Stephen Leather - Cold Kill

‘You were horrified, right? Disgusted?’

Button’s face was screwed up in disbelief. ‘Of course I was horrified!’ she shouted. ‘You had an innocent man killed.’

Yokely put up a hand. ‘Steady, Charlie. We’ve an assignment here, and that assignment is to make the bastard in there tell us everything he knows. Let’s not forget who the enemy is here.’

‘That boy wasn’t the enemy,’ said Button.

‘It was his call, not mine. All he had to do was to talk and that boy would have been released, unharmed. We gave him the choice.’

‘Richard, we can’t go about executing people!’

Yokely smiled amiably. ‘Actually, we do it quite a lot in America.’

‘The boy you had shot wasn’t guilty of anything. You had him killed…’ She was lost for words.

‘Listen to me, Charlie, and listen to me carefully. We are running out of time.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t see it, did you?’

‘See what?’

Yokely shook his head in mock-reproach. ‘You were too busy looking at the screen, weren’t you?’

Button wanted to swear at the American and tell him not to be so bloody condescending, but she bit her lip.

‘He was looking at the clock,’ said Yokely. ‘His own cousin was about to be killed, but he kept looking at the clock.’

‘There’s a deadline.’

‘Yes. Minutes or hours. Because if it was days he wouldn’t care what time it was.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ whispered Button. He was right. She’d broken one of the prime rules of an interrogation: always watch the subject’s reactions. Often it wasn’t what they said that gave them away but their body language.

‘I don’t think Jesus is going to help us,’ said Yokely. ‘This is something that’s been left up to us.’

‘Frankly, I’m not sure I can take much more,’ she said.

‘Which is why you have to be in there.’

‘I want a cigarette.’

‘This is a non-smoking building,’ said Yokely. ‘Sorry.’

‘Damn you, I want a cigarette and I want one now!’ she shouted.

Yokely put up his hands to placate her. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a pack brought in. What brand?’

‘Any brand,’ hissed Button. She sat down and sipped some water.

Yokely took out his mobile phone and asked for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whatever you can get.’ He put away the phone. ‘It’s on its way,’ he said. ‘Look, as I said before, we mustn’t get into a competition with this man. He’s as hard as they come, a committed terrorist who’s prepared to die for his cause. He’s not a suicide-bomber – I doubt he believes that seventy-two virgins are waiting for him in heaven and that Allah has a place reserved for him in temples of gold, but he’s prepared to die for what he believes in. If he’s put under pressure by someone who hates him, he’ll react by hardening himself. He’ll make it a point of principle not to give in. But he can see in your eyes the horror of what’s been done to him. He’ll see you empathising, and that will make it much worse for him.’

‘It’s sick,’ said Button.

‘It’s technique,’ said Yokely. ‘If we had more time there’d be other options, but, as I keep reminding you, time is the one thing we don’t have. So I need you in there, showing him that you’re upset by what’s happening, that you’d help if you could but you can’t.’

Button shuddered. ‘How far do we go?’

‘As far as we have to.’

‘You’d kill him?’ She corrected herself: ‘You’d have him killed?’

‘If he dies without telling us anything, we’ll have lost,’ said Yokely.

‘Now you’re the one making it sound like a competition,’ said Button. ‘A game, with winners and losers.’

‘There will be a winner,’ said Yokely. He gestured at the interrogation room. ‘And I’m damned if it’ll be him.’ He put his hand to his earpiece and listened intently. Then he looked at Button. ‘We have a brother,’ he said. ‘They’re setting up the sat link now.’

Button could feel a headache building and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. ‘Who the hell are we to be doing this?’ she whispered.

‘We’re the good guys,’ said Yokely. ‘And don’t you forget it.’

Joe Hagerman was sitting in a double seat, next to the aisle, facing the rear of the train. A middle-aged Frenchwoman was beside him, snoring softly and smelling of garlic. Hagerman was in a standard-class carriage where any passengers who wanted food or drink had to go to the buffet car in the sixth carriage. He stood up and headed for the rear of the train.

He bought a bottle of water and stood at a circular table, sipping it. He wore a cheap plastic digital watch on his left wrist. Another man was standing at another table, drinking coffee, wearing an identical watch. Two businessmen were at a table close by, drinking red wine and chattering in French, briefcases at their feet. A small queue was forming at the counter as more passengers arrived, eager for refreshments.

Hagerman carried his water across to the man with the coffee, who placed a black plastic-wrapped package on the table, and walked back in the direction of the first-class section. Hagerman slipped the package into the pocket of his duffel coat and went back to his carriage. It would soon be time.

Shepherd hurried back to his seat. Sharpe was starting on his steak. ‘You missed the main courses,’ he said.

‘Hagerman’s not there,’ said Shepherd.

Sharpe put down his knife and fork. ‘What do you mean?’

‘His seat’s empty. The woman’s there, snoring like a chainsaw, but he’s not.’

‘Buffet car?’

‘I had to go through it to get to his carriage. He’s not there and neither is the guy who got on.’

Sharpe frowned. ‘They’re both missing?’

‘They might have decided to go to the toilet at the same time, but it seems like one hell of a coincidence.’

‘What do you think’s going on, Spider?’

Shepherd sat down. ‘I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling,’ he said.

‘They couldn’t be planning something on the train, could they?’

‘All the bags are X-rayed and everyone has to go through the metal detectors. And they can’t hijack the bloody thing, can they?’

‘Poison? Anthrax? Gas? Remember the attack in Tokyo by those religious nutters?’

Shepherd took out his phone. ‘I’ll call Bingham,’ he said.

Scarred Lip untied the webbing from round the Saudi’s neck and tossed it on to the table. Broken Nose helped him to his feet. Button stood by the door, arms folded across her chest, eyes on the plasma screens.

Scarred Lip used a piece of webbing to tie the Saudi’s hands behind his back. His legs buckled and Broken Nose hurried to support him. The two men carried him to the chair and dropped him on to it.

As Button sat down, one of the plasma screens flashed white, then black. A test card appeared. It stayed up for a few seconds and was replaced with a view of what appeared to be the inside of a warehouse or factory. There was a bare concrete floor, prefabricated steel walls and, overhead, a metal roof criss-crossed with girders. Fluorescent lights hung from the girders, and there was a skylight off to the left.

‘Please look at the screen, Mr Ahmed,’ said Button.

Broken Nose grabbed his hair, twisted it savagely and forced him to confront it. The Saudi gasped in pain.

A man appeared on the screen, short and squat in a leather bomber jacket that stretched tight across his shoulders. He was wearing a black ski mask and gloves, and holding a length of chain in his right hand. He threw one end over a girder above his head. Button realised she could hear the chain rattling. This time there was sound.