. The rug had been a personal gift from General Abbadid of Pakistan, given to him only months before his capture and imprisonment in that same country. He kept it as an ironic reminder of the fickle nature of fate, and the priceless memento now stretched over a large portion of the gleaming wooden floor in the huge, open-plan living area of Cole’s home.

Cole spied the remote control on a nearby leather sofa, and reached to get it. As Cole turned to change the channel, the picture suddenly came back on of its own accord. But instead of a live feed from Stockholm, there was a shot of Bill Taylor, one of the regular CNN newsreaders, back in the studio in New York. A look of shock was written plainly across his face; despite his experience, something had badly shaken him.

‘I’m sorry for the interruption to our live broadcast,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We’ve … lost communication with our field crew. It seems there’s been an explosion of some kind and —’

‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Ben asked, seeing the strange look of concern, curiosity and, perhaps, a hint of excitement in his father’s eyes.

‘Ben, I’m going to have to listen a bit more first, but we can talk about it later. Why don’t you and Amy go and help Mommy in the kitchen?’

Reluctantly, Ben took Amy by the hand. ‘Okay, Daddy,’ he said, before turning to his sister. ‘Come on, Amy.’ Smiling back, she skipped away with him to the kitchen, leaving their father transfixed to the television screen.

4

A bead of sweat trickled down Lao Shin-Yang’s temple. What now? he asked himself in despair. He’d watched the whole thing on television in his room at the Stura Masta, the small but centrally-located hotel from where he had monitored the whole operation.

And what a disaster it had turned out to be. First the missiles had missed their target — and Shin-Yang had no idea whatsoever how that could have happened — then Kang and his team were all killed, live on TV. And now he’d learned that not only had the yacht been obliterated, killing six more of his men, but that the drivers at the two emergency rendezvous points had also been spotted by police, and were also now dead after a short but fatal fire-fight.

He was the only one left. His entire team was gone. Was there a leak? Surely not. Security was watertight. But what else could it be? Could it be that the European intelligence services were that good? He thought not. Am I even safe in this hotel? he asked himself fearfully for the first time.

Frantic, he had used the secure radio to contact his Control; he would know what to do. His Control, surprisingly, had not been shocked, and Shin-Yang found this somewhat impressive, yet at the same time disconcerting.

He had been told to wait in the hotel room, and had been assured that there were no leaks; he would be safe until someone came to get him.

That had been twenty minutes ago, which was twenty minutes too long in Shin-Yang’s opinion. Should he radio his Control again? No. The man had been quite firm on that; with the massive security crackdown that had commenced after the attack, even a secure radio link could not be trusted entirely.

Should he try to escape on his own? In his nervous state, this was highly tempting, but he knew it would be fruitless — any person who appeared to be of even slight Oriental appearance would be rounded up and interrogated, and the Human Rights Act be damned.

Nobody at the hotel had seen him; the room was registered to a Jake Dolman of Canada, and he’d picked up the key from a safety deposit box at the train station the day before. No, his Control was right. He was better off where he was, riding out the storm until –

A knock on the door pierced his reverie, as short and sharp as the crack of a bullet. His heart rate increased in an instant, adrenaline flooding his body. He’d served as a Captain in the People’s Republic Army, which was why he’d been chosen to act as the coordinator for this particular mission; all the other members of the team had been enlisted men. But that had been different. He’d trained for open warfare, not the clandestine, nerve-wracking uncertainty of small-unit covert operations. He and his team had undergone a good deal of specific preparation and training for this mission, but this was the first time he had been truly tested in the field. His team had so far failed; how would he measure up? he wondered anxiously.

Moving to the door, his sweaty hand gripped around his pistol, cocked and ready to fire, he bent forwards to look through the eye-piece in the door’s centre. Looking through with one eye, Shin-Yang stifled a gasp of surprise.

The man on the other side of the door was his Control, in person, here in Stockholm. He had obviously wanted to monitor the operation more closely than Shin-Yang had been led to believe. Doesn’t he trust me? he thought uneasily. Does he blame me for the failure?

‘Who is it?’ asked Shin-Yang reluctantly, starting the code.

‘Fred Sizemore,’ answered the man on the other side of the door. Shin-Yang had tried to place the man’s accent before, but couldn’t. Still, all Westerners sounded the same to him.

‘Our meeting’s not ’til three,’ he continued.

‘Sorry, I thought it was one. Can I come in anyway?’

‘Of course.’ The code complete, Shin-Yang unbolted the door. He decocked his pistol, but didn’t holster it.

As the man calling himself Fred Sizemore entered the room, closing the door behind him, Shin-Yang started to instinctively defend himself and distance himself from the mission, a skill honed whilst serving in the highly politicized atmosphere of the PRA. The best method of defence was attack, and Shin-Yang reasoned that if his Control was going to try and lay the blame for the mission’s failure on him, then he was going to go down fighting.

‘Sir, there must be a leak somewhere, I can’t explain it, perhaps one of our own men — ’

Shin-Yang’s Control cut him off with a raise of the hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lao,’ he said in perfect Mandarin. ‘Don’t worry. These things happen. Missions don’t always go to plan. Now we need to get out of here, but we need to take this gear with us.’ He gestured at the electronic communications equipment sprawled over the room’s small living area.

Shin-Yang nodded vigorously, happy that he wasn’t being blamed as he’d feared, and newly confident in their chances of escape. He even started to dare think that, despite the mission’s failure, his Control might yet keep the promises he had made about the future of Shin-Yang and his family.

Finally relaxing, he turned round to start getting his kit together, the pistol going back into his belt. As ‘Sizemore’ was presented with Shin-Yang’s back, he withdrew a Chinese-made Tokarev semi-automatic pistol from his own belt, a large and sinister Hakker silencer already in place.

Shin-Yang was still thinking about his family when his brains were blown out across the hotel room’s cheap beige carpet.

5

Cole was stymied by what he saw on the television. He had changed channels from the bemused CNN presenter to a live feed from Fox News.

The scene was one of devastation; a huge crater scarred the roadside, emergency crews tended to the dozens of injured people, and there was a trail of dead bodies scattered around the area, unattended due to the chaotic melee that had ensued.

The Fox reporter, wide-eyed with shock, breathlessly tried to explain what had happened, before an armed security guard marched up to him and ordered him to move away. Only minutes had passed since the blast impact, but the area was already filled with more police and military personnel than Cole could count.

The scene changed back to the newsroom, where the studio commentators played back the video of the incident, which the Fox cameraman had miraculously captured in all its morbid glory.

A Chinese attack on the Russian President? Cole wondered, dumbfounded. He knew Tsang Feng was against the defence pact, but this was just insane. As he considered matters further, his initial hatred and anger subsided, replaced by a cool detachment that had served him well throughout an operational career that seemed barely believable, especially to those who knew its full extent.

Anger wouldn’t help, he knew. And he could receive a call at any minute; his unique skill set ensured that his services were still regularly called upon, even after so many years.

He took the remote control to start taping the news channel for future reference, but found that it was already recording. He had started it, without conscious thought, from the moment he’d seen the look of shock on the CNN commentator’s face.

Angry or not, the cool detachment was there with him, always.

6

Vice Admiral Charles Hansard relaxed back in his plush leather captain’s chair, the telephone receiver cradled to his ear as he lit his hand-crafted pipe. Despite the softness of the seat, he sat with his back ramrod straight. The man had a decidedly military bearing, an understandable characteristic having joined the US Navy after graduating first in his class at Annapolis back in 1971. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law just the year before, but had decided to serve the American military machine in one way or another ever since.

He was at the present time the Director of National Intelligence, tasked with implementing the integration of the wider intelligence community into a coherent whole. His role gave him jurisdiction over the entire US intelligence world, and he was the President’s principle advisor on such matters.

Although he was often at the White House or the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was based in a non-descript office block in Chevy Chase, between Bethesda and Silver Spring, and it was here that Hansard took the phone call from Clyde Rutherford.

‘So how is she feeling?’ Hansard asked the Secretary for Defence.

‘Not bad considering,’ Rutherford replied. He was calling from an encrypted cell phone, aboard Air Force One on his way home with President Abrams. It had been decided that it might be unsafe to stay in Stockholm considering what had occurred earlier that day.

‘Early thoughts on a reaction?’ Hansard asked next, pouring himself a measure of cognac into a cut crystal balloon.

‘Pretty much exactly like you thought,’ Rutherford confirmed. ‘You’ll know soon enough anyway, she’s gonna want to see you as soon as she gets back.’

‘Yes, she’s already sent word for me to meet her at the White House this evening,’ Hansard said casually, sipping from the amber liquid, savouring its flavour.

‘What about Bill?’ Rutherford asked tentatively.

‘We’ll see. It doesn’t look good though, so I’m prepared to go with the plan.’

There was a pause on the other end of the line. ‘A shame,’ Rutherford said finally.

‘A damn shame,’ Hansard agreed. ‘But you know as well as I that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.’

7

Ensconced in the Presidential aircraft a thousand miles away, Rutherford’s blood ran cold.

He knew all too well that Charles Hansard had no problem whatsoever with breaking eggs. His absolute ruthlessness, disguised by the genteel manners of an older gentleman, was what made him so terribly effective in what he did. That, Rutherford thought, and his incredible intellect. Hansard’s intelligence combined with a relentlessness that bordered on the sociopathic, and it was a combination to be both admired and feared.

For his part, Rutherford felt both ways about the old man. But despite his personal feelings, he was in no doubt whatsoever that Hansard was the right man for the path the country was being led toward, a path that Rutherford fervently believed in and which Hansard himself was instrumental in planning.

‘You’re right, Charles,’ he agreed finally. ‘You’re right.’

Hansard always was.

8

Even after six years on the islands, Cole still found it strange to be celebrating Christmas Day in 24 degrees Celsius heat. Not that Christmases before his move had been exclusively in the depths of winter back in his hometown of Hamtramck, Michigan; many had been spent in even hotter climates, whether on exercise with the Australian SAS in the bone-dry deserts of the Northern Territories, or on operations in the sweltering jungles of Bolivia. It was just strange to be enjoying a family Christmas, at home, in such balmy weather.

As for the children, they’d never known any other way, and Cole watched with affection as Sarah kicked a ball to them on the hundred metres of white sand beach that had come with the property, the deep azure of the Caribbean stretching out from it as far as the eye could see. Cole was playing goalkeeper, and his over-the-top play-acting of trips and dives as Ben and Amy took their shots had both children in constant fits of giggles.

As Cole dived again onto the warm sand, the sight of his family warmed him immensely. He’d managed to avoid watching the news all morning, not wanting to spoil the fun his kids were having opening their presents. The simple joys of his own childhood Christmas mornings had been brought back to him, and he let himself think for a time about the family of Mark Kowalski — for he now thought of Kowalski as a separate person, entirely unrelated to himself. Since his official death in Pakistan, he accepted that he would never again see his parents, his brothers or sisters, or any other member of his old family, ever again. He knew they were all still alive and well back in the same old, small city near Detroit though, and that would have to be enough. At least he had fond memories of them.

Sarah’s memories of her own childhood were not so positive, Cole knew. Her mother had died when she was very young, and she had been raised by her father. He was uninterested in the extreme, however — as well as being inordinately busy — and she had really been raised by the housekeeper, Mrs Dyson, until she had reached her teens and decided she was old enough to raise herself.

The telephone rang then, from inside the house. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Cole, and he jogged back along the sand, going in through a large set of open French doors.

He picked up the landline handset, and an automatic message clicked on. It lasted just five seconds, and he hung up.

What could have happened since yesterday?

9

‘What evidence have we managed to get so far?’ asked President Danko at a virtual conference held via the US secure satellite system.

Jan Hanneskog, the Swedish Prime Minister, picked up the bat for that one. ‘Our intelligence services have identified the origin of the attackers as Han Chinese, from the various remains. We’ve also found remnants of Chinese-manufactured assault rifles and radio equipment, and the guided missile launcher is of a type used by both China and North Korea. Although it appears that the guidance systems on both launchers were mercifully faulty.’

‘We know all that,’ interjected Danko impatiently. ‘Do we know anything else? Ellen?’ He directed his enquiry to President Abrams, as the US was rightly regarded as having both the best electronic and the best human resources in the global intelligence community.

Abrams cleared her throat before speaking. ‘The Office of the Director of National Intelligence here in Washington has disseminated a full report this morning, detailing all that is presently known. All of you have a copy.’ She took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her, seeming to consider matters for a few short moments. ‘In essence, what we have is a group of people who happen to be from a specific Chinese ethnic group, utilising weapons and equipment known to be used by China and her allies. It certainly points a finger in the direction of the People’s Republic, but the evidence is circumstantial at best. Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in China, and are also found all over the globe. And the weapons are available anywhere, from Afghanistan to America, to Europe itself. Thus far, we have no direct link between the PRC and the attackers. We’re working hard to identify the suspects and trace their movements prior to the attack, as well as tracing the origin of their equipment. But this sort of work takes time, as we all know.’

‘We do not have time!’ Danko bellowed. ‘We need to act, and act now!’ Once more, the giant fist slammed into the table.

Behind Abrams in the electronic communications room in the basement of White House West Wing, unseen by the projected images of the other participants of the conference call, Hansard smiled.

His report was getting exactly the reaction he had planned.

10

Just half an hour later, Cole was in his study, facing a wall of books that lined the solid mahogany shelves stretched from one side of the room to the other.

After receiving his telephone call, a recorded had voice simply announced ‘Please call your answer phone to retrieve your messages.’ The call forced Cole to immediately switch mindset. Although it was Christmas Day, dinner would just have to wait. He was being given a mission.

The recorded message had told him that he had an encrypted cipher to pick up, and the only time that ever happened was when his services were being called upon by his controller.

And so, instead of sitting down to Christmas dinner with his family, Cole found himself reaching for Volume IV of Churchill’s ‘The Second World War’ on the shelf directly in front of him. As he tilted the book off the shelf, a soft mechanical whirr emanated across the room as a section of the huge, solid bookcase retreated back into the wall before sliding away smoothly behind the rest. As the narrow stairway which wound its way down to the hidden basement was revealed, Cole found it hard to suppress a grin. It was terribly clichéd, he knew, but he loved it anyway. A lifetime of military training and secret intelligence work had still not jaded the excitement; inside, he was still the little boy reading his comic books and James Bond novels, dreaming of one day living that same peculiar lifestyle. It was an enthusiasm that had seen him through mission after mission, and that had allowed him to survive situations that would certainly have broken other men. He loved spending time with his family, of course; but only when the secret calls came did he once again realize that he needed the mission.

As he quickly descended the stairs, the bookcase slid shut behind him. At the bottom of the stairwell was a rather more stringent security measure than the cantilevered book — a ten-inch thick reinforced steel door. ‘Cole,’ he said as he approached it, the voice recognition software responding to his unique vocal pattern and sending an electronic message to the control panel to the side of the door, which popped open immediately. He entered an eight-digit code into the keypad, using each finger of both hands, one for each digit. The computer system accepted the code, whilst simultaneously checking Cole’s fingerprints against its files. Were Cole to be compromised, for anybody to gain access to the hidden room they would need both of Cole’s hands and to know in which order each finger pressed each key; all elements were needed for validation. A retina scan onto Cole’s moving eyeball completed the checks. Overcautious perhaps, but Cole knew better than most the inherent dangers of his profession.

The team from the technical branch of the NSA that had installed Cole’s basement had been subjected to drug-based memory erasure after they had completed the work. Upon their return to the workrooms at Fort Meade, Maryland, they couldn’t even remember where they had been for the previous month.

For the hidden room was a room of secrets.

11

Cole seated himself at the cipher station in the small, armoured, underground room and started the process of retrieving his message. There were quicker methods, of course, but the old-fashioned cipher was still the most secure. They had proved themselves throughout history time and again, from the famous Enigma machine used by the Germans in World War II, to the incredible complexity of the NH67 ‘Swordfish’, used by both the American NSA and the British GCHQ. This was a modified example of just that system, which was now in its eighteenth generation. The original was nigh-on unbreakable, and the new NH67 was perhaps the most secure form of communication in the world; not totally secure, as anything made by man can be broken by man; but it was near as damn it.

