Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Ordinarily, it was the most difficult question of the day. Because how could he tell her the truth? How could he tell her that all day he had been counting the seconds of his solitude, wrestling with the memories and dark thoughts that swirled in his mind? How could he tell her that today had been worse than yesterday, which had been worse than the day before? He had heard it said that a problem shared was a problem halved. But not for him. To share his problems would be to infect others with his negative thoughts. He could not do that to Rabia when she was so kind and worked so hard. So he would always reply with the same words. ‘Today was better.’ And she would smile, and nod, and go to the kitchen.

This evening, however, he said: ‘Today was interesting .’

Rabia raised an eyebrow. ‘How so?’ she asked.

He tried to scratch his palms, but she gently stopped him. ‘How so?’ she repeated.

He told her about the letter. About the call. How they’d won a prize and, if they wanted to, they could take the children to Walt Disney World. He didn’t tell her about the peculiar way the letter had been delivered. He knew she would find that suspicious. When he had finished explaining it all, he took Rabia’s hand. ‘I know it means taking some time away from your work,’ he said, ‘and removing the children from school for a few days. But we could hold back some of the spending money to cover what you don’t earn. And when will we ever have this chance again?’

‘Are you sure it’s genuine?’ she said.

‘I spoke to the lady. She was very kind. The tickets will arrive in the morning.’

She nodded her head slowly. For a moment, Hamoud thought the crease on her forehead meant she was going to say no. But then she smiled. ‘We deserve some good luck,’ she said. ‘Heaven knows we haven’t had much of it.’ Her eyes shone. ‘We’ll go! I’ll call my clients, and I’m sure the school will understand.’

For the first time in years, Hamoud felt light. He had something to look forward to, not just the relentless march of the days. ‘You tell them,’ Rabia said, nodding towards the children who were still transfixed by Spongebob.

Hamoud nodded gratefully. He released his hands from hers and went over to the kids. ‘Children,’ he said. ‘Turn off the TV. I have something to tell you.’

And once he’d told them, he was certain that he would never, until the day he died, forget the look on their faces.

There were more CCTV cameras in London than anywhere else in Europe. Or so they said. Alice didn’t know if it was true, but she knew this: if the security services had a picture of your face, and they wanted to track your movements in London, they had a good chance of finding you quickly. It was becoming a common strategy. The lawyers were increasingly queasy about phone taps, and the resources to track targets in person were desperately limited. But there was a vast network of surveillance cameras, and the advances in facial recognition technology meant the computers could do most of the heavy lifting.

Of course, it also meant that the techies in the facial recognition department were permanently overworked. And they liked you to know it. Alice prepared herself to break through a brick wall as she returned to the basement with a photograph of Dimitri Poliakov. She swiped herself through to the correct department and found herself in another room dominated by computer screens, laptops and the low hum of fans and electronics.

A woman approached. She was about Alice’s age with pale, freckly skin, red hair and black-rimmed glasses. ‘You need something?’ she asked.

Alice nodded and handed over the photograph. ‘I think this guy is in London. I’ve no other leads. Can you help me out?’

The woman glanced at the photo. ‘We’re running quite a few checks at the moment,’ she started to say. ‘I’m not sure how quickly we can get to it.’

Alice had a choice. She could invoke her superiors, explain that her instructions came from the top and hint that if she didn’t get what she wanted, it might be all the worse for this woman and her department. Or she could take the more effective path. In situations like this she had learned a little girl power went a long way. She glanced over her shoulder, as though worried someone might be listening or approaching. ‘Do me a favour,’ she said, as appealingly as she could. ‘I’ve got this bloody man in the department, always putting me down. If I could ID this suspect before he hauls his arse out of bed in the morning, it would just put me a step ahead of him.’ She flashed her a smile.

The woman’s demeanour softened. She gave the photograph a more detailed look. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

TEN

Hereford’s target pack had included satellite imagery of the old Roman ruins. There was enough weaponry in the back of this smuggler’s truck to mount a small siege. Hooking up with a local fixer ought to be routine. But he was on edge.

The flashbacks he’d experienced earlier in the night had stayed with him. As he drove the truck towards the RV with the benefit of his night-vision goggles, he couldn’t help noticing the similarities with the Zero 22 op. This, too, was a covert night-time approach on a supposedly friendly target. As a Regiment man, Danny had learned to treat all operational situations with a degree of uncertainty. He had reason to be more uncertain than usual, with an unpredictable Bethany White sitting next to him, driving a vehicle that the fixer wasn’t expecting.

An hour had passed since the contact with the smugglers. They had driven in silence. This truck was less suited to the terrain they were crossing than the quad bike; Danny drove slowly and with extra care. He winced each time a wheel hit an unexpected dip and the weaponry in the back of the truck shook noisily. But they crossed twenty-five miles of desert with no further incident and now were close to their destination. Danny stopped the truck, took his rifle and night sight and stepped outside to scan the area.

The word ‘ruins’ was definitely apt. There was barely anything to see here. Through his sight, he picked out some stones protruding from the ground in regular patterns about 300 metres away, and an old stone wall. This was no tourist site. There was a narrow road, little more than a track, leading from the far side. To Danny’s two o’clock there was a copse of cypress trees, atypical for the terrain. Danny figured there must be some kind of underground water source. If they poked around the ruins, they’d probably find an old well somewhere. He guessed that the copse was where the fixer planned to hide their quad bike. It was just about the only place Danny had seen for the last hour that offered enough cover to hide a vehicle. Hopefully they’d be able to hide the truck there.

Time check: 04.20 hrs. Dawn, the time of the RV, was at 05.10. This was open ground; there was very little cover. Danny drove the truck round the ruins and parked on the far side of the copse from the road, hidden from anybody approaching. He removed and stowed the GPS unit. Took the keys and buried them at the foot of a tree with a distinctive knot on the trunk. ‘Come with me,’ he told Bethany.

They entered the copse together and headed through the trees to the other side. They could see the road from here. Danny knelt behind the tree line. Bethany took her position next to him. They waited.

The desert was silent. Just the whisper of leaves in a faint, cold wind. Danny kept his eyes on the road. He could feel Bethany looking at him and sensed that she wanted to say something. Danny didn’t yield. His instruction to deal with her when the op was over was weighing heavily. He would do it, but he was only human: the more time he spent with someone, the greater the connection he felt.