Ultimatum

Forty-three

18.58

Cain parked the car at a meter in the shadows of Westminster Abbey. He was right in the heart of the establishment here, barely a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament where, right now, politicians of every shade were debating the attacks that he’d helped mastermind today. And doubtless spouting the usual load of hot air. It was a pity, he thought, that the Stinger couldn’t be used against them, but he no longer had the missile. It had safely been dropped off at a lock-up garage, where it should already have been collected by the mercenary they’d hired, the mysterious but reliable South African Voorhess, who’d be firing it in about an hour’s time, when the deadline they’d given the government ran out.

The air was turning cold as Cain started off down the quiet night street on foot, pulling his cap down and his collars up to make sure that any cameras only got a very limited shot of him. He didn’t feed the meter as he wouldn’t be using the car again. It had been bought in cash at auction three months earlier and there was no way of tracing it back either to him or Cecil. As always, he’d planned everything down to a tee. The only fly in the ointment so far was his weapons contact, Jetmir Brozi, whose arrest had turned the arms deal in the scrapyard into a bloodbath and come close to getting them all killed. Brozi knew very little about Cain but, if he decided to talk, he could still provide information that might lead them in his direction.

But right now Cain wasn’t unduly worried about what might happen to him, and the reason for this was simple enough.

He was dying.

The doctors had diagnosed terminal lung cancer three weeks earlier. If he sought treatment, he had as long as a year. If he didn’t, he had half that, possibly less. So far, the symptoms — a persistent cough, and severe abdominal pains — were sporadic at best, but lately he’d noticed them getting worse. For a long time he’d never feared death, even in the midst of battle, but the events today at the scrapyard had made him realize how much he’d miss life when it was finally snatched away from him.

This made it even more important for him to bring his work to a conclusion. His aim was to bring down the government. Once this had been achieved, his hope was that the country’s native population would rise up and turn on the immigrants flooding the country and the intellectual elite who supported them. This had been his goal ever since he’d joined the shadowy group of individuals who called themselves The Brotherhood more than three years ago. Most of their footsoldiers had been killed during the Stanhope siege, which was why their numbers were now so small, but this no longer mattered. After today, the campaign of violence would give way to a new strategy as Garth Crossman, their leader and the man who bankrolled their activities, rode the wave of revulsion over today’s attacks, and the loss of his own wife in them, to enter politics for the first time at the head of a new political party promising radical change.

Cain smiled to himself. Crossman cut an impressive figure. He came across like a nice guy. He could really change things, given the chance, and by the time people realized what he was really like, it would be far too late.

Only two people knew Crossman’s real identity. One was Cain himself. The other was William Garrett, codenamed Fox.

And he’d be dealt with soon enough.

A marked police patrol car turned into the street fifty yards ahead of Cain, moving slowly, as if its occupants were looking for something.

Cain ducked down behind a parked van and watched as the police car drove past him down the street, coming to a halt in the middle of the road next to the Audi estate he’d been driving only a couple of minutes before. It then moved on about ten yards, but pulled into an empty parking bay, with its engine still running. At the same time, a second police car drove in from the opposite end, slowing up as it drew level with the first one.

Knowing this was no coincidence, Cain jogged in a low crouch, using the parked cars as cover, before ducking into a narrow back alley and breaking into a sprint.

They’d been betrayed.

And it could only have been by one man.