After the normal, tortuous wait, the message finally came through, in plain text after the painstaking decoding:

Cole read, then re-read the message. ‘C’ was his immediate controller, the agent handler who gave Cole his missions. It was previously accepted that after Cole’s relocation, he would have no further physical contact with his controller. And now he was coming directly to the Caymans?

Cole turned the idea over in his mind. It was highly irregular, and Cole felt no comfort in knowing the task that the man was travelling half way across the world to discuss with him. For ‘Mission Type 1’ was the coded designation for an assassination.

12

On board his private Gulfstream Jet, cruising at the speed of sound 38,000 feet above the Atlantic, Charles Hansard struck a match and put it to the bowl of his wooden pipe. A genuine Meerschaum, it had been a gift from the Commandant General of Austria’s Gendarmerieensatz-kommando counter-terrorist team, better known as the ‘Cobra’ force.

He had the cabin all to himself. Nicholas Stern, his trusted personal aide and bodyguard, was also acting as pilot on this particular trip

The teletype suddenly came to life next to him, catching his attention as it printed out a message from his private on-board cipher. It was, indeed, truly private; nobody else knew he had it.

He used it to contact his secret team of operators when he needed to call upon their services.

Before his appointment as Director of National Intelligence, Hansard had worked for over thirty years for the Defence Intelligence Agency, making his way up to Director.

Before he had gained the Directorship, he had been the Head of Department X, the Defence Counterintelligence and HUMINT Centre, responsible for the physical sharp end of the intelligence business. Since the early 90s he had run special projects groups such as the Intelligence Support Activity and Grey Fox, until accusations from the press over alleged government-sponsored assassinations caused him to take a brief sabbatical.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Hansard was again called upon to develop such a government service, and the result was the Systems Research Group, a secretive team that performed specialist operations for the nation’s intelligence services. It built on Hansard’s previous work, and its operators were culled from the very best the military had to offer — Army Special Forces and Rangers, Navy SEALS, Marine Force Recon, Delta Force, the list went on.

The men and women accepted into the unit underwent extensive further training, and immersed themselves fully in the clandestine, internecine underworld of secret intelligence. They were then gainfully employed across the globe as US ‘trouble shooters’, used on particularly sensitive missions where more formal military action would either be too much, or just politically inexpedient.

Mark Cole, formerly Lieutenant Commander Mark Kowalski of the elite United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group — more commonly known as SEAL Team Six — was Hansard’s top man. Before he even joined the SRG, he had already shown himself to be a solid, reliable man who had proved his worth in battle more times than Hansard could believe.

He had selected Cole for this particularly vital mission for these facts, of course, but there were two additional factors that also played a part.

Whereas the men and women who made up the Systems Research Group were all officially active-duty military personnel, albeit with identities that were classified as top secret, Mark Cole had no military background at all. He was simply a professional diving instructor who ran a small dive school with his wife in the Caribbean. He had no links whatsoever with any aspect of the United States government or her military, and therefore anything he did was completely deniable.

When Lieutenant Commander Mark Kowalski had been declared Killed in Action, and had then turned up in Pakistan, Hansard had realised how he could use this to his advantage. Kowalski had been asked to make the supreme sacrifice for his country, and had agreed.

Over the course of the next few months, Kowalski became Cole — there was plastic surgery, retinal implants, fingertip alteration, new official documents, a traceable history including friends and old work colleagues that would support his biography, and a new home in the Caymans. Halfway through his transformation, he had even got himself a new wife, and Hansard hadn’t minded in the slightest — being a family man would only help his cover.

And so Mark Cole had started to be assigned jobs, ones that couldn’t be officially approved through the normal channels but which were nevertheless vital to US security. Rendition, kidnap, undercover investigation, assassination — all were part of the diving instructor’s global remit.

Nobody within the US administration knew who Cole was, except for Hansard, and if anyone wanted a job doing they would contact Hansard as the agent’s controller, and ask for use of ‘the Asset’. And that was all.

Another of the things that made the Asset so useful, and the other reason why he had been selected for this particular task, was that during the time the man had spent in Pakistan, he had developed a certain skill set that was quite unique.

Hansard’s reverie was interrupted by the bleep of his cipher, telling him the message had been decoded and printed. He looked down and read the typed words before him. The pipe once more between his teeth, he smiled widely. ‘Crafty bastard,’ he muttered to himself, amused. It was nice to see that Cole had lost none of his panache.

13

Cole heard the seaplane before he saw it, the drone of the engines initially drawing his gaze. It circled lazily for a time, presumably trying to locate Cole’s private yacht, then began its descent to the calmly lapping waves below.

The odd little plane made its landing just two minutes later, sending huge geysers of water surging up past both oversized skis, finally floating to a stop just a few yards from Cole’s yacht.

Stern clambered out onto the port-side ski, the craft reverse-way on to the yacht, and caught hold of the mooring rope that Cole threw to him. The two vessels were linked together, and floated gently side by side in the gathering dusk.

Cole observed Stern closely as he pushed a wooden bridging platform over the gap between the plane and the yacht. Cole knew that Stern had been Hansard’s bodyguard, or ‘personal assistant’ as Hansard liked to call him, for ten years now. Six feet five, an ex-Marine officer and football offensive back, Cole had always thought the man was too big to be an effective BG. Too obvious.

Stern also surveyed the man opposite him, weighing him up him up. Could I take him?, he wondered, as he did whenever he met anyone. More often than not, the answer was a resounding Yes. From his school days, he’d always been bigger than his peers; not just in height, but also in sheer bulk. His sports background had bred a high level of ruthless, win-at-all-costs aggression in him, and this was further honed by his service with the Marines, which was a violent environment by any standard. The night-club fights and bar-room brawls he’d had when out with his school and college football teams continued throughout his military life. He was quick to anger, and even quicker to respond to any perceived challenge. And he’d never yet lost a fight; he was not above using the odd bottle or ashtray when he had to, but he would win.

He looked at Cole carefully. It had been seven years since he’d last seen him, and if Hansard hadn’t told him who it was, he would never have recognized the man’s face. He had changed dramatically, the result of extensive plastic surgery and other surgical procedures designed to disguise him since his official death.

Even though Cole had performed successfully on all the missions assigned to him, Stern expected the easy day-to-day family life Cole enjoyed in his luxury Caribbean hideaway to have blunted his edge.

Stern noted that Cole obviously still kept in shape, his wiry strength evident in the lean muscles of his torso, barely covered by the short-sleeve cotton shirt he wore. But, decided Stern, Cole was simply too small to pose any real threat; Stern had a good half a foot and a hundred pounds on him. Sure, Cole was well-trained, but so was he. And so Stern came to the same inevitable conclusion, and the same conclusion he had reached the last time they had met. Damn right, I could take him.

There had as yet been no words spoken; Cole and Stern had merely nodded at each other to signify an acknowledgement of the other’s existence. Then Stern turned and moved back inside the seaplane.

‘Ahoy there!’ announced Hansard effusively, waving at Cole as he strode regally along the makeshift gangplank, his other hand using the silver-topped ebony cane for support. Impeccably dressed, as always, Hansard moved across the darkening water with his idiosyncratic limp.

Cole marvelled as he watched him. Seven years after their last meeting, Hansard was still the austere Naval Commander. He could have been stepping out of his cabin aboard the USS Caron, Hansard’s first and last real naval command.

‘Ahoy there yourself,’ Cole responded, taking Hansard’s arm and helping him onto the deck. ‘Welcome aboard. It’s damn good to see you, sir. It’s been a long time.’

They shook hands firmly, and then Cole gestured to the oak parquet stairs that led down to the main cabin. ‘You’ve had quite a journey, sir. Care for a drink?’

Hansard nodded, moving past Cole towards the stairs. ‘Don’t mind if I do, my friend. Don’t mind if I do.’

14

At Cole’s invitation, Hansard settled himself into one of the leather captain’s chairs that were dotted around the yacht’s large, sumptuously appointed lounge area. Even with his militarily erect posture, Hansard seemed instantly at home in the surroundings. ‘I think we must be paying you too damn much,’ he complained finally.

‘You pay me what the jobs are worth,’ Cole countered. ‘Anyway, you could be paying me out of your own pocket and it would only be loose change to you.’

‘Now, now,’ chided Hansard in return, ‘I’m not that wealthy, you know. Anyone would think I was Donald Trump or something.’

Although he made a mockery of it, the truth of the matter was that Vice Admiral Hansard was one of the richest men in the United States, although he used his connections to ensure that his name never appeared on any of the nation’s ‘rich lists.’ Most of his peers did the same; in fact, America’s ‘official’ richest man, the genius billionaire behind the Lantex Leisure conglomerate, was actually only the nation’s eighth richest. Hansard’s vast wealth came primarily from his landholdings, passed down through generations of his family, but also from some rather shrewd business investments, some of which were also far from public knowledge.

Hansard took a sip of his brandy Cole had given him. ‘But there is serious business to attend to, I’m afraid. And I mean deadly serious. That’s why I’m here personally. No middleman, you see, not this time. We just can’t risk it. I couldn’t even risk sending you a cipher. We can’t have anything written down or printed. I need to give you the details verbally.’

‘Who’s the target?’

Hansard nodded to Cole’s bottle. ‘Have another sip of that,’ he suggested. Cole did so, raising a questioning eyebrow once finished.

Hansard seemed satisfied. ‘Your target,’ he began, ‘is William James Crozier.’ Cole’s brow furrowed upon hearing the name and he started to speak, but Hansard lifted a hand to stop him. ‘Yes, my friend. I will make it quite clear for you, so that there is no misunderstanding.

‘I want you to kill Bill Crozier, the Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.’

15

Sarah was waiting for Cole when he returned to the house shortly after nine. He smiled as he came in, and she smiled back weakly. ‘How long?’ she asked simply.

Cole approached her, holding her arms, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Only a short one this time, babe. Should be back the day after tomorrow by the latest.’ Sarah didn’t look convinced, so Cole added ‘Really, honey. I mean it.’

She nodded her head in resignation. ‘What time do you leave?’

‘An hour,’ he answered immediately. ‘I just need to go down to the office and then I have to get straight off.’

She nodded once more, knowing there was nothing she could say to stop him. ‘It’s important?’ she asked finally.

Cole kissed her gently on the lips and looked directly into her deep blue eyes. His own eyes, also blue, seemed to take on a strangely opaque quality as he replied ‘Yes. Yes it is.’ He hugged her tightly to him, and his warmth and strength immediately reassured her. I shouldn’t worry, she decided. He’ll come back safe. He always does.

Forty five minutes later, Cole closed down his computer system. The internal database stored detailed information on literally thousands of military, intelligence, police and political personnel from around the globe. Anyone of any importance was on it, and it was continually updated by secure link direct from the Office of the DNI, on Hansard’s orders.

Cole additionally had direct access, through a series of ingenious cyber-hacking programmes, to the internal computer mainframes of all major intelligence services from around the world.

In essence, Cole was able to obtain detailed information, official and unofficial, about anyone he needed. In this particular case, just half an hour after entering his secret room, Cole had turned up literally hundreds of pages of information on William James Crozier, including his military service record, his current CIA/NCS personal file, medical records, and even a diary of his movements.

Cole hadn’t balked at the idea of assassinating Crozier. It was an unusual request, certainly, but not without precedent. In the internecine world of espionage and intelligence, it wasn’t as simple as black and white. Very often, the most dangerous people were those who worked for the same country.

Indeed, for all Cole knew, the order to kill Crozier might even have come from the US President herself; that was how the programme was set up, so nobody would know where the orders came from. People with the necessary security clearance would contact Hansard on an encrypted communications network and put through their requests for ‘the asset’. Hansard would then assess the job and pass it along to Cole. It was possible even Crozier himself had used Cole’s services in the past, with neither man being aware of it.

Cole wasn’t about to question his orders — if the high-level politicians using the programme wanted the NCS Director dead, there would be a good reason, and Hansard himself would not necessarily know what it was. Such compartmentalisation was what ensured complete operational security, something that was often sadly lacking when politicians were involved.

Cole had sifted quickly through the gathered intelligence from his database, picking up on whatever was useful and discarding everything else.

And so, shortly after ten o’clock that evening, he had his mission completely planned out; exactly where, when and how he would kill William James Crozier.

16

Fifteen minutes after this, Cole had visited his children, asleep in their rooms, and kissed them goodbye. He didn’t wake them; Sarah would explain things to them in the morning. He had stared at them for a time though, gaining strength from their peacefulness. It was a calm that came only from innocence — they had not yet encountered the brutal reality of the world, as their father had. And he knew he had to succeed in his task, so that the innocent could continue to sleep untroubled.

And now he stood in the doorway, a light leather holdall in his hand, his car waiting for him outside. ‘Remember what to do if I make the call?’ he asked Sarah, who stood with him in the doorway, the cool breeze of the sea blowing blissfully over them.

‘Of course I do, honey,’ she answered. He had, after all, gone to great lengths to explain it to her; her exact actions should Cole ever be compromised on a mission. She knew the drills, and had practised them regularly under her husband’s direction. ‘But you know talk like that makes me nervous.’

Cole held her face in his hands, looking directly into her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, baby,’ he said with genuine feeling. ‘I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.’

Then Cole kissed away the single tear that rolled down her cheek, turned, and was gone.

17

Cole smiled at the young lady behind the check-in desk, handing over his passport as he did so. He looked, now, sufficiently like the photograph so as to arouse no concern — mousy blond hair, acne scars, thick-rimmed glasses — not that the girl gave it more than a cursory glance anyway.

More stringent would be the checks at passport control, but even biometric data could be forged, and Cole knew he would be presented with no problems. Thousands of people flew between Grand Cayman and Miami every week, and New Zealand citizen Brandon Clarke, whose identity Cole had now assumed, was just one more casual traveller.

‘Any luggage, Mr Clarke?’ the young lady, whose badge read Aretha Gibson, enquired cheerfully.

Cole patted the leather holdall next to him. ‘Just this,’ he replied. Whenever he travelled on a mission, he knew never to say too much, but also never too little; just enough to go through whatever motions were required of him. He left no lasting impression; just another face in a sea of faces, instantly forgettable.

Aretha gestured to the scales. ‘Just place your bag there please, sir.’ Cole placed down his holdall, smiling inwardly. She had already forgotten his name. The small ten kilogram bag easily passed the baggage allowance, and then Aretha went into her routine of asking if he had any prohibited items — razor blades, sprays, liquids, the list went on and on. Cole merely shook his head and said ‘No.’ It always amazed him that such precautions were taken. It seemed to him that all it did was make things harder for law-abiding, everyday passengers; any terrorist that wanted to get a weapon on board could easily do so, with only a modicum of planning.

He thought back to the time his SEAL section had been tasked with testing security between Heathrow and JFK. He and his three men had managed to board a 747 en route to New York with fake passports, three Glock semiautomatic handguns, one Heckler und Koch MP5K submachine gun, four combat knives, and enough C4 plastic explosive to destroy the entire airport, never mind one single plane. When they got through customs at New York with not even so much as a sign of suspicion, they had revealed to a disbelieving security staff exactly what they had managed to transport across the Atlantic.

The response was typical, and came as no surprise to Cole. The exercise was declared null and void because Cole and his team had ‘cheated’. The security had been told to expect them on a certain flight, and had concentrated their resources on that. Cole had seen the easy trap and therefore chosen another flight. Wouldn’t terrorists have done the same? asked Cole at the debrief. Because people that want to blow up aeroplanes do not generally play by the rules. But the airport authorities had ignored the facts that stared them directly in the face and, once again, had learnt nothing from what could have been a productive exercise; and international passage for men like Cole was still as easy as ever.

