Stop at Nothing

1

The party was held in the same place all of their regular Alumni meetings were now held — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Hansard made sure that nobody registered who the guests were, when they came, or when they left. It was as secure as a meeting of such important men and women could be; even their private security details were not allowed anywhere near.

Clyde Rutherford raised his glass first, clearing his voice as the excited chatter ceased and all eyes turned his way. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘let’s show our appreciation for Vice Admiral Charles Hansard!’

There were whoops and cheers, and loud applause as Hansard raised his own glass, acknowledging the praise. He let it continue for a few moments before holding up a calming hand, waiting for the applause to finish before he spoke.

‘Thank you,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you for your kindness, and thank you for the work you have all put in yourselves. Do not forget that we are all in this together, brothers and sisters striving for a new path for our nation; a better path, a safer path, and certainly a more profitable path.’

There was laughter, and he once again held up a hand for calm. ‘But let us not get ahead of ourselves. The first blow may have been struck, but we all know how much further there is to go before any of us can truly celebrate.’

Hansard watched as heads nodded around the room, taking a sip of Dom Perignon ’49 from the flute in his hand. ‘And let me give another toast,’ he continued in a solemn tone, ‘to the memory of Bill Crozier, until so recently one of our own number.’

Hansard saw some of the group open their mouths to object, but he held up a hand again — amazing how so simple an action could silence even people such as this, he reflected — and said ‘I know how some of you feel, of course. In the end, he was going to subvert his values and go against the whole ethic of the Alumni, perhaps even bringing our plans down around us. But we drink to his memory now for the role he recently played so effectively in such plans.’ He raised his glass again. ‘To Bill.’

Everyone in the room raised their own glasses, some more readily than others. ‘To Bill,’ they all said as one.

‘And now,’ Hansard said, piercing blue eyes looking over the gathered members of the Alumni, ‘we must prepare for the next phase of our plan.’

2

Cole had the radio tuned into the local news. His recent exploits had been given a full three minutes of airtime, and he had heard himself referred to not only as ‘armed and highly dangerous,’ but as a leading member of a murderous break-off group of Al Qaeda known as the Islamist Jihad Martyrs Brigade.

In fact, the news programme then spent the next two minutes describing the growing trend in white middle-class converts to radical Islam, and how such extremist groups were utilising such men for terrorist attacks, as it was easier for such people to avoid surveillance and detection.

As Cole eased the stolen Vauxhaul hatchback into the vast onslaught of traffic on the westbound M25, he had to laugh at the irony of the situation. Here he was, having spent the last two decades fighting terrorists and their various associates, now accused of being one himself. But he could certainly see the logic of such an accusation. Terrorists were big news, and the fact that there was one on the loose — especially an ‘armed and dangerous’ one — would ensure that all resources were directed his way, with full cooperation from the public. Cole felt sure that there would be a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ policy in operation.

But why? It just didn’t make sense to him. Why would Hansard want him dead now, after all these years? Evidently, it was linked to the assassination of Crozier. Hansard didn’t want him to talk. But why would Hansard have thought he would talk? He hadn’t talked for the year he’d been in P’ang Dakkar prison, and not many men could say that. Hansard knew he could be trusted. So what, then?

The answer was there in front of him, taunting him, jeering at him. He knew there could only be one answer, but he didn’t want to admit it. He couldn’t. And yet, there was no way to avoid it.

Hansard knew that Cole would never talk about a legitimate mission — never. He wouldn’t even talk about illegal missions, if the cause was a just one. Which meant one thing, and one thing only — the mission had been illegitimate. Maybe even a personal job for Hansard himself?

Glancing at his speedometer, he reduced his speed fractionally. He was in a hurry, but there was no reason to attract any unnecessary attention. It was important to keep to the speed limit. The car had been stolen from a small independent garage that was closed until the New Year. The loss shouldn’t be noticed for days, unless police attention was drawn to the car for another reason. He re-checked his headlights, and reassured himself they were functioning. Confident that there was no reason for him to be spotted, he let himself be pulled along by the heavy flow of seasonal traffic, along the most hated road in Britain.

His mind soon drifted back to Hansard. Why did he order me to kill William Crozier? What reason could there be for Hansard wanting Crozier dead? Again, Cole was confronted by a cold certainty; Crozier knew something that Hansard wanted kept secret. The relationship between the two men ran deeper than Cole had thought. He wanted me to silence him, Cole realized with a sickening conviction.

The answers provided him with nothing but more questions. What did Crozier know? What was the relationship between him and Hansard? What was Hansard’s plan? Cole was sure that the man had one, and he was sure it was something huge. It would at least give him something to think about for the long drive to the ferry port at Dover.

3

Sarah surfaced for a visual check just twenty metres to the starboard side of the yacht. She smiled underneath her respirator. Spot on.

The swim had not been hard. After all, Sarah was a professional diving instructor, and her fins were the best on the market. The six-kilometre distance had seemed like a mere fraction of that, and she was still fresh as she slipped once more beneath the waves, angling in on the yacht for her final approach.

Although they didn’t need the money, Sarah still organized dive tours around Cayman Brac and the neighbouring island of Little Cayman. It was simply something she loved, and the open ocean had given Sarah her first real taste of freedom, back when she had still been a teenager.

As she swam easily towards the starboard side of the yacht, unconcerned that she might be spotted — the attention of the men onboard was directed solely on the house — she once again felt that same sense of freedom, of life, she had first felt all those years ago.

But as she placed her little present against the smooth metal hull of the vessel, magnets attaching it firmly in place with a soft thunk, she tried not to think too hard about exactly what she was doing, and the devastating effect it would soon have.

4

Cole had left the car in a quiet residential area of Maxton, a small suburb of Dover, in the early hours of the morning. Just another parked car, it would not arouse suspicion for a number of days. Only when it had been left in the same place for a protracted period of time would the first curious neighbours perhaps contact the police, by which time he would be long gone. He had cleaned the car for prints nevertheless.

As he stepped off the local bus just outside the main ferry port of Dover at just after six in the morning, he was already operating with a firm plan of action. Rather than staying on the bus all the way to the main drop-off at Car Park Four, he decided to approach on foot. Hansard wanted him bad, and there would almost certainly be men there already, looking for him. Stepping off the ferry bus into the main car park would be a pretty major mistake.

Instead, he walked the last mile to the huge port compound, observing constantly as he went. At this hour, it was still pitch-black, and he kept sufficiently to the shadows that passing vehicles would pay him no attention. He couldn’t make out any static surveillance on the roads leading in. Not that he was surprised — not enough time had elapsed since his escape for a full surveillance operation to have been mounted, especially as Cole could be at any one of dozens of international transport hubs around the country. Hansard would want his resources concentrated inside the main port area.

As he first glimpsed the huge fences surrounding the massive complex, he was reminded of training exercises years ago when he and his men had been engaged on a joint exercise with the British Special Boat Service, the SEALs’ transatlantic cousins. They had been charged with infiltrating the main ferry terminal to leave dummy explosives, as part of an anti-terrorist programme ordered by the Ministry of Defence. Needless to say, it had been a simple enough task, even with security on full alert.

Now, in the freezing cold of the December morning, he once again approached the fence line with the aim of breaking in. It was ridiculously simple — Cole strolled for less than five minutes around the perimeter before he saw a long stretch of fence in an obviously underused area. He crossed the road after checking that nobody was around, and vaulted the broken-down six-foot chain-link barrier in one fluid motion. And that was it — he was in, completely undetected. He once again marvelled at the people who ran security at such establishments. The area was so big it was simply uneconomic to protect it properly all the way round, and so security was strengthened only at key points, such as the area immediately around the terminal itself. This would at least give the impression of security for the passengers and that, Cole reminded himself, was what it was all about — the perception of safety in the mind of the public. Anyone involved in the business itself knew that there was no foolproof way to protect against a determined intruder, and so seldom even tried. Such resolutely unsecured areas as the point through which Cole had entered were proof positive of that.

Now he kept to the shadows as he advanced through the compound, moving through the massive storage zones and cargo areas. Whenever passing someone was unavoidable, he merely straightened himself up, nodded at the person and said ‘Morning!’, as if he had every right in the world to be there. And, as always, nobody ever questioned him. Because at an establishment where over ten thousand people were employed, many on temporary contracts, who would know that he didn’t belong there? Cole had long since accepted the truism that when ignorance was mutual, confidence was king.

At a little before seven in the morning, the first faint rays of dawn only just starting to penetrate the dark winter gloom, Cole arrived at his destination. Even at this early hour, Car Park Four was a hectic cacophony of activity. The next Sealink ferry was scheduled to leave at eight a.m., and already the long queue of vehicular traffic was spread for half a mile along the icy concrete approach-way, the lead cars creeping onto the ramp that connected the mainland to the huge passenger ship that lay floating quietly in the dark waters of the Strait of Dover, the lights from the upper floors struggling to break through the freezing fog that constantly lingered over the English coast.

Cole identified where the cars were feeding from, and made his way across the car park towards the starting line. He waited in the shadows, observing the scene for some time, until he saw what he was after. Nearby, a man and a woman in their mid-twenties, two young children in tow, approached their car. It was a smallish Toyota hatchback, and as the woman put the two kids into their seats in the back, Cole saw the man talking to her impatiently, before stomping to the driver’s side and slamming the door. Probably stopped off in the main terminal building for a bite to eat and a visit to the toilet for the kids, and now he was pissed off about the surprisingly long queue to the ferry. Ah, the joys of family holidays, Cole thought cynically, as he started his own approach to the small vehicle.

He advanced on the car from the cover of the line of parked automobiles to the left, crouching low to avoid detection. He waited patiently just yards from the Toyota, and used the time to take off his shoes, removing his socks and wrapping them around his hands before putting the shoes back on his bare feet. He ducked low as all the doors were finally secured and the harassed father got the engine started. Instants before the car moved out to join the traffic, Cole rolled in one smooth motion underneath the chassis, clamping his protected hands around the cold metal front suspension struts and heaving himself from the floor, feet twisting around the rear struts.

He adjusted position slightly as the car moved forwards, making himself as comfortable as possible. It was a shame that he had to get into position so early — ideally he would have liked to pick a car nearer to the front — but by the time the cars were in the queue, there were large expanses of bare concrete to either side of the line, and his approach would have been easily spotted. As it was, nobody had seen him latch himself to the underside of the Toyota; and nobody, he was confident, would check underneath the car. It was unlikely that anyone would even look inside the boot, even at the security checkpoints just before the boarding ramp. A young family in a small hatchback simply did not attract attention; Cole wondered if they’d even be asked for their passports.

No, Cole decided as he relaxed all but the necessary muscles, nobody would find him. He would be decidedly cold and uncomfortable for the next forty minutes or so, but it would be no worse than many other things he had done, and actually more pleasant than some. But by eight o’clock, he would be safely aboard the Sealink ferry, undetected by Hansard’s agents, and the first leg of his journey to meet his family would have begun.

5

Albright was sitting on the hard deck of the yacht as the sun rose in a brilliant golden hue above the shimmering Caribbean Sea. Such beauty was lost on him, however; his attention was instead concentrated on the small mirror in his hand. The light sea breeze had whipped a lock of blond hair across his forehead, and it needed immediate adjustment. His comb was halfway through the procedure when he felt a tap on his leg. He looked next to him at the prone body of Art Michaels, still in position stretched out in front of his surveillance equipment.

Albright’s mirror snapped shut, and he got up onto one knee. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘We’ve got movement,’ Michaels replied. ‘Mrs Cole is getting some things packed up in the children’s rooms.’

Albright stood up abruptly. ‘That’s it. They’re on the move. Keep watching,’ he ordered as he moved quickly towards the wheelhouse, punching a number into his secure cell phone as he did so.

Michaels tried to listen to the conversation as Albright left the deck, but only caught the beginning. ‘Sir, it’s Albright. They’re on the move, and — ’

The door slammed shut, cutting off the rest of the dialogue. Moments later, however, he felt the throb of the engines as they started up, and soon saw the breaking of the waves ahead as the big yacht started heading for shore.

He could simply hope that the order was still only to follow and observe.

6

Sarah took the bags and started packing the car. She could see the yacht out to sea, further out to the west but about three kilometres closer than it had been earlier. They had obviously started their approach, circling in on the location in as subtle a way as they could manage.

Sarah had started fastening Amy into her child seat in the back of the Range Rover when her daughter looked up and saw her staring over the roof of the car. Caught out, Sarah smiled sheepishly. ‘What is it, Mommy?’ Amy asked.

Sarah smiled at Amy reassuringly, even though her heart rate was increasing exponentially as she watched the yacht move slowly towards the house. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, honey,’ she reassured her, checking her watch. Almost seven o’clock. She prayed it would work, whilst at the same time fighting the urge to gag as she thought about what she had done. She had always considered herself to be mentally strong, but the fact remained that theory was one thing; practise, especially when people could die, was something else altogether.

She checked her watch again and returned to the boot, pulling down the tailgate as hard as she could. As she did so, the sharp bang all but completely covered up the low, muffled whump that came from a few short kilometres offshore.

As she opened the driver’s side door, the children noticed the smoke and low-level flame on the nearby horizon. ‘What’s that?’ Ben asked, pointing.

‘Ooh, pretty!’ Amy said, giggling.

Sarah looked back over her headrest and smiled. ‘Just some early New Year fireworks, that’s all. You’re right though, Amy. It sure is pretty.’

Two twelve-kilo limpet mines would not be pretty for the men on the yacht though, she was sure of that.

But her children were safe again, and that was all that mattered.

7

It was only a short while later that Sarah found herself scanning the small departure lounge at Owen Roberts International Airport, senses alert. She was no professional when it came to counter-surveillance, but her husband had developed the natural instincts that she did possess into a passable approximation. He had taught her the basic skills of the trade, and now she was following routines that Mark had made her practise many times in the past.

To avoid detection, they might ordinarily have taken the family yacht the 400 kilometres across the Caribbean to Miami. But there was now the danger that they could be attacked at sea, because even though she had disabled one enemy vessel didn’t mean that there weren’t more.

It was therefore decided to revert to the secondary plan, and so the family had taken the island hopper from Cayman Brac to Grand Cayman, and then stayed at the airport to get a direct flight to Miami.

Sarah finished her inspection of the varied commuters, and finally turned her attention back to Ben and Amy. ‘How about some ice cream?’ she said as calmly as she could, trying to hide the adrenalized pumping of her heart, which had been working overtime since the explosion near her house.

The fact was that there were simply not that many ways to leave the Cayman Islands. Even if there was nobody watching here, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that they would be connecting with Miami. They were even using their real names and passports, at least for this initial part of the journey.

Sarah knew that Miami would be where the real work would start, and where their counter-surveillance would have to be operating on overtime for them to get clear of anyone waiting for them. Se only scanned the crowds at the airport out of habit, and just in case an attack was made. She thought that such an attack would be highly unlikely however, especially in such a crowded, security-conscious place such as an airport.

Besides which, Sarah had a feeling that if there had been orders to kill them, they would have already been carried out. But the yacht had only started moving when it became apparent that the Cole family was leaving. It therefore seemed that the men’s orders had been to follow, perhaps with the hope that the family would lead them to Mark.

Sarah grimaced internally. If that was their plan, then she’d have to make bloody sure that they weren’t followed in Miami, for everyone’s sake.

8

The passenger information came chattering over the secure connection onboard the private plane Albright had chartered that morning.

He scanned down the list, seeing what he needed — Mrs Sarah Cole, Ben Cole, Amy Cole, Flight 983 to Miami International; leaving in just under an hour and getting in at 1305 local time.

Albright allowed himself a satisfied smile. He had guessed right, and the small Gulfstream jet would get him to Miami a full two hours before his quarry, giving him time to liaise with Hansard’s men there, and to set up their surveillance operation.

Still smiling, Albright snapped open his small compact, the mirrored glass of which was now cracked down the middle. As he examined himself, the smile vanished. His hair was a mess, dark with sweat and salt water, and his eyes were puffy and bruised, his jaw line swollen. Cuts crisscrossed their way across his tanned face.

Most of the men from his detail were dead — only two others had lived through the devastating explosion, and they were both in intensive care. But as he stared at himself in the broken mirror, he didn’t feel lucky.

Albright had been lucky, however, the main bulkhead in the dive room protecting him from the full force of the blast. He’d managed to get out of the yacht through the immersion chamber, and had found one of the SDVs just below, blown free from its mooring under the bow by the explosion.

He had piloted the machine to shore, calling in the emergency and making straight for the airport, shrugging off the superficial injuries he had sustained. The other men were pulled from the wreckage by a rescue team just twenty minutes later, which was considerably too late for most of them.

It did not take long for Albright to figure out what had happened — he knew the effects of mines as well as anyone. He also knew that he had made a potentially fatal error — he had underestimated this woman, Sarah Cole.

As he snapped the compact shut again, disgusted by his appearance and deciding that he would take a shower and clean himself up at Miami International before anything else, he thought about Sarah, and knew for a fact that he would not let himself make the same mistake again.

9

Cole’s back touched down on the cold metal floor of the second-level parking zone, his muscles at first relaxing, before cramping up agonizingly. He had been clinging to the Toyota’s chassis for over an hour, and although he had adopted the most comfortable posture available, he had known that muscle cramps would be inevitable. And so he knew he just had to lie quietly and ride out the pain.

As his mind cleared, he considered his options. The car had been parked for the last twenty minutes, and Cole had still waited, suspended underneath the car, until all the passengers on this level had left for the comforts of the lounge above. He had only let himself slide down to the floor when he could detect no further presence in the parking area — no radios, no doors shutting, no children shouting, no drunkards singing. All was silent, and he was now free to move around the huge vessel like any other passenger.

The lure of a cold beer at one of the bars was certainly tempting, and yet he hesitated to move. Going above to the public areas would certainly be the more comfortable option, but it would not be the wisest. Although he had boarded the ferry undetected, he knew Hansard might have men stationed on all boats leaving port, including this one. Cole didn’t know whether his old boss would have had the time, or the manpower, to launch such an operation; it didn’t seem likely, but he simply could not afford to take the chance.

As his muscles eventually began to properly relax and feeling started to return to his limbs, he considered another of his options. He could access the service areas, and hide within the operational bowels of the massive ship. It would certainly give him room to stretch out, whilst keeping him away from other passengers, and possible agents. But the chances of a crew member stumbling upon him were too great, and then the options would be to either succumb to arrest, or silence the crew member, and Cole wanted to avoid that at all costs.

And so he decided on his third and final option — just stay exactly where he was, keeping himself as warm and mobile as he could, and leave for France underneath the same car he had come in on.

Cole considered briefly the possibility of being found under the vehicle, but thought it unlikely. The cars were densely packed and, even lying on the floor, it would be almost impossible for someone standing up to see him. A child perhaps, but he didn’t think it likely that parents would let their children wander around the parking area. If anyone did happen to bend down further, he could just pull himself back up underneath the car anyway, and then someone would really have to be looking in order to see him.

A drink, some food, a new set of clothes — all these things would be nice, but they could wait until he was in France. He had been hungry, thirsty, cold and wet before, and he adjusted easily to the discomfort. He had gone through the infamous Hell Week during SEAL training when he was just eighteen years old — five and a half days with only four hours sleep, exercised for twenty hours a day in the freezing cold mud and water of Coronado, running over two hundred miles with his buddies, more often than not carrying an inflatable boat over their heads as they did so. This would be a walk in the park in comparison.

As he started to roll from one shoulder to the other, flexing his arms to get some mobility back and start the blood flowing again, he wondered about his family. Where would they be now? Plane or yacht, he decided, headed for Miami. They’d have to work hard there, he knew, to avoid being followed. Cole didn’t think Hansard would kill them; not yet, anyway. They were too valuable alive, and Cole knew Hansard would be trying to follow them in the desperate hope of finding him.

It would be tough, but Cole thought Sarah would be able to lose their tails; the route Cole had planed for them was good, and they had practised the drills many times.

He thought about Ben and Amy, wondering how they were doing, whether they realized things were bad, or whether Sarah’s brave face was convincing them that it was all just a fabulous adventure.

He snapped himself out of his reverie instants later; he couldn’t afford to lose his concentration for a moment. If he was killed or captured, he knew Hansard would have no more need for Sarah and the children; and so maybe he would kill them to tie up the loose ends, or maybe he would just let them go, but Cole couldn’t afford to take the risk. He had to keep himself safe, if his family was to have a chance.

10

Ten minutes later, Cole was glad that he had kept his senses alert. Noises, but faint — footsteps? He listened closer, tuning himself totally to the environment.

Two men, moving slowly, methodically. Doing what? Cole listened harder as he pulled himself up again under the Toyota. Checking cars; they were checking cars! Cole cursed silently. He didn’t know whether it was a routine security patrol, ordered to makes extra sweeps to check for the ‘escaped terrorist’, or whether they were Hansard’s own men. If they were the latter, Cole was under no illusions that their orders would be to kill him; Hansard wanted him dead, so why bother with arrest, or other half-measures? No, he had to assume that the men were armed agents, intending to silence him. It would mean quite a drastic change of plan, but Cole was an adaptable man; he had learnt early in his career the veracity of the claim that ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’.

He waited silently, gauging the position of the two men. They were to his left, perhaps two rows over, about thirty feet back — two car lengths, maybe three.

He briefly contemplated killing them, but quickly thought better of it. Hiding the bodies would be too problematical, and there was the possibility that they were just ordinary security guards. Hansard’s agents may have been valid targets, but civilians were decidedly not.

Pausing under the car until he was confident the two men were in motion, walking, and not crouching down to peer under the vehicles, he eventually lowered himself back down to the floor and rolled silently across the cold metal. He passed through the wheels of the next three rows of vehicles to his right, away from the men. There were now five rows between them, so even if they did decide to check underneath the cars, he would be well hidden.

Just one row further and there was the containing wall of this particular parking sector. Two car lengths up from his present position there were two doors, placed just six feet apart. One, Cole could see, led to the main passenger levels above. The other, labelled ‘No Entry’, and for ‘authorized personnel’ only, Cole knew from his prior experiences led to the service areas below, including the engine rooms.

Remembering his earlier appraisal, Cole was still reluctant to enter the service areas; wearing civilian clothing, his presence would soon arouse the wrong sort of attention.

The passenger levels above were not much better, but would give him more opportunity to blend in. Besides which, if there were two agents down here, then there were less likely to be any above. If, Cole reminded himself, these guys are Hansard’s men. He would have to keep a low profile anyway, in case there were others; perhaps do a subtle counter-surveillance run, then find a nice quiet place to hide out. Then maybe just join the crowds when the electronic announcement for people to return to their vehicles came over the PA system, and get lost in the masses. He doubted anyone would be able to spot him in such a vast sea of faces.

He was equally sure that he would be able to slip under another car for the outward journey when back in the parking lot, again without anyone noticing. Most people are so completely unaware of their environment and anything that goes on around them that Cole would have found it laughable, if it wasn’t that same lack of awareness that terrorists — indeed, criminals of any kind — relied upon for their continued success.

Again waiting patiently until he could sense the men were moving, mercifully away from him, he finally moved. Keeping at a low crouch, he moved noiselessly up the row of cars until he was parallel to the public access door. Dropping once more to the metal floor, he then rolled under the last set of wheels straight towards the door, his hand snaking up immediately for the handle.

Pulling the door open slowly, he used the handle to pull himself up and through the thick doorway, only reaching his full height when he was through to the corridor, the big metal door pulling shut behind him. He didn’t know whether the two men had seen him for the precious half-second before the door shut fully, but he had other things to worry about now — mainly, how he was going to avoid any other agents that might be stationed anywhere within the massive passenger ship.

