Майкл Ридпат - Launch Code

‘So what does that mean?’ said Brooke. ‘I’m way behind, here.’

‘I get it,’ said Megan. ‘Admiral Robinson is bald. It could have been him in the kitchen with Pat Greenwald. Which would mean it was Admiral Robinson, not Dad, who gave the secrets to the Russians.’

‘Dad may have told them about the near-launch,’ said Alice. ‘But Robinson gave them more secrets. The secrets the FBI were asking about in 1996. And he did that over a period of years.’

Within two minutes Maya’s phone beeped. It was a simple text.

Henry says officer was bald. Call me with news.

‘I thought so!’ said Alice. ‘It was Admiral Robinson!’

‘The admiral has managed to keep what he did quiet for all these years,’ said Megan. ‘But he would have gotten worried when Sam Bowen started asking questions. Especially when Sam mentioned Pat Greenwald to us at Thanksgiving.’

As Megan was talking, the pieces were slipping into place in Alice’s mind.

‘So he had to shut Sam Bowen up. He must have killed him! It wasn’t Dad.’

‘But the admiral wasn’t in England then,’ said Megan. ‘Dad said he flew over here as soon as he heard about Sam Bowen’s death.’

‘That’s true,’ said Alice.

‘We don’t really know that he wasn’t in England,’ said Brooke from the back seat.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He could have been here all the time. Then when Dad got in touch with him, he pretended to fly straight to London.’

‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘But how did he know Sam had mentioned Pat Greenwald?’

‘Perhaps Dad told him?’

‘Dad said he told Lars,’ said Alice. ‘Maybe Lars told the admiral?’

‘In which case, Lars would have been suspicious when Sam Bowen was killed.’

‘And the admiral would need to shut him up too.’

‘If that’s all true, why would Dad want to kill himself?’ said Brooke.

‘A good question,’ said Alice.

But the pieces were tumbling into place in Megan’s mind as well. ‘The admiral needs someone else to be the fall guy, and Dad is the natural person for that. Better than you, Alice. But he can’t risk Dad being arrested. There would be a big trial and an investigation, and his own role might come out.’

‘OK.’

‘And he can’t just kill him, like he killed Lars. He’d be the last man standing — a more obvious suspect.’

‘So he wants to get Dad to kill himself?’

‘He wants Dad to be seen as the murderer. And then push him off the cliff and make it look like suicide, like Dad was overwhelmed with guilt. Everything will be tidied up. With a suicide rather than a murder, the authorities won’t ask difficult questions and the admiral will go free. That’s why he took Dad to the top of a cliff. I mean, why else choose that place to talk? At night, when no one will see them?’

‘And we would back up his story; we’d say we all thought Dad had killed Sam Bowen.’

‘But what about that email to all of us?’ said Megan. ‘Why would Dad send that email?’

Silence for a few seconds as they scrambled for an answer, Megan successfully splitting her concentration between the problem and the dark road ahead.

‘Dad didn’t send it. It was a hack,’ said Alice. ‘Must have been. The admiral made it look like it came from Dad.’

‘The admiral doesn’t look like a hacker to me,’ said Brooke.

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘But he was in intelligence for many years. He’ll know how to find himself a hacker for hire. One who will keep quiet.’ She paused. ‘Wait a moment. When I was in custody, the police accused me of hacking Sam Bowen’s Cloud account, or finding his password and deleting his notes. I didn’t, I wouldn’t know how. But someone did.’

‘It adds up,’ said Brooke.

‘It does,’ said Alice.

‘So what’s happened to Dad on the cliffs?’ said Brooke.

‘The admiral is planning to push him off,’ said Megan. ‘Fake his suicide. And then say he spoke to Dad and told him he had been found out, and Dad took it very badly.’

‘So we’re too late?’ said Brooke.

‘Maybe Toby will stop him,’ said Megan.

‘But Toby doesn’t know what the admiral is up to,’ said Alice. ‘And the admiral would have no qualms about killing Toby if he thought Toby saw him push Dad off a cliff.’

‘Call him,’ said Megan.

Toby ran back up the path and along the cliff, to where he thought he had seen the figure, but it was difficult to pinpoint the spot exactly. Once again, he slid over the fence and pushed his way through the bushes towards the cliff edge.

Carefully. He didn’t want to step into nothingness.

He reached the edge and looked down. A ledge a few yards wide jutted out into the air ten feet below the rim. Gingerly he eased himself down.

He slid the last couple of feet, until he reached firm rock and pulled himself to his feet.

He was correct; he had seen a figure up there. In fact there were two, standing just a few feet apart from each other.

‘Bill?’ said Toby.

But it wasn’t Bill who answered. ‘Stay exactly where you are, Toby.’

It was the admiral. And in his hand was a gun. And the gun was pointed straight at Toby.

Toby didn’t understand. So the admiral had got to Bill before he had jumped? That was good. And now he was stopping Bill from jumping.

By pointing a gun at him.

That didn’t make sense. Shooting someone was not a great suicide-prevention method.

Toby took a step forward.

‘Stop! Or I’ll shoot you.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Toby, opening his hands to show he wasn’t carrying anything. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bill. ‘But it doesn’t look good. For either of us.’

The admiral stepped back against the rock so that he could cover both Toby and Bill. ‘Come and stand over here, next to Bill,’ he said.

For a moment Toby wondered whether to obey. It occurred to him that if Bill and he were going to jump the admiral, now would be the best time to do it, while they were sufficiently apart from each other that the admiral could only cover one of them at a time.

Except that the admiral was pointing his pistol straight at Toby’s chest. And he had spent his life in the military; he probably knew how to use it.

Toby moved over to Bill. ‘So why did you send us that message, Bill? ‘ he said.

‘What message?’

‘The goodbye message. Like you were going to kill yourself.’

Bill glanced at Toby. ‘He just told me to jump. My guess is Admiral Robinson sent you that message.’

‘He’s trying to fake your suicide,’ said Toby, beginning to understand. It was impossible to see the admiral’s eyes in the darkness, but the barrel of his pistol glimmered a lighter shade of grey.

‘You gave those secrets to the Russians, didn’t you, Glenn?’ said Bill. ‘You are the spy the FBI asked me about?’

‘I was never a spy,’ said the admiral. ‘I never betrayed my country.’

‘Then why did you give them those secrets?’

‘Why should I tell you?’

‘Because I’m the only man in the world who might understand you,’ said Bill. ‘I gave them secrets too, remember?’

There was silence for a second or two. For a moment, Toby’s body was overwhelmed with a wave of fear, fear which rooted him to the spot and threatened to paralyse his brain.

He fought it.

Stay calm. Stay focused. Just like Bill. Watch out for an opportunity.

They were both only a foot from the cliff edge. The wind roared in his ears and the waves crashed sixty feet below. If they both jumped the admiral, one of them just might overpower him. But the other would be shot, and would probably fall backwards into the sea.