Aretha smiled again at Cole, handing over his passport, along with his ticket and boarding pass. ‘Thank you, sir. Have a nice flight.’

Cole smiled back, but not too much. ‘Thanks,’ he said simply, but cheerfully enough. And with that, Brandon Clarke made his way to the departure lounge.

18

Miami International Airport, even at quarter past one in the morning, was a chaotic cacophony of noise and sight; from the regular, monotone electronic announcements over the Tannoy, to the incessant pleading of parents trying in vain to placate their screaming children, to the roar of the big jets themselves out on the runways, everything conspired to destroy any vestige of peace or serenity.

Cole himself sat quietly, having chosen the end seat of a row fixed to a wall, facing out into the departure lounge. He never liked to sit on ‘exposed’ seating, especially in such busy public areas. He much preferred to sit with his back to something solid, so he didn’t have to worry about what was behind him. For the same reason, he would not sit in the middle of the row. A single seat would draw attention towards him however, and so he always sat at the end of a row; at least then he only had to worry about people to one side of him.

The large LCD screen suspended from the ceiling suddenly drew his attention. It was showing CNN, which ran the banner headline ‘ASIAN BLOW UP? WHY RUSSIA AND CHINA MAY SOON BE AT WAR.’ Under the banner, footage played of the attacks in Stockholm, interspliced with the recent speeches made by Vasilev Danko and Tsang Feng.

As the footage was replaced with studio commentators sombrely discussing the situation, Cole couldn’t help thinking: not good. Not good at all.

19

Cole felt the huge mass of the aeroplane shifting as its aerofoils engaged and it began to shed altitude on its slow decent towards Washington.

But the feeling was almost totally ignored by Cole. The body felt the change in pressure, heard the slightly higher whine of the jet engines, sensed the change of his position in space relative to gravity; and the mind interpreted these sensations, recognized they posed no danger or threat, and summarily dismissed them.

For Cole’s mind was locked on something more important. He had spent most of the flight engaged in a thorough mental rehearsal of his mission, visualizing with perfect clarity his every move, every action. Such was his concentration on creating the perfect mental picture, he could actually feel the cold, biting wind of the DC winter numbing his exposed face; could see the kneeling form of Crozier with vivid detail; could feel his heart rate rise with the unavoidable burst of adrenaline as he reached out towards him.

Cole had practised this particular form of psychological rehearsal from an early age. His parents had taken him to his first karate class when he was six years old, and he had taken naturally to the rigorous training. One aspect he had enjoyed from the start was the traditional art of kata; prearranged moves organised into set forms that could be practised alone. His sensei had told him that the key to success at kata was to imagine his opponents in his mind’s eye, in as much detail as possible. Unknown to the instructor, he was teaching the young Cole visualization techniques that would be at the forefront of sports psychology in the years to come. The skill served Cole well, and he took it with him into other sports, including judo and boxing. He enjoyed great success in his youthful competitive career, and rarely lost a fight. And he soon discovered that such a skill was directly transferable into everyday life, and was not just confined to the sporting arena.

As the Airbus lowered its landing gear on its final run, Cole came to the end of his last rehearsal. And the result was identical in every way to the last dozen times he had been through it; the mission successfully accomplished, with the quiet death of William Crozier.

20

By the time Cole left the arrivals lounge at Reagan National Airport, the first glimmers of the dull winter sun were just struggling over the horizon, throwing a greyish cast over the large parking lot towards which he was headed.

He had experienced no problems with security at this airport either, despite the increased alert status that always occurred around the holiday period. As he crunched through the thin layer of snow towards the Chrysler he had just hired from the Hertz desk in the foyer, he adjusted the huge bunch of flowers he had also just purchased, swapping them to the same hand that carried his holdall. It was force of habit to always keep one hand free, and Cole was a creature of habit. Habits like that had ensured his survival on a number of occasions, and he did not believe in taking chances unless absolutely necessary.

Cole soon saw the medium-sized grey sedan, and quickly verified the licence plate number with that provided by the hire agency. The car was like Cole himself — nondescript, unmemorable. Just another dull grey sedan like so many other thousands that trawled the streets of Washington. He blipped the central locking and opened the passenger door, laying the flowers on the seat and the holdall in the foot well.

Next, he spent some time walking around the car, checking it over carefully. The last thing he needed was to get a flat tyre halfway towards his destination.

Finally satisfied, he climbed into the driver’s side, inserted his key and fired up the engine. The driving computer flashed to life, and he set the heater to full. Damn, it was cold. The computer then offered him the option of satellite navigation to his destination, but Cole chose the radio instead; he had already memorized the route, and didn’t want there to be any chance of the rental company tracking where he’d been once he returned the car.

Without further pause, Cole put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, heading from the airport out towards Interstate 95, which would take him to his rendezvous with Bill Crozier.

21

The big Cadillac pulled along the gravel driveway of the Four Lakes Cemetery, rolling along at a respectful 3mph.

In the driver’s seat, Sam Hitchens aimed the car between two of the ornamental lakes, heading towards the set of gravestones by the third, larger lake. He once again thought about how hard Crozier made his job. He liked the man, that was for sure, but he thought some of the demands he made were entirely unreasonable. Such as wanting his bodyguard to also be his driver. None of the other top CIA guys just had one man with them; they all had bodyguards and drivers at the very least. But not Bill Crozier. Sometimes Hitchens thought that his boss didn’t feel that he deserved such protection. But that was just silly, Hitchens decided.

Another objection Hitchens had was his boss’s insistence on visiting his wife’s grave at 7:30 every morning. Hitchens had always felt it was unwise, and unsafe in the extreme to follow such an obvious schedule. But in the end, his opinion didn’t really matter, and Hitchens just had to do the best he could with the circumstances he was given. Besides which, Crozier had been a decorated Captain in the 82^nd, and as a former All American himself, Hitchens felt a strong bond with the NCS Director.

As the armoured vehicle rolled to a stop on the high lane that sat above the row of graves on the east side of the big lake, Hitchens noticed a man by one of the headstones, kneeling in the cold snow and placing a large bunch of flowers on the white ground in front of the grave. He seemed to be deep in prayer.

As Crozier got out of the car, Hitchens followed suit. Crozier threw the man a sharp look. ‘What are you doing? Stay in the car.’

Hitchens came over to Crozier. ‘I know that’s your rule, boss, but there’s a guy down there at the next grave over. I’ll go check him out, then I’ll come back and stay in the car.’

Crozier looked genuinely outraged. ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ he said quietly, but forcefully. ‘That man is offering his respects for a loved one. Don’t you dare disturb him!’

Hitchens sighed to himself in resignation. ‘Then will you at least wait in the car until he’s finished?’

‘I have a meeting with Dorrell in less than an hour,’ explained Crozier patiently, as if to a child. ‘So no, I cannot wait. Now get back in the car. I’ll be ten minutes.’

22

From his position in front of the gravestone, Cole had heard the noise of the Cadillac as it pulled onto the lane up the hill behind him. He had heard one door open, then the other, and then some exchanged words. What were they saying? Would they wait for him to move on? Would Crozier’s bodyguard come down with him? Cole sincerely hoped not.

He had read of Crozier’s habitual custom of visiting his wife’s grave from surveillance reports collated by the French secret service. Mary Elizabeth Crozier had died at the age of thirty-six in a car crash, had been pronounced dead at the scene. That had been seventeen years ago, and Crozier had been crushed by the incident. Many people had said that he could have got the Directorship of the whole CIA had his mind not been distracted by the tragedy.

The French intelligence report had other interesting information, including the fact that he had kept no close company since the accident, was a borderline alcoholic, was what the psychological profile labelled a ‘dependant obsessive’, but who was also extremely good at his job, perhaps looking to lose himself in his work. The report also said that Crozier’s bodyguard, Samuel Hitchens, always stayed with the vehicle on these visits.

And now what would happen? Would Hitchens accompany Crozier? Would they just call off the visit? Cole thought not. His own analysis of the man was that Crozier was not the sort to be perturbed by the presence of a fellow mourner; indeed, he would probably sympathize.

And so, as he knelt opposite the frozen lake in the cold, wet snow that had started to soak through the material of his trouser legs, he hoped that his reading of the man had been right.

23

Crozier slowly crunched his way down the small hill towards his wife’s gravestone. He had finally appeased Hitchens by letting him wait next to the car instead of in it; he would at least be able to respond more quickly should anything happen.

Not that Crozier expected it to. He was safe here. His wife was watching over him, as he had conversely failed to watch over her. And he would once again ask for her forgiveness, and find comfort in her answers. And then he would ask her what to do at the meeting that morning. And she would know.

Cole heard the single set of footsteps approaching from his left, moving towards the grave on the far side of him. The grave of Mary Elizabeth Crozier.

Good. Hitchens had stayed with the car. Cole had already decided on his plan of action should Hitchens have decided to accompany Crozier, but was grateful he didn’t have to go through with it. It wouldn’t have been as neat or as clean as he would have liked the operation to be, but sometimes you just had to improvise.

He once again thanked providence that this wasn’t one of those times.

Crozier was near the grave now, and had already started to pray. Please, Mary. Please forgive me. I love you. Please forgive me.

He had all but forgotten the existence of the other man, even as he stepped behind him to get to his wife’s grave.

Judging the moment perfectly, Cole made the sign of the cross and stood up, bumping directly back into the body of William Crozier.

24

From his vantage point by the car, Hitchens reacted to the sudden move. As the second man turned to face Crozier, a look of surprise on his face, Hitchens already had his gun out of the speed holster on his belt and was racing towards the scene.

Crozier himself was just as surprised, and felt the man touch his arm, then the side of his face, as if checking to make sure he was unhurt.

‘Whoa! Sorry buddy, I didn’t see you there!’ said the man apologetically in a mild Virginian accent. ‘Are you hurt?’

Crozier had regained his composure, and dusted himself down. ‘Not at all, don’t worry about it.’

‘Okay, thanks, I — ’ The man’s words caught in his throat, and Crozier could see a look of abject fear in his eyes.

‘Put your hands in the air! Now!’ Hitchens screamed at Cole, Sig Sauer pistol aimed towards his head. Acting with perfect believability, Cole’s hands went straight up in the air, voice panting and breathless with fear.

‘I … I — ’ He gulped down breaths of air, saw Crozier spin round to confront him.

Hitchens saw the face of his boss turn accusingly towards him. ‘Sam, what the Hell do you think you’re doing?’ Crozier hissed at him. ‘Get back in the car, now!’

Crozier seemed fine. Maybe it had just been an accident. Hitchens tentatively started to lower his gun. Crozier’s eyes widened at him. ‘Now!’ he spat, and Hitchens realized he had no choice.

Holstering his weapon, the bodyguard nodded his head and climbed back up the hill towards the car.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Crozier offered. ‘He’s rather protective.’

‘You can say that again!’ said Cole, backing away slowly, fear still showing in his eyes. ‘Er, look, sorry again about knocking into you. Real sorry.’

‘Forget about it,’ Crozier said, then turned to his wife’s grave, kneeling. The man was forgotten. He didn’t have time to get into a conversation with him. Besides, the guy looked scared enough to pee his pants, Crozier figured. After that display by Hitchens, he’ll just be happy to get out of there.

Crozier was right. Cole was happy to leave. Still with the worried look on his face, he edged away slowly, eyes darting from Crozier to Hitchens; the reactions of any normal citizen who had just been threatened at gun point.

After retreating a safe distance backwards, Cole turned and walked away as quickly as he could off in the opposite direction, back towards the car that was carefully hidden on the road outside the cemetery.

He smiled to himself as he went. The mission had been successfully accomplished.

25

Crozier entered the grand foyer of the CIA Headquarters at Langley just forty minutes later.

It was when he had passed through the first security gate that he first felt it; a sharp pain in his head, a powerful thumping, pounding away at the inside of his skull. At the same time, he felt a loosening of his bowels. He decided immediately to ignore it. Probably just a lack of food and sleep and too much whisky the night before. It would pass.

The feelings returned, even stronger, when he placed his hand over the palm-print identifier that opened the twin steel doors of the executive elevator. As the metal box fired rapidly up the smooth shaft towards the sixth floor and the CIA Director’s office, he began to feel faint. Terribly faint. His chest started to constrict around his lungs, and he felt his breath become caught in his throat.

As soon as they had arrived, the symptoms faded, and the elevator door opened and he made his way down the long corridor towards the next set of security checks before the top-level offices.

Jacob Maitlin, the senior security official on duty that morning, smiled widely as Crozier approached. ‘Hey Bill, how you doing?’ he asked pleasantly.

Crozier smiled. ‘I’m doing good thanks, Jake.’ He handed over his card, which was examined by the officer.

Jake nodded, then gestured for Crozier to lean forward to the machine that would scan his retina. The machine bleeped once and then the light on top turned green. Satisfied, Jake handed Crozier back his pass.

As Crozier was about to step through the security gate, he was swamped by the same feelings; pain in his head, heaviness in his stomach. He staggered to one side slightly.

Jake’s hand went out to steady him. ‘Hey there, Bill, go steady!’ He looked at Crozier’s eyes, saw the redness from the blood vessels that had started to burst. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ Jake, like most of the staff there, knew about Crozier’s alcohol habit, and put the man’s state this morning down to nothing more than a heavy night.

Crozier nodded weakly, and walked through past the metal barrier. Jake reached out for Crozier’s arm and bent his head close to whisper in his ear. ‘Bill, you look awful, man. Take my advice and go a bit easy, okay?’

As Jake wondered if he’d gone too far — did a security officer have any business preaching to the Director of NCS? — he figured that his twenty-eight year tenure at the CIA gave him the privilege of being able to talk straight when necessary.

But Jake needn’t have worried. Because Crozier just looked faintly at him, nodded weakly, and collapsed, dead, on the floor.

26

Cole pushed through the dirty chrome and glass doors into the Greyhound Bus Depot in Baltimore and was immediately accosted by the stench of stale urine, sweat, alcohol and desperation. He looked around the large, dull foyer and saw the groups of winos gathered in little clusters; the young, wide-eyed teens just arriving to the big city from their little rural backwaters; others, only slightly older, restlessly awaiting their transport back to the simplicities of country life, the big bad city having chewed them up and spat them back out; women with their small children running away from their abusive husbands; drug dealers meeting up for deals; students setting out for college. The depot was a true melting pot, a thousand people from all walks of life wanting to take the Greyhound across America for a thousand different reasons.

Cole looked across at the bored, dejected ticket sellers in their reinforced Plexiglas safety cells. They had seen it all before, and if it had ever interested them, it certainly failed to do so now. Cole smiled. The perfect place to escape attention. Nobody cared.

He had left the Chrysler with the Baltimore branch of the rental agency, after first erasing the memory of the vehicle’s satnav device; a laborious task, but an absolute necessity. He had then walked the two miles to the bus depot, his collar turned up against the December chill all the way.

He never returned home by the same route after a mission, nor did he ever use the same identity. New passports were easy enough to come by, and why take a chance? His plan this time was to take the Greyhound to New York, then fly from La Guardia over to Hawaii before connecting back to Grand Cayman. He figured he would be home by late evening the day after. Not bad at all.

He thought briefly of Crozier. He would certainly be dead by now, Cole surmised. Killing a man was never an easy thing, but Cole was not unduly perturbed by his own actions. It was a simple case of numbers. If Crozier had lived, others would probably have died. It was unfortunate that Cole had to be the implement of such a policy, but it was a policy that he could see the intrinsic value of, and he had killed many times in order to protect the lives and interests of his fellow countrymen.

The first time Cole had killed, he had been only twenty years old; a lifetime ago. A newly-badged SEAL, he’d been on a reconnaissance patrol in the border provinces of Iran, when his four-man section was ambushed by a group of approximately twenty — Cole never found out exactly how many it had been — well-armed militiamen. Barely out of training, Cole’s baptism of fire was as short as it was brutal.

