Ian Rankin - Westwind

‘Are you okay?’ he asked awkwardly, no other more sensible words coming to mind. She nodded briskly.

A man in a white coat was standing over one of the recording machines, checking line levels. He seemed relieved to see Villiers.

‘Thank God!’ he snapped. ‘I’m a scientist, you know, not a bloody gaoler.’

Villiers ignored the outburst. ‘This is Major Dreyfuss,’ he said. ‘And Major Dreyfuss, this’ — pointing his gun hand at the man — ‘is Henry Fagin, head of this... establishment.’

‘A bloody pawn more like,’ Fagin muttered, loud enough to be heard. He was still bent over his machines, moving from one to the next like a commander inspecting his troops.

‘What is this place?’ Dreyfuss said, looking around him. One hand still rested on Jilly’s shoulder, kneading the skin gently, calming her.

The reply came from Fagin. ‘It’s a listening post. Off-limits to Zephyr personnel. They don’t even know it’s here. Officially, it’s an offshoot of Menwith Hill.’

‘Menwith Hill?’

‘Yes. That’s an NSA operation, American personnel. The job is SIGINT, signals intelligence, picking up all sorts of information while it’s in transit.’ He gave a sly glance in Dreyfuss’ direction. ‘Nothing’s safe any more, not if it’s being transmitted. It still gets from A to B, of course.’

‘But on the way it’s listened to?’

Fagin slapped one of the machines proudly. ‘And copied. You name it: telephone conversations, rocket telemetry. Here, take a listen.’ He flipped a switch and a stream of noise started issuing from the speakers set into the walls. ‘Know what that is?’ he asked, his face opening into a smirk. ‘Computers talking to one another. Satellite computers.’ He pointed earthwards. ‘The ground asks Zephyr for close-ups of RAF Buchan.’ His finger jerked skywards. ‘ Zephyr transmits this request to the other satellite, which then sends it live shots of a base in Wales, made to look like Buchan.’ He pointed downwards again. ‘ Zephyr then sends these pictures to the ground. It’s quite easy if you think about it.’

‘You’re forgetting, Fagin,’ interrupted Villiers, ‘Major Dreyfuss doesn’t need to think about it. He was there when the satellite was launched.’

‘And when the crew were murdered,’ said Dreyfuss coldly. Villiers just shrugged.

‘A US branch decision. What could we do?’

‘I’ll tell you what you did do, though,’ said Dreyfuss, remembering Hepton’s story. ‘You killed a man called Paul Vincent, you tried to murder Martin Hepton, you murdered Cam Devereux, and God knows, that may only be the tip of the dagger.’

Villiers shrugged again but seemed, if anything, pleased by Dreyfuss’ catalogue. He glanced at one of four clocks on the wall, each one set for a different time zone.

‘Harry should have disposed of Mr Hepton by now.’

On hearing this, Jilly screamed behind her gag, her face purple with effort. Villiers was delighted by this effect and lifted his head to laugh. But a choking sound from Fagin cut him off.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Fagin was studying one of the computer screens. He pressed a few buttons, then studied the screen again. ‘There’s a fifteen-minute access alarm on the interface,’ he explained quietly. ‘And it’s just gone off.’ He turned to Villiers, his eyes twinkling with humour. ‘Somebody’s trying to out-sting our own little sting.’

‘Can you stop it?’ Villiers sounded wary.

‘Oh yes. Every time the intruder makes a move, I’ll just order the computer to make another. A bit like chess. Strange, though. He’s in, but he’s not doing anything.’

As Villiers peered at the computer screen, Dreyfuss knew he had to make his own move. But Villiers wasn’t his target: Fagin was. Fagin could wreck everything. He had to take him out. He threw himself forward and grabbed the scientist, pulling him to himself as a shield, then backed away. Villiers was already aiming his gun, undecided whether to risk the shot.

Fagin saw his hesitation. ‘For God’s sake,’ he pleaded.

Villiers stared at him, then at Dreyfuss. Finally he brought his gun arm down, but then angled it away from Dreyfuss and his prisoner and began raising it again. Directly at Jilly’s head.

‘I think,’ he said stonily, ‘this is what’s called an impasse. Except that you, Major, can do nothing with your hostage except hide behind him. While I, on the other hand, won’t hesitate to shoot mine.’

And to prove it, he turned his head away from Dreyfuss towards Jilly, taking aim and beginning to squeeze the trigger.

‘No!’ Dreyfuss pushed Fagin aside and started forward again. But he was too far away from Villiers, far too far away. The gun moved in an easy sweep until it was pointed directly at him. The explosion in such a confined space was deafening, but the impact in Dreyfuss’ chest was silent. He felt himself propelled backwards with great force, until, with a new and sickening sound of shattering glass, he slammed into and through one of the dividing walls.

Shards sparkled in his hair as he lay on the floor, a red stain spreading rapidly across his shirt. Villiers examined him through the sizeable hole in the glass wall, seemingly content, then turned back into the room. Fagin looked ghostly white, smoothing strands of hair back across his gleaming pate. And Jilly Watson... well, she was staring at Dreyfuss’ still body with wide, tear-brimming eyes and horror carved into her cheekbones. Seeing this, Villiers smiled at her with a face that seemed to be transfigured before her very eyes, becoming quite mad and more dangerous, even, than ever.

But now Villiers’ attention was drawn to Fagin. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ he roared. ‘Get to work! Let’s see who stops Martin Hepton first: you with your computer, or Harry with her gun.’

There was chaos in the control room. Some of the men had risen from their consoles to stare wide-eyed at Harry, and more especially, at the gun she was pointing in Hepton’s face. A few onlookers, caught between one desk and another, had frozen where they stood, while others had slipped out of the room. Harry didn’t appear to see any of this. She had eyes only for Hepton. He was still seated at his computer but had taken his hands off the keyboard and placed them either side of it. His left hand rested on the desktop, his right hand on Nick Christopher’s heavy dictionary.

‘I can’t believe,’ Harry was saying, ‘you thought you could just walk in here.’

‘Why not?’ said Hepton. ‘You did, after all.’

She didn’t seem particularly angry or vengeful or confident or nervous. She seemed... relaxed. A job was a job, and this was just another one. Hepton took pleasure in the scars across her face, the result of his boiling water.

‘Now look,’ Nick Christopher said from somewhere behind Hepton’s shoulder. ‘You can’t just come in here waving a bloody gun—’

‘Don’t waste your breath, Nick,’ said Hepton. His fingers had closed around the book under his right hand.

‘That’s right,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t waste your breath.’

Hepton swallowed hard. He had one last card. ‘I was sorry to learn about your mother,’ he said.

Harry’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. ‘What?’

‘Your mother,’ Hepton repeated casually. ‘I was sorry to learn that she committed suicide. Something to do with your father, wasn’t it?’

‘Shut up.’

‘He was in the army, wasn’t he? I find that odd, you see.’ He paused.

‘You find what odd?’

‘That you should end up working for the military, working for everything your father stood for. Yet he was so brutal to your mother, to Harriet.’