Adrian Magson: Execution

‘No. That unit lists patients’ names only. The British Ministry of Defence placed an embargo on any personal information of wounded military personnel being available in case of targeting by the press or extremists. This woman was listed simply as Clare Jardine. I’ll run it through our database but I don’t expect it to turn up much. I’ll have to get it another way.’

‘How?’ Serkhov queried.

‘I’m not sure,’ Gorelkin admitted, his anger subsiding quickly as he considered the action to be taken. He reached in his pocket and took out a Blackberry. ‘But I think I know of a man who can help us.’

In a stripped-out three-storey building off Belgrave Road in Pimlico, Clare Jardine came awake in a rush, reaching for the elbow crutch. She bit back on a yelp as her stomach muscles protested. Too quick, instincts overcoming caution. She waited for the pain to recede while assessing what had woken her in the first place, mentally gathering herself for flight.

The noise came again: it was the clatter of a rubbish skip out in the street, followed by a man swearing. She lay back. Normal everyday sounds. No threat. Not yet, anyway.

Above her head the high ceiling showed yellowed mouldings and a tracer work of fine cracks spread throughout the plaster. Bare wiring hung down from the central fitting, plaited and sheathed in fabric instead of the modern plastic coating. She shivered at the chill in the atmosphere. Like the rest of the building, the room was bare, ready for gutting and renovation. Only the two thin mattresses on the bare floorboards showed that anyone was using it, a low-quality squat in a high-society street.

But for now it was salvation. Of a sort.

She allowed the events of the night before to reel through her mind. After dressing hastily in her laundered clothes, and a T-shirt to replace the blouse ruined by the shooting, she had left the trauma centre and lost herself in the darkened streets of Camberwell. She’d headed north on Denmark Hill towards Newington and Southwark. It was an area one of her MI6 instructors had referred to only half-jokingly as bandit country, but going round it would have taken too long. Going south or east was too open; west or north-west would take her too close to Vauxhall Cross and the network of cameras around the building she had once called work: the headquarters of SIS — the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6.

Progress had been slow, keeping one eye open for cameras, the other for obstacles at ground level. Instinct had made her scoop up the discarded aluminium crutch in the stairwell of the hospital, which had helped. Aware that the two men who had entered her room might return and come after her, she’d forced herself to put as much distance between them as possible. But she was still weak after her enforced inactivity, especially in the legs, and bouts of dizziness made the street lights swim in front of her eyes, forcing her to rest up when it got too bad.

Twice she’d spotted the approach of police patrol cars and scurried out of sight just in time, losing herself in the shadows. They looked like standard night-time patrols, but a lone woman might be enough to attract a bored policeman’s curiosity. She had been trained to lie for England, but had no rational explanation for being out by herself, or why she was walking in obvious pain. And with her wallet holding cash, ID and credit cards all locked up in the hospital for safe-keeping, not being able to prove who she was would be a step too far.

A couple of drunks had appeared out of an alleyway near the Elephant and Castle station, buttoning their flies. They had eyed her with eager, if unsteady interest, and she’d hurried on, leaving them behind. But at the next convenient doorway she’d studied the crutch. It was lightweight, made of aluminium, with a plastic grip and a cuff for the arm and a rubber ferrule on the end. She’d ripped off the ferrule and stamped hard on the aluminium tip, squashing it into a sharp edge.

Now it was a weapon. She wouldn’t last long swinging it, but a look at the tip might put off all but the most determined of attackers. The rubber ferrule was no longer a perfect fit, but it would do. An SIS instruction drilled into the class had been a simple one: having a weapon didn’t mean you had to use it. But the value of the increased confidence for a field operative, especially in hostile territory, was immense.

Although she had no easy access to a phone, she had racked her brains for someone to contact. But whatever the gunshot had done to her stomach had also blitzed her memory bank; she couldn’t recall a single name or number of anybody she knew. At first she had panicked, staring out at the street in dread. What if she never regained her memory? How would she survive?

But she had forced herself to calm down and think logically. It was what she’d been trained to do in moments of high stress. Things weren’t so bad, because she wasn’t totally blank. She’d instinctively remembered the location of the SIS building, and the direction to take for Southwark; and she’d recognised the fact that the two mystery visitors to the unit had been speaking Russian. . and that one of them had wanted to deal with her, the words uttered with all the emotion of ordering a takeaway.

‘We could save the bother — do it now.’

She shivered at the memory, hating knowing how vulnerable she’d felt right then; acknowledging that there wasn’t a thing she could have done to stop them.

The rest of the journey to the river had been a blank, constantly dodging the most obvious street cameras, other pedestrians, cars and well-lit areas. But she had made it.

And now she was here.

She flinched as the door to her temporary refuge inched open, and lifted the crutch in readiness. A girl’s head popped into view. Orange hair with yellow streaks, face piercings and black lipstick. The body followed, tall and lean. Torn denims and Doc Martens. Her name was. . Maisy? Mitzi? She couldn’t remember. Only that she had met her near Charing Cross after crossing the river, sipping soup from a paper cup. She had blagged a cup for herself, then a room here for the night.

She relaxed again.

‘Time to go,’ said Mitzi. The German accent was strong with an American inflection. ‘Are you OK?’

Clare nodded and got to her feet, using the crutch to steady herself. ‘I’m good, thanks.’ Although Mitzi hadn’t asked, Clare had hinted at a broken rib from a mugging while dossing in south London. It happened all the time out there. ‘I appreciate the help.’

‘My pleasure. We have decided to move north — to Bayswater. I hear there’s a place just come up with easy access and no work going on.’ She was in the company of three others, friends from university, all squatting wherever they could. It was fun, for them; something to pass a few weeks in the city before heading back home to Berlin or wherever.

But not for Clare. ‘I’ll pass, thanks. Things to do.’ She stretched cautiously, feeling the tug of her stomach muscles and a slight pain where the bullet had gone in. It was better than it had been, but not yet ready for taking on an assault course.

Mitzi nodded. ‘There’s a Starbucks down the street. Pauli is doing the early shift. If we go now, he’ll give us breakfast and coffee.’

Pauli. Mitzi’s sort-of-boyfriend. Skeletal, moustache, studious type.

‘Yes, why not?’ She needed food, anyway. And some thinking time. After eating, she’d find a place to sit and work up a plan.

If only she could come up with a name.

To Harry Tate, the Major Trauma Centre at London’s King’s College Hospital in Camberwell looked no different than on previous visits. It was nearly five p.m. on a normal weekday — or, at least, a normal weekday for those not confined here by circumstances outside their control. Yet as he walked through the main entrance, there was a discernible air of unease about the place, as if its pulse was beating a shade faster than normal.