Petty Officer 1^st Class Pete Miller, the section commander, was an experienced man and was able to keep his men focussed as he screamed out fire orders at them. They blasted their way out of the ambush, killing eight of the militiamen before the others fled the scene. Cole had taken three himself. A Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal had followed, as did a promotion to E5, PO 2^nd Class. His officers had congratulated him, and his team-mates had almost drowned him with beer.

It also brought him to the attention of a senior officer who saw Kowalski’s potential and recommended that he attend Officer Candidate School. The young SEAL had never considered becoming an officer, but at the insistence of his own unit commander, he had gone to OCS at Pensacola Naval Air Station and had graduated as an Ensign soon after.

The instructors back at the Naval Special Warfare Training Centre in Coronado had always said that the first kill would be the hardest. Before the team’s deployment, psychologists had had long chats with all the men, going through strategies on how to cope with the guilt and attendant stress and anxiety that came with taking a human life.

Cole had never really experienced such feelings, however; he had just been glad to live through the experience. When the armed militia had opened up on them, the loud chatter of the AK-47s deafening in the close proximity of the mountain pass, Cole had momentarily frozen, scared into immobility. It had taken the kindly words of Petty Officer Miller — ‘Kowalski, snap the fuck out of it and get on that fucking rifle!’ — to move him to action. And when Cole had moved, he had moved well.

The guilt he felt afterwards was not for the taking of a human life — not even three — but for freezing, for nearly letting his buddies down. And he had vowed then and there that he would never let anyone down again through his inaction — not his country, not his friends, and not himself.

And that was how Cole had operated from that moment on — always doing everything that was asked of him if it was for the ‘greater good’, even if that meant killing a man in cold blood.

As Cole thought about Crozier, he muttered a quick prayer. A remnant of his Catholic upbringing, a prayer for the dead was always offered by Cole when someone died at his hand. When he was given to contemplate theological matters, he failed to see the irony; for he was sure that on his day of judgement, the Good Lord would see all of the lives that had been saved by his actions, and therefore forgive him for those that he had taken.

Satisfied that his duty was done, Cole decided to give no more thought to William James Crozier.

But there was one more thing to do before he could start his journey home; he had to report on the success of his mission. Trudging through the cold brown filth that had been trodden into the foyer from the snow-slicked streets outside and now slid its way across the drab tiled floor, Cole headed towards the bank of payphones clustered over by the entrance.

Keeping his gloves on in order to ensure no prints were left on the phone, Cole inserted some coins into the machine and then dialled the number. Although the mission was classified beyond any normal security level, he felt comfortable calling the telephone number Hansard had given him; only Hansard would understand the message that Cole was going to leave.

The phone was picked up after just two rings. What sounded like an elderly woman answered from the other end, a frail voice that could have been anyone’s grandmother. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi Edna, it’s Tom, how are you?’

‘Oh, Tom!’ The voice seemed to gather strength upon hearing his name. ‘I’m very well, thank you, dear, how are you? How was your holiday?’

Cole knew the woman would understand that ‘holiday’ was code for ‘mission’, but also knew that she would have no idea what it had entailed; she would just report back through the proper channels that ‘Agent X’ had made positive contact.

‘It was good, thanks, saw everything I wanted to see. Hopefully be back home soon.’

‘That’s great, Tom, glad to hear it.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Cole’s senses instantly came alert; there was going to be something else, wasn’t there? ‘You know, it would be really nice to see you here in London before you went back, do you think you could pop by to say hello before you go? You could tell us all about your trip.’

Hansard wanted to debrief him in London? Why? It was completely against procedure. But what could he say? ‘Of course, I’d love to. I should be there by evening.’

‘Oh, that’s lovely Tom, we’ll look forward to seeing you. Bye now.’

‘Yeah. Bye.’ Cole replaced the receiver, but stood motionless for a full minute. What did it mean? Did Hansard have another job for him? Cole hadn’t been debriefed in person in almost nine years, before Pakistan. Why did Hansard want him there now? And why London? It didn’t make sense, and Cole distrusted anything that didn’t make sense; especially when it concerned his job.

But if Hansard had asked for him, there would be a good reason. And so, misgivings or not, Cole walked up to one of the Plexiglas safety cells and asked the bored attendant for a one-way ticket to Dulles International. The British Airways flight, Cole knew, left for London Heathrow at midday.

27

The flight left right on schedule, the huge Airbus surging into the sky with an accelerative force that bordered on the miraculous. Cole tried to remember what the massive aircraft tipped the scales at — six hundred tonnes? Seven hundred? When he had trained to recapture ocean supertankers from terrorists back in his Navy days, he had been in awe of the fact that such vast behemoths did not simply sink beneath the waves; the scale of the things was extraordinary. But this! How on earth did it even get airborne, never mind stay there? He knew all the technical explanations, of course; but to see it, to feel it, was something else again.

He was glad of the distraction; his mind had been hitherto completely occupied with trying to figure out the purpose of his visit to London. There had to be something of vital importance to warrant this breach of protocol.

The message seemed to indicate that the purpose of his visit was to give Hansard a debrief on the assassination of William Crozier. But surely that wouldn’t warrant a visit to London? Cole felt sure that there must be another mission awaiting him.

Or maybe the whole situation was panicking Hansard, making him paranoid? The entire operation had been mounted under a cloak of absolute secrecy, right from the start; why should the debrief be any different?

The more Cole thought about it, the less able he was to come up with a viable answer.

28

Cole left the arrivals lounge of London Heathrow Airport at just past midnight. He passed through the automatic glass doors into the chill London air and breathed deeply. The city was familiar to him; he had been to Britain many times in the past, on exchanges with military and intelligence groups, and had even performed a job here in London just two years earlier.

A taxi pulled up next to him, the classic black cab, one of the mainstays of the London tourist experience. Cole got into the vehicle, asking the driver to take him to the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. He wasn’t going to stay there, however; he just didn’t want the taxi driver to know where he was staying. Besides, the Dorchester was a large luxury hotel, and as such kept too many detailed records of their patrons’ visits. He settled into the back of the black cab, getting comfortable for the thirty minute journey into the city.

Before his flight, he had called a London contact number. The person on the other side of the line had given him details for the morning’s meeting; a message that would have been meaningless not only to the messenger who delivered it, but also to anybody else who happened to be listening in. But Cole understood perfectly. He was to meet Hansard at the CIA safe house near Regent’s Park at 0900 hours later that morning. Cole knew of the existence of the place, although he had never been there. It was certainly a secure environment, Cole thought with a small degree of comfort.

Cole had then called to book himself into the Devonshire; not one of the major hotels, but nice enough, and it was conveniently located on Devonshire Street, just across the park from St John’s Wood. He had used one of his many untraceable, but quite legitimate, credit cards, this one in the name of James Driscoll. It was one of the secure identities that Cole had secretively set up for himself; even Hansard was unaware of its existence.

Using cash, although untraceable in theory, was in reality no longer worth the risk. Anyone paying cash these days was immediately regarded with suspicion. Indeed, hotel management within the capital, even in a family-run concession like the Devonshire, had been provided with a special telephone number to call when clients paid in cash. The call would be routed through to Special Branch, the intelligence wing of the Metropolitan Police, who shared the information directly with the Security Service, better known as MI5, who would then cross-reference the details with other information kept on their files. An enquiry would soon be launched if the service’s instincts were aroused, and a surveillance team from A Branch would be assigned if it was thought that the situation warranted it.

After the anthrax attack on Wembley Stadium three years ago, which had killed over two thousand people and left thousands more in hospital, no chances were being taken. Emergency powers were granted to both the police and intelligence services, and the budgets of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, which had become available for public scrutiny in recent years, had once again been made a matter of secrecy. It was thought that the budgets for all three services had been increased by a factor of four since the tragedy of ‘Black Saturday’, and whilst GCHQ predictably used the money to increase its electronic and signals intelligence capability, the other two services had invested heavily in human intelligence. The number of agents employed by MI5 alone was now thought to stand at somewhere near four thousand, and it was now possible to actively investigate anything that needed investigating. And so Cole used a credit card whenever he travelled.

The half hour journey passed quickly enough, and Cole was soon peering through the windows at the illuminated beauty of Marble Arch as they turned with the traffic, heavy even at this late hour, onto Park Lane.

The black cab stopped outside the imposing façade of the Dorchester at quarter to one that morning. It was late, and so there was no waiting doorman to take Cole’s bag, which was good, all things considered. The driver was duly paid, and Cole made towards the huge gilded entrance, veering away as he saw the taxi pull away back into the steady stream of traffic.

Instead, he pulled his collar up against the icy wind and started to trudge towards Oxford Street, on his way to the Devonshire. It would take no more than half an hour, he figured, and so he was assured of a good night’s sleep. Because even five hours was considered a good night’s sleep on operations; and until Cole was safely at home with his family, he still considered himself to be very much involved in his mission.

29

Cole finally slipped into bed a short time after three in the morning. He stretched out underneath the warm, luxurious sheets, his body aching from the thousands of miles he had travelled in the last forty-eight hours, and the debilitating after-effects of adrenaline from the short but crucial period of action.

He had not walked straight to the Devonshire, but had followed a circuitous route instead. By walking in a certain unpredictable pattern, by taking unlikely diversions across the London underground, and by generally using anything but the easy route, he would be able to pick up on any surveillance that might be watching him. It was a habit born out of years of experience.

As he had approached Oxford Street, he decided that he would need a change of clothes for the meeting later that morning. On reflection, Cole also decided that it would be prudent to destroy the clothes he was wearing. After all, there was no point walking around covered in potential DNA evidence.

He therefore entered a clothing store on Oxford Street at one o’clock that morning, selecting a light blue cotton shirt, conservative grey business suit, a plain silk tie, and new underwear. From the camping store a few doors up, he also purchased some more casual travelling clothes and trekking boots, and he then obtained some leather brogues and a new leather holdall from a gentlemen’s outfitters just a few minutes walk away. Not for the first time, he was grateful for the twenty-four hour culture that this country had finally embraced.

At half past one, he descended the steps of the Tottenham Court Road tube station, and changed into his new casual clothes in the cubicle of the public toilets. He stuffed his old clothes and shoes into his original holdall and transferred his documents to the new one. He then put his suit and other clothes into the new bag, and all the shop’s plastic packaging into the old one. Satisfied, he caught the next Northern Line train to Warren Street.

After ascending to street level once again, Cole strolled easily for five minutes, before heading down one of the dark alleys off Great Portland Street, where he set fire to his old holdall and all its contents. He watched it burn, until all that was left inside the skeletal carcass of the holdall was a large pile of ash. He scattered the ashes over the rain-slicked street of the back-alley, then threw the useless, burnt leather bag into a nearby wheelie bin.

He had then continued, via Portland Place, on to the Devonshire Hotel in Devonshire Street, confident that he had not been followed. After a quick check-in he had gone up to his room, where he had indulged in a wonderfully long, hot bath before crawling into bed.

Stretching complete, Cole reached over to set his alarm for half past six, rolled back, and was asleep.

30

Sarah noticed the tiny pinprick of light as she stared out to sea. Ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it. After the coded message she had received from Mark though, her paranoia level had increased considerably.

Not that there was anything unduly worrying about the content of the message — he had merely been informing her that he would be delayed by a couple of days.

However, Mark had always stressed that whenever there was a deviavtion from the norm, precautions should always be taken. And so here she was, Ben and Amy fast asleep in bed, staring out across the Caribbean and looking for anything out of the ordinary. And the light out at sea, so late at night, fell directly into that category.

It was certainly worthy of further investigation, she decided.

Dan Albright didn’t like the fact that the yacht’s sidelights were on, but those were the orders from the harbour-master, and it would be even more trouble to get into a conflict with him. Because the last thing Albright wanted to do was to bring any untoward attention down on him and his men.

Besides, he didn’t expect Sarah Cole or her children to notice their presence. Not until it was too late.

31

Cole strolled down the street towards the safe house, the air crisp and cold. There was a fresh layer of snow covering the road, although the snow was no longer falling. In fact, there were no clouds in the sky at all as far as Cole could make out, and the sun was trying its best to pierce the icy atmosphere. But despite its efforts, it was still bitterly cold, and Cole observed how his breath crystallised as he exhaled. The snow would soon turn to ice, he knew, and then just the very act of walking would become somewhat treacherous in his leather-soled brogues. He was glad he’d be able to change into his new boots after the meeting.

The small terraced street was a quiet place, running off a much larger and busier road nearer to the park. It held long stretches of large, four-storey Georgian town houses on both sides, and seemed well cared for. It was certainly an affluent area, and Cole wondered for how long the CIA had kept a safe house here. He felt certain that it would have been several decades at least, as current property prices would now scare off government purchase of such a site, even with the generous black budgets currently enjoyed by the US intelligence services.

Such safe houses were remnants of the transatlantic ‘special relationship’ enjoyed between the US and the UK and, although press reports indicated that it wasn’t what it once was, the intelligence community was still pretty tight. In this day and age, with terrorism a global concern, it had to be. And so the British government was only too happy for the American intelligence services to have their own stations within the UK. It allowed the CIA and other US agencies to perform aspects of their work away from the prying eyes of Congress, whilst Britain received reciprocal favours in return.

The street was quiet, perhaps due to the time of year, and Cole could see nothing at all out of the ordinary; which was, he thought ironically, odd in itself. But all in all, he was satisfied with the location. He was sure that his movements were now being monitored by electronic surveillance, but he was not concerned. His appearance was sufficiently different to his file photographs to ensure that a match would not be made. And anyway, he was officially dead — any agents now watching him wouldn’t even have access to his file.

He had heard that this was the location for many top-level interviews, from the protracted debriefings of KGB defectors from the Cold War, to the ultra-sensitive handling of politicians escaping the despotic regime of modern-day North Korea. Cole knew that only preliminary interviews would be held here, before the individuals concerned were spirited away to more secure, remote locations in the Scottish Highlands or Welsh mountains, in conjunction with the British Secret Intelligence Service. Nevertheless, if such stories were to be believed, then some very influential men would have spent at least the first few days of their new lives here behind the thick stone walls.

He was sure that the safe house would be like a fortress.

32

Sarah knew the location of the binoculars as well as her husband did, and had practised using them on more than one occasion, under his exacting instruction. She now carried them silently through the house, slipping upstairs to the top floor, where she entered a small cloakroom. She pushed her way through to the back, lying down prone on the floor. Reaching forward, Sarah pulled a small wooden slat to one side, leaving a six-inch by three-inch gap.

The opening gave her a view directly out of the wall of the house, and it was just big enough for the lens of the binoculars to fit into. Remembering precisely how Mark had demonstrated their use, she turned on the night-vision device and trained it out to sea. The glow was a strange, eerie green that took her a few moments to get used to. But when she did, it took her only a short while longer to locate the yacht she’d spotted earlier.

So, she thought to herself, I was right. It’s still there. Focussing the binoculars, she zoomed in on the vessel. Even with the impressive night-vision facility, it was still hard to make out details at this distance — Sarah estimated it was at least six kilometres out from shore. But she was patient, and waited. And waited. Until, finally, she saw movement. What looked like a tall blond man came out from below deck and walked to the bow, kneeling down as he got to an indistinct mound on the floor. The man knelt, his hand going down to touch it.

The mound moved under the blond man’s touch. Oh no, thought Sarah as she saw what the mound really was, the reality of the situation dawning. She then focussed her high-powered lenses, first of all on the blond man’s face, and then on that of the other man. Previously hidden under a dark blanket, the second man had been using his own night-vision scope to keep a quiet eye on the Cole household.

This wasn’t just out of the ordinary; this was a direct threat to her and her children.

She breathed deeply. Something would have to be done.

33

Cole arrived at the large, black-painted door at nine o’clock in the morning precisely. He struck the brass doorplate three times with the solid brass knocker, and after a few seconds heard the slow shuffle of feet from inside. This was followed by the sounds of a key being turned in a lock, and then the door was pulled ajar to a width of just three inches, a brass chain halting further progress.