Ah well, he thought in resignation as he started towards the stairs to the third level lounge, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Same old story.

11

Hansard was feeling older than normal, far from his usual self. He sat quietly in a chair by the window of the private bar in the outside ring of the Pentagon, finishing off his second brandy of the morning.

The smooth flavour of the 1966 cognac improved his feelings somewhat, but he would have to be careful not to overdo it — as Director of National Intelligence, he would be giving evidence at the forthcoming emergency meeting of the National Security Council. Hansard wanted to be happy about it; it was, after all, exactly in line with the second phase of the plan. A convincing performance here might well ensure its ongoing success.

But he felt less thrilled than he had anticipated, and he was all too aware of why that was. The idea for the project had first come to him almost two decades before, and he had spent the last fifteen of those years in earnest planning for the events that were now occurring. He had been meticulous, painstaking in his preparations, and the desired result was for the first time within his grasp.

But now there was a not inconsiderable spanner in the works; namely Mark Cole, who had indeed been a part of that same plan, albeit one that should have been eliminated. Hansard had never really wanted to have Cole killed; he was in many ways like a surrogate son to him, and in fact reminded Hansard on some occasions of his own son, who had been tragically killed in Afghanistan many years before. But Hansard was a man of vision, and knew that to achieve the outcome he so desired, he had to take care of even the tiniest pieces of the jigsaw.

Hansard didn’t doubt Cole’s loyalty; but he knew the man was intelligent, and feared that the events he hoped to occur over the next few days would have made his plans all too apparent to Cole. And what would he do then? It was possible that he just wouldn’t care; but given his background, that was decidedly unlikely, and it was therefore more probable that Cole might have undermined everything. And still might, Hansard thought uncomfortably.

It had been a mistake bringing him to London, Hansard thought with regret. He should have allowed him to return home, and then let Albright take care of the lot of them over in the Caymans. But, Hansard considered, he had no idea of what Cole’s return plans were, how long it would take for him to get back home. If it was more than a few days, Cole would have realized that he was sent on the mission under false pretences and would have started to put two and two together.

Hansard straightened. No, he told himself, it wasn’t a mistake bringing Cole to London. It was a mistake trusting those useless bastards at the safe house to do as I asked.

And now Cole was nowhere to be found, perhaps already starting to piece the puzzle together. The feeling of losing control was starting to creep up on him, placing its first tentative hand on his shoulder, but he quickly shook it off. He had to. There was no point in worrying about the situation; he would just have to ensure that the rest of his plan went so well, and influenced so many people, that even if Cole did turn up with some crazy story, it would be too late to change anything anyway.

He rather fancied another brandy, but decided to forego the pleasure; there was business to attend to, and he was due to speak in under half an hour. As he stood, he felt his secure phone buzz in his pocket. He looked at the number, recognized it, but didn’t allow his hopes to rise too far. ‘Yes?’ he answered.

He walked to the thick oak door, his cane keeping time with his steps on the tiled floor as he listened to the man on the other end of the phone. When he finally replied with a whispered ‘Kill him. Immediately,’ his face remained resolutely impassive; inwardly, however, he was at last smiling.

12

Cole had spotted the two other men easily. Unfortunately, they had also spotted him. His assumption about the two men below must have been correct, he realized. They were Hansard’s men, and they must have seen the door in the parking sector mysteriously opening and closing, and then radioed their colleagues up above to check it out.

And so, as soon as Cole got to the top of the stairs and turned into the main corridor, he had immediately seen the two men approaching. Upon Cole’s sudden appearance they had split up, veering off in different directions; one pretended to look in the window of a nearby boutique, whilst the other just carried on walking up the busy corridor.

Cole was sure that the men hadn’t even realized he’d spotted them, so sure they would be in their own professionalism. But Cole had known their type instantly. Both men were of medium height and medium build — harmless, unobtrusive. Nondescript hair, nondescript clothes. It was the eyes that gave it away, aware and alert. For someone who knew what to look for, it was a dead giveaway. Only very few men and women could disguise the look in the eyes. Cole was one of them, and he didn’t let the recognition flash across his own eyes even for an instant.

But he couldn’t be entirely sure of who the men were, of course, just as you could never really be sure of anything in this particular business. But there were ways of assessing the possibilities, and so Cole decided to carry on with his planned counter-surveillance run and see if the two men followed. It would put some space between him and the two other agents downstairs as well, as Cole was sure that they would soon be summoned upstairs to help.

As Cole turned left into the corridor, he saw the first man’s head twitch. Not that interested in the boutique window, then. Within seconds, the same man was on the phone, starting to follow him.

The second man was nowhere to be seen, probably circling round to intercept the tail further on. This would enable the two men to switch, and therefore be much less obvious. Against an untrained target it would almost certainly work, and Cole could see that the men were not amateurs.

As Cole stopped to look at the menu of a small restaurant, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the phone call had finished. Had he been summoning the men below? Or calling Hansard for orders on how to proceed?

Either way, Cole knew, the agents would have to be taken care of. And as he turned from the menu to continue his stroll through the ferry, he was already developing a small plan of his own.

13

Almost five thousand miles to the south-west, Albright watched Sarah Cole and her two children deplane the jetliner onto the scorching concrete of Miami International’s Runway Three. The kids looked happy, he thought in surprise. Probably no idea what’s going on, he decided. Sarah looked more nervous, but Albright found himself impressed with her composure.

Albright, ensconced in the security command centre of the airport after using his official credentials, saw Sarah finish a visual search of the area, and then watched as she and her children started off for the terminal building.

He knew that Sarah be keeping tabs on who might be watching. It wouldn’t matter though — they would have to leave the airport at some stage, and if they tried to get a connecting flight from within the airport, Albright would pick that up right here in the office.

They wouldn’t get one over on him again.

14

Sarah had seen nothing that aroused her suspicions, but that meant nothing — she had no idea who the people following them might work for, and therefore no idea how sophisticated their surveillance would be. For all she knew, they might have access to the airport’s own security apparatus. If that was the case, she knew that their actions within the airport would be monitored electronically, without them ever realizing.

Sarah’s visual checks were only really to see if there was anything overt to be concerned about. The escape plan accepted the fact that they would be monitored until leaving the airport, and all hinged on the routine they would follow once outside.

But Sarah had been told by Mark time and again that it never hurt to check; if she could identify a surveillance team within the airport, it might make avoiding such a team later on a little easier.

Sarah and her children made their way slowly over to a small restaurant in the main foyer, trying as best as they could to avoid the hustle and bustle of the thousands of holidaymakers and business people that swarmed around the airport like bees in a hive.

Sarah had already visited the American Airlines ticket desk and bought three one-way tickets for San Francisco, on a flight leaving in just over three hours. She had no intention of boarding that flight, a fact that would be obvious nearer the time, but she hoped that the enemy, whoever they were, might waste a few resources setting up surveillance on the other side of the country. At the very least, she hoped that the people undoubtedly waiting and watching outside would allow themselves to relax slightly, making things easier for when they did leave the airport.

Taking time out to have a comfortable meal would help the subterfuge, as they looked for all the world like they were just another family killing time before a connecting flight. It would also give Sarah the opportunity to go over their next course of action, as time spent in mental rehearsal was never wasted. Mark had taught her that lesson well.

15

Once Cole had verified that the men were definitely tailing him, he decided to act quickly, before the four of them had time to regroup and develop a plan of their own. He looked through the window at the view outside the colossal ship. The weather was filthy, rain driving hard against the thick glass.

He turned away and traversed the busy corridor, stopping outside a jewellers to peer through the window, watching the door to the men’s toilets just adjacent to the shop with his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see the two men from the parking sector yet, but assumed they would be waiting, hidden, until called by the others.

Of the second pair, the one Cole had labelled ‘Mr Blue’ due to his blue denim jeans, was watching him surreptitiously from inside the jewellers, whilst the other — ‘John Wayne’, because of the curious, bow-legged way he walked — was about ten feet to Cole’s left, sitting on a plastic bench pretending to read a copy of Newsweek.

Out of the corner of his eye Cole saw a lone man push through the toilet door back into the corridor. Cole knew the toilets would now be empty, and took it as his cue to move. Turning away from the shop window, he started to wander down the wide corridor. Acting as if he had just spotted the toilet sign, he stopped as if wondering whether he needed to go, and then pushed through the door into the bathroom beyond.

He didn’t know if the men would follow, but at least it would let him know what the men’s orders were. If they were merely to observe him, possibly with the hope of arresting him after, they would wait patiently outside until he had finished. If, on the other hand, they had orders to kill him, then an empty bathroom would be too good an opportunity to miss and they would soon be joining him.

He made his way to a urinal on the wall straight ahead, stomach turning at the smell of the place. That was another thing that would never change about ferry crossings, he guessed; toilets constantly blocked with vomit from alcohol and general seasickness, along with diarrhoea from disagreeable food. Holding his breath, he unzipped and immediately started to urinate. If the men did enter, Cole’s apparent vulnerability would make them relax, and possibly be more likely to make mistakes. In addition to which, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been, and he actually did need to go quite urgently.

Moments later, he heard the door open behind him. He watched the reflection in the curved metal of the cistern pipes in front of him, and the distorted image showed the two agents entering, the rear man — Mr Blue — placing some sort of jam under the door to stop any unwanted visitors from coming in and spoiling the fun. He’d been right, Cole thought as they approached; their orders were to kill him.

Cole knew the men wouldn’t risk using guns. Silenced weapons could slow the velocity of a bullet sufficiently to negate the telltale sonic crack, but ricochets were always a danger, especially in such a confined space. Additionally, gunshot wounds were messy, and the agents surely wouldn’t want to raise suspicions too much. They wouldn’t want it to appear like a professional hit, not in so public a place.

Cole expected knives, at close quarters; something that could be blamed on a robbery, or an argument. Or maybe they’d use a garrotte, and try to strangle him. Or a taser, hitting him with 50,000 volts and causing a heart attack that would only later be determined as unnatural. Whichever method, Cole knew that they would have to get close.

One of the men approached the urinal next to him. From the heavy footsteps he knew it was John Wayne; Mr Blue was hanging back. As Cole started to zip up, he turned to the man stepping in front of the adjacent urinal, and smiled the slightly coy, self-conscious smile that was common in men’s public toilets around the world. John nodded back, and Cole finished zipping, catching the glint of a knife reflected in the pipes in front of him.

John’s hands went down to his trousers as if to unzip, but then he suddenly burst sideways at Cole, in an attempt to grab and pin him whilst Blue did his work with the knife.

Cole’s reactions were quicker. As soon as John moved, he slammed the callused edge of his hand into the agent’s windpipe, crushing the trachea instantly. The man dropped to his knees and Cole dodged sharply to the side as Blue thrust the knife towards his spine.

Twisting round in a close arc, Cole grabbed Blue with both hands — one secured around the man’s knife-arm, the other gripping his hair — and, using Blue’s own momentum from the forward thrust, he yanked him forwards viciously. Blue’s head smashed into the reinforced porcelain of the urinal with a sickening crunch, and Cole knew the agent was no longer a threat.

Cole also knew that he couldn’t afford to let either man live and so he leant forwards and jerked Blue’s head violently backwards, breaking the neck cleanly. Cole looked down to the left and saw John on the floor, eyes wide as he struggled in vain to breathe. As Cole reached down, the agent’s eyes were pleading, and yet no words came out of the gargling, shattered throat. A moment later, John joined his partner on the dirty toilet floor, his neck also broken.

Cole picked up the knife from the floor, a folding Gerber; easy to conceal but deadly nevertheless. Cole was glad he hadn’t had to use it; the blood would have been hard to cover up. As it was, he still had two bodies to hide, and he went to work quickly.

He pulled Blue’s limp body through into a cubicle, trying as hard as he could to ignore the putrid stench from the stained bowl. He took off the man’s jacket and used it to secure him in a sitting position atop the lavatory, tying the sleeves off around the pipe behind the dead body, which looked grotesque with its unnaturally erect posture. He then pulled off Blue’s belt and pulled the man’s trousers around his ankles, before going back out and pulling John’s heavy body through into the cubicle. Hoisting him up to a higher position, he used Blue’s belt to secure his old partner on top of him, cinching him in tight so that he wouldn’t slip down.

After checking his handiwork, Cole then locked the cubicle door from the inside and climbed out over the top of the doorframe. Looking underneath the door from the outside, he could see a pair of legs, trousers pulled around the ankles down to the leather shoes, and nothing else. Just another passenger using the facilities. The smell would certainly back that one up, Cole thought grimly.

Satisfied, Cole moved towards the exit. From the banging on the door, he could tell someone was impatiently trying to get in, their entry blocked by Blue’s door jam. He wondered if it was one of the other agents, but quickly discounted the possibility. They wouldn’t be trying to get in; they’d be observing off to the side, waiting for their colleagues to come out. The banging door would just be a normal passenger, he decided, probably desperate for a piss. Pulling the jam from the bottom of the door, he decided to play it that way.

He yanked the door open, as if he’d been struggling to do so for some time. Cole acted suitably surprised as the door finally opened and came hurtling towards him at speed, taking a defensive step backwards. The move would also give him a chance to react if he’d been wrong about the person on the other side of the door. Cole had been correct in his initial assumption however, and the passenger stumbled forwards from pushing against the door, surprise written plainly across his own face.

‘Sorry mate,’ said Cole breathlessly, pretending to try and regain his composure, ‘bloody door must have got stuck!’

The other man was trying to regain his own composure, and smiled back at Cole in a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. ‘No worries mate,’ he replied, moving past Cole into the bathroom, ‘I’m just desperate!’ Cole smiled in return, and moved past the man into the corridor.

Although he hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the parking zone, he recognized them instantly now, standing across the passageway, their backs to the outside window. It was the eyes that did it, as always. Neither of them could conceal the surprise, the confusion, the fear.

Cole moved off instantly down the walkway to the left. He would have to care of these two somewhere else.

16

Albright followed the Cole family in the impromptu surveillance car he had earlier hired from the Hertz rental desk. Another of Hansard’s own agents, who was on liaison duty in Miami and had introduced himself as Andy Cragg, drove the vehicle, but there were just the two of them.

His targets had left the airport suddenly, just minutes before they were due to board the domestic flight to San Francisco, and jumped into a waiting taxi outside the terminal. Albright had expected some sort of trick, not really believing Sarah would do something as obvious as catching a connecting flight from the same airport, and had waited in the foyer with Cragg.

There had only been two other of Hansard’s men who’d been able to get to Miami in the time available, and they had boarded the plane ahead of the targets. When Albright had seen Sarah race with the kids out of the terminal, it was too late. Out of radio contact, the other half of his surveillance team were now on their way across continental America.

Hansard had instructed him that he was to keep a low profile with the local authorities; the mission wasn’t something he wanted people to know about.

As the taxi ahead of them took a left turn, Albright cursed his bad luck. Three cars would have been ideal, although even just two would have been better than what he had. But he would just have to cope. The taxi up ahead, its dark windows glinting brightly in the hot sun, was turning left again. As Cragg changed lanes and indicated left, Albright couldn’t help but wonder what their plan was.

17

In the back of the taxi, Sarah was playing a game with Ben and Amy. Her nerves were shredded, but she knew on an intellectual level that the plan was sound. So why wasn’t she calm?

Sarah knew all too well why she was panicking — this was a different world to her, and going through drills and exercises was inherently very different to the real thing, where there were real lives at stake, including those of her children.

She was, however, quickly getting used to hiding her feelings of fear, and was now able to play I Spy out of the cab windows without Ben and Amy realising anything was amiss.

The last half an hour had revealed that they were being followed. The driver, at Sarah’s request, had followed a circuitous route, doubling back twice in a deceptive circle designed to trap a surveillance car into giving away its position.

The fact that the same silver Chrysler Voyager was still there, four cars behind them, indicated that there was only one car tracking them. If there had been more then they would have been in radio contact, swapping around at regular intervals to disguise their movements, and Sarah would have never spotted them.

The realization warmed her immensely — it meant that the opposition’s forces were limited, and would make the next step of the plan just that little bit easier.

18

Albright was angry with himself. It was only after the third turn that he’d recognized the counter-surveillance technique, and by that time it was too late; he knew Sarah would have already spotted him.

Damn her! It was only because Albright hadn’t wanted to let the woman out of his sight that he’d let himself fall into the trap. If only he hadn’t lost the two men on the aeroplane, they would have had that second car and he wouldn’t have been caught like that.

No matter, Albright decided finally. The die had been cast now, and he’d just have to do his best with the limited resources he had. Sarah might know he was there, but there was no point calling off the chase; Albright would keep following them to the end.

19

Cole had led the two agents on a little tour of the ship, not giving them any time to settle or get into a routine; it was strictly stop-start all the way. The method had the added benefit of disguising the place where Cole was really leading them — back to the parking zone where he’d heard the men initially.

He’d had a good look at the two agents now and, as he had been trained to all those years before, had assigned names to them. The trouble with choosing names for undercover operatives was, of course, the fact that they were not physically very distinctive. The very nature of their profession demanded that they aroused no suspicions, and so deciding on a feature to lock onto was certainly harder than with most people. Both men wore nondescript clothes and had decidedly nondescript faces.

The first two had been easier, which indicated to Cole that this pair was the more professional, and therefore the more dangerous. Cole had many years experience of watching and observing people, however, and it was only a matter of seconds before he had latched onto the main differentiating characteristic of the two men. The first agent had a slim build, emphasized by a scrawny neck. To his credit, he tried to hide it by doing his shirt up high, but it was still apparent. The second man evidently liked to work out, although again he tried to hide his physique with his loose clothes. But he couldn’t completely hide the size of his neck, which stood out in stark contrast to his partner. Pencil Neck and the Bull it was then, Cole decided.

He remembered the layout of the parking sector from his earlier visit precisely, including the location and angles of the various CCTV cameras dotted around the vast cavern. He chose to re-enter the parking zone through the same door he had left through earlier — he knew the type and location of the nearby vehicles, and had already decided on how he was going to solve the problem of his two pursuers.

Cole crouched in the cold darkness, off to one side of the wide metal door, and waited patiently for the two men to appear. On the upper level, he had made a show of checking the area, pretending not to see the two agents before he crept through into the stairwell and headed downstairs. He hoped that Pencil Neck and the Bull would assume that Cole didn’t realize he was being followed, and would therefore confidently follow him downstairs in the hope of surprising him.

It was taking longer than Cole had anticipated for the men to appear however, and he began to wonder if they had seen through his plan, or had perhaps been ordered to stand down, or –

The door moved, opening quietly, slowly. Cole’s eyes pierced the dark, straining to make the identification. It was Pencil Neck. Cole exploded upwards, jumping straight into the agent and lashing out viciously. Holding the thumb and second knuckle of his index finger together in a solid point, he thrust the callused weapon straight into the man’s unprotected throat. The strike was as fatal as if he had used the knife he had taken earlier, but a lot less messy.

Pencil Neck dropped to the floor, convulsing violently as he started to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog, but Cole was already moving past him to confront the Bull, his arm cocked to deliver a second lethal blow. Where is he? Cole wondered in rising panic. He looked around the small corridor, up and down the stairs, but saw nobody.

Just then, he heard the sound of a door opening on the opposite side of the parking sector. Damn! The agents had split up, hoping to move in on him in a pincer movement. He should have anticipated it, but Cole knew now wasn’t the time for self-recrimination.

For a split second, across the twenty rows of vehicles that now separated them, Cole’s eyes met with those of the second agent. The Bull realised in an instant that his partner was down, and immediately raised his right arm. Instinct took over Cole’s actions, and he dived for the floor even as he heard the light phht! of a silenced pistol. The echo of the reverberating ricochet as the subsonic bullet struck the metal door just inches from Cole’s head was much louder, and Cole hoped that the CCTV cameras weren’t wired for sound.

It was clear that subtlety was now out of the equation. The man wanted Cole dead, however he did it.

Cole looked down at the body of Pencil Neck in front of him, spread-eagled on the floor, the thick metal door trying to close itself by crushing his chest. Beyond, Cole saw the man’s own silenced handgun at the foot of the stairwell. Keeping low, he ducked down to grab the weapon and retrieve it from the doorway.

The same phht! was followed by the same metallic kerang! as the Bull fired again. Cole reared back out of the way, again narrowly missing being shot. The man was good, Cole gave him that.

So, he couldn’t get the gun. But Cole was faced with another problem — the open door would soon register with the ship’s security centre. Meant to be kept shut against flooding, if the door was held open for too long an alarm would soon start sounding in the operations room.

Cole held his breath, centring himself. Over the beating of his own heart, he heard movement. The Bull was advancing. Cole used the opportunity to reach out and grab Pencil Neck’s legs, pulling him violently backwards into the parking sector. As the door finally released him and clanked shut, Cole fell over backwards with the force of his pulling. It didn’t matter though — the body was out, the door was shut, and Cole regained his feet instantly.

He had lost his awareness of the other man’s position, though, and hoped that the man or woman tasked with watching the security cameras would not be studying the screens too closely. The notion didn’t worry him unduly, however; experience had taught him that such cameras were seldom monitored very effectively. They were, in fact, mainly for use if and when a crime was reported, at which stage the films would be played back and potentially used as evidence. A useful tool to be sure, but due to a lack of manpower to monitor the multitude of images, it was rare for that tool to be used to prevent an incident in real-time.

Deciding to play it safe nevertheless, Cole slipped quietly to the floor and dragged himself underneath and past the first two lines of cars, heading for the line he thought the Bull would be approaching from.

As he pulled himself along the cold, wet floor towards the centre of the parking sector, a noise made him pause. It was the rustle of clothing against metal, and it had come from the right hand side. Cole slowly eased out from his position, trying to see exactly where it had come from.

He saw it and pulled his head back under the car at almost the same instant, as the Bull fired another subsonic bullet towards his prey. The man started running then, Cole saw, eager to capitalise upon his attack. Cole rolled in the opposite direction, out from under the car, and stood up in a low crouch, revealing himself to the hunter.

The Bull, now only twenty feet away, saw Cole’s head pop up and immediately turned to fire, this time a two round double-tap. But Cole had already ducked back down and was rolling under the same car back the way he had come.

He popped up on the first side of the car again just as the Bull reached the opposite side, gun aimed down at the floor where he expected Cole to be. It didn’t take long for him to realize where Cole was, and he instantaneously turned to fire, but it was already too late. The knife that Cole had taken from the agent in the bathroom earlier, thrown with great force and accuracy, entered the Bull’s skull via the eye socket before he even had the chance to squeeze the trigger. The tip of the blade pierced the agent’s brain, and he fell to the floor dead.

Breathing a weary sigh of relief, Cole’s head snapped around just instants later as a sudden noise caught his attention. A buzz of static, then a voice — the ship’s electronic PA system.

By the time the voice was halfway through its announcement, Cole was already in motion. Apparently they were almost at France, the passengers were being instructed to return to their vehicles — and Cole had just minutes in which to hide two more dead bodies.

20

Sitting across the polished wooden desk in the White House office of Richard Jenson, Hansard sipped at his third brandy of the day, an unusually refined almanac. Ignoring the jug of iced water set to one side, Jenson joined him with the brandy, and they raised their cut-crystal glasses to one another in toast.

‘It went well,’ Jenson said happily, referring to his latest meeting with President Abrams. ‘Just like you said it would.’

