Adrian Magson - Execution

Why couldn’t the number she wanted do that, instead of this. . forbidden one? It had been so tempting to try the keys. Katya Balenkova. The familiar image of the slim face and short blonde hair hovered before her, causing an ache she thought she had long suppressed.

An echo of the ache that had led to her downfall.

But calling Katya would trigger alarm bells in more than one place, of the kind that would end in disaster for both of them. After she had been pulled off the assignment by her controller at Vauxhall Cross, she’d had no news of the FSO officer’s fate and had heard nothing since. For all she knew, Katya might be dead.

She leaned forward to check the street, her view now clearer with the mothers and children gone. The young man had disappeared. She’d been lucky; just a few seconds more out in the open and he would have seen her.

She sat back with a sigh and watched in a detached way as a blue BMW drew up at the kerb and two men got out. They ignored the reserved parking sign for deliveries, and a workman in a yellow tabard and hard hat protesting about needing the space.

The men crossed the pavement and stepped inside. The first was tall and dark, military in bearing. A leader. The second was stockier, heavy across the shoulders. A follower. She labelled them instinctively, businessman and driver. She felt tiredness wash over her. This was taking more out of her than she’d thought possible. She needed to get back to the empty flat; to get her head down and sleep.

The two men ignored her and went to the counter, ordering tea and coffee.

She must have dozed off momentarily, because suddenly they were sitting down, the tall one by her side, the other across from her.

Blocking her in.

The taller man shifted in his seat, bringing him slightly closer.

With him came the familiar smell of peppermint, giving her a jolt of recognition more acute and identifying than a face.

‘Miss Jardine,’ he said softly, looking into his mug of tea with distaste. He placed it to one side and added, ‘You’ve embarrassed us, my colleague and me. Led us quite a dance. Is that how the saying goes?’

Her instinct was to ask him who he was, what the hell he was talking about, to dissemble and act the outraged lone woman accosted by two predatory men. But she knew that wouldn’t work.

He was speaking Russian.

Clare stared at him. The shock of hearing him use her name lasted a brief moment before she managed to clamp down on any reaction. Of course he’d know it; he’d have got it from the hospital. The moment they’d found her gone, after dealing with Tobinskiy, they’d have gone into overdrive, deciding what, if any, were the implications of her disappearance, and what to do about it. How they had found out she spoke and understood Russian was incidental. They’d probably drawn that conclusion from her sudden departure. It would have been enough to have had them calling in expertise, checking records, chasing down CCTV records and trawling the streets.

Now they’d found her.

If she hadn’t been so stunned, she’d have been impressed.

‘What do you want?’ She remained calm, studying both men, analysing what kind of opposition they presented. She wasn’t going to outrun them or fight them off, not in her condition; they looked too fit, too determined. Professionals. FSB or their contractors at the very least, to have been sent here after Tobinskiy. That meant they wouldn’t be easily stopped. But she had to find a way out somehow without involving anyone else.

She felt the mobile in her pocket. Eased it out to lie by her leg, where they couldn’t see it. Pressed the re-dial key.

‘We would like you to come with us,’ the tall one answered. ‘No fuss, no trouble.’ He flicked a finger sideways to indicate the other customers. ‘We don’t want to. . alarm these good people, do we?’

For alarm, read hurt, she thought. They were actually going to take her out of here.

She didn’t need to look around to know exactly who was in the cafe. Her training had kicked in and she already knew. There were two baristas behind the counter, with five customers in the place; two at the counter, three at tables. All women. All innocents. If these were the same two men from the hospital, they were unlikely to be here on legal papers and would not react well to confrontation, or to her refusal to go quietly.

It would be a bloodbath.

She could hear the phone ringing out. Just a tiny sound. Or it might have been her imagination. Surely they would hear it, too? They couldn’t be that deaf.

Come on, Tate. For Christ’s sake pick up!

But they appeared to be unaware. Or maybe they didn’t care.

The ringing stopped. She couldn’t hear a voice responding, but she imagined it. A beat or two, the cadence of an incoming call with no voice, followed by another query: Hello?

‘What are you going to do, shoot them?’ she said. She held her chin down, trying to project her voice down at the phone without the nearest customers hearing her. The last thing she needed was panic.

‘If we have to, we can do that,’ the shorter one replied. He leaned forward over the table, unwittingly putting his face nearer to the phone. ‘We could shoot them all, before you could make a sound.’ He grinned coldly, enjoying the moment.

She swallowed at his nearness. All he had to do was look down and he’d see thephone by her leg, the screen clearly lit up.

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Of course we would.’ He picked up the powder compact where she’d placed it on the table and studied it, turning it over as if studying a particularly interesting relic. ‘Perhaps I will take this as a souvenir of our visit. I have a girlfriend who likes this trash. What do you say?’

Clare tried to snatch it back, but he was too quick. He sat back and continued toying with the compact, then put it in his pocket, a sly smile on his face.

The tall one said, ‘I hope you realise that it would be quite simple for us to just shoot you here and walk out. Do you really want us to harm them — just because of you? We are new here, the authorities don’t have our faces on their databases and we will never come back. So who cares? Simple.’

‘How did you find me?’ In spite of the threats, Clare was puzzled by the speed with which they had tracked her down. From a standing start, they had moved with amazing speed, in a city where finding a single person should have many taken days.

In response, he dropped a couple of photos on the table. One was obviously a still from the hospital CCTV; she recognised the bland NHS decor even with the grainy finish. The other looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t think why. It had a string of numbers printed across the bottom and could have come from anywhere. It had been taken face-on, a bland head and shoulders shot like a passport, only bigger. She tried desperately to recall where it could have been taken, but her mind was a blank.

She swallowed the rise of fear and despair that rose in her throat. Something about this photo meant something; but she couldn’t think why. And that helplessness made her more frightened than anything else. All she knew was, they had found her so quickly, that all her efforts had been laughable. But there was a core deep inside her that refused to give in. She breathed deeply, watching the tall Russian’s face. He seemed unaware of how much the photo had affected her. Or maybe he assumed she was just acknowledging that she was caught.

‘Where did these come from?’ she asked.

‘We have our sources.’

‘Sources?’ It was a vain hope that he might tell her something, but she had to try.

‘You think we’re amateurs, Miss Jardine? You think I’m going to tell you who got them for us?’ He shook his head slowly, but looked very pleased with himself. ‘Dream on, I think the saying goes in English.’