A small old lady looked out curiously from behind the door, her eyes lighting up as they settled upon Cole. ‘Tom!’ she exclaimed, immediately taking the door off the chain and opening it wide, a smile on her face. ‘How lovely you came! Come in, come in!’ she gushed, gesturing for him to enter.

Playing along, Cole smiled back. ‘Hi, Edna,’ he said happily as he gave her a hug on the doorstep. ‘How have you been?’ The house, and maybe the whole street, might be CIA or SIS controlled, but you never knew who else might be watching. And so appearances had to be maintained at all times.

‘Me?’ asked Edna as she turned back into the house. ‘Don’t let’s talk about me when you’ve so much to tell me! It really is lovely you came, I can’t wait to hear about your trip, I’ll bet it was really nice, have you brought pictures? I’d love to see them if you have …’ On and on she droned, until the big front door was shut, at which point she became completely silent. Cole wasn’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t as if they knew each other.

Without another word, she led him down the hallway, past the entrance to an old-fashioned sitting-room, towards a polished oak door at the far end. The hall, he noticed as he trotted along after her, was exactly as one would expect were ‘Edna’ to have really been the owner of such a house — very neat and tidy, with a thickly patterned wool carpet and damask wallpaper, a selection of collectible antique china on the small mahogany hall tables. An expensive residence, but nice and homely all the same; perhaps the dwelling of a rich widow. The multitude of photographs of the same man adorning the walls would certainly indicate the fact.

A sham, of course, but any casual visitor to the house would certainly be satisfied. A more inquisitive caller could even be shown into the small sitting-room off the hall without their suspicions ever being aroused. The house certainly seemed normal enough.

As the frail woman approached the door at the end, Cole thought he detected a brief flash of light — a retina scan perhaps? — and then she put her entire right palm in the centre of the gleaming wooden door, turning the brass knob with her left. Cole was sure that her palm was also being electronically scanned as a further security measure. And then the door was open, and the old lady beckoned him through.

Cole passed her by, nodding his thanks as he went. As he entered the room beyond, his eyes widened involuntarily with surprise. He didn’t even hear the noise of the door clicking shut behind him.

34

After recovering from the initial shock, Cole started to more carefully appraise his surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a sprawling, top-class private members club. He was stood in what he took to be the reception area, a large room in and of itself; completely panelled in rich mahogany and swathed in thick wool carpet, it was the epitome of luxury.

He saw quiet reading rooms off to each side of the central lobby, men and women sipping at drinks whilst they studied the morning’s papers. Through the large, arched entrances on either side of the beautiful antique reception desk, Cole could see a vast lounge bar beyond. The lady behind the desk smiled at him as he approached. ‘Good morning, sir,’ she said amiably, though without real warmth. ‘If you would just wait there a moment,’ she continued, pressing a button under her desk.

Seconds later, two serious and competent-looking men came out from a side room. ‘We’ll just need to perform a quick search, please, sir,’ explained the first man politely. Cole just nodded his consent. He’d have been surprised had there not been a search. He assumed the only reason he had not been asked for identification was because Hansard had so ordered it.

The search was quick, but professional. After an initial pass with a portable metal detector, the second man performed a manual search — and not the pedestrian pat-down that is so often done, Cole noted, but a proper and thorough job. Cole was not concerned, though. He had nothing on him.

Satisfied, the men thanked him and retreated back into their little room. Cole looked around as they left. He couldn’t see anything visible, but he was sure that every room in the building would be under close surveillance. Probably cameras behind mirrors, or hidden in the light-fittings.

The receptionist spoke again, now that the formalities were out of the way. ‘Mr Hansard sends his apologies, but he is running a little late. He invites you to relax and have a drink at the bar while you wait.’ The woman gestured through one of the arches behind her. ‘I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.’ Thanking her, Cole strolled through the vaulted entrance to the left of the desk.

The lounge bar, which he had seen partially from the reception area, was even bigger than he’d imagined. Sporting the same rich mahogany panelling and thick carpets as the anteroom behind him, the lounge was designed in open-plan. Quiet booths with deep leather bench seats and solid wood dining tables were spread along the walls to the left, and there was a long, gleaming bar stretching fifteen feet down the right hand wall. The rest of the floor space was adorned with various Chesterfield sofas, sumptuous leather wing chairs, and an assortment of antique coffee and lamp tables. Landscapes adorned the walls, and were illuminated subtly by the dull glow of the brass-pedestaled lamps that were scattered around the room. A galleried library looked out over the lounge from the mezzanine level above, its dark wooden bookcases stretching from floor to ceiling.

Cole found his breath was taken away by the sight. The room was not only inordinately luxurious; it was also vast. It wasn’t the high ceilings or the great depth that most surprised him however; it was the sheer width that really did it. Spanning a little over seventy-five feet in Cole’s estimation, it was three times the width of the house he had entered. Cole realized that his earlier thought about the CIA owning the entire street might not have been mere idle supposition. The organization certainly appeared to own at least the two houses to either side of the first, and Cole found himself wondering just how big this safe house really was.

After he had taken in the scale of the lounge bar, he began to observe its occupants as he walked slowly to the bar itself. There were about a dozen people there in all, only one of whom was female. Most were in their middle age, from what appeared to be a variety of ethnic backgrounds. All were smartly dressed. They were mostly reading the morning newspapers as they sipped at their dainty cups of tea or coffee, although a couple were perusing the leather-bound volumes up in the library. One or two sitting in the lounge had already started on the brandy.

Cole noticed that the nation-wide ban on smoking in public places obviously had no sway here, and he could detect not only the rich aroma of pipe tobacco, but also the expensive scent of cigar smoke.

None of the room’s residents looked at him, even in passing. They had all obviously passed the stage of interest in the comings and goings in the strange house. Cole guessed that they would be people who had already received their initial, and extensive, preliminary debriefings, and who were now waiting to see what would happen next; if they were going to be sent elsewhere for further interviews, or granted freedom to stay in the country, or perhaps even shipped home if they had been of no use. Whatever the case, Cole was sure that new arrivals to the house would not be allowed to congregate in the public rooms; they would almost certainly be ‘confined to quarters’, at least initially.

Cole wandered over to an old, button-back leather armchair that faced the twin arches at the entrance to the lounge and sat down, picking up a copy of The Times from the little table next to him as he did so. He opened the pages, and read them with interest.

There was nothing of major importance that he hadn’t learned from the television news he’d watched in his room that morning. A more thorough run-down of press interviews and statements from Abrams, Danko and Feng, but not much else. What was more interesting was what wasn’t there. Cole could find no mention on any of the pages of the death of William James Crozier.

He was not surprised at the omission of Crozier’s tragic, if necessary, demise. The CIA would think long and hard about how they were going to release the information, and make sure that there was a competent man waiting to take over Crozier’s responsibilities. The last thing James Dorrell, the Director of the CIA, would want would be a power vacuum. Bill Crozier, as Director of NCS, had been ultimately responsible for all international initiatives, and Dorrell would have to be sure his replacement was fully up to speed on all aspects of the Directorate’s activities. Dorrell would certainly not want the international press to start reporting on Crozier’s sudden and unexpected death; such an event would delight the intelligence services of America’s many enemies.

What would happen, Cole was sure, was that the death would be reported in a day or so, mentioning how Crozier had long been suffering from ill health, and how he had been working closely with his successor for the last several months in preparation for the tragic, but inevitable, passing on of the current DNCS. This would send out the right sort of message — that the death, although tragic, was nevertheless expected, and the CIA had made preparations for the event that would ensure operations could continue without skipping a beat.

The truth, Cole knew, would be somewhat different. There would be panic at the highest levels of the CIA as they struggled to find someone to take over and bring that person up to speed, then further panic when they realized that all sorts of operational secrets had gone to the grave with Crozier. But that panic would never be made public, and the transition to power of the new DNCS would appear to be smooth sailing, at least on the surface.

But, Cole wondered, could there be another reason that Crozier’s death had not been mentioned? Could he have failed in his mission? Could Crozier have lived?

Cole silenced the doubt as soon as it arose. He knew the man could not have lived. At the cemetery, Cole had struck three of Crozier’s vital nerve points, in quick succession. As he’d stepped ‘accidentally’ backwards into Crozier, the point of his elbow hit a nerve inside the man’s forearm, next to the long radiobrachialis muscle. It was fairly harmless in itself, but Cole’s steel-like fingertips had then grasped one of the series of nerves lying near the medial deltoid muscle of the shoulder, and he had then lightly tapped the Seventh Cranial nerve near the hinge of the jaw.

After the initial impact felt by Crozier when Cole had stepped back into him, the next two nerve manipulations had appeared to be nothing more alarming than natural moves by Cole to check if the man he’d bumped into was okay. But they had made the initial, otherwise harmless strike into a deadly one, interrupting the flow of blood to both the brain and the heart with devastating effect. Cole knew the results would not be instant, but also knew they would be permanent. Cole had estimated that Crozier’s death would occur approximately one hour later.

Such nerve strikes were known to the Chinese as dim mak, and to the Japanese as atemi; to the Indians, from whom Cole had learned the art, it was known as marma adi, the most advanced stage of knowledge in the ancient Indian martial art of kalaripayattu. To its adepts, the title didn’t matter, only the results. Depending upon the skill of the practitioner, these could range from temporary paralysis, to instant death, to a certain death, delayed up to several hours. It was a deadly art indeed, and Cole had learned its secrets well.

Having studied martial arts from his youth, Cole had thought only of strength and aggression; he had had little time for rumours of such mystic ways. He had won countless fights with basic moves, honed through thousands of repetitions, and with a brutal and aggressive application of those moves. He had trusted nothing that couldn’t be both learned, and retained, easily. But that was before his capture in Pakistan, and before he’d met Panickar Thilak, an Indian ‘cross-border terrorist’ who had occupied the cell next to him for over a year. Panickar had shown him that such skills were no myth; they were real, and could be used.

Knowledge of such a skill was what now made Cole such a valuable asset. ‘Enemies of the West’ could now be killed cleanly, effectively, and with no indication as to how it had been done — no alien chemicals in the body, no severed brake lines, no accidental ‘falls’ in front of speeding trains. Just a heart attack, a stroke, a brain haemorrhage. Unfortunate, but often just an unavoidable part of life, and unworthy of further investigation. And all Cole had to do was get close to them.

He closed the paper and placed it back on the table next to him. No, thought Cole, Crozier was dead.

35

It was nearly ten o’clock when Hansard entered the reception lobby, Stern at his side. There was no search or metal-detector check-in for him, Cole noticed. An assistant came out to greet him, taking the coat from his shoulders before he ventured through the archway into the lounge.

Leaning on his ebony cane and puffing on his pipe, Hansard scanned the room, his eyes lighting up as they met with Cole’s. He said something quietly in Stern’s ear, and the big man nodded grudgingly and moved across to the end of the bar. He pulled up a stool and sat down, all the while looking sullenly across at Cole, who ignored him.

As Hansard approached, Cole stood to greet him. Hansard propped his cane against a nearly chair and offered his hand, which Cole took. ‘Well my friend, looks like you’ve done it again. Got confirmation last night.’ He nodded at Cole approvingly. ‘Good man.’

So Cole had been right; there was nothing to worry about. Crozier was dead.

‘May I?’ Hansard said, gesturing to the chair near Cole upon which his cane rested.

Cole looked surprised. ‘Here?’ he asked.

Hansard sat down into the armchair and was followed, reluctantly, by Cole. A brandy was brought over immediately by the attentive barman. ‘Mark,’ Hansard began soothingly, ‘would you rather we had our little discussion in one of the interview rooms? Despite my influence, whatever we said there would be recorded and filmed. Likewise outside these walls,’ he continued. ‘You know nowhere is safe from Echelon.’ Cole nodded his head. The Echelon eavesdropping system was indeed an incredible technological marvel. As well as scanning every voice and electronic message sent around the world, its ingenious systems could turn anything into a voice recorder; it could take over the power of a mobile telephone and activate its internal microphone, or it could translate the reverberations of a pane of glass in a restaurant into voices. It was an incredible weapon, and Cole knew that if Hansard wanted the conversation recorded, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

‘Most of this building,’ he continued, ‘is covered with surveillance equipment of all description. This room, on the other hand,’ he explained conspiratorially, gesturing around the huge lounge, ‘is not. It is a rest area, if you will, free from prying eyes, or ears. It’s where our guests come after their first series of talks, to let off a bit of steam while we decide what to do with them next.’ As Hansard took a sip of his brandy, Cole accepted the confirmation of his earlier deductions about the place. ‘Not that many do,’ Hansard carried on. ‘They’re just too damned suspicious of everyone. Won’t believe the room’s not bugged.’ He smiled. ‘Can’t say I blame them. Don’t suppose I would, in their position. But please believe me when I tell you that this entire building is secure from external listeners, and this particular room is the only one in the building that is safe from internal listeners.’

Cole was already convinced, even before Hansard enthusiastically summed up. ‘My friend, we are now, quite literally, in the most secure location in England. We may discuss whatsoever we like, and only you or I will ever know about it.’ Hansard’s eyes seemed to twinkle as he spoke.

‘Okay,’ Cole agreed. ‘We can talk here. But maybe first of all you can explain just what it is that we have to talk about in the first place.’ Although Cole could not be angry at Hansard — they had been through too much together for that — he was concerned over this whole breech of operational protocol, and wanted the man to know that he was not happy.

‘Mark, I don’t think I need to spell out the ramifications of what we’ve done. This wasn’t some tin-pot North Korean General or some damned psychotic terrorist leader. This was the Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, one of our own people. And we killed him. Now what do you think would happen if anyone ever learnt of our involvement?’

It was a serious question, but Cole considered it only momentarily. ‘It doesn’t matter what they would do if they found out. They won’t do anything, because they won’t find out.’

Hansard took a sip of his brandy and looked at Cole coolly. ‘Normally I would accept that,’ he offered. ‘But not with this. I have to know this won’t come back to haunt us. You have to tell me everything — dates, times, places, people. We have to be absolutely sure that there can be no comebacks.’

‘But sir, they won’t even investigate his death, and even if they do, what then? I don’t even officially exist anymore, so there’s no way to track me, or link me to either you or the US government.’

‘I believe that is probably the case,’ Hansard allowed, ‘but I have to know. We cannot afford to take any chances here, you must realize that. So tell me. Everything.’ He patted the remnants of tobacco out of his pipe and started to repack it. He interrupted his routine to look up at Cole and smile. ‘After all,’ he continued, ‘if you can’t trust me, who can you trust?’

Cole settled back into his chair. He never told anyone the details of his missions; that was the point, wasn’t it? They used him for missions so that there would be plausible denial. But maybe, Cole started to wonder, Hansard was right — maybe there was something that he might have missed. This was no ordinary situation, and Cole couldn’t blame Hansard for wanting to keep a tighter control than usual. And he was definitely right about one thing — whatever his faults, Hansard could be trusted. He couldn’t help but think about how he could still be in that stinking prison in Pakistan if not for Hansard’s intervention.

Finally, slowly, Cole nodded his head. ‘Okay,’ he said simply. ‘I’ll tell you.’

36

It was past noon when Cole finished his report, and the two men had moved over to one of the enclosed booths, where they had ordered lunch. The lounge bar was a little more full now, and most of the booths were occupied. A string of people lined the bar, but still nobody was talking.

Hansard looked satisfied. He was pleased that Cole had lost none of his ability to deliver a good, detailed post-action report. He had covered every aspect of the operation, and seemed to have left out nothing. There was, however, one thing which concerned him. He was about to mention it when a waiter brought over their food — a lobster thermidore for Hansard and succulent roast duck breast in port sauce for Cole. The efficient waiter made sure that everything was satisfactory before making his exit.