Hansard nodded his head sagely. He had not been overly surprised; but reality was fluid, and Hansard was all too aware that nothing could ever be set in stone. He did, however, have contingency plans for most variations. How could a plan hope to succeed otherwise?

‘Let’s not count our chickens just yet, Richard. Much can go wrong in the next few days,’ Hansard advised. ‘We need to follow a fine balancing act with our allies. But, yes, this morning went well. We just have to keep on top of it and make sure it keeps going well.’

Jensen nodded, and took a sip of brandy. He held the glass up in front of him, examining the rich, honey-coloured liquid. As he did so, his face grew pensive. At length, he looked up at his friend and advisor.

‘Do you really think it will work, Charles? Do you think we’ll do it?’ The question was hushed, worried, a cry for reassurance.

Hansard regarded Jenson with his cool grey eyes. If you don’t let me down, he answered silently. But he knew the man he’d chosen all those years ago wouldn’t fail him. Perversely, the weakness and vulnerability that Jenson displayed when alone translated to great strength when on the public stage, almost as if he was able to feed off his own fears and worries and imbue himself with a power he wouldn’t otherwise have.

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think the outcome was achievable, Richard,’ Hansard answered at last. ‘It is by no means certain — there are always too many external imponderables to ever be certain about anything in this game — but it is most definitely achievable.’

Jenson smiled, and took another sip of his drink.

21

Sarah made her way through the Jackson Mall as nonchalantly as she could, seeming to idle from boutique to boutique with no real direction. Her tight hold of her children’s hands was entirely subconscious, and betrayed the fact that she was actually a harried bundle of nerves, totally on edge.

Although she appeared to have no destination in sight, the three members of the Cole family were actually headed for a very specific location. She had tried the counter-surveillance moves as best as she could under the circumstances, and thought that nobody was following her, but she was all too aware that she was no expert at this game. There could have been a dozen men following her for all she really knew.

She managed to continue her laid-back stroll until they came upon a small coffee house. ‘Who wants a cake?’ she asked Ben and Amy.

‘Me!’ shouted Ben immediately.

Amy, a little more aware of her mother’s uneasiness, asked quietly ‘Is it okay?’

Sarah smiled widely at her, her daughter’s understanding giving her renewed strength. ‘Of course it is honey, we’re on holiday! Come on, we’ll have a bite to eat and then we’ll go shopping. Okay?’

‘Okay!’ Amy replied brightly, heading with her mother and brother into the café.

Ben rolled his eyes at his sister as they passed through the doors. If they were offered cake, the answer should always be a simple Yes! There was certainly never any need for questions. Why did girls always have to make things complicated?

22

Across the crowded plaza, a man was watching the Cole family. Andy Cragg saw the three targets enter the coffee shop, and wondered if he should follow them in. His orders were to remain unobserved however, and so he resisted the impulse. The mother seemed to be so far unaware of his presence, but it was clear that she had some knowledge of counter-surveillance techniques. She was no expert, but was good enough for him to have to keep his distance. He couldn’t take the risk of the Cole woman making him, and so he sat down on one of the benches opposite and started to wait.

He could see the family through the coffee shop’s window, and would pick up the tail when they left.

Albright had wanted to keep watch himself, but Cragg had suggested that with his damaged face, it might just be too easy to spot him. Albright had argued, but Cragg had finally convinced him, and he was now just around the corner, in close radio contact.

Cragg could see that there was more to Albright’s desire to watch the family than professional pride; it seemed somehow personal to him. Cragg knew that the senior agent was a vain man — indeed, within the DIA’s Department X, Albright’s narcissistic qualities were well known — but Cragg hoped that it wouldn’t start to colour his colleague’s judgement.

23

Across from the coffee shop, Cragg observed Sarah Cole check her watch and then ask for the bill. It came just a minute later, and he watched her take some money out of her purse and put it on the table. He started to react as he saw the mother and her two children stand and start to make their way towards the door.

He relaxed a moment later when the little girl — Amy Cole, wasn’t it? — stopped her mum and whispered urgently in her ear. Smiling, Sarah Cole approached the coffee bar and spoke to the lady behind the counter, who pointed towards a hallway at the rear of the little café. Cragg watched as she led her children down the corridor and out of sight.

Cragg wasn’t concerned; just a four year old girl needing to use the toilet after a meal, nothing unusual. He used the opportunity to radio Albright to let him know the Cole family were about to move.

‘Why did you want me to whisper in your ear, Mommy?’ Amy asked as they walked quickly past the door to the bathroom.

Sarah looked down at her little girl and smiled. ‘We’re just playing a game honey, just a game. Like acting, you know? Maybe like hide and seek?’ The trio got to the end of the corridor and stopped at the fire exit.

Ben looked at his mother with curiosity. ‘Who are we playing with?’ he asked with genuine interest.

‘Some friends,’ Sarah replied automatically as she checked the device in her hand. She hoped it still worked.

They were across the alleyway outside the Mall in seconds, Sarah closing the fire door and pressing the button on the remote control in her hand at the same time.

The control was aimed at another fire door, positioned directly opposite her across the narrow alleyway. They were almost there, and Sarah thought for a moment that it wouldn’t work, but then it creaked open and they were there, bursting through into the stair well and slamming the door closed behind them immediately.

Sarah hoisted Ben and Amy into her arms, smiling at both of them warmly. ‘Looks like they’re not going to find us,’ she said with relief.

‘Did we win?’ Ben asked.

‘I think so,’ Sarah replied, and Ben and Amy cheered. ‘And that means we get to play another game. I hope you both like fancy dress.’

24

At 12:10, Cragg was starting to be concerned. Where were they? Why hadn’t they come out?

He really didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to give away his presence, but what if there was a back way out that they’d decided to use? He could be sat here wasting precious time.

Eventually, Cragg radioed Albright again, and was given the order to check it out. Once he’d had the decision made for him, Cragg acted quickly. He moved straight through the front door, ignoring the waitress who wanted to escort him to a table, and entered the female bathroom. Nothing. He checked it from top to bottom, and then moved to the male bathroom. Again, nothing.

Coming back into the corridor, he rounded the corner and saw the service door. Oh no. This really wasn’t what he wanted.

Despite the dread of what he might find — or not find — he raced to the door and opened it, spilling out into a narrow alleyway. He ran one way down the alley, then the other. Once again — nothing. No sign of the Coles whatsoever.

As he picked up his radio to give Albright the bad news, he never even considered the dull metal fire door opposite him.

Albright didn’t bother racing into the café to assist Cragg.

His shoulders sagged in defeat; he didn’t even have it in him to shout at the man. The fact was, they’d lost. They’d lost, and now he had to tell Hansard.

As he pulled out his cell phone, he wondered about the words he would use.

He rolled his neck, the faint cracks relieving some of the tension from his body.

It would have to be Cragg’s fault, of course.

25

Cole’s memory of the boat’s layout was mercifully intact. Although the ferries he’d trained on whilst on joint exercise with the British SBS were somewhat older models, he was pleased to see that the internal superstructure of the new vessels was similar enough to make no real difference.

After hiding the two bodies, Cole had managed to access the service area through the hatchway near to the stairwell. Since then, he had descended another two levels until he was now at the lowest point in the ship.

He had successfully avoided contact with the ship’s crew, giving the kitchens and engine rooms a wide berth. The circuitous route had taken a bit of extra time, but was worth it for the lack of trouble he’d run into.

He worked his way through a tiny passageway — really only designed for an electrical cart to run along but just big enough for Cole to squeeze into — and tried to hurry towards the rear of the boat. He could feel the engines slowing, and knew he didn’t have much time left.

26

The clean-up crews started working the moment the passengers began to head downstairs, and Diego Marquez had just been informed that he’d have to do Sections 1a and b today. Another guy would normally do 1b, but Diego’s supervisor had said that the man had been taken ill, and so he would have to clean both.

It never ceased to amaze Diego how filthy people could be. To a certain extent he had become desensitized to it, but he could never quite understand how such a short journey could result in so much mess. The ferry journey lasted barely three hours, but in that time the two thousand passengers never failed to turn the beautiful, sparkling clean ship into a bombsite.

After working for three years on the same boat, Diego had managed to get himself a decent area. It was in a relatively tidy area near the jewellery boutique, mercilessly separate from both restaurants and toilets. Toilets were always the worst on sea voyages, and Diego was almost ecstatic when he’d been transferred to Section 1a.

But now he’d have to go through it again, and he wasn’t pleased by the prospect. The toilets in Section 1b were invariably clogged up and overflowing. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant job, and so Diego made the decision to get it out of the way first.

Entering the bathroom, the smell was the same as always — repugnant. He scanned the room quickly and was agreeably surprised to see that there was only one pool of vomit on the floor. The place was filthy underfoot, but at least it just seemed to be general dirt and slush from the hundreds of pairs of boots, shoes and trainers that would have trawled through the place over the last few hours.

The locked cubicle door to his right caught his attention next. Strange, he thought. All the passengers should have returned to their vehicles by now. He approached the door and knocked on the wooden front. There was no reply.

He bent down, careful not to get too close to the floor even with his gloves on, and saw a pair of legs, trousers pulled round the ankles. He thought back, and remembered that such a sight wasn’t actually all that strange — a lot of passengers would get so drunk that they’d fall asleep on the toilet, and have to be woken by the clean-up crews. Some would need medical assistance.

He sighed, and banged on the door louder. He really didn’t want to have to go in there if he could possibly help it. It was never nice to have to drag a sleepy, uncooperative drunk out of a cubicle. There was still no answer, and so he banged again on the door, shouting this time for good measure. Still nothing.

He rolled his eyes up to the sky and muttered a curse under his breath as he pulled a small coin out of his overall pocket. Inserting the coin edgewise into the screw-head on the outside of the lock, he twisted it clockwise. The action caused the lock to unbolt, and he pushed the door open.

His eyes went wide, and his breath caught in his throat as he became frozen to the spot. He had never seen this before, that was for sure.

27

The cold air hit Cole in the face with a solid blow, and it took him a few moments to regain his senses. He peered out at the French coastline, the dim landscape lit up intermittently by the bright lights of the port city.

From his precarious position, balanced on the top of the massive anchor chain that had only minutes before dropped with a deafening crash through the ship’s large hawse hole into the sea below, he concentrated on regaining his night vision.

Eventually, he was able to make things out clearly. The huge chain stretched down some forty feet below him to the dark waters of the French Channel. It was on a blind-side from the main port buildings, and Cole thought the area of coastline to the West of the massive port complex was probably about a half mile away.

He picked his time carefully, waiting for the boat to slow its rocking enough until he could manoeuvre out of the hawse hole all the way onto the chain. The bare metal was freezing, but at the same time slick and slippery with oil and seaweed.

The last time he’d climbed such a chain, at least he’d had good equipment for the job, including rubberized gloves. Right now, he had nothing more than strips of cloth wrapped tightly around his hands to protect them against frostbite. It would have been easier just to dive in from a height, but Cole knew that there might be people watching from up on deck. A big white splash against an otherwise dark sea might just attract the wrong kind of attention.

And so slowly, laboriously, Cole lowered himself down the colossal anchor chain, gigantic link by gigantic link. It took five agonizing minutes, but as he finally slipped into the near freezing water where the chain met the sea, he was confident that he had done so completely unobserved.

28

Cole pulled himself onto the shores of mainland France just as the first rays of dawn started to cast their dreary light over the muggy bank.

Getting cold and wet was starting to become too much of a habit, Cole decided as he stretched out his freezing and exhausted body. The respite was short-lived; he knew he had to get moving, and find some more dry clothes.

But, he thought with some satisfaction as he made his way up the slope towards a nearby block of buildings, he was safe, at least for now.

29

Nothing was ever perfect, Hansard considered as he put the phone down. The meetings this morning had gone well; things were being downplayed now between Russia and China, which was exactly how he wanted it for now. He didn’t want President Danko’s anger to subside completely, but nor did he want any sort of physical confrontation to erupt. For the time being at least, the requisite balance was being kept perfectly.

In fact, things had been going altogether too well, which was why he wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that Cole had escaped the net yet again. How lucky could one man be? wondered Hansard, although he knew that it wasn’t luck. The simple fact was that Mark Cole was one of the best there was. He was certainly the best that Hansard himself had ever worked with personally.

Hansard sat at the big desk in his office, staring at the mass of paperwork spread out in front of him, reports and case files that all seemed to need his immediate attention, and felt the pulse throb in his temple. He sighed, and pulled a bottle from the veneered drinks cabinet next to him, pouring himself a stiff measure. As he sank back into his upholstered leather chair and poured half of the rich, hot liquid down his throat, his mind started to drift back many years, to his first meeting with Mark Cole.

It was early during the second Iraq war, in 2003. Hansard had been Head of the DIA’s Department X at the time, having transferred to military intelligence from the US Navy back in 1984. The Navy had been his parent unit in the same way as it had been for his father, and his grandfather before him, but circumstance had conspired against the third generation.

Hansard was the product of a wealthy family, and came from old money, but that family had always taken the protection of the nation seriously. His father had been killed in action in the Gulf of Suez in 1956. Charles Hansard had only been eight years old at the time, but by 1971 he had passed out of Harvard Law School and then the Annapolis Naval Academy as an Ensign, keen to honour the memory of his heroic father.

He had an early taste of intelligence work when he had been seconded as the Naval attaché to the Pentagon in 1980, and he had witnessed the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw first hand. President Carter’s attempt to resolve the Iran hostage crisis had resulted in a catalogue of errors and the unnecessary loss of many lives.

Hansard had realized three things that day. The first was that America had at its disposal some of the best special forces operators in the world. The second was that there was a very poor link between the intelligence services and the military, and this simple error was the primary reason for the operation’s failure. The third thing he had realized was that he could do better — he could see how links needed to be forged between the intelligence and military communities, and started to make plans and report his findings up the chain of command.

His secondment eventually came to an end, and he resumed his normal duties within the Navy. But in the back of his mind was always that experience in the Pentagon control room, watching as brave Americans died due to a lack of cross-service cohesion, and the feeling that he could improve things.

He got his chance to move back into the intelligence community soon after. As Captain of his first command, Hansard’s naval destroyer was sent to support the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. A freak explosion on deck occurred soon after his arrival there, and Hansard had left the bridge to rescue three of his crewmembers who were left burning on the top deck. A yard arm had then collapsed from the intense heat, and had partially crushed his left leg. Hansard had even then dragged one of his sailors out of the flames using just his arms, before he himself was rescued by his Chief.

Hansard had been awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery, and the surgeons back in Bethesda had managed to save the leg, but the impact had left him with a permanent limp, and no longer fit for active duty on board a naval vessel. He still had the burning desire to serve his country though, raging through him stronger than ever.

His superior officers recognized his sharp intellect, and his analytical and strategic abilities, and after reviewing his own personal request, had recommended that he be transferred to the Defence Intelligence Agency after his recuperation.

By the time of the first Gulf War, Hansard had already proven himself more than capable of operating within the shadowy confines of the intelligence underworld. A certain degree of ruthlessness displayed during his early work against the Contras in Nicaragua and the Columbian drug cartels had led to his involvement with the infamous Intelligence Support Activity, a body later disbanded after accusations of financial mismanagement. During his time there, Hansard had learnt a great deal about how such units operated, what the potential pitfalls to such work were, and how mistakes could be avoided in the future.

His successful involvement in covert operations soon led to his becoming the DIA’s key liaison with the military’s special forces units. For the next few years he assisted their operations across the globe, until he was made Head of Department X shortly before Iraq invaded Kuwait in the early 1990s.

Hansard also took command of the DIA’s own paramilitary force, known by the codename Grey Fox. The unit’s aim was to carry out covert missions for the government that were too sensitive for normal special forces troops. Tasks involved the kidnapping of foreign agents, penetration of unfriendly governments, sabotage, blackmail and, of course, assassination. Hansard had been aware of the program since its inception, and had worked with some of the men previously, always impressed with their sheer professionalism. Command of such a unit was his dream job and, once he took the reins, it was made even more successful.

Awareness of the cell was one of the major problems Hansard faced, as it was something of an open secret within the armed services. Some of the jobs that Hansard had planned, and his small unit of handpicked men had carried out, were becoming almost legendary. The problem manifested itself in the late ‘90s, when newspapers started to get wind of it, and accusations started flying about another government ‘hit squad’.

Hansard knew the best policy was containment, and so quickly and quietly disbanded his beloved unit. A cooling off period was decided upon, and Hansard’s employers wanted to know what their man wanted to do during the hiatus; his impact and unrivalled success ensured that he would get any posting he asked for. They were surprised when Hansard had asked to join the Joint Military Intelligence College as a Group Mentor. But strings were pulled, and in the January of 1999, Hansard left for the key post at JMIC.

The college was a finishing school of sorts, for the top people within the military and intelligence communities. Established in 1961, it had initially been known as the Defence Intelligence School, and years after Hansard had been there it was again renamed as the National Defence Intelligence College. It offered programs at both the graduate and undergraduate level, and some of the top people within the United States government had passed through the school over the years.

Hansard had known this fact all too well, and he had used the three years he was there to lay down the groundwork for his ultimate goal; you could never start planning for something too early, he knew.

Upon his return to DIA headquarters, he resumed his role as Head of DX, and set about creating a new covert action cell. This time, rather than inheriting an existing unit as he had before, he had carte blanche to create a new unit from the ground up. This he did with typical attention to detail, spending time over every little thing, from the selection of the men and women themselves, to the computers he wanted for the intelligence headquarters. The result was the Systems Research Group.

He kept the cell small, with a headquarters of half a dozen experts, and twelve field teams of four operatives. These men and women were seconded from their parent units in utmost secrecy, and the number of people who were even aware of the existence of the SRG was less than a hundred — unheard of for such an operation.

Selection of the right personnel was absolutely key, Hansard knew. He only wanted the best, most reliable people; soldiers with plenty of combat experience. Luckily for him, US special forces were never light in that particular department. He didn’t hold open selections due to security considerations, but what he did do was obtain the service records of the members of America’s various special forces units, and read through them one by one. From these reports, which numbered in the thousands, he requested two hundred people for interview. Of these, he knew he would accept only twenty-five percent.

Mark Kowalski had been the eighth name on his list.

30

The driving snow was making it hard to see out of the windscreen of the stolen car. Cole had driven the Citroen C9 a little over two hundred miles, and knew he would soon need a new one. He didn’t want to drive too far in a stolen vehicle, for fear that it would attract attention. Changing cars every two or three hundred miles would make the journey a lot safer. There would be one more change before he got to the German border, and then he would leave the vehicle and cross over on foot, only taking another car when he was safely in the new country. He couldn’t take the chance of driving through the border, for fear that the patrol guards might have his picture; he had no idea the extent of the manhunt Hansard would have ordered.

He coaxed the little car on along the highway at a steady hundred kilometres per hour, in quite possibly the worst conditions he had ever come across. The compacted snow under his tyres made grip all but nonexistent, and the snow was coming down so heavily that even with his wipers on at double speed, he could barely see the road ahead.

Even with his concentration on the road, he felt his mind returning to his old master and mentor. Hansard — he still couldn’t believe the man wanted him dead. It was too much to accept, and yet Cole’s experience of the world meant that his views of human nature were essentially somewhat less than optimistic. Cynicism was his watchword, and yet he had never expected Hansard to turn against him. What was the man thinking? He was up to something, that much was obvious; it was also evident that whatever it was, it was big. But, he remembered, Hansard had always had the mental edge; not just over him, but over everyone.

Cole remembered their first meeting, back when he had been Ensign Mark Kowalski with SEAL Team Two during the long, hot summer of 2003 in Iraq. It was only a year after he had fought in the caves of Afghanistan, but he didn’t mind; he loved the action. There was always the fear, of course, but he knew that if he could persevere through the fear, there would be the glorious reward of the supercharged adrenal surge at the other end. Kowalski had learnt early on that there was no more powerful a drug than the adrenaline hit brought on by a real-life fire-fight, with trained men shooting at you, whilst you tried to shoot back. It made everything so clear — movements, sounds, the feel of the air on your skin, the flow of blood pumping around your body — and it was unlike any other feeling Kowalski had ever experienced. The truth of the matter was that he only felt truly alive when his life was in danger. It was a truth that Mr Hansard, as he introduced himself, saw immediately.

Mr Hansard was waiting for him in the operations tent when Kowalski returned from a reconnaissance patrol. The interview took place before he had even had the chance to shed his equipment. As soon as Kowalski entered, the man was on his feet, extending a hand. ‘Ensign Kowalski, I presume?’ the tall, slim man said in a polished, almost seductive tone. As Kowalski took the hand and shook, the stranger continued. ‘My name is Mr Hansard. Sorry for the intrusion, but I would like to have a little talk with you.’

Kowalski looked around the room. Nobody else was there, which told him something; the operations tent was the nerve centre of the troop and was normally a hive of activity. Whoever this man was, he was someone important. Hansard … Kowalski’s mind wandered. He knew the name from somewhere, and it wasn’t long before he made the connection. The dark wood cane leaning against the side of the chair helped the matter. Charles Hansard, a big wig from the DIA. A war hero and a special ops legend. What the Hell does he want with me? Kowalski wondered.

The Systems Research Group was never mentioned, and Mr Hansard never even indicated that he was setting up a new, ultra-covert military action cell. All the questions came from the DIA officer, and Kowalski answered them as honestly as he could. It was clear that the older man was recruiting, but for what, he didn’t say. The interview went well, Cole remembered, but it was such a strange situation that in some ways it felt like no more than a dream.

At the end of the meeting, Hansard had stood, shaken hands with the American commando, and announced that he would be in touch. He kept his word, although it was four more years before the men spoke again.

31

The problem, Hansard remembered, was that at the time, Kowalski was something of an adrenaline junkie. The commendations, awards and medals — including a Bronze Star, Purple Heart with cluster, and the Navy Cross, a line-up that made him one of the most decorated men serving in the military at the time — that had looked so impressive in his personnel file, were merely the result of Kowalski’s impetuous desire to be in the thick of the action. Some people called it ‘courage under fire’, and Hansard did indeed find the man’s achievements impressive, but the new head of the SRG had decided, in the end, that such a man would be a liability in the field.

It was a further sad fact that Kowalski had almost been demoted after breaking the jaw of a four-stripe Navy Captain, almost losing his hard-won commission only months after his graduation as an officer.

Kowalski’s unit had been leaving a ‘hot’ beach in Libya, chased by Gaddafi’s Revolutionary Guard, and the submarine they had been expecting to extract them one kilometre off-shore had pulled back two further kilometres due to the Captain’s concerns over the safety of his ship. The extra distance had caused two of the team’s wounded men to die, and Kowalski had to drag the lifeless body of one of them almost a mile through the powerful current of the Red Sea.

Once aboard the sub, he had lost no time in finding the Captain and punching him straight on the jaw. He would have done more, Hansard heard, had he not been restrained by his team-mates.

It wasn’t that Hansard blamed the man per se; Heavens knew, the Captain deserved it for his cowardice. But it showed a streak of impetuousness that would be dangerous for an SRG operator. Indeed, Kowalski might have been thrown out of the Navy altogether had it not been for his incredible service record.

