Adrian Magson - Execution

Balenkova took a moment to react, no doubt having had to break her concentration. She turned her head, then snapped it back into position at once, her whole body stiffening.

Contact .

Harry’s phone rang.

He ignored it. Too much going on here right now. It stopped once to go to voicemail, then started ringing again immediately. He accepted the call.

Ballatyne.

‘Don’t hang up — I don’t care what you’re doing. Just listen.’ The MI6 man’s voice was tense. ‘Keith Maine’s body was discovered thirty minutes ago in a Ford Transit off Kennington Road. He’d been stabbed once with some kind of long spike. On the floor of the van was a lunch box and the cap from a memory stick, but no sign of the stick itself. It looks like he got it out of the building in the lunch box. There was clearly a handover, but the other party didn’t keep their side of the bargain. I checked back with the techs. Maine accessed a travel file in Six and picked up the ticket reference to your name, and copied details of your trip to Vienna. Safe to say that whoever he was working for now has the stick and whatever data it contains. He knows where Balenkova is. . and where you are.’

Harry swore silently. He’d been here before. If the information had been passed to the two Russians, it wouldn’t take them long to get a team in Vienna to track them down based on Katya’s movements. All they had to do was follow the group’s itinerary.

He cut the connection with Ballatyne without a word. He had to warn Rik to keep his eyes open. But the most vulnerable was Clare — especially right now when she was face to face with Katya herself.

A whistle sounded, piercing the music and noise from the amusement stalls and other rides. Harry looked round.

Rik was standing near where the cab had dropped Balenkova’s party. He was making a subtle chopping motion with one hand across his throat, fingers out straight. He must have tried to ring Harry but couldn’t get through because of Ballatyne’s call.

The signal was clear.

Abort .

Behind him, Harry saw why. Four men were getting out of a black Mercedes SUV. Dark suits but definitely not business types. Too alert to be casual visitors. One of them flicked a hand to usher away the other three, their orders to disperse. Then he looked off to one side, where a footpath led through to a green space and an adjoining approach road, and gave a subtle nod.

Harry turned his head to follow the look.

Two more men had appeared between the trees. They were scouting the area, trying to be casual but looking more like attack dogs on the hunt.

Harry turned and walked towards Clare and Katya. Playing out the same scenario as Richoux had done, he lifted his arms in welcome and called her name.

She turned and stared at him in puzzlement, but he gave her no time to object. Placing his arm across her shoulders, he bent as if to kiss her cheek, but instead muttered, ‘Move it. We’re blown.’ Then he led her away, smiling down at her and catching a brief glimpse of Katya’s face, her mouth open in surprise.

As they left the area, one of the men from the car approached on the trot, calling Katya’s name.

‘Wait!’ Clare hissed, struggling against his arm. ‘We can’t leave her!’

Harry increased his grip on her shoulders, making her gasp. ‘There are at least six of them — probably more. What do you want me to do, shoot them all?’

‘No, but-’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘That we had to meet, to talk. She didn’t say much. I think she was in shock.’

Harry looked up and saw Rik standing by the entrance to a cafe. He turned and disappeared inside. They followed him and found a table at the back. It wasn’t a big place but crowded enough to provide cover for a while. If the men from the car were combing the area, they would look for anyone leaving the site and heading across the open spaces or roads nearby. Staying right under their noses was not the wisest move, but might be enough to fool them.

‘I’ll stay outside,’ said Rik. ‘They didn’t see me.’ He disappeared through the door.

‘Talk me through it,’ said Harry, after ordering drinks and making sure the briefcase was safely out of the way.

Clare still looked angry, but was beginning to calm down as she saw the sense in Harry’s sudden intervention. If the men had suspected Clare was making an approach, they would have scooped them both up immediately, dealing with any legal fall-out later. Or maybe they had orders not to worry.

‘I thought she didn’t recognise me at first,’ said Clare. ‘Then she said my name. That was all. I told her I was being hunted. . that some men were trying to kill me after Tobinskiy was murdered.’

‘How did she react?’

‘She looked stunned. I said I was a witness and that Tobinskiy’s killers were now after me, and I thought they were under orders from Sergei Gorelkin, who’s in London. She looked at me as if I was nuts.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. She just said “That can’t be”. Then you rocked up.’

Harry wasn’t sure what to do. Either Katya had believed Clare or she hadn’t. Time would tell. A lot would depend on what the men who had come looking for her would say and do — and what their orders were. If they had been briefed against Balenkova, they would probably take her in for questioning. If so, that would be the last they would see of her.

‘I told her where we were staying,’ said Clare, her voice sombre. ‘In the hopes that she was able to contact us later. Sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll move somewhere else.’ He would leave the hotel a contact number in case, isolating themselves from any possible move against them. Something was puzzling him. ‘She said “That can’t be”. What do you think she meant?’

‘Like I told you earlier, I didn’t think Gorelkin was still around. If he is, he’s been brought out of retirement for a special assignment. Katya must have thought the same thing.’

‘She’d know him, then?’

‘God, yes. Everyone in the FSB knows about him — he’s a legend.’

‘What do you think she’ll do?’

‘Gut feel?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think she’ll call.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘I hope she will, anyway.’

Harry said nothing. It was the most vulnerable he’d ever seen Clare. And no wonder. She had been through the ringer recently, and had put up with more than most people ever have to suffer. Now she was hoping that the one person who had ever meant anything to her, someone whose career she had brought to a stuttering halt, would give her a fair hearing rather than simply turn her over to her bosses.

Rik appeared in the doorway. He walked across the floor and took a seat.

‘They’ve gone. There was a bit of a row with Katya, but she used her mobile and was looking up at the wheel. I think she was talking to her mate on board with the three stooges. Then they all left.’ He looked at Clare apologetically. ‘Katya went with them.’

Back in London, in a service office near Marble Arch hired for the day, Sergei Gorelkin was being brought up to date with events. He listened to the call on his mobile, then shut it down and stared across the table at Votrukhin and Serkhov.

‘So. Balenkova is now being interviewed by the head of the Vienna team. It seems they were remarkably efficient in finding her.’ His expression dared the two men to object to his barbed comment, and he continued, ‘However, she was on official duty with a colleague and their three charges when they found her, and there was no sign of the Jardine woman or the two men who are helping her. Balenkova did not know what they were talking about.’