Hansard lifted his glass, and Cole did the same. ‘Here’s to a successful operation. Congratulations.’ They clinked their glasses over the table and both took a sip. They both smiled in appreciation at the subtle taste of the wine.

Hansard set his glass down and looked at Cole. ‘There is just one thing,’ he said eventually, as Cole started to cut into the delicate meat in front of him.

Cole stopped what he was doing and looked up at Hansard. ‘Oh?’ he asked in surprise. ‘What?’

‘This bodyguard who saw you at the graveyard.’ Cole knew what was coming. ‘Could he be a problem?’

‘I don’t believe so, sir, no,’ Cole said emphatically. ‘It was fairly dark due to the time of day, I was wearing a hat, and I’d altered my appearance sufficiently. Besides which, Crozier died of a heart attack. Why should anyone ask questions anyway?’

Hansard nodded, inwardly digesting what Cole had said. ‘Yes, but still, given the circumstances, do you not think it may have been prudent to — ’

‘Kill him?’ Cole finished for him. ‘Absolutely not. A middle-aged man dies of a heart attack, nobody bats an eyelid. That same man’s bodyguard dies on the same day — in any way, whether it’s a heart attack, car accident, or a bullet through the head — then alarm bells will start to ring.’

‘You’re right, you’re right,’ Hansard muttered. ‘I suppose I’m just getting paranoid. No, you did the right thing. Well done. A good op.’ Hansard toasted Cole again, and then the both of them got on with the serious business of eating the delicious food in front of them.

37

Hansard dabbed at his lips with the linen napkin before placing it carefully down on the table by the side of his empty plate. ‘Excellent,’ he said happily. ‘Quite excellent.’

Cole had to agree. The meal had been delectable. ‘It certainly was,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Thanks? You’re thanking me? My friend, our entire nation should be thanking you. You’ll probably never even know the contribution you’ve made to your country’s future.’ Hansard stood. ‘Now, I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got to make a move. I have another meeting to get to.’ Hansard extended his hand, and Cole took it, shaking it firmly. ‘You’re a good man, Mark. Thank you.’

And with that, Hansard turned and walked towards the twin arches, Stern removing himself from his bar stool and coming over to join him.

Cole looked through as the assistant helped Hansard back into his heavy Crombie overcoat, then watched the two men leave. Cole sighed, then finished the last of his wine. Probably the last time I’ll see the old man, he thought. But at least he hadn’t been given another mission; the meeting was, as the message had originally suggested, purely for a post-action debrief. Now he’d be able to get back to his family.

He’d leave it half an hour — he didn’t want to walk out of the front door so soon after Hansard — and maybe treat himself to a glass of the 1977 vintage port he’d seen on the wine list. He’d then go directly to the airport and get the three o’clock flight to Paris, from where he would then transfer to Madrid before getting a connecting flight back to Grand Cayman. He estimated his arrival back at the house on Cayman Brac at no later than eight the next evening. He wondered idly if everything was alright at home, or if Ben and Amy had driven Sarah insane already.

His thoughts wandered back to Hansard, and the strange look he’d had in his eyes when he’d said his farewells. Probably nothing, Cole decided. He was undoubtedly under enormous pressure.

38

After giving Hansard a good head start, Cole finished his drink and wandered over to the reception area, passing once more beneath one of the archways.

The assistant went to get his coat, and helped him on with it upon her return. Cole didn’t feel like he needed the help, but she looked the sort that might take offence at a rejection of the offer. He thanked her and made a move towards the door, but she put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Sir,’ she began, ‘Mr Hansard thought it might be more prudent to use the back door.’

‘He’s probably right at that,’ he said. ‘Would you care to show me the way?’

‘Of course, sir,’ the assistant replied primly, leading him back through the arch and into the lounge.

She weaved a path through the sofas and armchairs, arriving at a buttoned leather door, slotted between two of the booths on the left-hand wall. She opened the door for him and led him through into a long corridor, which by Cole’s estimation must have stretched through at least four more of the street’s town houses. It had the same décor as the rest of the building that he’d seen so far, and had several doors coming off both sides. Cole wondered if they were the interview rooms.

The pretty assistant gestured to the first door on the right. ‘Just through there, sir,’ she said, before turning to leave.

‘You’re not seeing me out?’ Cole asked in surprise. He had expected some sort of security lock on the doors that she would have to open.

She smiled at him, as if explaining something to a slow-witted child. ‘No sir, it’s all electronically monitored from here. The doors will open and close automatically for you. Through that door is a little chamber — it’ll be dark at first, but the lights will be activated by your movement — and the exit is right on the other side. The room’s like an airlock, the door will lock behind you and if I went with you, I wouldn’t be able to get back in.’ She nodded her head at him, still smiling. ‘Goodbye, sir.’

He smiled back. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, then pushed at the door. As she had explained, it opened freely, and he took a couple of tentative steps into the darkness. As he entered the room, he suddenly tensed. The door swung shut behind him, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. Something wasn’t right, and he already thought he knew what it was.

He took another pace forwards into the room, and the lights came on, glaring in their intensity. Shit.

He felt the cold press of steel against the back of his head at the same time as he saw the two men in front of him, dressed in plastic coveralls and aiming their own handguns at him.

Cole had no time to think, only to act. He span round in a tight arc to his right, deflecting the gun arm of the man behind him with his own right arm. Continuing the arc even as the other two agents opened fire, Cole’s body snaked behind that of the man who until moments before had been stood behind him, his hand running down the man’s arm to the pistol.

Holding the agent’s body tightly in front of him, Cole felt the jarring impact of the 9mm rounds as they slammed into the makeshift human shield. As the man’s grip loosened, Cole took the pistol smoothly away, aimed instinctively, and loosed off four rounds in quick succession.

Less than two seconds had elapsed since the door had closed and the lights had come on, and Cole surveyed the carnage. He let his human shield drop to the floor, the man’s body ripped apart by his colleagues’ bullets. Those same two colleagues were also now laid spread-eagled on the floor, two neat little holes in each forehead, the backs of their heads blown out.

All three men were quite clearly dead, and Cole took the opportunity to take a look at the small room. The pretty assistant had at least been telling the truth about one thing, Cole thought bitterly. The room was like a chamber. And this particular chamber had been recently decorated with plastic sheeting, not only for the floor and walls, but also for the ceiling. A professional job for a professional execution.

But Cole had no time to consider the whys and wherefores now — he was a target, and needed to get out. He could work out who wanted him dead and why after he’d managed to escape. He was still feeding off the adrenal dump he’d been given when the lights had come on and he’d seen the guns, and he knew he had to use it while he could, before it left him a shivering, quaking wreck. He had to control it, harness it, and get every last bit of hormonal supercharging that his body would give him.

There was no door on the other side of the room, Cole soon noticed. There was only one way in, and one way out. It was a room with only one purpose, he realized.

Cole checked the door he’d entered through, but it was unsurprisingly locked. He then started a careful search of the room, almost losing his footing on the slippery pools of blood that had collected across the plastic sheeting. There was nothing he could use — no doors, no windows, no hatches. But, he observed with a flash of hope, there were no cameras either. Not the sort of place you’d want permanent records to be kept of, he guessed. But it gave him the briefest glimmer of a chance — it meant that the building’s security probably hadn’t realised what had happened yet.

Cole picked up the two guns that had fallen to the floor and quickly checked them. Six rounds left in one, seven in the other. The gun he’d taken initially had twelve rounds left. He tucked the other two pistols into the waistband of his trousers, then searched all three men. He found an extra fifteen round magazine on all three of them, and slipped these into his pockets.

Only moments later, the door started to open and the first man of a clean-up crew entered the room. There were three men in total, mops and buckets in hand, and their eyes went wide at the dead bodies on the floor in front of them. They started to react, turning and going for their weapons, but it was too late; Cole fired just three shots and all three men dropped dead, the 9mm rounds exploding through their skulls with sickening force, spraying the plastic-covered walls with blood, bright red in the harsh lighting.

He was sure that they were all good men, just doing their job, but Cole never even considered letting them live. Shooting guns out of men’s hands was all well and good for John Wayne, but in real life, things just didn’t happen that way. Cole had to escape and, innocent or not, there were now three fewer men to follow him. Like Cole, they had known the risks of their chosen profession when they had signed up. The guilt would creep up on him one day, perhaps a week later, perhaps a month, but Cole would shed no tears for them. After all, they would have shed none for him.

He spun out into the hallway, keeping close to the doorframe for cover, his eyes tracking the path of his guns as they scanned quickly up and down the corridor. They was nobody else there. He dropped the two pistols he was holding, and immediately crouched over two of the new bodies, quickly searching them. He removed identical handguns from holsters on the waists of both men, and stood up. Better to have two fully loaded weapons, he figured. He felt sure he would be using them again.

As if to prove his scepticism, a crash sounded at the other end of the corridor. Spinning out once more into the hallway, his eyes went wide as he saw another four men rushing out of the huge doorway at the other end of the corridor. Shit. A silent alarm, tripped by the security force that was undoubtedly surveilling the corridor by means of hidden CCTV.

A burst of gunfire from a compact Heckler and Koch submachine gun that narrowly missed his head focussed his attention like a laser beam. Instantly, Cole adopted a low, side-on kneeling position to minimize the target he would present and fired down the long corridor with both guns, rapidly stroking the triggers until both weapons were empty. Even at that distance, all four men went down; perhaps not dead, but certainly out of action. Their inexperience had been clear to Cole from their first shots — fired on the run, without rooting themselves to take proper aim. Cole, on the other hand, had preserved sufficient presence of mind to do so, and the results were apparent.

Another sound started to echo down the room, and it took several precious moments for Cole to realize what it was — doors locking. The sound had started at the far end of the corridor and was working its way rapidly down the hall. All his exits were being cut off. Cole barely had time to wonder if the entire corridor would become an airlock, allowing them to kill him with some sort of poison gas, before he saw the door to the chamber out of which he had escaped also swing shut and lock with a solid clunk.

Spinning round desperately, he dropped his guns as he reached out for the door that led back into the lounge area. He only barely managed to grab the handle and yank the door open, mere fractions of a second before the lock electronically activated, thick steel bolts shooting out from the inside edge of the door; mercifully not into the housings in the doorframe, but into fresh air.

Hearing more noises behind him, he just had time to glance back through the doorway as more armed men poured into the far end of the hallway, before he jumped through the gap and into the lounge bar, swinging the heavy door shut behind him. He heard the impacts of the bullets on the far side of the door, but ignored them. Instead, he immediately surveyed the room in which he now found himself, analysing his every option. As he quickly took in every feature of the big lounge, he realised with disheartening realism that there were not many choices open to him.

As he watched, armoured doors slid powerfully shut across the arched entranceways through which he had initially passed earlier that morning. There didn’t seem to be any other doors, except for one on the library’s mezzanine level, on the right hand side opposite that of the one on the ground floor, although it was undoubtedly securely locked by now.

The people in the room were the same group as when he had left just minutes earlier; various types and ages, scattered around the lounge, some half-way through their lunch, others still digesting the daily newspapers. But all now looked fearful, terrified. Having entered the CIA’s protective custody, they would all assume that Cole had been sent as an emissary of their own respective governments to kill them.

A thought suddenly entered Cole’s mind suddenly, unannounced and unbidden. My family. He suddenly realised that it would not just be himself that would be in danger; he had been betrayed and now his family would also be a target. He couldn’t die here; he had to escape. He had to. He had to get out and warn them. He vowed that nothing would stop him; nothing would stand in his way.

A collective scream echoed around the room, and everyone dived for cover, fearing that they would be next. Cole knew his time was running out. The security team would be at the door within the next couple of seconds, and they’d want blood; Cole had already killed or seriously wounded eleven of their colleagues. Sprinting over to the bar, which offered the furthest point from the doorway, Cole grabbed hold of a short, spectacled man in what appeared to be his mid-forties, who was cowering on the ground, hands over his head. Cole yanked him to his feet and placed his gun to the side of his head just as the door burst open.

A team of eight men entered the room, fanning out down that side of the lounge, taking up positions in front of the dining booths. The two men on the far sides had H&K SH sniper rifles; a little bit of overkill for this sort of environment, Cole couldn’t help thinking, but it made him a little more cautious of just where exactly he angled the short man’s body. Cole crouched slightly to better cover himself, and saw the other six men all had assault rifles, pointing directly at him.

‘Don’t shoot!’ Cole shouted violently. ‘Don’t fucking shoot! I’ll put a bullet in this guy’s fucking head, you know I will!’ The men exchanged looks with one another, before looking to the man just right of centre, who Cole took to be the section leader. As the man seemed to consider matters before giving his orders, Cole hoped beyond hope that the guy he’d grabbed was of significant importance to someone.

The section leader shook his head slightly, and Cole could see the subtle relaxation of the other men’s trigger fingers. For long moments, nobody moved, and nobody talked. Cole pressed the gun harder into the short man’s temple as he saw the small black holes at the end of the multiple barrels all pointing unwaveringly at him. The other occupants of the room just held the floor for dear life, not even risking a glance upwards. The huge lounge was eerily quiet.

The section leader at last made his move, and placed his weapon down on the ground in front of him, standing with his hands held out placatingly in front of him. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Just let him go.’ He turned to his men. ‘Hold your fire,’ he ordered them. ‘Okay. We’ll get you out of here.’

‘Do it now!’ Cole shouted, trying to ignore the man’s attempts to relax the situation; Cole wanted everyone to remain tense, keyed up.

‘Please, just calm down,’ the section leader said calmly. His words were designed to be soothing, to lower Cole’s guard; but his actions betrayed him. A brief flicker of the man’s eyes upwards told Cole everything he needed to know, and suddenly time seemed to slow for Cole. It was a sensation he had experienced before in such adrenaline-charged situations, where the mind seemed to subconsciously grasp the severe danger of the circumstances, and automatically changed the way the brain interpreted its signals and perceived time. What happened next occurred very slowly for Cole, but was over in mere seconds.

Cole’s head first of all snapped to the right and up, in the direction of the section leader’s quick glance. His gun hand was moving too, as he already knew what would be there; his prior survey of the room had provided the clue. His trigger finger depressed just fractions of a second later, the bullet finding its target just instants after that. The sniper that had entered quietly through the mezzanine level door and positioned himself over the library balcony, to the right and slightly behind Cole, was rocked back by the impact. The body fell backwards into the doorway, jamming the door open, whilst the rifle fell from the man’s hands onto the carpeted floor of the landing.

The heads of all the men in the security team turned to look at the descending rifle, mesmerized for precious instants, and Cole took the opportunity to act. Pushing the short man away from him into the centre of the room, Cole took two quick shots towards the men as he raced for the staircase just fifteen feet away to his right. Both rounds hit their targets, and the two snipers on each side of the room were both hit.

As Cole sprinted for the relative safety of the stairs, the six remaining men regained their senses and opened fire. Mercifully, the confusion caused them to forget to lead their target, and the bullets instead tore through the air behind Cole, allowing him to reach the stairs unscathed. As he carried on up the stairs, the rounds from the assault rifles chased him, obliterating the carved wooden banisters just inches behind him.

The men started to rush towards the stairs themselves just moments later, but Cole was already at the top. Instants later, he had dragged the dead sniper through the doorway, the heavy door slamming shut behind him. The section leader, the first up the stairs, heard two more shots from the other side of the door, then there was silence. He reached for the door handle and tried to open it, but found it locked. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, before clicking the microphone on his collar. ‘Open the doors! Now!’

39

Cole looked at the three dead bodies on the floor of the corridor in which he now found himself. There was the sniper, and two others that he had found when he had dived through the doorway. Luckily, Cole had managed to take advantage of their surprise and get two rounds off before they could react.

He then looked to his left, and confirmed with satisfaction what he thought he had seen through the doorway when he had glanced towards it earlier — a window. But something more than that; a way out.