Hansard had kept a close eye on Mark Kowalski, however, watching as he made Lieutenant — presumably his previous transgression against the submarine commander had been forgiven — and then as he passed selection for the SEAL’s own elite DEVGRU unit, known more famously as SEAL Team Six, and started the arduous training programme for that specialist group. According to Hansard’s sources, Kowalski had exceeded all expectations in training, and was deemed by his instructors to be a natural counter-terrorism soldier. One of his greatest attributes, reputedly, was his patience. Hansard remembered being surprised to hear this particular comment, and made a note to monitor Kowalski’s first few jobs for the DEVGRU in order to see just how far the lad had come on. Although the SRG was a small group — and still a well-kept secret — there was always room for the right sort of person. And Hansard was finally coming round to the decision that Kowalski was the right sort of person.

It wasn’t long after training that Kowalski was once again tested in the field, as his Team Six was sent straight to Iraq to make up Task Force Blue, responsible for hunting down the Al’Queda high-command in the western provinces, including regular incursions into Iran.

What impressed Hansard about the operation wasn’t so much the fact that it harmed Al’Queda — he knew they would replace their lost leadership soon enough — it was the fact that the unit had never been seen or discovered, even though it moved throughout a dangerous area, in which allied forces should never have been in the first place. Which meant that Kowalski had kept his cool.

It seemed, for whatever reason, that Kowalski had developed into the man Hansard had been looking for. It was time to meet with him again.

32

The call came as a surprise to Kowalski; so much had happened since that strange meeting two years previously that he had all but forgotten Hansard and the mystery job.

He had been at home in Dam Neck, Virginia with Claire, his first wife, when the call came. Things hadn’t been good between them lately — Kowalski had been away too often, either training or on operations, and his wife had simply grown tired of being alone — and she had just started another argument when the phone went. Glad of the interruption, Kowalski had picked it up straight away.

The conversation was short, merely inviting Kowalski to meet with him the next day in Washington. There was no question of not going; he was curious about why Hansard should contact him now, after never getting back to him before. Besides which, it would give him a reason to be out of the house.

The meeting was shorter this time. Kowalski could tell Hansard had already made his mind up, and the ‘interview’ was a mere formality. It soon became apparent that that was indeed the case.

‘What do you know about a covert cell known as the Systems Research Group?’ Hansard asked.

Kowalski shook his head. ‘Systems Research Group? Never heard of it.’

Hansard smiled. ‘I should hope not. It doesn’t officially exist as such, you see. Are you familiar with the Intelligence Support Activity or Grey Fox?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Kowalski answered. ‘I even know a few guys who served in those units, met them on joint exercises. Good men,’ he added.

‘They probably were,’ Hansard agreed. ‘The problem was, everyone knew about it. And for a covert unit that does questionable work for the government, that’s really not good. So, we disbanded and had a quiet couple of years. Time to reflect, so to speak.’ Hansard watched Kowalski’s face for a reaction. There was none; he had come a long way in just four short years, it seemed. ‘But the need for such a unit was still there, and on an even wider scale. And so I was asked to establish the SRG back in 2003, to carry on that necessary work. I was of course interested in you then; but I felt that you could do with a bit of maturing.’

Kowalski was not offended by the suggestion; looking back now, he could see how impetuous he had been. He realized now the danger of such behaviour and, although the desire for action was still there, his immense personal discipline now kept it very much in check.

‘Do you have any issues with the work that the ISA or Grey Fox was involved with?’ Hansard asked him directly.

‘No,’ Kowalski answered without a pause. Why would I? he wondered silently. The unit performed work that the American government deemed was necessary for the safety of the country; DEVGRU did pretty much the same thing, Kowalski figured. To some, the methods may have been questionable, but Kowalski was a firm believer of the ends justifying the means.

‘Good,’ Hansard said, standing and offering his hand. ‘Welcome to the unit.’ And that was it.

33

Only a couple of hours after losing the agents at the mall, Sarah and her family were making their way down I-87 towards Louisiana, and Louis Armstrong International Airport, from where they would catch the 19:15 flight to Munich.

The mood in the car was jovial. After they had gone up three flights of steps back in the Miami apartment block, Sarah had taken them through a service door and into a brightly-lit corridor.

The group had then entered Apartment 1209, where they had all had the chance to get washed and changed into new clothes. For added fun, they had all dyed their hair too, and Amy had been particularly happy with her new blond locks.

The apartment was owned by Mark Cole, who had bought it some time ago as part of the intricate escape plan he had developed for his family. It had taken him a while to find such a location — with service doors backing onto those of the huge neighbouring mall — but he had eventually managed it. He had also put in the remote-controlled door, and had it checked periodically.

And when the happy party were ready, the Ford 4 × 4 with blacked-out windows they found in the secure underground parking garage was also owned by Cole, who had thoughtfully placed the keys in a drawer in the apartment kitchen.

As they drove along the parched concrete of the interstate, Sarah finally began to relax, at least a little. After all, they’d done it; they’d finally managed to get rid of their pursuers, and would be in Europe by early morning.

And soon after that, she hoped above all else, her family would be reunited.

34

The collision was inevitable. The expressway southwest to Reims that Cole had wanted to use had been closed due to a large-scale accident caused by the horrendous weather, and so he had been forced to go straight down along the A16 to Paris. He now planned to skirt around the city and take the E54 out east on his way towards the German border crossing near Strasbourg.

But by the time Cole had got to D104 eastern ring road towards Attainville just to the north of the city, the weather was so bad that visibility was limited to mere inches, the ice on the road making progress even more treacherous.

Cole barely had time to turn the wheel when he saw the muted glare of headlights swiftly approaching from the side, out of a concealed entry road. The lights were swinging wildly from side to side, and in the instant before impact, Cole understood that the car must have lost control coming down the hill, picking up speed as it careered forward on the ice.

Cole managed to turn the steering wheel just in time to angle the car so that the brunt of the impact was taken on the rear end. Because he had a few precious instants to prepare, the collision didn’t shake him as much as it might have done. The icy conditions were merciless, however, and Cole felt his own vehicle start to spin wildly. He tried desperately to correct the wheel, but it was no good, and less than two seconds after the initial crash, the Citroen was straddling the opposite lane of the highway.

Cole had no time to prepare for the impact of the second vehicle as it ploughed straight into him; he merely felt the car roll, and then everything went blank.

35

Sarah, Ben and Amy arrived at Louis Armstrong International fresh and ready for their ‘holiday’. Sarah had been telling her children all about Europe during the car journey, and they were excited to see Germany.

Sarah had been born and brought up in New York, sometimes in the city but mainly at her father’s huge estate in the Catskills, and she had travelled widely across Europe in her youth. As a teenager she had gone backpacking with two of her girlfriends, visiting most of the continent’s capital cities, and had soaked up everything she could of their history and culture.

Although dangerous, travelling around Europe hadn’t worried her; she had been brought up to be self-reliant, and was more than capable of handling herself. Some parents would have balked at letting their daughter travel unprotected around Europe; Sarah’s father hadn’t really cared. Indeed, since the death of her mother, he hadn’t really cared about anything.

She sometimes reflected if his apathy was what let her leave her old family behind so easily, to live with Mark in the Caymans.

She accepted Mark’s way of life without question, and she realized that this would have seemed strange to many women. After all, it wasn’t until they were engaged that he had confided in her his real name, his real history, and his real job.

They had met at a dive centre in Cyprus, and the attraction had been instant. She was an instructor at the centre, and he was there on holiday, although it turned out he was an instructor too. It wasn’t until later that she found out that he had really been there recovering after plastic surgery, the final step of his transformation from Mark Kowalski — a Navy SEAL from Hamtramck, Michigan declared Killed in Action two years after being seconded to the secretive Systems Research Group — to Mark Cole — apparently a professional diving instructor from Phoenix, Arizona but who was really a covert agent for the US government known only as ‘the asset’.

She had been shocked initially, of course, but the truth was that Mark’s background excited her. She was a woman who loved adventure, and hated boredom — and Mark’s life, a life that he let her into and share, was anything but boring.

And, she figured, what he did now was no different from what anyone else did in the military — they followed orders sent down to them by politicians, for the good of the country.

She had been scared by the recent events, that much was true; but Mark’s training and his well-laid plans had worked, and now they would soon be in the air, on their way to their rendezvous.

She was confident her husband would meet them there.

36

Cole couldn’t see, but he could hear voices; first as if far away, or maybe underwater, but gradually becoming clearer. Eventually, he could make out the words. French. He concentrated harder to understand.

‘No, he’s unconscious,’ said one of the voices. There was a pause, as if the man was listening to a reply, indicating the conversation was via telephone, and it was long enough for Cole to remember everything. There’d been a crash; his car had been blasted across the highway, rolling onto its roof and back again. He had lost consciousness soon after, and had no idea how long he’d been out. Given the conditions, it would have taken the emergency services a considerable amount of time to attend the scene. He might have been in the car for hours even.

Police would have attended also. They would know the car was stolen, but would they make any further connections? He listened to the rest of the one-way conversation to find out. ‘Yes, bad crash, I’m with the medical personnel in the ambulance, we’re moving him to the hospital.’ There was another pause. ‘American agents will meet him there?’ The voice did not sound happy. ‘Sir, this is a criminal case, he was driving a stolen car, he —’ There was another, longer pause. ‘Yes, sir. I will sign him over upon arrival. Yes, of course.’

The conversation was at an end, and Cole had the information he needed. They must have matched his description to an APB put out by Hansard. So they knew where he was, and where he was going. That wasn’t good.

Light was starting to filter through his eyelids, and Cole could feel that he was secured down to what he assumed was a stretcher. His arms, legs, body — even his head — had all been strapped in place. He hoped it was merely for security reasons, and not because he was paralysed.

Slowly, carefully, he started tensing and relaxing the muscles through his entire body. Everything ached, but everything seemed to be responding.

Next, he very gently started to open his eyes, careful to be discrete, not wide enough for anyone to realize that he had regained consciousness. There was a uniformed police officer at the foot of the bed, presumably the man on the phone, and Cole took extra note of the Glock pistol in the holster at the side of his belt. There were also two medical personnel, one on either side of him, administering to the various machines he was hooked up to. He hoped one of them wasn’t a morphine drip; he would need his wits about him soon enough, he was sure. If Hansard’s agents were to meet him at the hospital, then they wouldn’t be bringing flowers.

37

After Albright’s report from Miami, the news from France cheered Hansard up no end.

The man in the stolen car had no ID of course, but Hansard knew it was Cole. The physical description provided by the attending police officer was a match, but perhaps more importantly, the tactics of the car thief were a match.

Cole’s continued existence worried Hansard a great deal. What did the man already know, if anything? And if he did know something, then had he told anyone? As he took a sip of his Almagnac, he relaxed slightly. Hansard was sure Cole could not possibly know anything of any real significance. He would realize that Hansard had lied about the reason for Crozier’s assassination, but would have no idea why.

He had another sip, and started to relax even more as he thought about Cole’s current predicament — strapped down in the back of an ambulance, under armed guard, helpless, on his way to meet two more of Hansard’s ‘special’ agents — professional assassins who could be relied upon to get the job done.

38

It was luck of course, Albright realized. For all his orders, his plans and his directives, despite everything he’d done to track the targets down, in the end it was down to sheer luck. But, Albright considered cheerfully, that was good enough for him.

After they had escaped him in Miami, Albright had put out warnings to every transport hub in the United States, asked for upgraded passport checks, requested local roadblocks, and instigated a hundred other ultimately wasted security precautions.

But despite the vast array of assets ranged against them, the targets had successfully evaded detection at Louis Armstrong International, and then again at Munich Airport, a small Munich bus terminal, and once more at the city’s Hauptbahnhof.

It was a normal train conductor who made the breakthrough in the end, although at the time he had no idea how desperately wanted were the passengers seated in Cabin 4F of the direct train from Munich to Innsbruck.

He only knew that the ‘family’ were travelling on German travel cards, but had been speaking fluent English before he knocked.

And so Stefan Kohl had stamped their passes, smiled politely, wished them a good journey, and excused himself from the cabin. But instead of entering the next cabin along the corridor to check the next set of tickets, he turned on his heel and marched rapidly back the way he had come.

He had been briefed on the methods used by terrorists to move about, and knew that they were not above using children as decoys. And he was sure that this was what he was now dealing with — terrorists. On his train! He’d have to act quickly, he knew that; and so he hurried to the control room at the front of the train, demanding that the driver let him use the radio immediately.

39

Stefan Kohl’s frantic call was received by Commander Kraus of the Municipal Transport Police, who had been given orders earlier in the day to contact the local representative of the Landespolizei state police if anything — anything at all — out of the ordinary was reported. He didn’t know why this was the case, but after receiving the desperate message from Kohl, he hung up and immediately made his own call.

Marcus Hartmann answered the telephone on the second ring, and proceeded to listen with interest. A family, travelling on German passports, who nevertheless spoke English when alone. A woman and two children. Most interesting.

His section had been put on the alert by direct order of the Bundesnachtrichtendienst, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service. It was an American matter apparently, but intelligence services across the continent had been asked to cooperate as it involved international terrorism. The suspects were announced as two adults — a man and a woman — travelling with two children, a boy and a girl. The American DIA had provided his department with images and descriptions of each, but asked that the various European agencies be circumspect in issuing their own orders. A panic or a public manhunt was the last thing that was needed, apparently. And so Hartmann had sent out his orders to the police and the national transport services, as well as half a dozen other departments, to immediately report anything out of the ordinary.

His office had been flooded, of course, but he had the advantage of knowing what he was looking for, and was therefore able to immediately disregard the vast majority of calls.

But this latest information looked promising. He put a call through to his contact at the DIA, who then made a formal request for the ‘family’ to be followed, until a US surveillance team could take over. The formal request for an American team to operate on foreign soil had already been made, and approved, for almost all countries on the European mainland, and so Hartmann had agreed, saying that he would send some of his men to board the train at the next station.

The train in question was on its way to Austria, and so Hartmann also started to alert his colleagues over the border. It was just good manners, he believed, to give his neighbours a timely heads-up.

40

Albright received confirmation that a small German team would be put on at the next train stop, whilst he himself was still airborne, two hundred miles away. Good, he thought, whilst at the same time hoping that they would not be noticed.

His own team was assembling at the next major stop on the train’s route, which was where Albright would meet them. He had spoken to Hansard earlier, and had received authorization to recall three sections of men, with more en route from the U.S. They had been given permission to operate within mainland Europe, and would receive cooperation from the relevant local services.

Albright wanted to keep the locals out of it as much as he could, but he appreciated the fact that they wouldn’t be hindered.

Sarah was concerned, to say the least. The conductor had tried to mask his feelings, but Sarah had noticed the brief, unmistakeable flicker of suspicion in his eyes as he took the travel cards. She had spoken to the conductor in fluent German, but had the man heard them talking before he entered the cabin? And what would he have thought if he had?

And then Ben had started to talk in front of him — ‘Mommy, what — ’ but Sarah had cut him off with a burst of stern German, to the effect that children shouldn’t speak unless spoken to. It was purely for the benefit of the conductor, of course, as Ben had no idea what his mother was saying — but the look in her eyes got the message across effectively enough, and Ben was instantly quiet.

It was her own fault, Sarah knew. Mark had warned her about the importance of always staying in character, but she obviously hadn’t performed well enough. Speaking in English, even within the privacy of a cabin, was just plain careless. But what to do now?

Their tickets had been due to take them all the way across the border to the Austrian city of Innsbruck. The route would now possibly be compromised — and just the fact that there was the possibility meant that the route was compromised.

There was noting else for it, Sarah decided. They would have to get off at the next station and find another way into Austria.

41

Cole didn’t know how much time he had. They were driving slowly due to the conditions, but he had no idea how far away the hospital was, and he therefore had no idea how long it would take to get there.

For the last few minutes he had been working on the leather straps that secured his wrists. He had been trained to escape from such bonds back in DEVGRU, but the situation was made harder by the fact that he couldn’t make any obvious movements that would be seen by either the ambulance crew or the police officer.

From the conversation of the paramedics, Cole had ascertained that he was not seriously injured. Indeed, they had objected to the police officer about the way their patient was strapped down, although the man remained unmoved by such protestations.

He seemed to have some mild bruising and several minor cuts that they had already stitched up, but they were also concerned over his head injuries, suspecting that he might well have a concussion. This didn’t worry Cole unduly however — he’d had plenty in the past, and it had never stopped him before.

After ten agonizing minutes, he’d done it — the wrist straps had been loosened sufficiently that he would be able to pull his hands free when the time was right. His legs, upper arms, torso and head were all still strapped tight, but he had his hands — and that would just have to do.

42

Andy Truro and Jimmy Vinh pulled into the hospital car park just after midnight. It had been lucky that they had been available — they had recently finished a job and were relaxing at a private resort in the French countryside just outside Paris. They wouldn’t ordinarily have done a job so close to where they were, but the money offered by Hansard for what seem like a fairly easy bit of work made the decision for them.

They were unusual in that they worked as partners, which was generally unheard of for such contract workers. Their history together went all the way back to early childhood, however, and they had been together from the orphanage nursery through to the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. When Hansard had approached them about going ‘off the radar’, they had agreed on one condition — that they would be able to continue working together.

At first, Hansard had rejected the idea; but as he cogitated further, he recognized that some missions could benefit from a good working partnership, and so he had taken them on, on a trial basis.

They had since proved to be a formidable addition to Hansard’s team, both ruthless and inventive. They were also committed to each other to the exclusion of all else, which resulted in behaviour to others that bordered on the sociopathic. This was the reason that Hansard generally gave them the lower-end jobs, as he simply could not trust them completely. But it was also the reason Hansard was sending them to kill Cole; there would be no second guessing, no emotion, and no mistakes. They would simply do their job, and then disappear.

43

Sarah was beginning to relax slightly. She’d given the driver a couple of false destinations, which necessitated some sharp changes of direction and would have revealed the presence of a tail, if there had been one.

Her constant scanning of the surrounding traffic eased her concerns, as she could see clearly that there was nobody following them. More importantly, her gut instinct told him that they weren’t being watched.

She had probably overreacted anyway, she reflected — the ticket collector had almost certainly forgotten the whole thing, if he had even realized that something was amiss in the first place.

She comforted himself with the fact that they hadn’t really lost too much time — Rosenheim was only a short way away, and had a direct connection to Innsbruck. They would still be able to get to Austria by evening, and would be safe not long afterwards, just as soon as they made their rendezvous.

44

Albright’s helicopter touched down in the parking lot with just three minutes to go. Hartmann had called him to say the family had exited the train at Bad Tölz and then travelled by taxi to Rosenheim Train Station. Jumping out of the doorway, Albright ducked low as he sprinted away from the chopper, the rotors still spinning wildly, whipping up dirt and rubble from the rough concrete.

The last report had delighted him — Hartmann had indicated that all three targets had also now boarded, on Cabin E. Four members of his own team were now aboard the train, seemingly unnoticed, and had occupied the adjoining cabins. They now had the bat, and Hartmann was stood down.

Strictly speaking, Albright had no need to go to the station at all — he could have simply moved to Innsbruck and picked up the tail there. But somehow it just didn’t seem right — Sarah had escaped too many times already, and Albright was reluctant to leave it entirely in the hands of others.

Without a second thought, he increased his pace, legs starting to pump wildly, along with his heart. He knew he just had to follow the group, but his adrenaline started to kick in when he thought about Sarah. Something told him that the future held more than just a simple tail; confrontation was inevitable.

45

Cole opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the harsh overhead lights as if he was waking for the first time. A look of confusion spread across his face as he pretended to take it all in.

‘What … What’s going on?’ he asked weakly in French. ‘Where am I?’

As the paramedics tried to console and reassure him, Cole saw the policeman rise from his seat and approach, his head coming down towards Cole.

‘The police?’ said Cole. ‘Why? What …’

‘We know that the car was stolen,’ the man said. ‘You’re in big trouble, sir.’

The ambulance team began to remonstrate with him for badgering their patient, but Cole whispered faintly, ‘No, no, it’s okay.’ He gestured with his head for the officer to come closer. ‘Come here,’ he continued, his voice getting weaker, ‘I need to tell you something … about the car.’

His curiosity aroused, the officer bent forwards, his head going close to Cole’s so that he could hear the quiet words.

Before he knew what was happening, he felt a blinding pain in the side of his head, searing in intensity. He heard a high-pitched noise, and realized it was his own screams.

Cole had slipped his hands and lower arms out of the straps, and whilst he grabbed the officer’s head with one hand, pulling it close and sinking his teeth into the man’s ear, his other hand shot across to retrieve the handgun from the open belt holster.

Putting the gun tight to the officer’s head, cradled across his chest, he let go of the ear and snapped at the shocked medics. ‘Get these straps off me! Now!’

The men remained frozen to the spot, and Cole noticed a dark stain appear on the trouser leg of the nearest man. ‘Do it or I’ll blow his fucking head off! Do it!’

The man furthest away acted first, reaching down to untie Cole’s head, then his arms, body and legs. The policeman was meanwhile sobbing into Cole’s chest, begging for mercy, for his life to be spared.

Cole sat up, ordering the medics to the doors at the back of the vehicle. ‘Open them,’ he ordered. The first man again did as he was told. ‘Now jump.’

The speed wasn’t great, so the first man jumped quickly, rolling over in the ice and snow into a small heap. The second medic was still frozen, petrified. Cole gestured aggressively towards him, and the man squeaked as he jumped reflexively backwards, he too rolling across the icy road.

Cole shoved the policeman towards the door, aiming the gun at his chest. ‘Now you.’

Cole could see the officer weighing his options — his ambition telling him to capture the criminal, his logical mind telling him to jump.

He made his choice and moved unsurely towards Cole, but Cole was ready. He launched a vicious thrusting front kick to the officer’s chest that sent him sailing out of the back of the ambulance into the road beyond.

Cole closed the doors, and looked towards the other end, where there was a door to the cabin.

He stretched the kinks out of his body, and tried to shake off his headache — maybe he was concussed after all — and pushed through the door, gun aimed at the driver.

The man was caught completely off guard, surprised — he had heard nothing from the rear compartment. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, horrified.

‘Just keep driving and you’ll be fine,’ Cole said calmly, looking out of the windscreen. The weather had improved, but visibility was still poor. Even so, Cole could make out what looked like a large concrete structure just up ahead.

‘Where are we?’ he asked the driver, although he feared he knew the answer.

‘We’re here, we’re here. The hospital. Just let me out, okay? Please?’

Cole was silent. He recognized the building as the American Hospital of Paris, on the Boulevard Victor Hugo less than a mile northwest of the Arc de Triomphe. It had been set up in 1906 by a group of expatriate Americans who wanted American care within the French capital. He had used it before in fact, after sustaining an injury whilst operating in France, and knew the staff there were like Swiss bankers, never revealing anything about their patients. The CIA often sent agents there for surgery, and it was also widely used by the American military. It was the perfect place for Hansard to have him killed.

As they cruised up to the entrance, he could see the two men standing to one side, motionless. Truro and Vinh. Cole recognized them instantly, having worked with them on a couple of ops in the long and distant past. Because of his plastic surgery, they would not recognize him, of course; but Cole knew that it would not matter to them even if they did recognize him. They were bad news, ruthless professionals that could be trusted to get the job done.

‘Get out,’ Cole ordered the driver. ‘Now!’

The ambulance was slowing down to a halt anyway, so the driver gladly opened the door and jumped out, running for freedom even as Cole slipped into the driver’s seat and gunned the accelerator.

