Adrian Magson - Execution

‘I don’t actually have access to it myself,’ Paulton told him smoothly. ‘But I have a contact in the Metropolitan Police who can arrange for a search to be made.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘It would take a small fee, of course, but I’m sure that’s not a problem, is it?’

‘How much?’ Gorelkin’s sour mood had evaporated, as if fanned away by the promise of positive action, and he was now almost jovial, like an indulgent parent being asked for pocket money by a child.

‘It depends how badly — and how quickly — you want to find her.’

Gorelkin gave a cold smile. ‘Very badly and right now. Good enough?’

Paulton nodded and took out a mobile phone. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He excused himself and walked away, leaving the three Russians staring at each other.

‘Can we trust this pompous little shit?’ asked Votrukhin sourly. He was still smarting from being held responsible for not seeing a possible threat from the Jardine woman. And now this Englishman with the all-knowing attitude was making the job look like a walk in the park across the way. ‘Where does he get his expertise and contacts?’

Gorelkin looked at him. ‘There was a time, Votrukhin, my friend, when that pompous little shit, as you call him, would have been tracking you right now through this city. He would have had a discreet mobile team around you the moment you stepped off the plane and would have known where you went, who you saw, when you scratched your arse and on which side. And you wouldn’t have known they were there. And all that without this — ’ he waved a circular finger in the air — ‘fancy camera technology. Paulton used to be an operations director for MI5. And he was very good at what he did.’

‘So why is he helping us now?’ asked Serkhov.

‘He’s a capitalist at heart; he joined the private sector. I believe it pays better and he gets to choose what he does.’

‘So we’re paying him?’ Serkhov looked puzzled by the idea. He was more accustomed to telling people what to do; if they complied, which was nearly always, it was because he had the means and information that left them with little choice. Life was simple that way.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Gorelkin considered the matter for a moment. ‘Let me put it this way: Paulton owes me one or two favours. I helped keep him out of jail once he left his position in MI5, and he performed certain. . tasks for me in return. Tasks his former masters would almost certainly not approve of. Paulton knows I like bargains to be kept, and his payment for helping us now is that he gets to live a little longer.’ He glanced at Votrukhin as Paulton walked back into the room, slipping his mobile into his pocket. ‘As to your question about whether we can trust him, not in a million years. He’s a traitor born and bred. You should bear that in mind.’

Paulton sensed, as he returned to the table, that the Russians had been talking about him. It didn’t bother him; he’d have been amazed if they hadn’t. He was, after all, a former enemy, even though he was now helping them out in their dirty hour of need. Suspicions would be natural on both sides. But he was determined that this would be the last time Gorelkin crooked his finger at him like a master summoning a servant. He’d do this one job, but not merely because Gorelkin had demanded it. He had a much broader plan in mind; one which would see him triumph over adversity. He hadn’t yet finalised the full details, but the framework was there.

Then a great many people would find the tables turned.

He’d made a call to his contact in the Met, just as he’d told the Russians. It added slightly to the risk of exposure, but his choices were limited if he wanted to make this visit as productive as possible. What Gorelkin and his goons didn’t know was that he’d made a second call, this to a person high up the food chain, a person with the means and position in the intelligence community to assist his return to the UK — and not under a false flag and a silly beard, either.

That same person had also given him the information he was after: it was indeed former MI6 killer Clare Jardine who had been in King’s College until the other night. Not that he was about to tell the Russians just yet. Better to keep some things back and retain a home advantage. But the information made his next course of action quite simple: find Jardine, turn her over to Gorelkin and his thugs, then set about selling them all as part of his retirement plan to come back home for good.

It made using his contact in the Met Police even more urgent. It might burn the man if anyone caught him with his hands on the CCTV search button, but that was too bad. He’d have to make it worth his while.

He was tired of running. Tired of looking over his shoulder. Tired of wondering if Harry Tate — no, knowing — was out there somewhere, waiting to take him down.

It was time to come in.

All he needed was a bargaining tool that they simply couldn’t turn down.

‘She’s got nowhere to run,’ he announced as he sat down. ‘She’s the product of a care home. She got caught in a gang shooting in Streatham, south London and King’s College was the nearest unit.’

‘But she understood Russian,’ Gorelkin muttered. ‘How is that possible for a girl from a care home?’

Paulton thought quickly. ‘Simple. She was said to be running with a couple of Ukrainians at the time she was shot.’ The lie came easily. It was better than giving them anything they could fasten on and double-check, and was part of the trade-craft he’d learned many years ago: use elements of the truth for real colour, but sprinkled liberally with facts that were difficult or impossible to verify. The delay would give him time to engineer something himself. Part of the bargain for coming in. ‘Even Ukrainians go in for pillow talk, don’t they?’

‘Ukrainians.’ Gorelkin looked disappointed and Paulton knew why. In the Russian’s world, family members offered a bargaining tool; a leverage point. But gang members weren’t family and couldn’t be coerced — even assuming they could be tracked down.

‘Don’t worry,’ Paulton said smoothly, and indicated the two FSB operatives. ‘I have my resources. Your men can start looking and I’ll get things rolling. I should have some answers in a couple of hours. Perhaps I could have a mobile number to contact you?’

Gorelkin flicked a finger at Votrukhin to give Paulton his number. ‘You can talk to him. He will pass messages to me.’

Paulton nodded. Gorelkin was being very careful, using his man as a cut-out. It was standard cell procedure. If anyone locked onto Votrukhin, it would end there.

‘Nothing.’ Rik handed Harry a coffee and nodded at the laptop screen, open on his living room table. The air in the room was stuffy and the machine’s fan cooler was whirring busily, pointing to a long period of constant use. In the street outside, traffic noises signalled life in the Paddington area going on as usual.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No mention of any prison transfers of females below the age of forty in the last five days. Unless they dropped her into the system without a tag, which I suppose could be possible, she’s not in there. Knowing the way their bureaucratic minds work, they’d have had to provide her with a file, even if they’d given her a cover name. But the bio and physical details would have had to be similar, and I found nothing like a reasonable match.’

Harry agreed. Even given MI6’s possible involvement, the civil service minds would have demanded some appropriate, if false, paperwork for a prisoner transfer, if only for health and safety reasons. And there was only so much fudging of details possible before somebody noticed and shouted out loud.