40

The section leader waited impatiently at the door as his order was transmitted to the electronic security centre, buried deep within the bowels of the building. Simon Edwards was a Sergeant with Army Special Forces, although he had been seconded to a special section specifically recruited for the protection of the London safe house. As he counted down the seconds until the door swung open, the only thought going through his head was that he had failed. It was his section’s job to make the safe house physically safe, and this crazy bastard had already killed several of Edwards’s own men.

When the door opened, he would have to catch this guy, whoever he was. That was another thing that grated. Normally he would be given details of every visitor to the house, no matter how important they were. He hadn’t even been given a name for this guy — orders from the top. But, Edwards promised himself, names are for tombstones; he was going to kill the man personally.

Finally, Edwards heard the click of the locks come open. He organised his men with quick hand signals, then kicked open the big, heavy door, submachine gun tucked tight into his shoulder as he entered the first floor corridor.

At first, he didn’t even notice the three dead bodies. His attention was instead captivated by the hallway window; or, rather, the lack of it.

He understood instantly how Cole had done it. The glass had been armoured, naturally, and was rated as strong enough to withstand even the high-powered rounds of a sniper rifle. But not, Edwards could now see quite plainly, five carefully placed such high-powered rounds, fired at point blank range.

The veteran Green Beret sergeant looked down and saw Hendriks’s discarded H&K SH rifle, lying in a pool of blood that still oozed out of a pulsating wound in the man’s neck. Another one gone, Edwards thought to himself. Damn. Brannigan and Fitch too, he now noticed, and although two of his men hurried to administer first aid, Edwards knew it was too late. They were already dead. Son of a bitch.

Edwards ran to the window as his men continued checked the bodies. Leaning out of the shattered window, he peered into the rear yard, the muzzle of his weapon tracking the same line as his vision. Nothing, he thought with wonder. There wasn’t a trace, not even a mark in the fresh snow.

The thought suddenly struck him that maybe the man had gone through one of the other doors in the hallway. He was about to come back in and get an interior search organised when a noise from above stopped him. Not much of a sound — a faint whump, followed by a few shards of falling ice — but he knew instantly what it meant. In the blink of an eye, he snapped his gun upwards and depressed the trigger.

41

Two floors up, Cole barely managed to get his last foot over the edge of the slippery, tiled roof before it erupted in a sudden explosion of gunfire from below.

Damn. He’d hoped to be quick enough that they wouldn’t see him, and therefore would suspect that he was still somewhere in the building, having used the shattered window as a diversion. Meanwhile, his plan was to make his way across the rooftop to a point further down the street, then to come down on the other side.

The drainpipe and ledges he’d used to climb up the side of the building had unfortunately proved to be that little bit too icy, however, and with bare hands and leather soles, the ascent had taken longer than anticipated. Now the building’s security team would put men on both sides of the building and send others up to the roof; they’d probably cordon off the entire street before long.

But Cole knew that there would be a delay in those orders being carried out, a brief window of opportunity in which he could act.

Without another thought, Cole started to scramble across the slick, icy rooftop, the steeply sloped surface making his progress even more difficult. But he struggled on at a steady pace, heading towards the end of the long terrace. Being in the middle of the terraced row as he was, there was a formidable distance to cover, but Cole figured that his best bet was to head for the busy thoroughfare of the main park road at the end of the street. The security team would be unlikely to use weapons so close to so many civilians — there were operating in what was essentially a foreign country, after all — and once at street level he hoped to make his escape through the heavy traffic. But first he would have to get to the end of this row of roofs, and there were still fifty metres to go.

42

He heard the sound of the men climbing out onto the roof behind him not even a minute later; he hadn’t even managed to get half way. Spinning round into a crouch, careful not to lose his footing on the treacherous ice, Cole fired four shots at the emerging agents. His aim was to pin them down as he made a run over the peak of the roof to the far side, and he wasted no time with his plan, scrambling up the tiled slope as fast as he could, fearful that the men would open fire before he got to safety.

As he reached the long peak of the roof, he looked down and saw men spilling into the streets on both sides of the house, weapons aimed up at him. Ice was churned up just inches from his feet as the men on the roof started shooting, but then he was over the other side, the bulk of the roof providing relative safety, at least for a few precious moments.

He started racing towards the end of the roof, but trying to keep his body low to avoid fire from the snipers now stationed in the street below. A bullet shot past his ear, and he lost his footing on the ice, sliding down to the edge of the roof. He dug in with his heels and his free hand, just as his body passed the edge. He barely had time to pull himself back over before the ledge erupted with gunfire from below.

Not able to even catch a breath, he saw the first two agents come over the roof peak. Firing wildly, he hit one in the leg and missed the other entirely. The second man ducked back on the other side of the roof, as his colleague lost his balance and started an inexorable slide towards a four-storey drop, the wound in his leg leaving an ugly red stain on the slick ice. Unable to stop himself, the man slid straight over the side, screaming all the way down until the sickening crump silenced him forever.

Cole realized he was running out of time; fatally slippery or not, he would have to sprint the last twenty metres across the icy rooftop. Seeing the faint outlines of heads coming over the roof peak again, he emptied his pistol at the vague targets, dropped it as he regained his feet fully; then pulled out two more pistols from his belt, waiting just two seconds before the agents tried again. He saw plumes of red spray high into the winter sky as he loosed off all thirty rounds from both guns, but had no idea how many agents he had hit; he was off and running before the empty pistols had dropped to the roof and skittered down to the street below.

43

Edwards was watching in disbelief. How was the man still alive? He couldn’t see him now, as he was on the other side of the roof; he could, however, see his own men pinned down, three of them hit. What the Hell was going on up there?

‘Wilson!’ he barked into his tactical mic. ‘What’s going on up there? Give me a sit rep!’

The reply came moments later, crystal clear through the helmet earpiece, the panic in the voice evident. ‘He’s pinning us down sir, we’ve got men down … He’s heading towards the end of the roof, he’s … Holy shit!’

‘What?’ Edwards almost screamed.

‘He’s jumped! The crazy bastard’s jumped off the roof!’

44

Cole had seen the truck travelling along the road when he’d been just feet from the edge. He knew the agents would be coming over this side and opening fire at any second, and soon heard the staccato blasts of automatic fire, felt the snow and ice churning around him. There was only one option open to him, and he took it without a second thought.

Leaping from the edge of the roof out into fresh air, as bullets raced towards him from behind, he doubted that he could make it. The big, dull grey haulage truck seemed so far away now, travelling so fast, it seemed impossible.

But then his body crashed onto the wide, slightly curved roof, and he was scrambling for a secure hold, sliding over the roof, but he had made it, he had landed safely, now all he had to do was stay on the roof, stay on the roof …

But then the truck turned for a bend in the road, and he found himself sliding inexorably over the side. Try as he might to get a grip, to hold on, it was no use; the roof was too icy, the turn too tight, and Cole found himself being flung viciously from the top, once more sailing through the air.

The landing was hard, and Cole gasped for air, pain erupting all the way down the left side of his body. He knew how to fall, but it was a long way down from the moving vehicle, and the concrete had been unforgiving. He tried to breathe again, and the pain worsened. He figured the ribs were bruised at least, possibly even broken.

‘Whoa, you alright mate?’ asked a stunned passer-by, helping Cole unsteadily to his feet.

Cole shook his head to clear it. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m — ’ Over the Good Samaritan’s shoulder, Cole saw half a dozen agents racing out towards him. There was heavy traffic between them and Cole, as he was now on the far side from the row of houses, but he had no time to waste.

Adrenaline successfully numbing the pain in his side, Cole turned and ran for the roundabout straight ahead, heading for Regent’s Park. He would lose them there, he was sure.

Edwards could simply not believe what was happening. He’d lost half his men, and they still hadn’t managed to catch the bastard.

What could he do now? The man was out in the open, loose on the streets of London. They couldn’t risk a gunfight around here, that was for sure. But they needed to take the man down, and quickly.

They needed help, and Edwards knew it. And so slowly, reluctantly, the security team leader reached into his pocket and extracted his phone. It was not a call that he was looking forward to making.

45

Cole started to breathe more easily, and allowed himself to relax ever-so-slightly into the small plastic seat on the train in which he now travelled. The pain was still there, but less now. He started to think that may be it was just bruising; he certainly hoped so. Bruising would cause discomfort, but wouldn’t hamper his performance as much as a true break.

He had entered the park with the remaining agents hot on his heels. They no longer sported their submachine guns, but Cole knew they would still be armed, and out for blood. Although he had been acting in self defence — they had tried to execute him, after all — Cole was in no doubt as to how his pursuers would be feeling. They would only see that Cole was an enemy of the state who had murdered several of their friends and colleagues in cold blood. So whatever the current policy on using firearms near British civilians, Cole wasn’t entirely sure that protocol would be followed.

It was a simple enough task to lose them in the vast expanse of Regent’s Park, however, especially with the head start that he’d had, and so after leading them along a false route, he had doubled back and left the park near Baker Street.

Descending the nearby stairs to the Underground, Cole was sure the agents would still be looking for him on the other side of the park.

He couldn’t afford to lose concentration however, and after catching the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus he would switch lines a couple of more times until he was on the other side of the river.

And then he would have to urgently set about finding a telephone box; he needed to call Sarah before it was too late.

46

Hansard sat in the back of his Bentley limousine, contemplating the news he’d just had delivered. This was not good. Not at all.

Ordering Cole’s death had been hard — he was an excellent agent, after all — but like many of the unpleasant things he had done in his life, it had been necessary. There were events that had now been set in motion that were more important than the life of one man, of that Hansard had no doubt.

But now this news that Cole was alive! And more than that, escaped! It was more than a worry; it could bring down everything he had worked so hard to achieve, destroy his magnificent plan before it had even borne fruit.

It was of course inconceivable that Cole would be allowed to get away, and so after Edwards’s frantic phone call (why he had ever put the man in charge in the first place, he just didn’t know), Hansard had set about alerting John Hughes, the Security Service Department Head of A Branch. MI5’s highly-trained urban ‘watchers’, the men of A Branch were even now spreading their nets across London, with orders to bring Cole in, dead or alive; but preferably dead. And with almost every division of the government, from traffic wardens to the men and women of Scotland Yard’s SO19 weapons section being duly informed to keep their eyes peeled for a dangerous ‘terrorist’, Hansard was confident it would not be long before his mind could be put at rest.

Looking out of the double glazed windows at the grey streets of the capital, Hansard picked up his phone and dialled a memorized number. Just one more thing, he decided.

47

Dan Albright and his men were already fully kitted out when the second call came. They wore black wet suits, combat vests and submachine guns fully waterproofed. Even their SCUBA gear was painted with a special resin that eliminated any chance of the metal giving a telltale reflective glint in the moonlight.

He had finished his briefing and they were just about to slip down into the sylph-like Swimmer Delivery Vehicles that would carry them quickly and noiselessly to the shore, when the red light came flashing on the phone in the dock area.

Albright momentarily thought about ignoring it, but decided that would probably not be wise, and so picked up the receiver on the fifth ring. The conversation was short and one-sided, Albright simply saying ‘Yes sir,’ before he replaced the handset and turned to his men.

‘Okay guys, stand down. The family are getting a short reprieve. Seems the husband has gone missing, and we can’t go until he’s been cleaned up.’

The men around him seemed disappointed that they weren’t going into action, but somehow relieved at the same time. Although Albright didn’t seem to mind, not all of them were excited by the prospect of killing a woman and her two children in cold blood.

48

Cole was becoming increasingly wary as he travelled on his journey across London. He knew Hansard would have been informed about his escape by now. The question was, what would his orders be? Cole knew that the man could order a huge manhunt for him if he thought it prudent. One might already be underway, and the first Cole would know of it would be when he’d been identified, targeted and captured.

But maybe he wouldn’t do anything, Cole considered. The thought was only fleeting, however — Hansard wanted him dead, and would stop at nothing to see that this was done. Cole was sure that the eyes and ears of A Branch would be scouring the capital for him this very second.

He couldn’t help thinking that he’d been on this train too long. He’d first thought it prudent to keep on the Central line for as long as possible, changing over to the Northern line at Bank Station to cross the river, before finally getting off at the Elephant and Castle. He figured that the search would initially be concentrated north of the river, and after he emerged in the south, he’d have a little more freedom. He could then get to a phone and call his family to warn them.

But as he passed station after station, watching the people getting on and off, he started to become nervous. There were too many people looking at him too closely. It was possibly paranoia, he knew, but then again — maybe not.

It was the man in the jeans and dirty grey bomber jacket who had sat opposite him a few seats to his left that bothered him the most. Part of it, Cole admitted to himself, was the clothes — it was a typical outfit for a military undercover operative. Cole remembered his days in Team Six when he’d first received instruction in undercover operations, and remembered all too well the military definition of ‘casual’ — jeans, trainers, old jacket. The man had fit the bill perfectly. Maybe it was just coincidence, but the man had looked at him once too often, and had used his mobile phone to text someone straight after.

And at the next station, the man had left the train; but three other men — big, athletic, but trying to hide that with their baggy clothes — had got on, glancing momentarily in his direction.

Cole had left things a little too late; he should have got off at the last station as well. Now he was trapped for the long stretch between Chancery Lane and St Paul’s, with nowhere to run to.

Not willing to let the situation be entirely dictated to him, he decided to act. Standing, he stretched his body as if after a long day at work — ignoring the pain in his ribs — and moved towards the next car on his right. The three men stood chatting to his left, he noticed as he turned.

He got to the partition door and pulled it open, only then seeing the young lady about to come through from the other side. She was quite pretty, possibly Hispanic Cole thought, with a big satchel on her back and a sleeping baby cradled in her arms.

The door wasn’t big enough for them both to fit through and so Cole backed off to allow her through. As he did so, the lady thanking him, he risked a glance behind him. The three men were still standing there chatting, not even sparing a glance in his direction. Maybe he’d been wrong, he thought, but he’d move through to the other car anyway and wait to get off at the next stop — there was no point in taking a chance.

As he turned back round, it was only the sharp glinting reflection in the window that saved him. As he moved instinctively to protect himself, he took it all in — the baby falling from the woman’s arms, the flash of the knife being pulled and thrust savagely towards him, aimed straight at his throat, and the cold, lifeless eyes of the attacker as she lunged. Cole’s response was instantaneous and effective. Intercepting the knife arm, he had twisted and dislocated it at the shoulder before the decoy baby had hit the floor, knocking the assassin out cold with a solid elbow strike to the jaw.

Grabbing the knife, Cole turned to confront the others, the adrenaline in his system masking any sign of pain from his damaged ribs — but instead of a brutal attack, he was instead faced with looks of fear and terror as the other passengers started backing away, wanting to escape even more than him.

A noise behind him, back in the doorway, caused him to turn again. Two men in suits were rushing through, hands going to the inside of their jackets. Cole flew forwards, thrusting a vicious front kick into the torso of the first man that sent him flying backwards; and as the second man’s gun cleared the holster, the knife Cole had taken was already flying through the air, striking him in the side of the neck.

It was definitely time to get off, Cole decided.

49

Edwards was travelling rapidly across London in a seconded police car, sirens blaring, when he got the message. He was on his way to St Paul’s station, where the target was hopefully going to be waiting, either captured or — he hoped — already dead.

But then came the news — three more agents down, and Cole once again escaped. According to the garbled report, the man had pulled the emergency brake, throwing the whole train into chaos, and had then run through the cars, smashed a window and leapt out into the tunnel. So far, he had not emerged at either St Paul’s or Chancery Lane.

Damn, Edwards thought in despair. Damn!

50

Instead of running down the lines to one of the stations, Cole had found an access tunnel coming off the side of the main tunnel and had followed that until he came to a staff area. There were mercifully few people, and he ignored anyone that spoke to him. Nobody challenged his presence there, which only reaffirmed his belief that security was still a joke at almost every important institution in the country. Unlike most of the general public around the world, who were shocked in the rise of terrorist actions over the last few years, Cole was surprised there hadn’t been more.