46

Neither Truro nor Vinh could believe their eyes. They had seen the ambulance coming from a distance, its headlights illuminating its path through the thick snowfall. They were gearing up to retrieve the target from the back of the vehicle when it got close enough to see clearly. And what they saw inside the cab made them immediately sick. A man matching the description of their target, holding a gun to the driver’s head. And then the driver was jumping out of the vehicle, the target was taking the wheel and –

Both men left it too late to react, one darting left and one right. Vinh narrowly missed the front bumper, but Truro took the full force of the ambulance as it smashed into him, lifting him clear off the floor as the vehicle mounted the kerb at the front entrance, his body flying off as the ambulance came to a stop, the limp form crashing straight through the large glass double entry doors.

Vinh watched wide-eyed as the ambulance reversed backwards off the kerb, pulled a one-eighty, and sped off back the way it had come.

His eyes went reluctantly to the mess over in the foyer. Andy. He sprinted over to check on him, but it was too late. The impact would have broken every bone in his body, and the shattered glass had left him a bloody pulp. He checked for a pulse nevertheless, even as an army of doctors and nurses rushed towards them. There was none.

A single tear rolled down his cheek as he ran back out into the frozen night, watching the receding tail-lights getting away from him.

Vinh ran to get his own car, vowing to do whatever it took to destroy the man who had killed his only friend.

47

Cole could see the approaching lights in his wing mirrors. He knew Truro must be dead, so it would be Vinh trying to catch him. He was sure their vehicle would be fast, and would certainly handle better than the big ambulance he was driving, but Cole nevertheless tried to pick up the pace, increasing speed as he raced south back down Victor Hugo towards Boulevard Bineau, grip next to nonexistent on the icy streets.

The road was, however, mercifully quiet due to the late hour and the atrocious weather, and so Cole didn’t have to use the siren, which would have made it too easy for Vinh behind him. As it was, it was even possible that he might lose his pursuer in the urban mass of the city, if he could keep sufficiently ahead.

He crossed straight over Bineau, seeing headlights just behind him. Cole strained to identify the vehicle from the unclear image in his mirrors. A Range Rover? He heard the supercharged V8 accelerating behind him, and confirmed the ID. Perfect for the weather, and fast too. It was going to take some creative driving, Cole decided even as he ignored the instruction to follow the road to the right, instead ploughing straight ahead onto the lower half of Boulevard d’Aurelle de Paladines the wrong way, two vehicles coming towards him forced to swerve off to the side, the icy surface causing their cars to spin out, freewheeling across the street.

Cole carried on through the Place du General Koenig, still driving against the traffic, and straight through an intersection onto Avenue des Ternes, vehicles coming from either side just missing him, one by mere inches.

Cole risked another glance in his wing mirrors. Surely he would have lost Vinh by now?

But there it was, the ominous black 4 × 4 still surging towards him, a killer at the wheel.

48

Vinh had seen Cole’s trick early, and had therefore had time to manoeuvre his car around the vehicles on the one-way street as they span out of control.

The Range Rover didn’t just have an uprated engine, giving an output of over seven hundred horsepower, it also had much improved suspension and brakes; even the chassis had been strengthened to deal with the extra torque.

As Vinh followed Cole’s suicide dash across the intersection, he was in no doubt whatsoever that he was going to catch the slow, heavy ambulance.

It was just a question of how long it would take.

49

Cole had now passed the seventies lump of the Palais des Congres convention centre, and had gone the wrong way around the Place de la Porte Maillot, clipping a small Citroen and forcing the rider of a small scooter off the road, before joining the Avenue de la Grand Armee.

The illuminated beauty of the Arc de Triomphe lay ahead of him, just visible through the snow that still fell, but now only lightly. He accelerated the ambulance down the wide avenue, checking his wing mirrors constantly.

Nothing … Nothing … There it was, turning onto the same road and accelerating once more towards him.

Cole had hoped taking the wrong direction at the roundabout might have lost his pursuer, but it had merely gained him some time.

Gritting his teeth, Cole decided he would have to use it wisely.

Ahead of him, Vinh could see Cole’s ridiculous ambulance as it raced in and out of the light traffic towards the Arc de Triomphe.

Vinh heard the whine of the twin superchargers as he pressed his right foot down, feeling a kick in his lower back as he was thrust forwards down the street at a tremendous pace, gaining distance with Cole rapidly.

His quarry’s driving had enabled him to string the pursuit out, but as soon as he slowed for the main roundabout, Vinh would be right in top of him. He would ram him straight off the road, run around and shoot the bastard straight in the face.

The ambulance was there, Vinh could see, right at the arch; Vinh was behind, still surging forwards. Cole would have to slow soon, and Vinh could –

His eyes opened wide as the ambulance ploughed straight on, snaking in and out of the vehicles travelling around the arch, mounted the pavement and drove directly underneath it.

Son of a bitch!

50

Cole came crashing down off the other side, through the massive arch, down off the pavement and once more through the traffic circulating around it.

There were only one or two vehicles though, and Cole easily avoided them as he charged forwards onto the Avenue des Champs Elysees.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he glanced again in the wing mirrors, only to see the big Range Rover following him through the arch, across the circular road, and onto the Champs Elysees right behind him. The man might have been trying to kill him, but Cole had to admire his nerve.

Cole drove on, leaving it until the last possible second, Vinh’s 4 × 4 just feet from his rear bumper now, the sound of the big V8 filling the cabin, until he pulled a sharp right onto Avenue George V. It was simply too late for Vinh to react, and the man sailed past, still on the Champs Elysee.

Cole smiled to himself as he carried on towards the river, happy to have finally lost the man.

His pleasure was short lived though, as he heard the big V8 off to his left. He stamped on the accelerator even as he turned his head to see Vinh piloting the big car the wrong way down the Rue Marbeouf.

The heavy black vehicle missed the rear side of Cole’s ambulance by under a foot, and Cole was gratified to see that Vinh was having difficulty controlling the car back into line after its high speed attack.

Cole used the opportunity to make it onto the Avenue de New York, following it west along the Seine. Cole glanced at the river, the black icy waters reflecting back the lights filtering in from the city of love around him, the illuminated mass of the Eiffel Tower looming over to his left, a symbol of the city itself.

Cole thought quickly. Even at this late hour, and even with the bad weather, surely there would still be tourists and sightseers at the Tower, maybe a bit of extra traffic he could use to shake Vinh off for good.

In the distance he could hear sirens, and he put his right foot further down in a reflexive action, burying the accelerator pedal into the cabin floor as he surged forwards along the riverside avenue.

Vinh had finally gained control of his car, at the same time still managing to monitor the direction of Cole’s travel.

Once on the Avenue de New York, Cole’s intentions were clear — he was going to try and lose him in the traffic he hoped would surround Paris’s most famous tourist attraction.

Racing along the snow-covered street, Vinh was determined to not let that happen. He owed it to his brother to kill the man.

51

Cole turned again sharply left onto the Pont d’Iena, fully aware that Vinh was back in the chase, again closing down fast behind him.

He careened over the bridge, struggling to find grip, surprised to see no other vehicles ahead of him. Where was everyone? Cole finally found the digital clock on the dashboard and risked a quick glance. Almost three o’clock in the morning. He sighed. He had thought it was late evening, not early morning.

He wasn’t going to be able to rely on the traffic, that was for sure; there simply wasn’t going to be any.

It left only one option, and Cole adjusted immediately, gunning the ambulance’s diesel engine and accelerating himself down the Avenue Anatole France towards the incredible tower, even as he reached underneath the dashboard to disconnect the fuse responsible for powering the brake lights.

The sirens sounded closer now, and he knew time had almost run out.

He then stamped hard on his brakes, bracing himself for the impact.

52

You’ve got nowhere to go, Vinh silently told the driver ahead. His car was always going to beat an ambulance, no question about it. The only question now was whether he would be able to nudge the ambulance off the road and kill this guy before the police descended on the scene. He could hear the sirens less than a mile away.

His thoughts were interrupted when he saw the back of the ambulance suddenly approaching him at an unbelievable speed. The target must have braked, but there was no warning, nothing at all, no time to stop –

Cole felt the Range Rover smash into the back of the ambulance with a mixture of satisfaction and trepidation. He was glad it had worked, but he was aware that he now had to finish things hand to hand.

The vehicles had come to a stop with the ambulance bonnet resting at the colossal left leg of the giant tower, the Range Rover buried halfway into the back end.

Cole wasted no time, and instead of jumping out of the driver’s side door he pushed straight through into the rear compartment. The Range Rover’s bonnet was almost touching the compartment wall, the whole front of the car ensconced within the rear of the ambulance. Cole leapt onto the bonnet, pistol aimed through the shattered windscreen. He scanned the interior. Nothing.

A sound to his left made him turn his head, and he saw Vinh rising up from behind the front wheel arch, his own pistol raised. Cole instinctively kicked out, knocking the weapon out of the man’s hand and bringing his own to bear.

Vinh was quick though, and rushed him, pulling a knife from a concealed sheath. Cole couldn’t get the handgun round fast enough to take a shot and so converted the movement into a clubbing attack, striking Vinh around the side of the head as the knife came straight at him.

Cole parried the blow, but Vinh came back through, slicing through Cole’s arm, forcing him to drop the gun. Cole grabbed the knife arm, pushing Vinh back against the interior wall of the ambulance, knocking the air out of him. He pulled him back round and smashed the man’s arm onto the bonnet of the Range Rover, forcing him to drop the knife.

Vinh used Cole’s distraction with the knife to grab hold of Cole himself, pulling him close in and aiming his teeth at Cole’s neck. Cole’s shoulder came up reflexively to protect himself, and Vinh’s teeth buried themselves deep into the muscle tissue there instead. Cole felt a terrible pain as Vinh’s head whipped back and forth, trying to tear the flesh.

Vinh’s concentration on the bite, however, opened him up to someone who could keep their head clear despite incredible pain, and Cole took the opportunity provided.

Two marma adi nerve strikes to the unprotected parts of Vinh’s body and neck were all it took for the bite to be released, and the life to flicker out of the man’s eyes. Cole could see that Vinh genuinely had no idea what had happened to him as he collapsed dead onto the floor of the ambulance, head coming to rest against the polished alloy wheel of his Range Rover.

Cole climbed over the car and out of the ruined back end of the ambulance, into the street. Despite the late hour, there were tourists here, and all eyes turned to Cole as he emerged from the ravaged vehicles.

There was professional interest as well, and he saw two members of the Eiffel Tower’s security detail racing from the control point towards him, hands going to the guns on their belt holsters.

The sirens were also louder now, and then he saw the flashing lights make the turn onto the street.

He turned again, back to the huge iron girders of the tower’s leg. He ran straight forwards, underneath the leg and through to the other side, even as the tower security guards shouted a warning, stopped, took aim and fired their 10mm rounds after him.

The shots ricocheted off the iron leg of the tower, and then Cole was out the other side, hurdling a low hedge into the darkness and relative safety of the Parc du Champ de Mars.

He was pretty sure he had not been seen, but that was the least of his worries; he still had to evade capture and make his way to Austria, so he could get to the rendezvous point and make sure his family were safe.

53

Sarah stared out of the window at the people milling about the platform. Who was friendly?, she wondered. And who, more to the point, was not?

Four businessmen chatting over coffees, steam billowing out from the hot liquid into the cold air as they laughed at some unknown comment; young lovers, hand in hand, with rucksacks on their backs, gazing at one another almost without blinking; a homeless man begging near to the long queue of a cash machine, two armed station security guards hustling over to move him on; a school party, two dozen excited children and two distinctly stressed adult chaperones; these, and a hundred more besides.

Sarah sighed inwardly. It was just impossible to tell. Impossible!

She knew the people who were after them would be trained not to stand out, would blend easily into such a crowd. So what am I even looking for?, she asked herself. She turned her head, and saw her two children, both sleeping peacefully next to one another in their big seats. She smiled warmly, smoothing their hair with her hand. They’d had a long, tiring day and were doing the only sensible thing.

They’re so sweet … So innocent. A tear welled at the corner of one eye.

Sarah glanced down at Ben and Amy again, children sleeping peacefully in the safety provided by adults, then turned once more to stare out of the window at the crowded platform.

She could sleep later. When they were safe.

54

Hansard could not quite believe his ears. The news that was coming from France was just too much to reconcile. Cole had escaped again!

He had been strapped up helpless, under armed guard, travelling straight into the hands of two of Hansard’s best assassins! How could it possibly have gone wrong?

But Cole wasn’t the best for no reason, and the outcome shouldn’t really have surprised him, Hansard eventually realized. The problem was, what to do now? It seemed that they had lost all of their leads, and now Cole was free to meet up with his family in whatever safe location they had chosen.

He would be free to study the situation in detail, follow the events that would occur over the next few days, and possibly come to an understanding of what was happening, what Hansard’s overall plan was. Cole was certainly clever enough to piece everything together. The only thing was, would he do it in time to make a difference? Or would things have got to the stage where the truth no longer mattered?

55

The train pulled out at 2.34 precisely. Albright smiled into the bathroom mirror as he adjusted his hair. German precision.

He had made the train with only moments to spare, but he was confident that he had done it unseen by the targets.

He paused, looking into his own eyes in the mirror. He looked drawn, tired. But it was worth it; they’d tracked down their prey, and had closed the noose. There were two men in Carriage D, two more in F, whilst the four targets were ensconced in the cabin between them.

Albright had officially taken charge, and was seated in the same cabin as two of the other agents. He knew Sarah would recognize him instantly if their paths were to cross — the scars on his face would give him away. He also knew he should have taken the helicopter to Innsbruck to meet the train when it arrived and to organize the agents waiting there to pick up the tail. But he felt an urge — inexplicable, but there all the same, as an almost tangible, physical sensation — to keep close to the targets. Especially Sarah.

He shook his head, looking down at the sink. What was it with her? Why was the woman’s presence affecting him so much? But he knew all too well. He had underestimated her, and had paid the price. He turned his face to the mirror once more, fingers tracing the ugly scabs that traced their way across his forehead and down his cheeks, remnants of Sarah’s explosive gift on the yacht back in the Caymans. Yes, he was under no illusions about his obsession with her. It was revenge, pure and simple.

His reverie was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He looked at the screen, saw that the number was withheld. Still, not that many people had access to this number. He answered after the second ring.

56

‘Albright,’ Hansard heard the agent say over the secure line.

‘This is Hansard,’ he said coolly. ‘Sit rep?’

He listened as Albright described the operation so far, sipping from a glass of cognac as he sat behind his office desk. He couldn’t remember the last time he had managed to get home, but it was of no consequence. Comfort and relaxation could come later.

He listened with silent amusement as Albright told him how the targets had been reacquired — the agent tried to dress it up as best he could in order to maximize his own role in the proceedings, but Hansard saw between the lines instantly, recognizing the more important role played by blind luck. Still, he reflected, there was nothing wrong with a little bit of luck now and again. Nothing at all.

The team of agents had a tight loop around the targets now, it seemed. The only problem would be if they realized they were being followed and called off the RV completely. There was no reason this should happen if the agents exercised caution, but you could never tell what might go wrong. Murphy’s Law was, after all, a regrettable fact of life.

It wouldn’t mean the end of the operation, of course; the targets could always just be picked up and interrogated, or held as bait for Cole, but such methods were crude and unpleasant, and would not guarantee results. As back-up plans, however, they were better than nothing.

57

Was it him? She had only a brief look, but Sarah was positive. He had decided to take a stroll through the train just after it set off, just to double-check that they were safe, and in the very next carriage his attention had been immediately captured. A blond-haired man sitting and staring out of the window. Tanned, blond, with what looked like recent facial injuries. It was the agent from the yacht, the one who had followed them to Miami, she was sure.

We’ve been found.

Albright spotted Sarah straight away, of course. Indeed, he had taken a seat in this carriage on purpose, to invite just such a situation. It wasn’t that he was making anything happen. Rather, it all depended upon whether Sarah remained in her own seat, in her own carriage, or whether she went roaming. The way Albright saw it, it was entirely up to fate. And in this instance, fate had been kind.

Sarah was back in her own carriage soon after, scanning the faces as casually — but as thoroughly — as she could. She didn’t feel that she was being watched., but that didn’t mean anything. The agents were definitely here on the train, and although she had no idea how they had found her, it was now a problem that she would have to deal with.

She decided quickly what to do, and whispered to her children. Moments later they were on the move.

Once she had Ben and Amy secreted in a toilet cubicle at the far end of the train, Sarah made her way back through to her original carriage. All that mattered now was her children. If she drew the attention of the agents, maybe they would forget all about Ben and Amy.

She thought of Mark, wondering where he was. Thinking of her husband reminded her of what they were doing on the train in the first place. She wasn’t angry with him; she had always accepted that something like this might happen one day, and he had made it clear to her when he had proposed. But she had accepted him as he was, risk and all.

Her children, however, had never asked for the risk, had never asked for their lives to be put in danger. And suddenly she felt shamefully guilty, horrified at the adult selfishness that had resulted in their current predicament.

Mark had told her she was strong enough to protect them herself, and her husband obviously thought that she was capable as. But do I believe it?, she wondered. At the end of the day though, she realized, her belief didn’t matter; she had to be strong enough, it was as simple as that. Until she reached Mark, she couldn’t rely on anyone else.

58

Hansard heard the phone ringing and picked up the receiver immediately, said his name, and then listened intently.

The news was decidedly bad. Apparently Albright had been spotted on board the train by Sarah, which now raised all sorts of issues. Would she still try and make the RV with her husband, or would she abort? Had she warned him? Arranged another meeting point? Or cancelled the meet entirely, and was now all set to lead them on a merry old goose chase? It was impossible to say with any degree of certainty.

He mulled the situation over as he turned in his chair to stare out of the large window onto the parking lot below, suburban sprawl beyond. He knew there was only one answer. Thinking further would only delay the inevitable.

‘Go to plan B,’ he said coldly. ‘Make her talk.’ With that simple command he replaced the telephone receiver and sat there quietly, staring out towards the river.

59

Albright replaced the mobile phone in his pocket and smiled to himself. At last, he thought. At last.

He had advised this approach right from the start; rather than waste valuable time and resources following the Coles, why not just send in a team, pick them up and interrogate them? Albright himself was well versed in the art, and knew that some of the more recent techniques were practically guaranteed to get accurate information from the subject. But no, Hansard had wanted to play it safe, an order that surprised Albright. Hansard normally preferred the direct approach.

Still, he thought happily, better late than never. He knew he wouldn’t be able to use the sophisticated methods that were available back at ‘Block C’, the DIA’s secure interrogation facility outside Virginia, but he would not let this deter him. He was certainly no stranger to the ‘old school’, more hands-on approach. In fact, from a strictly personal perspective, he actually preferred it. He told his colleagues that he felt it gave him a better ‘contact’ with ‘the client’, but they knew the real reason; he just enjoyed it, plain and simple.

He had just gone through the first carriage when he saw her, staring straight at him. Hi Sarah. She looked away quickly, but Albright knew he’d been recognized. Probably the damn scabs on his face, he realized. He couldn’t help but admire her calmness as she casually sat down and turned to stare out of the window.

Where are you going?, he wondered. You’ve got nowhere to go.

60

Cole parked up the stolen Audi in a multi-storey lot in the centre of Stuttgart. He had crossed the border into Germany at Strasbourg earlier that day, having stolen the big estate car from Montreuil, a suburb of Paris, the night before.

His escape from Paris had been easier than he had feared, aided as he was by the darkness of the night and the depth of the snow, which meant searching for him had been extremely taxing for the limited resources available. Hansard probably had nobody else in the city, and the French emergency services were already overstretched with road traffic accidents all over Paris and its outlying areas.

He had gone far enough in the same car though, he had decided, and did not want to tempt fate by driving for too long in the same vehicle.

The radio had been on all the way, but the local news around Paris had yet to pick up on the story of his escape and chase through the city. As he was reaching for the ignition key though, his hand stopped dead.

It was the news headline that caught him, a second or two late as he translated it from German into English in his head. America Said To Have Been Behind Attack on the Russian President. He sat back in his seat to listen, eyes wide.

‘The People’s Republic of China has been completely exonerated of any involvement in the recent attack on the Swedish parliament house,’ the reporter began. ‘Instead, it seems that the attack was launched by the United States of America. Reports have come in that it was a CIA paramilitary operation, designed to lay the blame on China’s doorstep. Whether or not this was an officially authorized operation is now the subject of much debate within the international community. Ellen Abrams, the President of the United States, recently issued this statement:

‘My fellow Americans,’ Cole heard her begin in her faint Southern drawl, ‘I come before you today with some sad news. It has come to my attention that there may have been American citizens involved in the recent tragedy in Stockholm.

‘Details are sketchy at the present time, but it appears that the operation may have been carried out with the help or prior knowledge of an unknown number of our own people. Because information at this time is necessarily very limited, I would at least like to take this opportunity to spell out the position of the United States government.

‘I hereby state categorically that, despite the involvement of US citizens, the mission was not sanctioned by myself or the US government. Indeed, I promise that we had no prior knowledge that such an attack would be carried out, or was even being planned.

‘I would like answers as much as the next person, and offer all the assistance I can to our allies across the Atlantic. I am all too aware of the recent escalation of events between Russia and China and wish for us to avoid such a confrontation ourselves. On behalf of the American people, I therefore offer my apologies for the apparent involvement of our citizens in the affair.

‘I am sure we will manage to salvage relationships, and I promise to do everything within my power to help.

‘Thank you for your time, and rest assured we will keep you posted on our progress. God bless you all.’

As the reporter took over once more, Cole finally switched off the ignition and exited the car. He needed to learn more, but couldn’t do it sitting in a stolen car in the middle of a busy parking lot.

Cole didn’t think that President Abrams herself would have been involved. He knew her to a certain extent, having served as part of her protective detail back when she was a Senator on her way up, and he was in DEVGRU. She had been visiting Iraq on a fact-finding mission for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and as she was regarded as a high-level target, she had been assigned a four-man contingent from SEAL Team Six for her time in-country.

It was a good job too, as there had been an attempt — albeit amateurish — on her life, with a two-man attack on her armoured 4 × 4 on the last day of her visit. The two other SEALs in the back-up car didn’t even have time to react before Cole’s partner had braked, put the car into reverse and pulled a J-turn on the dusty road, whilst Cole leant out of the window and put two bullets in each man’s head.

The Senator had been frightened but impressed, putting Cole and his partner forward for the Bronze Star. She had even spoken at his funeral years later, just before she was starting to get touted as a possible future presidential nominee. Cole had never known whether the speech she gave had been genuine, or just calculated to look good for the troops.

The time he had spent with her in Iraq had given Cole a good impression of her however, and so in spite of his cynicism, he liked to think she was genuine. She had been extremely incisive and intelligent, Cole remembered, never asking the usual inane questions asked by most politicians. She seemed to have a better handle on the situation there than most, and was a definite realist. He had even started to like her, as behind the ruthless efficiency there was the genuine warmth of a true human being. He had been glad when she had been picked as nominee for her party, and been even happier when she had won. He knew what a battle it had been for her to be taken seriously, as sexism was still rife throughout not only the government, but the country as a whole. The fact that her victory had been a landslide indicated that she was indeed a very special woman.

Cole therefore thought that what President Abrams had said in her statement was probably true, although he was realistic enough to know that it could also be total bullshit. At the very least though, elements of the US government had helped orchestrate the attack — Abrams had admitted that much — and such paramilitary operations were the sole preserve of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, headed until very recently by William Crozier, the very same man that Hansard had ordered Cole to assassinate.

Finding onward transportation was going to have to wait until he found out just what the hell was going on.

61

Within the hour, Cole was sitting in front of a computer monitor, a strong black coffee steaming in a mug beside him.

He had not gone straight to one of the upmarket cyber cafes that were prevalent in the modern, glass and steel city centre — they were too easy to monitor. Instead, he had asked around before finally being directed to an establishment based in what looked liked somebody’s living room, secreted away down a narrow back alley. It was set up like any other internet café, just a little more utilitarian — work benches and trestle tables for the equipment, coffee coming in thick-handled mugs from the kitchen.

The client base was also decidedly different from that of more conventional establishments. Instead of smart, suited executive-types, the customers here were from the underground German cyber-Goth counter-culture, all leather, tattoos and body piercings. Such an environment meant that security here was good, though. Not foolproof, of course, but good enough for a public access venue. The people who came here wished to live ‘off the grid’, without their actions being monitored too closely by the security services.

The technology was state of the art, and the data security was first-class. Cole knew that the NSA would still be able to access any of it, of course, but they would have to be looking in the first place. All in all though, it was as good a place as Cole could hope to find in such a short space of time.

Ironically, it was the NSA that had trained him to do what he was now doing — hacking into the CIA’s own internal database. The National Security Agency was the foremost electronic communications intelligence organization on the planet, and was where Hansard had sent Cole when he had first joined the Systems Research Group.

Because agents of the SRG had to plan their own missions with minimal official help, it was important that every man and woman was capable of accessing information from a wide range of sources. The NSA had therefore taught Cole everything there was to know about systems security, including how to keep his own communications secure, as well as how to penetrate the security of others.

He had used this training many times over the intervening years, and could be considered to be something of an expert in the field. By piggybacking remotely onto the massive computing power of his home system back in the Caymans, breaking past the firewalls protecting the CIA’s mainframe was still complicated, but accomplished within just twenty minutes of firing up the computer.

The trouble now was the sheer mass of data available to him. He instigated a simple search program and inserted it into the CIA files, and within seconds the search returned items of definite interest.

First of all there was the information that was publicly available, and Cole immediately started downloading it to a pen drive that he had bought from a store on his way to the café.

He then found the classified documents he knew would hold the real information he needed, which mainly seemed to be reports sent between James Dorrell, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Harry Trencher, the head of the CIA’s internal affairs department. It seemed that Dorrell had authorized an investigation into the attack the day after it had happened; it had obviously taken the news media several days to catch up.

From the classified files, it seemed that several months ago a man called Paul Richmond, a newbie at the Special Projects section of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, had been seconded directly to William Crozier.

Crozier had selected Richmond for a special assignment, choosing him due his fluency in both Cantonese and Mandarin. He was sent around the country, liasing with immigration officials and interviewing illegal immigrants that were being held in detention. He had been told to specifically seek out men of Chinese origin, preferably with some prior military training, and test them for physical, mental and psychological aptitudes. He was then to choose the thirty most promising candidates, men who would be willing to perform a ‘service’ for the government, in exchange for citizenship of the United States.

Crozier had told Richmond to offer US citizenship not only to the chosen men themselves, but also to their families. Once the team had been assembled, Richmond was then to round the group up, sort out the relevant release paperwork with the authorities, and then book them into the Palace Hotel in Boston.

That was where Richmond’s responsibility ended; he ensconced the thirty men in the hotel, registering them as a trade delegation from South Korea, and then left, to return to his regular duties at headquarters. He reported directly to Crozier; even David Ellison, his official team leader, had not been allowed to debrief him.

The CIA investigation at this point indicated that the men had been shipped to a civilian facility known as Delta Training, which was apparently often used for mission-specific training for deniable ‘black’ CIA operations. Crozier apparently knew the owner of this facility personally, both men having served in the 82^nd Airborne. Crozier had often sent people there for training it seemed, and the owner assumed it was for another CIA-approved mission.

The operation, it appeared, had been planned and executed by Crozier alone at every step of the way, and this was certainly what the ‘official’ CIA investigation was going to show. It declared him to be perhaps delusional, certainly mentally ill. But also highly intelligent, able to evade pick-up on routine psychological evaluations. After the death of his wife, he had dived headfirst into his work, became obsessed, paranoid by perceived threats which weren’t really there. He had apparently seen Russia and China as a major threat to the US, but his fears were ignored time and time again, until eventually he decided to go it alone and solve the problem by himself, without waiting for official authorization, which he had come to believe he would never get.

Interesting, thought Cole. But not as interesting as the fact that there were two CIA investigations into the US involvement in the attacks occurring simultaneously. The first was to make Crozier the scapegoat for the whole affair, in order to tie things up with as little fuss and with as little diplomatic damage as possible.

The second was to find out what really happened, and although this particular investigation was still ongoing, it gave Cole all the evidence he needed.

It seemed that before the attack in Sweden, Crozier had been having a number of secretive, covert meetings with an unknown group. Nothing particularly unusual in that for a man in Crozier’s position, but it was now CIA policy that a record should be made of all such meetings — even Crozier would have to alert the Director at least. But no such record was kept, and Crozier’s bodyguard Sam Hitchens remembered that his boss was always very upset by the meetings, drinking more than normal both before and after.

Hitchens had also been instructed to erase the journey to and from these particular meetings from the car’s black box recorder. He had not been allowed to be present at such meetings, but at one stage had caught a glimpse of two other people, and had worked with the CIA’s team of identification experts to come up with artist’s impressions, which they were now running through their computers for a match.

So although the official line was that William Crozier was acting alone out of some paranoid need to protect American interests, there were fears that Crozier was actually being controlled — perhaps blackmailed — into running the operation by an outside source. The investigative team had no idea who it might be — elements within the government, the military, big business, even a foreign power, they just didn’t know.

But Cole had recognized the artist’s impressions instantly. To a certain extent, the two men were nobodies — just executive protectors like Hitchens himself. James Garrett and Glen Doring were bodyguards trained by the Defence Intelligence Agency, Cole’s own home agency when he was with the SRG, which was why he recognized them.

What was more interesting was who they were protecting, and a quick search came back with two names that left Cole pausing at the computer screen in disbelief.

Garrett was the bodyguard of Clyde Rutherford, the Secretary for Defence, whilst Doring was the bodyguard of Tim Collins, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Cole looked up from the computer screen, blinking his eyes as he looked around the café. Finally his eyes caught the tattooed proprietor’s, and Cole held up his coffee mug with a questioning smile. The man nodded, and went to the kitchen.

Cole stretched his neck and shoulders, hearing the stiffness creaking out of his bones. His ribs still hurt like hell from his fall from the roof in London, and the car crash outside Paris seemed to have left him with a permanent headache. But at least he was still alive.

The owner of the café — six feet six inches of tattoo-covered muscle with hair halfway down his back and a trail of studs running up one side of his nose — brought Cole another mug of steaming hot, super-strength coffee.

Cole thanked the man in fluent German, took a sip of the hearty brew, and then turned back to his computer.

The meetings could of course have had an innocent explanation — it wasn’t unheard of for the Director of the NCS to meet with the SecDef and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — but why erase the car’s black box? The inference was that Crozier didn’t want the Director of Central Intelligence to know about the meetings. Why?

It also concerned Cole that Hitchens was sure there were many more people at the meeting; it was only that he had caught sight of two, and they had turned out to be only bodyguards. Cole wondered who else would have been at the meetings, and what their connection was.

To get some background, Cole did a brief search of his own home computer files and brought up a wealth of information on Rutherford and Collins. He traced their biographies and professional resumes, then re-read them. An interesting coincidence seemed to have cropped up that aroused Cole’s instincts immediately.

Joint Military Intelligence College. Both men had attended the college from 1999 to 2000, taking their Masters in Science of Strategic Intelligence.

Working quickly, he called up the information on Crozier he had read before travelling to Washington to kill him.

There it was. Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2000.

Shit. Cole took a deep breath, a slug of the thick black coffee, and began to interrogate the files of the National Defence Intelligence College, the name the JMIC was now operating under.

Who else had graduated from the class that year?

Before long, Cole had the entire class list for the JMIC’s Masters programme for 1999 to 2000.

His breathing was shallow as he read from the computer screen in front of him.

He knew many of the names, and Google searched the ones he didn’t. The repercussions hit him instantly. The list was like a who’s who of Washington power brokers.

Although back in 2000 they had yet to hit the heady heights they now enjoyed, they had all been vibrant, go-getting up-and-comers, and it seemed they must have been mutually supporting each other ever since.

Their current positions demonstrated their success, and Cole made a mental note of the details:

It was almost too much to take in. The JMIC alumni list for 2000 was incredible. Richard Jensen, the Vice President of the United States of America himself was on the list!

But what did it all mean?

Cole interrogated the JMIC files again, looking for further information. When he found it, his stomach tightened reflexively.

So that was it. They were all linked, all — controlled? — by Charles Hansard himself.

Some of the most powerful political, military, intelligence and business leaders in the United States, all unified under one man, a man who had recently ordered the death of one of their own number, William Crozier.

So why had Crozier’s death been ordered if he was one of the group? It seemed quite obvious now, Cole thought sadly.

The attack in Sweden had obviously been concocted by this group, and the work had been farmed out to Crozier, as Director of the NCS. He had obviously run the operation effectively, but had then perhaps expressed opinions on the outcome which were contrary to the group’s own opinion. The result? Crozier’s execution, followed by Cole’s own death in order to get rid of any links.

It all started to make some sort of sick sense, but there remained one burning question –

Why had an elite, secret Washington cabal ordered an attack on the Russian President and sought to blame China? And how was this industrial-military complex enshrined in Hansard’s private little club going to benefit?

Cole knew he would not have time to make his conclusions now though — the CIA would register the security breech before long, and he wanted to be long gone from the café by the time they picked it up. He therefore downloaded every available piece of information to his pen drive, before completely purging the computer he had been working on.

Before leaving the small cyber café, he spent some time chatting to the heavily tattooed proprietor. When he left, it was with the pen drive and a new, secure laptop computer.

He would continue his search elsewhere, and he would get answers.

62

Sarah was now sure this must be the man from the yacht. He was relentless, that much was clear, and it was a realisation that made her stomach turn.

She tried her best to hide the reaction of recognition, and thought she had done a good job, even though her heart seemed like it was instantly trying to punch its way out of her chest.

No matter what, she promised herself, she was going to keep this man, and anyone else he was with, away from Ben and Amy. No matter what.

Albright could tell that Sarah Cole wasn’t watching the scenery — the focus of her eyes indicated that she was instead watching the interior of the carriage in the reflection of the window.

He wondered momentarily where the children were. Still on the train? Or had they got off at the station, been picked up by an unseen contact? At this stage, it would hardly matter anyway. Still, it was a shame they weren’t present — children could always be used effectively as extra leverage.

He sat down across from Sarah and smiled. She glanced at him, just another attractive, lone female passenger being admired by a lecherous male. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked him in German as he continued to stare, trying hard to keep her voice steady. Her hands gripped the ends of the chair arms, and she could feel her knuckles turning white.

All she needed to do was to string him along for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. She’d chosen her seat carefully, next to the emergency stop lever. A quarter of an hour, and the train would be in just the right place. All she had to do was hold out until then.

‘Mrs Cole,’ Albright said cheerfully in English, ‘please don’t play games with me. And let go of those arms before you tear them off the chair.’

Sarah looked at her hands, saw the way she was gripping them, and released them immediately. It was no good; she just wasn’t used to this. Get yourself used to it, she told herself. Ben and Amy are depending on you.

She considered the emergency cord nearby. They were several miles away from the RV, but they could hike the distance. She hoped it would distract Albright long enough to escape. The train would jolt violently to a halt and people — hopefully the blond man included — would be thrown from their seats, with total chaos presumably to follow shortly after. Sarah would then be able to grab Ben and Amy and jump from the train, escaping in the dark.

‘Please, don’t even think about going for the cord,’ Albright continued. Like a magician’s conjuring trick, a gun appeared in his hand, covered by the jacket laid over his lap. ‘I promise you, you wouldn’t like the consequences.’

Sarah looked at the gun. Shit. ‘You wouldn’t shoot me in front of all these people,’ she said, and even she could hear the lack of conviction in her voice.

‘Try me,’ he said coldly, and the smile was gone, his eyes glistening with anticipation.

Sarah believed him. What now? Sarah began to think of another plan, but Albright interrupted her thoughts. ‘Get up. Now,’ he commanded. When she didn’t move, his eyes grey colder, greyer.

Sarah could sense that this man in front of her was capable of irrational violence, and she got up out of her seat as he demanded. With her dead, her children would have nobody to protect them.

Albright ordered her to turn around, and she did so with no comment. He urged her to start walking, but the fear that was starting to flood through her body like iced venom caused her body to freeze on the spot, unable to move.

‘Move,’ she heard the blond man whisper and, slowly, she started to walk. She wondered where he was taking her, but then it hit her. The toilets. He knows they’re there!

Sarah felt the gun in the small of her back and carried on walking. What can I do?, she asked herself, the panic rising inside. I can barely put one foot in front of the other.

They got to the first toilet door — where Ben and Amy were playing their silent game — and Albright pushed it. Please don’t make any noise, she pleaded silently.

But Albright didn’t even wait for a response from behind the door, he just tried the next one along. It opened, and he ushered her urgently inside.

The relief hit her like a wave. He doesn’t know they’re there. And as long as they keep quiet, he won’t find out.

Okay, she decided, steeling herself. Don’t make any noise, Sarah. Whatever he does to you, don’t make a sound. If Ben and Amy hear your voice, they might say something.

Albright shut and locked the door behind them and turned to her. Without an introductory word, he raised the heavy steel pistol and cracked it straight down into her face.

Her nose shattered instantly, blood flying everywhere. Stars flickered across her vision and her knees buckled, sending her tumbling to the floor.

‘That was just to illustrate that I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I won’t be so nice again.’

Sarah looked up at him through her dazed vision, saw him glaring down at her with those cold, grey eyes, and knew he meant it. She wondered briefly whether he blamed her for the damage to his own face, and was about to extract a measure of vengeance. Put yourself somewhere else, she urged herself. Put yourself somewhere else, and don’t make a sound.

Albright reholstered his pistol and withdrew a pair of calfskin gloves from a jacket pocket. He looked at the woman, kowtowed down at his feet, and was satisfied that he could break her. Most women simply weren’t used to being hit, especially in the face. The dazed look in Sarah Cole’s eyes told Albright that this one was no different.

‘Now,’ he began, left hand wrapping itself around her long, dark hair and pulling back her head, forcing her to look at him, his right hand raised, poised to strike. ‘We’ll start with an easy one. Where are you supposed to meet your husband?’

But Sarah Cole simply looked up at him, not saying a word. Defiance?, he wondered, pausing with momentary disbelief. Well, he thought, even as his right hand lashed out towards her, it won’t last long.

63

Ben tried as hard as he could to help Amy ignore the sounds coming from the cubicle next door, holding her small head to his chest, covering her ears.

He didn’t know what all of the sounds were — a low, male voice, distorted through the wall, followed by a series of bangs and crashes and thuds — but it had been going on for well over five minutes.

Amy sobbed into his shoulder, and Ben was doing his best to hold back his own tears. Whatever was happening next door, it wasn’t good. But they couldn’t leave until Mummy gave them the special knock.

‘Shhhh …’ he whispered to his sister. ‘It’ll be alright. Mommy’ll be here soon. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry, Amy. Don’t worry.’

Suddenly, a muffled scream broke through from the other side of the wall. And before Ben could stop her, Amy’s head was up, alert. ‘Mummy!’ she cried.

64

Albright’s ears pricked up instantly. ‘Mummy?’ he repeated, a grin spreading across his face.

This Sarah Cole had been one tough bitch. He had beaten her black and blue, but she’d made no noise at all — no grunts of pain even, let alone any useful information. He’d been starting to think that she was just in shock, and therefore unable to give him anything useful.

So, just to be sure, he had screwed a silencer onto his pistol and shot her in the foot. The scream had been genuine, and the fact that she had tried to muffle the sound told him that she still had control of her faculties.

The cry from next door that followed told him everything else; she’d been hiding the kids there and was being quiet to protect them.

Admirable, he thought as he looked down at her, clutching her foot and writhing in agony, gouts of blood spilling over the dirty floor. But ultimately fruitless.

‘You’ve been impressive Sarah, I’ll give you that,’ he said, again reholstering his gun. ‘You can handle your pain well.’ He cleared his throat and rotated his neck with a crack. ‘But I wonder how well little Ben and Amy will handle it?’

He looked down at her and her saw her looking at him, eyes changing. Was it fear? Worry? Panic? Albright couldn’t tell for sure.

A second later, he realized it was something different entirely. The look on Sarah Cole’s face was rage, plain and simple.

The cry of Amy, the look on the blond man’s face, his direct threat to her children; all of it immediately erased all of the pain, the fear, the shock, replacing them with anger.

Ignoring the pain, Sarah leapt up from the floor, supercharged on the adrenaline which was flooding her body, and attacked, her hands sliding their way up to Albright’s face, scratching the skin, her thumbs finding his eyes; she felt the left thumb slip into the socket and she tugged at the soft, gooey flesh there.

She felt the blond man writhing in pain and she pulled his face forwards, sinking her teeth into the cartilage of his nose, her head whipping violently from side to side as she tried to tear it from his face.

She then felt the man slipping, and she saw her chance, senses suddenly so clear and pure, and helped him on his way, forcing his head down as he lost his balance.

Albright tried to fight her off in rising panic, but she was like a wild animal, a fireball of pure fury, energy focussed entirely on his destruction.

His balance was finally broken, and Sarah used the momentum to drive the side of his head down onto the sharp corner of the sink unit next to them. There was a dull crack, and the man fell heavily to the floor, blood pouring from his nose, eyeball hanging lazily and perversely from the gouged socket, scalp torn by Sarah’s raking fingernails, the side of his head torn open from the impact of the sink.

Sarah wasn’t sure if the blond man was dead or not, but knew she couldn’t pause, knowing that if she did, she would simply collapse in shock. She had to keep going, keep moving until they were safe. She checked her watch; they still had two minutes until the train would be in position.

She grabbed her handbag, searching with shaking hands for the two things she needed. Sunglasses to hide the black eyes, and a headscarf to try and disguise the ugly swellings that covered her head and face. She didn’t want her appearance to frighten her children.

She worked quickly, then washed the blood off her hands and checked the mirror. Far from perfect, but it would have to do. She kicked the blond man, but he didn’t move.

It was then she realized that she was stood up, despite having been shot in the foot. She looked down and saw the bleeding had stopped. In the back of her mind, she understood that it was the adrenaline that had stopped the blood flow, constricting the wound so that she could continue to function. The rest of her mind just screamed Go! While you still can!

She burst out of the toilet stall and turned to the next cubicle. ‘Ben! Amy! It’s Mummy, come on, it’s time to go!’

The door swung open and she saw her children there, terrified. They both ran into her arms, sobbing, and then she was sobbing too.

But there was no time. ‘Come on,’ she exhorted, grabbing their hands and running back to the carriage, not giving them a chance to have a look directly at her face.

They raced down the carriage towards the exit doors. Checking her watch, Sarah quickly got herself and the children braced against the door support. Seconds later they heard the deafening sound of an alarm claxon, and then the wild screech of brakes as the train was made to come to a sudden, violent stop. They watched as passengers were catapulted from their seats, across the floor of the carriage. Chaos had well and truly ensued.

65

Stefan Steinmeier stood by the side of the train tracks, stamping his feet to keep warm. He was dressed for the weather, but staying stationary would make it easier for the cold to find its insidious way past the various layers.

He had been diligent in his preparations, as was his custom, and the brightly coloured yellow saloon car had been placed by the side of the road earlier in the day.

Upon getting to the emergency RV point, he had hidden his own vehicle, then moved quickly to the yellow saloon. Getting the revs high, he slowly moved it up the embankment, until it straddled the tracks at a slight angle.

The track at this point was straight for over a mile; with the headlights left on, and the garish yellow bodywork, the car would be seen by the train driver in sufficient time for him to slow down to a stop without crashing. Although snow had been falling for most of the afternoon, the night sky was now exceptionally clear, giving perfect visibility.

If the plan went perfectly, the Cole family would hop off the train just by where he’d parked the robust Nissan 4 × 4. He situated himself just off the embankment, H&K sniper rifle at the ready beside him.

He checked his watch. 1810 — it was nearly time.

It was just seconds later that he heard the first dull roar of the train approaching in the distance, at speed. He stamped his feet a few last times and picked up the rifle, settling into position, the high-resolution optical sight up at his right eye, left eye already closing even as he sank down to the cold ground.

Seconds after that, he saw the glaring lights, just a pinprick in the distance. Instants later, the noise of the train’s 120 decibel horn cut through the cold night air, and for a terrifying moment, Steinmeier thought that the driver wasn’t going to stop, would instead just try and plough straight through.

The hissing screech of the brakes soon assuaged his momentary fear however, and he watched through his night vision scope as the huge locomotive started to shed its speed.

The process of stopping a four thousand tonne piece of metal travelling at two hundred and fifty kilometres an hour was not a quick one, and Steinmeier watched expectantly as the train grew nearer and nearer to the bright yellow car.

He tracked the night scope along the carriage windows, watching the passengers screaming in terror, some frozen in their seats, others falling over in the aisles.

Everyone seemed to be panicking, except for one lone woman and her two children, who were waiting by the exit doors next to them, gripping tightly to the grab rails but otherwise waiting calmly to jump off the train when it stopped.

Steinmeier smiled to himself through his big, bushy beard.

Perfect.

66

It was just two minutes later that he saw the family jump from the train, which had stopped barely twenty feet from the car.

He had been briefed fully on the situation, and trained his sights on the bodies — one large, two small — as they fell to the snow-covered ground by the side of the carriage.

He breathed deeply, then held the breath, cross hairs resting on the largest target.

It was defintely Sarah Cole.

67

An insant later, Steinmeier slung the rifle across his back. The woman in his sights was his friend’s wife, and Mark had asked him to get her and the children safely to the emergency safe house — and he intended to do just that.

Steinemeier had also been told that there might be enemy agents in pursuit, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Something was definitely wrong, though; Sarah was walking awkwardly, staggering down the slope.

Steinmeier broke from the cover of the trees where he’d been hiding and sprinted out to Sarah and the children. He needed to get them away before any other passengers got off the train and created more complications.

Amy saw him first. ‘Stefan?’ she asked, and he grinned at her in return.

‘Amy! Hey, how are you doing? Ben!’ he continued as he got nearer. ‘It’s good to see you!’ His English was perfect, although he had retained his German accent.

As he got closer, he could see the look of worry on Ben’s face. ‘You’ve got to help Mummy!’ the little boy screamed out to him, and then Steinmeier was there with them. Sarah looked up at him through her oversized sunglasses, smiled with relief, and fainted in his arms.

68

Steinmeier sat next to Sarah Cole, who was fast asleep in bed, nigh on unconscious from shock and blood loss.

He had a thick, heavy glass of vodka in one hand and a telephone in the other. His mind was in turmoil as he debated what to do.

The night before, he had had to administer a field dressing to Sarah’s foot before setting off — on seeing him, her adrenaline had started to ebb away, and after she fainted, the ugly wound had started to bleed heavily.

Luckily for Sarah, feet never bled too much, and Steinmeier was able to collect all the blood in one dressing before he bandaged the wound. Unluckily for her, several of the bones were shattered, and it would be a long while before she would be able to walk comfortably again.

He had placed her in the front passenger seat, legs elevated onto the dashboard, and had sat Ben and Amy in the back; he hadn’t wanted them to see their mother’s features too closely, at least not until he’d had the chance to attend to the swelling and bruising.