Eventually, he came to a fire exit which he followed down a corridor, up a long flight of bare metal steps, and then out into fresh air; or at least what passed for fresh air in the small dirty alleyway off the main thoroughfare of Cheapside that he emerged into.

Straightening himself out as best he could — although, with his ripped and dirty jacket and bloodstained shirt, he realised he now looked like he’d had a very bad day at the office — he then stepped out from the alley into the mass of humanity steaming along the pavement of Cheapside.

There were people everywhere, and everywhere there would be people looking for him, he was under no illusions about that now. He needed to get out of the area, and fast.

Looking to the street, he saw the perfect answer — a gleaming red double decker bus. Stuck in traffic, Cole took his chance and casually strolled over to it, hopping onto the footstep.

He smiled at the conductor, and gave him a story about his day. It worked well, Cole thought, and then he started to wonder just how bad he must look — the man had not only let him on, but had refused money for the journey.

But no matter — the bus was moving once again, and Cole was on his way.

51

Edwards had almost lost hope. Countless agents dead, his mission failed. He was starting to doubt whether they’d ever get this man.

But then something miraculous had happened — across the road, not twenty feet from his own car, Edwards had seen Cole wander out from an alleyway and casually board a bus. He had to blink his eyes twice to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, but he wasn’t — it was definitely the same man, Edwards would have recognised him anywhere.

‘That’s him,’ Edwards said quietly, under his breath, almost as if Cole would be able to hear him.

‘Who?’ his driver asked.

‘Him,’ Edwards replied simply. ‘There.’ He pointed towards the bus.

‘What do you want to do?’

Edwards considered the matter for some time. ‘Which bus is that?’ he finally inquired.

‘The RV1. Goes across Tower Bridge,’ his driver offered.

Edwards thought for some moments more. This was a gift, he knew that; the thing was, how to capitalise on it?

Moments later, the answer struck him. ‘Don’t get too close,’ he told the driver as he reached for the radio, ‘follow him from a distance.’

52

Cole headed up the narrow spiral staircase to the upper level of the bus. He wasn’t entirely sure that upstairs would offer the best location for him — he would be further from the exit — but there was always a trade-off, and in this case, Cole wanted to have a good view so that he could monitor any activity around the bus.

The vehicle was less busy upstairs, and Cole was able to take a seat by one of the windows. What passengers there were paid him no attention whatsoever; there was not so much as a casual glance. Londoners, Cole knew, had long since disassociated themselves from everything and everyone around them, and were dyed-in-the-wool experts on ignoring anything that didn’t directly involve them. Cole again found himself wondering why there weren’t more terrorist attacks in the capital; the utter disinterest of its population left it wide open.

He wasn’t worried about people seeing him from outside the vehicle either — he knew that the effect of the bright winter sun shining onto the dirt and grime of the window glass would make him all but invisible to those on the street below.

He once again scanned the occupied seats, casually observing and assessing the other passengers, and was again satisfied that there was nothing to arouse his suspicions. He almost began to relax, but didn’t, knowing that such a thing could well prove fatal. He was a firm believer in the old samurai adage that when the battle was over, it was time to tighten the helmet straps.

And so, whenever the bus stopped and let on more passengers, Cole was alert. Sometimes new passengers would come upstairs, sometimes old ones would leave; at others stops, there was no movement upstairs at all, people choosing to stay on the level below. But slowly and surely, Cole was able to chart the bus’s progress along the Embankment and towards Tower Bridge. He’d soon be over the river.

Not five minutes later, he saw the huge, imposing mass of the Tower of London, regal in its ancient architecture; and then the massive twin gateways of Tower Bridge, holding sway over the River Thames like two sentinel guardians.

He rose and stretched, testing his side and finding it didn’t hurt as much as before — then started to go around the upper deck to make quick checks out of all the windows. He acted like a tourist wanting to take in the sights, but really wanted to assure himself that nobody was following him.

As he moved from window to window, sometimes having to excuse himself to other passengers in his friendly-tourist-just-visiting-what-a-great-city manner, he started to feel that he really would be able to get out of this mess. He’d get across the river, lose himself in the back streets of the East End, contact his family and then move to meet them at the emergency rendezvous. And then? Well, Cole considered, he would just have to think about that later, and –

Cole stopped short. He had seen something out of the rear window, just a glimpse. But what had it been?

He squeezed himself between two Chinese teenagers, no longer worried about his friendly pretence. What had he seen? He scanned the street below, sectioning the vista before him into manageable chunks — at first halves, now quarters, now eighths — and scrutinized them carefully.

Then he saw it — the blue Ford Mondeo. A new registration, which meant that the radio aerial on this model should be housed invisibly within the windscreen. So why was there a large antenna on the front of the roof? Cole knew it could be used for picking up secure satellite communications, as used by the Security Service’s renowned A Branch. Or maybe the car just belonged to a sales rep who wanted a bit more of a selection of radio channels on a long drive?

Then the car directly in front of the Mondeo pulled away, and Cole momentarily caught a look at the vehicle’s tyres. Far too wide for such a saloon normally, and certainly too wide to be offered as a factory-fitted option, but perfect for holding the road during high-speed car chases. So it was an A Branch car. The question is, Cole thought desperately, is it following me? Or is it just out searching the streets randomly?

The unfortunate reality was confirmed just seconds later, when Cole saw Edwards lean forwards from the passenger seat to look up at the bus, as if to check it was still there. So, that was it — he’d been spotted. When? Where? Cole knew that it no longer mattered. Who knew how many cars they had following him?

He looked to the front of the bus — they were already on Tower Bridge, passing under the first big arched gateway. Then something else caught his eye — a flash of blue light. He raced to the front of the bus, looking through the dirty window straight ahead, across the bridge. Already, the traffic was slowing up, and Cole could see why — there were uniformed police setting up a road block on the far side. Doubtless, armed members of the Met’s SO19 specialist firearms unit would be there to ‘assist’.

Cole ran back to the rear window. Sure enough, the bridge was beginning to be closed off by a series of unmarked cars. Cole could see armed agents running through the traffic from behind the bus, and armed police moving in from the front. Edwards was out of the Mondeo, a gun in his hand and an eager look across his face, starting to run with the other agents.

The bus finally rolled to a stop. Cole was a sitting duck, trapped and with nowhere to go.

Looking out of the windows, Cole could see disgruntled drivers jumping out of their cars to complain, then jumping straight back in again when they saw the men with their large automatic rifles running along the bridge towards the big red bus.

The other passengers were starting to talk, in a cacophony of rising panic — ‘What’s going on?’ — ‘Who are they?’ — ‘They’re coming towards us!’ — ‘They’re heading for this bus!’, but Cole ignored them completely, his mind elsewhere. He watched Edwards and his A Branch driver reach the trapped vehicle, and decided to waste no more time.

He turned to the nearest window on the left and lashed out savagely with a kick. The window shook with the force, but didn’t break. It was enough to worry the passengers though and, realizing for the first time just why the armed police might be heading towards this particular bus, they screamed in panic and bolted for the stairs, getting jammed in the stairwell as they all tried to cram through the narrow opening.

Good, Cole thought as he attacked the window with another kick. At least it would stop Edwards and his men from getting upstairs, for a few vital moments at least.

The third kick did it, smashing the window entirely. Cole felt the rush of cold air hit him. He heard shouts behind him, and knew Edwards was trying to beat a path up to him. With no time to lose, Cole climbed up into the window frame, balancing precariously on the thin metal edge.

He looked both ways and saw a cordon of men start to surround the bus, weapons all trained up at the upper level. Further to each side, he could see the huge towers looming over the bridge, massive figures of authority that seemed to be judging him silently. He saw the American team along with British policemen and MI5 operatives caressing their triggers, and couldn’t help but wonder what that judgement would be.

Then his mind cleared, and he jumped.

53

Having wrestled his way to the top of the stairs, Edwards’s pistol now led the way. The head and body soon followed, with a face that registered complete disbelief. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘No!’

He saw the legs disappearing out of the window and raced to the huge gaping hole, followed by more agents. He looked out of the shattered glass and saw his target propel himself through the air, straight over the side of the great bridge into a picture-perfect dive towards the icy depths of the tumultuous river below. In frustration, he raised his pistol and loosed off the entire magazine at the rapidly descending figure, but it was too little, too late.

The man was gone.

54

It was almost twenty minutes later when Cole made it onto dry land. He’d let the river’s powerful flow sweep him along towards the east, let the men on the bridge see him struggle helplessly as he was swept along, and then had allowed himself to be pulled under.

Summoning up all his strength, he had then managed to swim back underwater — unobserved by the surrounding security forces — towards the west, fighting hard against the current. He knew he could do it — he had used the same strategy evading his instructors during escape and evasion training when he was one of the youngest ‘tadpoles’ in the SEALs, and was used to holding his breath for extended periods of time.

The task had been made infinitely harder though, due to the pain from his bruised ribs, and for five agonising minutes he had battled, until he was forced to come up for air. He had surfaced near the south bank, and had made about a hundred metres against the current; it wasn’t far, but it was far enough. After seeing him being swept away, the search would be conducted almost exclusively to the east of the bridge.

But he couldn’t risk approaching the bank just yet; there were too many curious onlookers about and, although their attention was directed towards the bridge, the sight of a tired man in a soaking wet business suit pulling himself out of the Thames would soon set alarm bells ringing. But as he continued his exhausting battle against the river, he knew he would have to get out soon — the chilling water of the Thames would soon send him hypothermic, and he’d become unable to swim, or even to move. He could feel it even now, the cold seeping through his skin, into his veins, until it was like ice coursing through his entire body. But he had to press on, he had to keep going until he found a better spot.

He had swum the best part of half a mile by the time he finally pulled his exhausted, pain-wracked body out of the river, collapsing onto a remote, muddy shore of the South Bank. His entire body shivered uncontrollably, wracked with a piercing, numbing coldness that bit into his bones. He knew he couldn’t afford to rest, and clambered the rest of the way up the slippery bank, pulling himself over some old wooden pilings and up onto an abandoned concrete dock.

He started to jog towards a shabby group of old warehouse buildings, but his legs failed him and he stumbled helplessly, weak from both cold and fatigue. He would have to get out of these clothes soon, he thought, or things would get bad for him. But first, he had to find a telephone.

55

Yet another call had come through to Albright on the emergency line. He listened intently, nodding his head as if the caller could see him. He finished the call with a simple ‘Yes sir,’ and replaced the receiver, turning to his men.

‘Okay guys,’ he started. ‘The target in London has been confirmed as having escaped. We are now expecting his family to move to an RV with him, and our task is therefore to follow them, without their knowledge, in order to locate the primary target. Any questions?’ There were none. ‘Okay, good. Mr Hansard is none too happy, so let’s not screw this up.’

He turned and moved towards the stairs up to the deck. Damn. He didn’t like changes of plan. And he’d rather been looking forward to storming the house. No expected defences, easy targets; just the way he liked it. He stopped in front of a mirror half way up the stairs, examined himself for a few moments, and then adjusted a few strands of rich blond hair that had strayed across his tanned forehead. There, he thought with some satisfaction. That’s better.

56

As Hansard’s Bentley swept him the last mile to the private airport just outside London, he couldn’t help but be a little perturbed. He could tell that the whole incident had put him out of sorts when it took him three attempts to pack his pipe properly, the first two having degenerated into a sorry mess on the deep carpet.

So, Cole had escaped. It was too bad; really, too bad. Hansard could only hope that the man’s mind would be on meeting up with his family, and not on revealing to the press — or anyone else for that matter — that the death of William Crozier had been an assassination. Because that would really put the cat among the pigeons.

But Cole didn’t truly realize the implications behind his latest service, Hansard was sure. Besides which, the issue of secrecy was one which Cole took seriously. Hansard had only ordered Cole’s execution because he had been worried that Cole might talk after he had realized what the real reason for Crozier’s death had been. And the real reason wouldn’t be clear for several days yet, Hansard knew. Therefore, he had time.

Hansard had not yet issued a national alert for Cole; if captured, he might talk nevertheless before one of Hansard’s men could get to him. But he had plenty of agents out there looking for him, and had his own people posted at every sea port and airport in the country. And at the other end, he had Albright watching the Cole house. If Cole followed normal procedure, he would try and meet with his family in a neutral, secure area. Hansard didn’t know where that was but he felt sure that Cole would be found. If he managed to escape the United Kingdom, his own family would lead Hansard’s men to him.

The galling thing was that Hansard was no longer in direct control of what was happening. Some of the control was now in the hands of fate, and that was something Hansard had no time for. He hated the uncertainty of it, and further hated the fact that his careful plans, which had been years in the making — years! — could soon be undermined by one man.

But Hansard was an optimist at heart — he would never have even dreamt of such a venture if that had not been the case — and felt quietly confident that Cole would soon be reacquired, and quickly silenced. There was still plenty of time before he could become a true danger.

57

Cole hung up the receiver of the payphone with a shaking hand. In such a run-down area, it had taken him some time to find a phone that worked, and that hadn’t been vandalised beyond either function or recognition.

His extended search had, however, provided him with a new set of clothes, although he would have been the first to admit that they were far from perfect. As he had staggered from one destroyed payphone to another, he had soon become aware that he was being followed. He would normally have realized sooner, but his senses had been dulled by the afternoon’s activity.

It was past four o’clock now, and in the rapidly diminishing light, the predators were already out and operating, looking for victims. And in his obviously weakened state, Cole looked like just such a thing.

They approached him two minutes after he had spotted them. One circled round in order to approach from the side, whilst the other stayed behind, confident that he was out of view.

The first man was casual, almost friendly. ‘Alright mate, have you got the time?’ he asked in a broad cockney accent. Cole was well aware of the trick — distract the victim with a question, make them look away, perhaps down towards a watch, then pull out a knife and demand money, backed up by the second man from behind, who would also be armed — and had no desire to get into a protracted fight with the men, having neither the time nor the energy.

And so no sooner had the man got the words out of his mouth than Cole had knocked him unconscious with a marma adi nerve strike to the inside of the collarbone. The second man went down just half a second later as Cole spun round and hit two points on his neck in rapid succession, using the extended middle knuckle of one hand. He was beginning to adjust his movements to compensate for the pain in his ribs, and the three strikes had caused only slight discomfort.

Cole dragged the bodies out of sight into the deep shadows of a nearby side street, and stripped them both, then himself. He used the clothes of one man to dry himself, rubbing his body vigorously with the jacket, top and trousers until they were soaked through. They might not have been the cleanest things in the world, but Cole was not so much concerned with hygiene as with avoiding hypothermia.

Once thoroughly dry, he put on the clothes of the man who was a more similar size to himself, along with the boots; too big, but they would certainly do for now. He found two flick-knives and a knuckle-duster on the men as well — just necessary tools of their chosen trade, Cole supposed — and pocketed the items. He also found over two hundred pounds in cash, and decided that they must have had a busy day. Cole was glad that he had ended it early.

Although they were not an ideal size, the clothes were at least non-descript. The man had obviously chosen them to be bland and unmemorable; victims’ police reports would subsequently not be much help in finding the culprits, and this suited Cole’s needs perfectly.

He had finally found a payphone just around the corner on the next street, and used some of the change he’d found on the men to place a coded call to a bureau in Grand Cayman, who then relayed an innocuous message to his home’s landline telephone. The coded message directly would tell Sarah to move immediately to the emergency RV.

He had faith in her ability to do so; she was tough as well as smart, and he had trained her well. But he had no idea what obstacles she would have to overcome, if there were agents already near the house, if — he stopped himself dead. There was no point in filling his head with ‘what ifs’; such a waste of mental energy would only work against him in the long run.

Cole breathed deeply, the pain in his ribs making him wince in pain. He had to trust that Sarah and the children would make the rendezvous; he simply had to.

The question is, Cole wondered as he considered the security net Hansard would be spreading out over the country to bring him in, will I manage to make it there myself?