They had avoided being seen by any of the passengers, and Steinmeier was confident that there hadn’t been any agents aboard, or at least none that were continuing with the pursuit.

Nevertheless, he had taken the Nissan on a widely circuitous route, using its 4 × 4 capability on several occasions to traverse ground that would give away anyone who was following them.

Just over an hour later, they were at their final destination, the safe house where they would wait for Mark.

Steinmeier was perfectly happy with the security arrangements there. The safe house was, after all, his own home; and if that wasn’t safe, then what was?

On the surface it was a normal, timber-framed Alpine-style chalet, situated in a quiet residential street, set well back from any neighbours; not that there were many neighbours in the small village. Inside, however, it was like a fortress. The walls were reinforced with aluminium, there was extensive electronic surveillance, and weapons literally covered the house — hidden but immediately accessible.

But perhaps what made the house so secure was Steinmeier’s network of lookouts and watchers throughout the village. The members of the local community thought of Steinmeier as something of a local hero, and like villagers the world over, were well attuned to strangers entering their territory. As a result, any such unexpected visitors would be drawn to Steinmeier’s attention almost before they would even know they were in his village.

69

Steinmeier had first met Mark Cole back in the days when he still went by the name of Kowalski. It was almost fifteen years ago, back when the young American had just joined SEAL Team Six, and Steinmeier himself had been a grizzled old Sergeant in Germany’s GSG9, the counter-terrorist section of the Federal Border Guard.

They had been paired for a training exercise, simulating an operation against a North Sea oil rig platform that had been hijacked by terrorists. Steinmeier had expected the young man to be nervous, uncertain, sure to make mistakes. Although such units often trained and fought alongside one another, there was always a feeling of friendly competitiveness, and Steinmeier was looking forward to correcting the American commando’s faults.

The training exercise went in an unexpected direction though, and Steinmeier found that Kowalski didn’t falter once. From the insertion to the target on their Mark 4 Zodiac hydrofoils which jarred along the freezing, choppy waters that threatened to break their backs, to the ascent up the ice-slick ladders, to the stealthy movement around the massive structure, and eventually to the taking down of the hijackers and the release of the hostages, Kowalski’s performance had been perfect.

But what had impressed him the most was the man’s response when Steinmeier had made a mistake himself.

Moving through the bowels of the superstructure, Steinmeier had struck his foot into a loose metal casting on the floor, not fifty yards from two armed sentries. As their heads snatched round at the sound Kowalski dropped them with his silenced submachine gun before they even realized what had happened. But what was more, Kowalski never mentioned it again, respecting Steinmeier’s age and experience and not wanting to tarnish his image.

Steinmeier had respected such an act, and the post-exercise drinking session had cemented their friendship. Kowalski couldn’t only fight, but could also drink like a German!

For his part, Steinmeier had proven over the years that he was a man that could be trusted. Indeed, he was the only man from Cole’s previous life that he had told about being alive; even Cole’s own blood family believed that he had been killed in action, having attended a funeral for him a year after he had gone missing in Pakistan.

It was this bond of friendship and trust that had brought about this current situation — he tending to Sarah’s wounds, whilst his own wife and children entertained Ben and Amy downstairs, as they all waited anxiously for the arrival of Mark Cole.

It was also what had caused him to almost finish the bottle of vodka that sat on the table next to him.

70

Cole positioned himself at a table for one, by a glass balcony overlooking the lower shopping concourse in the largest section of the Fünf Höfe, Munich’s famous ‘five courtyards’ shopping mall. The centre was still busy despite the late hour, and was spectacularly bedecked for the Christmas period. The thirty-foot tall Christmas tree below him in the main foyer must have cost tens of thousands of Euros alone, and was only a small part of the decorations. It seemed like a continuation of the traditional Christmas market that filled the Marienplatz main town square further down the street, which Cole had had to push his way through on his way to the mall, the thousands of visitors revelling in the joys of the season.

He had driven straight down to Munich from Stuttgart through the afternoon and evening, wanting to keep moving towards the rendezvous point with his family. But by the time he had reached the outskirts of Munich, curiosity had finally got the better of him; and so instead of carrying on down to the Austrian border, he had detoured into the city centre in order to find out more about Hansard and his secretive little group.

His position on the balcony gave him a clear line of sight not only over most of the mall, but also back through the coffee shop. There should be no reason why anyone should find him here, but you never knew, and it always paid to be careful.

He fired up the laptop as he sipped a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. He had the computer connected to a landline connection; wi-fi was available, but was simply too insecure. In fact, this whole location was less secure than the cyber café he had used back in Stuttgart. But time was pressing on, and he was aware that he just didn’t have time to track down a similar place. Still, the security on the laptop itself was good, and that would have to do.

Hansard’s own computer files were his target, and he prayed that they would be as simple as the CIA ones he had hacked earlier. If he was to get to the bottom of this thing, surely he would find what he needed buried somewhere deep within Hansard’s own system.

71

Whereas the CIA’s computer security was government funded, and therefore relied upon the best computer technicians that government money could buy, Hansard had had his system security designed by private contractors, at much greater expense.

It therefore proved much harder to crack through its various levels, and it wasn’t until his third cup of coffee, and a little over an hour, that Cole managed to force his way in.

He immediately downed his cup, ordered another, and started poring over the wealth of information on the screen in front of him. It was an intelligence goldmine, with files kept on all of Hansard’s computers, from his home estate in West Virginia, his apartment in Washington DC, and from his private offices in Chevy Chase.

Now it was just a matter of finding what he needed.

72

Ellen Abrams, immaculate as always, sat at the head of the large table in Conference Room One, the largest of three such rooms within the White House West Wing’s Situation Room.

‘So,’ she announced to the gathered men and women of the National Security Council at the close of the meeting’s introduction, ‘things are not good.’

She turned to Charles Hansard, down the table to her right. ‘Charles,’ she said, her voice velvet smooth despite the lack of sleep and attendant stress, ‘would you care to lead us through the latest developments?’

Hansard took a sip from the glass of water on the table in front of him, rearranged his papers, and looked up at the group. ‘I’m afraid the President is correct,’ he announced plainly. ‘The situation is decidedly not good.

‘As you know, after discovering the American involvement, President Danko and President Feng broke off all diplomatic contact with the United States. Danko has since flown directly to the Politburo in Beijing to speak to Feng personally, and the two have been in meetings for the last thirty-six hours.

‘Our resources in the People’s Republic are necessarily limited, but the information our sources have been able to feed back to us suggest that Danko and Feng do not believe that the operation was the work of one rogue CIA agent. They are both under the firm belief that it goes much higher, all the way to the top in fact.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ announced James Dorrell, the Director of Central Intelligence. ‘Everything we’ve found out we’ve fed back to the Russians and the Chinese, and none of its points any higher than Crozier himself.’

Hansard nodded his head sagely. Dorrell was outside his own private circle, and so like many around the table did not know all the facts. ‘Even though we know that to be true here in Washington, I’m afraid we’re going to have one hell of a time trying to convince Danko and Feng.

‘As it stands, Danko and Feng think that you’ — here he pointed at Ellen Abrams — ‘came up with the whole Mutual Defence Treaty purely in order to lure Danko to a controllable location in order to assassinate him. They furthermore believe that it was your desire for the attack to be blamed on China in order for you to launch ‘justified’ revenge attacks on the People’s Republic.

‘They are totally convinced, according to our sources, that the whole operation was concocted in order to behead one superpower and weaken another, in order for us to preserve our status as the world’s most powerful nation.’

The faces around the table remained calm, but he saw flickers of fear and panic cross more than one. The ramifications of Russia and China gunning for the US could be potentially horrifying, as both nations had gigantic nuclear stockpiles.

Hansard took another sip of the water. He hadn’t even got to the scary bit yet. Some of the people around the table — he counted four members of his Alumni — knew what was coming; most didn’t.

‘There’s one more thing we were able to find out,’ he continued at length, ‘and at the moment we are awaiting secondary confirmation.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There are rumours circulating that Danko and Feng are already talking about a strategic alliance of their own.’ Hansard was gratified by the open shock now expressed around the table.

‘Yes,’ he carried on, ‘it appears that a new eastern bloc might be emerging, with the combined power of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, with interests and intentions aligned against those of the United States.’

‘Damn,’ breathed the Vice President, ‘it’ll be like the whole damned Cold War all over again.’

Thanks Richard, Hansard thought silently, as he saw the effect Richard Jensen’s words had on the men and women in the room, people already starting to shift nervously in their seats.

Ellen Abrams looked sombrely about the room, shocked but dignified as always. ‘Then Heaven help us all,’ she said with genuine feeling.

73

Back in his office at the ODNI, Hansard was drinking his fourth cognac of the day, more than normal — although he might soon have to address what constituted normal, he decided.

The meeting had gone well of course, and the plan was still well on track, but the situation with Cole and his family was nagging at him uncontrollably. He had no idea where Mark Cole was, and Sarah and the children had somehow managed to escape from the train, and there was now no trace of any of them.

He finished his glass and was reaching for the bottle when his computer bleeped at him. He glanced at it briefly, and then his head snapped back.

A systems breech? What the hell is this?

He tapped some buttons, and all was revealed. Someone was downloading all — all! — of his files, including his secure communications records.

Cole. It had to be Cole.

Hansard picked up the phone on his desk, calling through to Max Wilborough, the head tech who designed his system security. ‘Max,’ Hansard said forcefully, ‘there’s been a breech. Track the source. Now.’

74

Cole had not touched the new cup of coffee since it had been put down next to him nearly an hour before. His entire focus had been on the laptop computer in front of him, and the time had flashed by in an instant.

He could simply not believe what he had discovered. Was Hansard insane?

On one level it was brilliant, of course; but anyone who would come up with such a plan — much less actually go through with it — was without a doubt suffering from some sort of mental illness.

And now the whole world might suffer for it, Cole realized with dread.

Cole snapped back to reality when a red light started to flash intermittently on the screen. Shit. The breech had been caught; he had kept it open too long.

He didn’t know how long ago it was discovered, but files were starting to be deleted. He immediately started downloading the most important information to a secure host, where he would hopefully be able to access it again later.

Next, he slowly raised his head to check the surrounding area. If Hansard was aware that his system had been corrupted, he might be able to trace the source of the cyber attack. Agents might already be on their way.

He turned his head back to the screen and watched as the information was transferred from the laptop to his secure computer vault back in the Caymans.

The question now, was what should he do with it?

75

Agents were on their way. It hadn’t taken long for Wilborough to track down the source — first to Germany, then to Munich, then to the Fünf Höfe, and finally to the Café Tyrol on the centre’s second level.

There were eight American agents in Munich that could be relied upon. None from the SRG, but that would have been hoping for too much.

As it was, at least the eight men available were from the DIA, an agency under the directorship of Hansard’s friend and fellow alumni member Jerry Adams. As such, they were also part of the US security net that had been spread throughout Europe. They were not part of Hansard’s inner circle, but they were loyal, and would follow his orders to execute Cole with no questions asked.

And there was not a doubt in Hansard’s mind that the man needed to be killed — and killed quickly, at that.

Because if he had read the files as well as just downloading them, Cole would now know everything about Hansard’s plan, and his ultimate goals. And Hansard was sure that the man would now try and do everything in his power to stop him.

76

Cole’s head moved constantly. He would look down at the lower concourse, sweep the floor, then go back up to the upper level, following the wrap-around balcony that stretched from the café all around this level. Finally, he would look down at the laptop for an update on the download. There were three minutes remaining.

It wasn’t that the computer was slow; rather, there was such a large amount of information to be transferred. Hansard had managed to delete some files — and now Cole would probably never learn what had been on them — but the ones Cole had already opened and read, and with which he had pieced together Hansard’s crazed plan, were now being saved for future use.

If he still had a future, Cole thought grimly, performing yet another visual sweep of the mall. Hansard would almost certainly have put a trace on the source of the security breech, and Cole knew there might well be agents on their way right now. He didn’t know what assets Hansard had in Germany, but the man’s reach was vast.

Two minutes left. Cole scanned again, his mind doing cartwheels. It wasn’t just Hansard’s lunatic scheme that concerned him; it was other orders and communications that he had found buried in Hansard’s system.

It appeared that there had been a team waiting for his family back in the Caymans, with original orders to kill his wife and children once he himself had been taken care of. Cole was relieved to see that this had been rescinded to a tailing order only, presumably in the hope that Sarah would lead Hansard’s agents to Cole.

It appeared so far that the team had failed to locate them, but Cole didn’t know how up-to-date such communications were, or if the latest updates were amongst the files deleted by Hansard.

The leader of the team was Dan Albright, and this alone was enough to give Cole cause for grave concern. The blond pretty-boy was a stone-cold psychopath, so much so that –

Movement to his right lower corner. His head turned and he picked up two men in suits hurrying through the main entrance foyer in the lower concourse. Possibly just businessmen late for a meeting, but then they looked up, scanning the mall, looking for … him.

Shit. Two more on the far side of the balcony on this level. He adjusted himself in his seat.

Another two on this same level, on the near side of the balcony. Six so far, and he had no idea if there would be more. As it was, they were already boxing him in.

He had let himself be distracted, his attention divided between Hansard’s plan, and worry about his family. He should have concentrated on the job at hand, and picked the men up earlier, but now was not the time for recriminations; now was the time to act.

77

Michael Porter looked up at the café on the level above and to the front of him, scanning the clientele. There. One man sat by the balcony, casually performing a scan of the crowds as if he was just taking a momentary rest from staring at the computer screen in front of him.

The man’s face wasn’t an exact match to the picture Hansard had sent through to his cell phone, but it was close enough. Mark Cole. According to Hansard, although the man was supposed to be a diving instructor from the Caymans, he was really a terrorist, a radical convert to Islam. This was the man who had killed some of his colleagues back in London, and was an adversary to be cautious about. Not to be feared — Porter was too much a professional for that — but definitely someone to be careful with.

He checked to his left upper corner and saw two of his men approaching from that side, then checked his upper right and saw two more agents converging on the café. He had a further two men approaching through the coffee shop itself, whilst he and his own partner would approach via the escalator, completely blocking off all hope of Cole’s escape.

78

Cole glanced again at his laptop. One minute left.

He turned in his chair, checking the café. Two more agents were coming towards him, dressed smart casual, jackets but no ties. Open jackets, with easy access to their handguns.

Were they just going to blow him away in the middle of a shopping mall? If Hansard thought Cole had discovered his plan, then it would be a resounding yes. Hansard would have given the order for Cole’s death, and would worry about the legal niceties later.

Cole hadn’t reacted to seeing the men, and doubted they were aware that he knew they were there. That would make things easier.

Thirty seconds.

Two pairs on each side of the upper concourse, converging on him. One pair approaching the double escalator from the lower level. One pair behind him, close now.

He could see the reflection of the two men behind him in the screen of his laptop now, could see them withdraw their short-barrelled H&K semi-automatic handguns from their concealed holsters, holding them down against their thighs so as not to alarm the other customers. It was evening, the sky pitch black outside, but the mall was still busy, and Cole knew the agents would wait until the last minute before making their move.

Ten seconds.

79

Porter saw his two men on the coffee shop balcony draw their weapons, sidling up close to their target, who seemed oblivious to their presence.

Hansard’s orders were clear. Mark Cole was to be executed on the spot. He was known to have evaded agents in the past, and Hansard was adamant that no chances should be taken.

The mall itself had its own security guards, but they would be unarmed, and unlikely to challenge armed men. Porter therefore expected the first two men on the scene to shoot Cole cleanly in the head at point blank range, and make their way casually from the area.

If the police were to show and somehow get involved, they were to offer no resistance; Hansard assured them that he would sort everything out if they were caught. Mark Cole was, after all, an internationally wanted terrorist fugitive.

Porter had asked Hansard about getting the local police involved, but Hansard had thought this a bad idea, not wanting to bog the operation down by including too many people. Porter decided he was right; operations often failed for that very reason, and Porter knew that they could not allow this mission to fail.

80

Cole checked again the positions of the men moving in against him.

The two men on the balcony near side were now almost at the café, and the pair on the far side were making rapid progress. The pair from the lower concourse were now on the escalator, halfway up.

The pair behind him were coming up to within arms reach. Cole steadied his breathing as their pistols came up, aiming towards the back of his head.

He glanced at the laptop.

Download complete.

Cole pivoted downwards from his chair, taking his head out of the target zone, before grabbing the laptop and exploding back upwards. He swung the computer in a tight arc, smashing the unit into the head of the man on his right-hand side.

The laptop shattered with the impact, which knocked the agent out cold, and in the same instant, Cole’s left hand dropped onto the second man’s right wrist, deflecting the gun down and away from him.

The man squeezed the trigger, and although the 9mm round discharged harmlessly into the concrete floor, the effect of the supersonic crack was electric.

Customers in the café leapt out of their seats, pointing, staring and screaming. ‘Pistole!’ shouted one, and then the panic really started, especially when they watched as Cole dipped his legs and shoved his right arm in between the agent’s thighs, pulling him up and over his shoulders in a modified fireman’s lift; modified only in that instead of keeping the man on his shoulders, he kept the movement going and threw the man violently off the opposite shoulder and straight over the balcony.

The mall fell silent as the man went over the side, so that his piercing scream was all that was heard, until it too was silenced as he crashed through the circular glass roof of the flower stall beneath.

The sound of breaking glass set everyone off again, and now even those customers who had not reacted to the gunshot were in wild-eyed panic, and a mass exodus of screaming men, women and children stormed the exits.

81

Porter watched with disbelief as he saw first one man go down, then the second spiralling over the balcony. What the hell?!

He and his partner broke into a sprint up the escalator, Porter’s hand microphone going up to his mouth. ‘Go, go, go!’ he ordered the other two pairs above him. ‘Take him down!’

Cole saw the other two pairs push their way past the surging crowds, drawing their own weapons, no longer interested in subtlety.

Cole dropped down as the nearest pair opened fire, peppering the area with 9mm rounds. The bullets ricocheted off the balcony’s steel support columns and shattered the glass between, showering down on Cole and lacerating his hands and face.

Cole spotted the handgun of the first agent he had taken out, on the floor just next to the man’s prone body. He grabbed it up, rising to a crouch and letting loose half the magazine, forcing the pair to duck for cover of their own.

Cole switched to his other side, where the other pair were now aiming their weapons towards him, and emptied the rest of the magazine at them.

The pistol slide clicked forwards, empty, and Cole wasted no time in placing his hands on the balcony support rail in front of him and swinging both legs over the side, vaulting it in one fluid motion.

82

Porter looked on wide eyed as he reached the second floor, just in time to see his quarry jump straight over the balcony.

He and the other agents rushed forwards, and saw Cole gripping hold of the flexible branches of the huge Christmas tree below, swinging wildly from side to side as he tried to steady himself.

The agents leaned over the barrier with their weapons and unloaded at the escaping target, and the tree erupted in the hail of fire, lights exploding and decorations disintegrating.

Cole was protected by the massive embrace of the tree itself though, and before long had reached the first floor of the mall, having dropped from branch to branch down the massive pine.

Porter watched as Cole sprinted away from the tree, into the crowds surging for the exit.

He saw movement from his side, and quickly deflected the gun arm of his partner. ‘No!’ he warned. ‘He’s too close to the crowds. Let’s go!’ he ordered, and the six agents raced back towards the escalators.

83

Cole couldn’t believe he had managed to avoid the gunfire of Hansard’s agents. He had hoped the tree would afford him some protection, but had not realized quite how thick its shrubbery was.

The pine needles had been sharp, however, and he now had them embedded in his hands and face, to go with the cuts from the broken glass from the balcony. The fall also hadn’t helped his bruised ribs, which were still not properly healed.

Now he was joining the crowds though, on his way out of the mall, and he knew that the agents couldn’t risk taking any more shots at him. He had a good head start, and would set out straight into the sprawling Christmas market outside, losing the agents there and –

The air was knocked out of him as the security guard tackled him from the side, blasting him sideways and down to the hard floor, landing with his heavy body on top of him.

Cole’s head turned, and he saw two more uniformed guards racing in from the other side. He head butted the man above him, managing to disorientate him for long enough to roll him off the side, slipping two fingers into the base of the man’s neck and rendering him instantly unconscious.

The other guards were on him now, their steel batons fully extended and rearing back to strike.

Cole blasted in towards the guard on the right, intercepting the man’s raised arm before he had a chance to swing the weapon back towards Cole. At the same instant, he unleashed a straight punch to the guard’s jaw. It didn’t knock the man out, but dazed him enough for Cole to grab the man’s collar and turn him into the path of the second guard.

The second man’s baton struck his comrade, now used by Cole as a shield, directly across the face, causing a sickening crack, and Cole capitalized on the man’s shock by planting a heavy front kick straight into his gut, blasting him backwards across the concourse.

Cole flinched as a chip of concrete flew up from the floor at him, and he sprinted for the big glass exit doors as bullets traced their way towards him, not even glancing over his shoulder.

He knew the agents would be right behind him, closing in.

84

Cole broke out into the clean, crisp night, watching as the crowds that had recently been inside the Fünf Höfe dispersed through the surrounding streets. There were some curious onlookers who had stopped, nervously staring back at the arched entranceway, wondering if they would see any more of the carnage they had witnessed inside, but most of the people were heading away from the mall as quickly as they could.

Cole was on Theatinerstrasse, a long straight road that led from the mall entrance right down to the Marienplatz precinct and the Munich Christmas market. The world famous market used to run only from Advent to Christmas Eve, but had for the past two years extended its run until New Year; it was simply too valuable to Munich’s tourist economy to limit it to the traditional period alone.

Cole knew the market would be swarming with people, and took off down Theatinerstrasse towards it at a run. Surely he would be able to lose his pursuers there.

85

Cole was at the cross roads further down in less than a minute, dodging in and out of the casual pedestrians as swiftly as he could, anxious to put as much space between him and the agents as possible before he slowed and melted away with the market crowds.

As he ran straight across the junction, car horns blaring as he sprinted straight across to the pedestrianized Weinstrasse, he glimpsed over his shoulder and saw six suited men following close behind, pushing their way through the evening strollers. Cole could see frustration written plain across their faces as the traffic increased at the junction and they were forced to wait for a break between the vehicles.

Cole used the extra time to increase his stride and put even more distance between them.

The Munich Christmas market was vast, almost a town within the city. Hundreds of gift sellers competed with hundreds more food stalls, ranging in size from simple trestle tables to huge tents. In and around the narrow passageways, entertainers vied for the tourists’ attention, with everything from juggling and acrobatics through to classical musicians and carol singers.

There was a warm glow from the small Christmas town, coming from the traditional kerosene lamps that dotted the lanes. It was like something from a bygone era, and Cole was sure that he would be able to lose his pursuers there.

86

Porter had led his men out of the mall, guns now hidden again against their legs — they didn’t want the whole area to descend into a panic. That would just make an already difficult job into an impossible one.

As it was, as Porter and his men chased their quarry down Theatinerstrasse towards Weinstrasse and the Marienplatz, he was unsure of whether they would manage to catch him at all. Although the mall security guards had managed to slow the man down, Cole still had a head start on them, and it would be a relatively simple affair to lose himself in the mass of people that would be gathered at the Christmas market ahead, which was where he was undoubtedly headed.

The only thing in their favour was that Cole was now a little easier to spot — the damage to his face from the shattered glass and the pine needles would be hard to miss.

Porter could only hope that it would be enough.

87

Cole made his way down one of the lanes between the stalls, heading on a rough south easterly course that he knew would take him to the far side of the Marienplatz, where he would slip into a taxi and get the hell out of Munich.

He was, however, all too conscious of the cuts that criss-crossed his face. The blood, still running freely down to his neck and chest, made him far too noticeable, and he just hoped that the tightly-packed crowd would stop his pursuers from getting too close.

His head turned to his left as he heard a siren from that direction, presumably drawn by news of the gun battle at the mall. As his head moved, his eyes caught a glimpse of a man coming out from between one of the stalls, a glint of metal in his hand as it raised level with Cole’s chest.

It was one of the agents, and Cole didn’t have time to dwell on how the man had found him; instead, he jerked his body violently to the side, just as the agent fired the pistol.

Cole felt a searing heat burn his shoulder, but ignored the pain, rolling across the floor towards the food stall on the agent’s left hand side. There was a griddle for meat on the main counter, and the stall was outfitted like a mini-kitchen. There was a stove too, with a chip pan bubbling away, oil burning at over three hundred degrees centigrade.

The agent’s aim was blocked as people reacted to the gunshot and started to run, and Cole used this opportunity to grab the pan in both hands, much to the shock of the stall’s owners.

The space cleared between Cole and the agent, and as the gun turned towards him, Cole was already releasing the pan, the boiling liquid showering the agent in a steaming squall.

The man tried to protect his head and face from the hot oil, taking his aim away from Cole, but he still took the worst of it, screaming wildly as it covered him. Cole continued towards him, then pivoted as he noticed movement from his left; whereas most people were running away, this figure was approaching at speed.

Cole wasted no time in a visual check, instead turning back to the food stall and grabbing a long-bladed knife from a chopping block. Continuing his turn, he saw the second agent stop in front of him, raising both arms to take a more stable two-handed grip on his gun; there was a bark and Cole watched the yellow muzzle flash even as he released the knife.

Cole carried on with his turn, feeling another burn across the top of his chest at the same time as he saw his knife enter the man’s throat, knocking him straight onto his back, dead.

He turned to his left, seeing another figure emerge from the retreating crowd, gun coming towards him. Cole raced forwards, grabbing the agent’s gun arm and head butting him square in the face. The man jerked back, trying to get his gun arm free, but Cole tightened his grip even as he took the man’s collar in his other hand, swinging him back towards the food stall.

Cole stuck out his foot as he turned, pulling the agent up and over as he tripped him, driving the man’s head down onto the griddle.

There was the sickening hiss of burning flesh as the griddle seared the skin from the man’s face, the pain causing him to rear violently backwards out of Cole’s grasp, falling to an agonising heap on the floor.

Cole looked back up to the other side of the lane just as three more figures emerged, all three with guns raised towards him.

Cole didn’t wait for them to fire, but launched himself into a headlong dive over the burning griddle into the food stall, 9mm bullets following his airborne body all the way.

88

Porter couldn’t believe what he saw in front of him; three more of his men down.

Cole was bleeding from the chest and shoulder, but it was clear that neither bullet had caused more than a graze; they certainly weren’t going to slow Cole down.

As it was, the market was going into the same sort of panic that had only minutes earlier occurred in the mall, people running everywhere, tripping and falling in the narrow lanes as others then trampled them into the ground in their rush to escape.

Over the screams of panicked terror, Porter could also hear the sounds of police sirens, much louder now, presumably at the perimeter of the market. The cars would be unable to move down the narrow lanes, but Porter was sure there would be officers entering the market on foot.

Porter watched as Cole leapt over the counter-top of the food stall, just fractionally ahead of their bullets.

The crowd was in panic, the police were on their way, but Porter never considered calling the operation off. They had their orders, and they wouldn’t stop until Cole was dead.

Porter gestured to his two remaining men, and they edged towards the food stall, reloading their weapons as they did so.

89

Cole pushed past the owners of the stall, so startled by the whole thing that they were frozen to the spot, and went out through the back of the stall into a narrow service lane that ran between two parallel rows of stalls.

He immediately entered the rear of the stall on the opposite side, which turned out to sell traditionally crafted wooden toys, and out into the next lane.

The panic hadn’t spread to this side yet, and there was a string quartet playing just outside the toy stall as people gathered round to listen. Cole watched as heads turned left down the lane, and he stifled his surprise as he saw a group of uniformed police officers heading through the crowd.

He re-entered the toy stall, not wishing to draw the officers’ attention by confronting Hansard’s agents directly in front of them. He marched past the elderly owner towards the curtain at the back, snatching up from the display a cup and ball connected by a length of string in one hand, and a beautifully painted wooden train in the other.

He got to the curtain just as the first agent pushed through into the stall. Cole let go with the ball and string, the ball spinning through the air and striking the man on the right wrist, causing him to drop his gun. Cole followed up by smashing the end of the train into the man’s face, smashing the cartilage in his nose up into his brain. The agent died instantly, and Cole wasted no time in targeting the next man through the curtain, slamming the train down into his right forearm, deflecting his aim, before swinging the ball around the agent’s head.

The string looped around the man’s neck, and Cole twisted the ball and cup violently, the string garrotting the agent with deadly efficiency. Two seconds later, the man sagged at Cole’s feet, dead.

Cole backed up, looking right and left. Two down. But where was the third?

90

Porter had let his men go through the curtain at the back of the stall whilst he had gone through the adjacent tent, circling around from the front.

He held his H&K pistol against his thigh again as he saw the policemen striding down the lane, the string quartet playing on, unaware of the violence occurring just feet away.

As Porter approached the toy stall, he was concerned his men had still not appeared. There had been some muffled sounds, but it was hard to tell above the sounds of the nearby music. Something was obviously going on in the stall, and this was reinforced when he saw the elderly owner frantically running out into the lane just moments later, shouting about a ‘madman’.

The owner’s cries attracted the attention of the inbound police officers, and Porter knew he was running out of time. He crouched down, shuffling along the front of the stall, hidden behind the counter.

He breathed deeply. On the count of three, he would spring up and give Cole the good news with all sixteen 9mm rounds from his handgun, and there was nothing the murderous, terrorist son-of-a-bitch would be able to do about it.

91

Cole was at the counter when the third agent sprang up. He had not known he was there — not for sure anyway — but when the third man had not appeared through the curtain at the back of the stall, it didn’t take a genius to guess he would be circling around to take Cole out from the opposite side.

Cole reacted instantly to the movement in front of him, thrusting both arms out straight ahead, his left arm knocking the man’s gun out to the side even as Cole’s hands slipped around the agent’s head. Cole gripped hard and pulled down even harder, driving the man’s head straight down into the wooden counter top, bouncing it off the hard surface.

Cole took advantage of the man’s disorientation and grabbed the wrist of his gun-arm, twisting it across his body and up across the agent’s chest until the gun was aimed upwards under the man’s chin. Cole didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second, pulling down on the man’s trigger finger as soon as the weapon was in position.

There was a loud crack, and the top of the agent’s head exploded outward in a crimson cloud of bone and brain matter.

The music finally stopped, as the crowd realized what had just happened, but Cole ignored them as he grabbed the agent’s gun in a two handed grip and moved forwards into the lane, weapon tracking left and right as he checked for other agents.

He froze as he came left, his gun aimed directly at the men strung across the lane opposite him, the barrels of their own guns pointed directly at him.

92

The police. Shit. There were four of them; uniformed officers, two kneeling, two standing with legs braced, all four with their weapons raised towards him.

‘Halt!’ shouted the man on the far right. ‘Polizei!’ There followed the command for Cole to drop his weapon, and the threat that he would be shot if he failed to do so.

Cole instinctively calculated angles and tangents. In his time at SEAL Team Six, he had fired well over twenty thousand rounds in training, in all manner of positions, and Cole knew he could dispatch the four men in under two seconds. It was what he had trained to do, plain and simple.

But he also knew that he could never do such a thing. Killing agents sent directly by Hansard to execute him was one thing; killing members of the law enforcement community was another thing altogether, and something that Cole just couldn’t do. He was an assassin, that much was true; but only against legitimate targets.

And so it was that Mark Cole relaxed his stance, placed the H&K pistol on the ground in front of him, put his hands in the air, and allowed himself to be placed into the custody of the Munich municipal police department.

93

‘Are we still on track?’ Jensen asked over a cup of coffee in the sitting room of his Washington residence. Number One Observatory Circle was a quaint nineteenth century house located within the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory, used by Vice Presidents and their families since the 1920s.

Hansard took a sip of the well-brewed drink from the bone china cup. ‘Well Richard,’ he announced finally, ‘we’ll just have to wait and see.’ He pulled out his pipe and tobacco and started to pack it with a practised economy of motion. He knew Jensen hated the thing, but the man didn’t say anything. It was just as well; with Jensen’s role about to increase exponentially, it wouldn’t do to have him acting above his station already. Charles Hansard was still the Vice President’s mentor, having subtly and unnoticeably guided his career to its present position, and it just wouldn’t do to give the man too much freedom.

Part of Hansard’s plan, in fact, relied upon manipulating Jensen from the shadows; and so it was important for the ex-Governor of Nebraska to know his place, and who it was that really gave the orders. He lit his pipe, blowing smoke up to the ceiling.

‘It all appears to be going well so far,’ Jensen offered helpfully.

‘It does,’ Hansard agreed, ‘it does.’ He paused. ‘Is Abrams still set up for the press conference?’

Jensen smiled and nodded his head; he could sniff the prize that awaited just out of reach. ‘Yes sir,’ he confirmed. ‘Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.’

‘Then we’ll soon know for sure.’

Jensen’s smile widened.

94

When Hansard got back to his office, he set about how to deal with the one major problem he still had — Mark Cole.

His own agents had not succeeded in neutralising the man, but Cole was now in custody at least. The problem Hansard now faced was what to do with him.

His agents in the area were now sadly depleted — Cole had seen to that. And even if he did have reliable personnel available, he couldn’t just send them in to execute the man. Cole was now being kept in a Munich jail cell, and there was the thorny issue of legality to consider. It was one thing to gun a man down in the street — a case could always be made that a deadly threat was being posed, after all — but it was another thing entirely to kill someone who was already in police custody.

He sipped from a glass of cognac and considered the problem. He would need to get Cole extradited back to the United States, where he could be handled ‘in-house’. It would be complicated, but it certainly wasn’t impossible.

He lifted the handset of his secure telephone and dialled the chief of Munich’s municipal police force. He would have Cole on a plane back to Washington within the hour.

He would demand that the man be sedated first, of course. After all, he didn’t want Cole talking before he could be dealt with properly.

95

Fucking bitch. Albright looked at himself in the mirror by his bedside. Fucking bitch!

He was blind in his right eye, which had been gouged out from the socket completely, and his nose was all but destroyed. The surgeons had managed to re-attach it, but it was covered by thick bandages, which wouldn’t be coming off for some time.

He also had bandaging around his head, protecting the small hole in the skull created by the impact with the sharp corner of the bathroom cabinet. Maybe I should sue the rail company?, he wondered idly, but the laughter only brought more pain. His temple had been missed by less than an inch, and the doctors felt that it was something of a miracle that he was still alive.

As Albright looked at himself through his remaining eye, part of himself wished he wasn’t. Dark, ugly scabs formed across his previously perfect face, left by the woman’s clawing nails; his once beautifully coiffured blond hair had been shaved off to allow the surgeons access to his skull. And that wasn’t even to mention his eye and his nose. His face, he realized in grim depression, was ruined. Sure, he could always have plastic surgery, and it might even be a pretty good job; but it would no longer be his face, and he would always have to live with that.

The part of him that wondered if life was now worth living was easily silenced, however. Of course it was, he reminded himself. How else am I going to kill that bitch and her entire fucking family?

And so slowly, carefully, yet with grave determination, he unplugged the drips and monitors that surrounded him and raised himself up in the bed, swinging his legs off the side and onto the cold hospital floor.

Back to work.

96

Sarah came around towards nine in the evening. She had waited up for Mark’s arrival all afternoon, until the pain became too bad and Steinmeier insisted — indeed, practically forced her — to take more medication. It had laid her out again, and when she awoke in the dark, she was confused and disorientated.

‘Sarah,’ Steinmeier said comfortingly from the armchair near her bed. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe.’

‘Mark?’ she wondered out loud.

‘Still no word, I’m afraid. But there’s no point worrying, you’ll just slow down your recovery. He’ll be here, just not on schedule, that’s all.’

Sarah lay back in bed, thinking. She had always known her husband was capable, and although she knew his work was dangerous, she had never before truly worried about him. Partly this was due to his own nonchalance, brushing away any talk of such danger when the subject came up. But mostly, she now realized, it stemmed from her utter ignorance of the reality of violence, and of the world her husband lived in.

She had now been exposed to that world first hand, and the experience had changed her outlook on things irrevocably. Like an epiphany, her eyes had been opened to the cold, hard, brutal world, and now that she knew what her husband was up against, her faith in his safe return had started to slowly ebb away.

Steinmeier stayed with her, calming her down until she was asleep again, and then took a long hard pull from the vodka bottle by his side. He stared at his friend’s wife for several minutes before leaving the room.

He still didn’t know what he was going to do.

97

Cole awoke to a dull roar, which seemed to be coming from all sides at once.

At first he didn’t open his eyes all the way, but instead kept them as narrow slits as he scanned his current location.

He was in what looked like a large metal container, securely restrained to a large metal chair, which was in turn secured to the metal floor. A uniformed German police officer sat to one side, working on a small laptop computer.

He remembered being in the stark white cell back in Munich, overhearing the conversation regarding his transfer to Washington. He then remembered being given an injection, and wondering whether it would prove lethal, Hansard executing him whilst in the supposedly safe hands of the German police.

It had just been a sedative though, as it turned out — presumably to stop Cole from talking before Hansard’s agents picked him up from Andrews Air Force Base, where the aircraft would almost certainly be landing.

Cole checked his suroundings again. He recognized the interior of the metal container now as that of a C-130 Hercules military transport plane, a four-prop beast used by almost every nation in the world. He had parachuted out of the back of such planes more times than he could count, and the internal architecture was more than familiar to him.

He knew that Germany was one of the only countries in the world that didn’t make use of the Hercules, but the aeroplane’s internal layout told him it was the C-130K, as used by the British RAF. It figured; the Brits still had plenty of military forces in Germany, and Hansard would undoubtedly have been able to pull some strings in order to get him in transportation as soon as possible.

Next, he re-checked how exactly he was being secured. It seemed that the large metal clasps around his wrists and ankles were electromagnets, and he knew there would be no possible way to break free of them.

But there was also no possible way he could let this plane land at Andrews. He would surely be killed within an hour of landing, and Cole could just not allow that to happen.

The information he had discovered was too important to be lost.

98

Hansard’s plan, Cole had discovered, operated on many levels and had been many years in the making. Essentially though, it amounted to profiteering on an unprecedented scale, at the risk of the world descending into nuclear chaos.

It seemed that Hansard, from his position as Head of the DIA’s Department X, had spent time recruiting young up-and-coming politicians, military officers, intelligence agents and businesspeople. He had spent time researching their backgrounds, understanding their motivations, helping their early careers.

Eventually, when he had been given the Mentor role at the JMIC, he had used his contacts to make sure that they had all been seconded to the school at the same time, in the same class.

Here, Hansard spent the next twelve months moulding the men and women under his care, subtly influencing their perceptions and attitudes to the world. It didn’t take much on Hansard’s part — they were almost on his wavelength right from the start, which was why he had selected them in the first place.

By their graduation, the group was a close-knit family unit, with Hansard as their father figure. Since then they had mutually assisted each other up through the levels of Washington power politics, until now each and every one of them occupied important positions within the American political, financial and military infrastructure.

It seemed they were all still loyal to Hansard, willing to follow and support his audacious plan.

The plan itself was already well on its way. Crozier’s attack had already created a situation which had pushed Russia and China together, with America shunned. Hansard and his group hoped such events would create two opposing power blocs, with Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States on the other. The group would now work to exacerbate the situation, encouraging a formal alliance between Russia and China whilst increasing tensions between them and the US.

This new Cold War would lead to massive new defence contracts as conventional military arms would again make a comeback — aircraft carriers, fighter jets, bombers, tanks, artillery. The group knew that these big-ticket items were where the money was made, and the owners of the four big private military contractor companies on the list were standing by with contracts ready to be signed.

From what Cole could make out, the figures were projected at near to two trillion dollars, and each member of Hansard’s group stood to make billions from the deals.

But this wasn’t the most frightening thing about the plan. The elite little club needed those contracts signing, and there was no way to guarantee — no matter how dangerous this new ‘Cold War’ situation looked — that President Abrams would sign them.

Steve Mancini was not part of the core group, but was one of the hundreds of staff who worked loyally for the members. Mancini was Ellen Abrams’ personal Secret Service bodyguard, and Charles Hansard had recruited him to the mission before the agent had even joined the Service.

And tomorrow morning, at 0900 Eastern Standard Time, Steve Mancini would accompany his protectee to the White House Press Briefing Room, ensure she got to the podium in safety, then draw back behind her to keep watch.

And then, when all the cameras were on her, along with the eyes of the entire world, Mancini would pull out his 10mm Sig Sauer pistol and blow Ellen Abrams’ brains out, live on television.

Mancini would almost certainly be killed by the other Secret Service agents — there was nothing in anything that Cole read to indicate that Mancini was expected to survive, at any rate, and Cole wondered for a moment what motivated the man. Why was he willing to sacrifice himself? Maybe it was the thirty million dollars that had been promised to his children.

Planted evidence would later suggest that Mancini had been working for the Russians, and it would then be suggested that the whole thing was a revenge attack for the assassination attempt on Danko, and the whole of the United States would be in uproar. There would be no conclusive evidence — there couldn’t be, otherwise the US would have to declare war on Russia — but everyone would believe that this was the case.

It would further push Russia and China together, and would ingrain a hatred of the two countries in the minds of the American people.

It would also push Richard Jensen into the Presidency, where he would declare a formal start to the new Cold War, with a commensurate build-up of the United States conventional military machine.

And with Richard Jensen, the new President of the United States, being manipulated from behind the scenes, Cole knew with chilling certainty that this would put Vice Admiral Charles Hansard in indirect control of the entire country.

99

Hansard relaxed in his leather armchair, allowing himself just the slightest of hope that his plans might soon come to fruition.

He was a rich man anyway, but the arms deals that would be made over the coming weeks and months would bring him untold billions more. He didn’t need the money of course, but the truth was that money bought power, and that was what he truly craved.

And yet he had no desire to be a famous politician. He had decided early on in his career that he was much happier directing things from behind the scenes, much like a puppet master would have done in the shows he used to watch as a young boy.

From a purely practical point of view, the plan also made sense for the country’s security. The trouble as Hansard saw it — along with all the rest of the Alumni — was that America had no consistency in its present enemy.

Since 9/11, the United States had concentrated almost all of her military and intelligence resources on the War on Terror. Terrorism, however, was not an easy enemy to fight against. Its sheer unpredictability meant that victory was never likely. Terrorists dressed like civilians, lived with civilians, hid behind civilians.

America would never be able to win against such an enemy without creating such massive civilian collateral damage that it would virtually guarantee another generation of anti-American jihadists, thereby ensuring that America would not win at all, but merely prolong the conflict further.

The War on Terror was simply a no-win situation. The oil contracts had already been signed, and with the United States’ Middle Eastern oil routes guaranteed already there was simply no reason to continue with it.

Hansard had been pleased, in fact, when US forces had finally been withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were low-level conflicts, with a large emphasis on special forces, reconnaissance and foot soldiers — all of which made for bad publicity when such men and women were killed on the front lines, but none of which generated the sort of revenues that were possible from a conventional conflict.

Or even — as Hansard strongly believed — the threat of conventional conflict.

Back in the days of the Cold War, the huge military machine that had been built up under Reagan was immense — though hardly ever used. Thus aircraft carriers, logistics craft, submarines, fighter planes, bombers, reconnaissance vehicles, artillery pieces, battle tanks, and all the associated weaponry to go with them, were financed, researched, developed, purchased, tested, exercised, repaired and finally replaced, all without being used in anger, generating massive incomes for the contractors and their political allies whilst not exposing the American people or their military to much in the way of direct danger.

It was a truism during the Cold War that stretched from the late 1940s all the way into the early 1990s that many ‘hot war’ incidents were avoided due to the possibility of Mutually Assured Destruction — both the US and the USSR had massive nuclear stockpiles, and both were aware of the ramifications of their use. Thus, nothing happened except for small local conflicts fought by proxy, with the exceptions of the Korean and Vietnam wars of course.

It was Hansard’s dream to see this same sort of perverse stability recreated in the present day. He wanted the US to abandon its war on terror and get back to conventional warfare — it was safer, infinitely more predictable and, as a result, infinitely more profitable.

Diana Westlake of Westlake Inc. would be one of the major new contractors on President Jensen’s new program of nuclear rearmament. It was part of the Alumni’s plan to have America’s nuclear arsenal increase by a factor of ten over the next five years. Not only would it create an income for companies owned by the Alumni of close to a trillion dollars — in addition to the trillion or so dollars from other conventional weapons systems whose contracts were already in place — it would guarantee a similar build-up on the other side of the world by China and Russia.

Such build-ups would once again mean that any future conflict might result in MAD — and as such would surely be avoided at all costs, thus ensuring long-term American security.

It seemed a perverse way of looking at the world, but Hansard and his cabal truly believed that it would be better for the country this way. The threat of nuclear war on the global scale would so far overshadow the threat of a terrorist attack that terrorism would simply be ignored, and would thus no longer be effective — and would thus cease to exist.

So not only would the plans of the group make them billionaires many times over, it would also make the entire country a safer place. The Alumni were patriots, after all.

And the fact that Vice Admiral Charles Hansard, wealthy scion of a famous American family, would finally have control of the country through his manipulations of the new President, his cabinet and the entire US legislature, would just be the icing on the cake.

Reclining in his chair, Hansard puffed on his pipe, sipped from his glass of brandy, and smiled.

100

Cole knew what he would have to do. The risks associated with Hansard’s crazed scheme were just too great — what if nuclear weapons were launched? With massive build-ups of weapons by the US, Russia and China, such a conflict would simply ensure the end of the world.

But he still didn’t know whether his family was safe. The escape route through Miami was good, and Sarah knew what she was doing. Cole knew his wife was both tough and resourceful, and not only had he taught her well, but she had learnt well too, being something of a natural at the work.

It seemed a little incongruous that such a well-bred daughter of such an incredibly wealthy man could at the same time be street smart and so very, very capable. But, Cole remembered, with no mother and an absentee father, she had essentially raised herself, and her self-reliance was no accident.

It was too painful to even think about his children — were they okay, were they safe, did they know what was going on, were they scared? Images flashed through his mind, snapshots of their lives from their earliest days as they crawled in nappies around the floor of the beach house, learnt to walk, to talk, to –

A tear welled up in Cole’s eye, and he blinked it away as subtly as he could, careful not to let the German policeman see him.

No. He had to believe Sarah would get herself and the children to Stefan. She was capable, the plan was good, and Albright — dangerously psychotic or not — should have been left behind in Miami, shaking his head in confusion, leaving his family free to travel to the rendezvous in safety.

He wanted desperately to make the same rendezvous, get to Steinmeier’s house and check his family were okay, kiss them, hold them close, say sorry for dragging them into his business, promise them it was all over, he would never leave them again.

But the fact of the matter was that the very future of the world — and certainly that of the United States — was also under threat, and Cole was the only person who might be able to prevent the cataclysm.