Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

He wondered who had delivered all this to the safe house. An MI6 agent attached to the British Embassy, he presumed. He didn’t much like the idea of the locals spotting an obviously Western person carrying these suitcases up to the flat. He hoped they’d been discreet, and he double-checked that the door was locked before returning to the bedroom where Bethany was waiting for him. ‘Not going to lie,’ she said. ‘I’m quite looking forward to seeing you in a suit.’

Yet again, Danny found himself resisting her flirtation. A tendril of hair had fallen over her face in an appealing way. He wanted to brush it back over her ear. He forced himself to think about something else. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘We’re going to the General’s hotel this evening. I need to know how you’re going to do it.’ She cocked her head. ‘How are you going to do it?’ he repeated. ‘We won’t be able to take weapons into the hotel. It’s not as simple as a bullet in the head. You need a plan.’

Bethany didn’t reply immediately. She walked over to the window, where she looked out over Amman while tracing a shape on the glass with her forefinger. ‘I’ll improvise,’ she said.

‘Not good enough,’ Danny told her. And when she didn’t reply again, he strode over to where she was standing, grabbed her by the shoulder and roughly turned her round to face him. He was surprised to see that tears were welling in her eyes.

‘You think I’m a monster,’ she said. ‘You think I spend my time working out inventive ways to kill people.’

‘You’ve got form.’

‘And so do you. But there’s more to you than that. And there’s more to me, too. The men I killed, I killed for a reason.’

‘We’re killing this man for a reason too. So how are you going to do it? He’s highly trained.’

Bethany gave him a rueful smile and shook her head. She dabbed at her eyes with the same forefinger she’d been tracing on the window and walked over to the bed. ‘Once a man has his clothes off,’ she said, ‘you can do anything. You think you’re so damn powerful in the bedroom. You’re not. You’re putty in the hands of a woman who knows what she’s doing.’

‘We’re talking about a five-star American general here. Don’t underestimate him.’

‘I’m not underestimating anybody. But trust me, once a guy thinks it’s on, he’s a child again, I don’t care who he is. If I can get him to take me to his room, it’s a done deal. I don’t need much. A pen. A razor blade. Whatever comes to hand.’

‘His room might be guarded. You’ll need to keep him quiet while you do it.’

‘Trust me. He won’t make a peep.’ She pointed at the bed. ‘I’m going to get some sleep. If I’m going to be all the General’s dreams come true, I don’t want bags under my eyes. You can stay or go. It’s up to you.’

Danny left her in the bedroom, taking his press accreditation and passport. He returned to the front door. Sat opposite it with his back against the wall and his handgun on the floor beside him. He opened up the passport and committed the counterfeit Andy Waldren’s place and date of birth to memory. He calculated that Waldren would be thirty-four. He put the documentation to one side. He barely wanted to admit it to himself, but Bethany’s tears had affected him. He found himself wanting to comfort her. Maybe more. He did his best to put that thought from his mind as he closed his eyes and prepared to wait out the day.

Alice’s lack of sleep was catching up on her. The basement was warm from all the computer equipment, which gave off a hypnotic whirr. Her eyelids were heavy, and she had to keep shaking herself awake.

The young woman who had agreed to help had introduced herself as Karen. She sat by Alice’s side at a workstation. Three curved monitors, a keyboard, a trackpad and a fingerprint scanner. The screens displayed a flickering succession of images. They changed so quickly that Alice couldn’t identify any of them individually. Rather, she had a sense of a jumble of generic types of pictures: individuals standing at a zebra crossing, or queueing in a coffee shop, or stepping out of a bus. A bewildering blur of young and old, male and female, black and white. After scanning in Alice’s picture of Poliakov, Karen had sat and stared at these screens for at least two hours, as if her brain was processing the tens of thousands of CCTV images that the systems were checking. Alice could see the flickering pictures reflecting in her glasses, which somehow made the whole experience more disorientating. Every twenty minutes or so, the pictures would stop, and Karen’s fingers would fly over the keyboard. The first time this happened, she’d explained that she was changing to a new CCTV zone, but now they sat in silence as she went about her work and Alice grew sleepier and sleepier.

Her chin was on her chest when Karen’s voice jolted her awake. ‘I’m sorry. It doesn’t look like we have any matches. We can set an alert, if you like? If your guy turns up, we’ll let you know.’

Alice found it hard to conceal her disappointment. ‘Are you sure you’ve tried everything?’ she said. ‘It’s really important I find this guy soon.’ She knew instantly that Karen was holding something back. It was the tightness around the eyes. The hesitation. ‘Please, Karen,’ she said. ‘I know he’s been in London. If there’s anything you can do?’

‘There are some other CCTV databases,’ Karen said. ‘We’re not really supposed to access them without prior authorisation. The lawyers get antsy.’

Alice was wide awake now. ‘Please,’ she repeated. ‘I promise I’ll get you any authorisation you need. But the sooner I get a lead . . .’

Karen bit her lower lip, then nodded. She turned back to her screen and started typing again. The blur of images reappeared. The two women stared expectantly at the screen. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes.

And then the blur stopped. A single image filled the screen. Alice felt her stomach lurch.

It was him. Poliakov. Even though the CCTV image was monochrome and blurred, there was no doubt. It looked like he had just entered a building through a revolving door. He wore a black beanie hat and a heavy coat, and there was something decidedly shifty in the way he was half looking over his shoulder, half looking up, as if searching for the camera that was filming him, but failing to see it. He had several days’ stubble and dark rings under his eyes. It was, in Alice’s experience, the image of an anxious man in hiding.

‘Where was this taken?’ Alice said.

Karen brought up a table of metadata. It meant nothing to Alice, but her colleague seemed to decipher it with ease. She launched some mapping software on one of her screens and keyed in some coordinates. The map zoomed into a location in central London. ‘Battersea,’ Karen said. And then, after a few more taps of the key-board: ‘One of the new residential blocks at the old power station.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Pump House. The footage was taken by a camera in the reception area.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. 22.13 hours.’

Alice felt a surge of heat through her veins. Even as she’d been researching him last night, Poliakov had been been active in London. Doing what? Was he planning something? Every instinct she had told her that if so, it needed to be stopped. Quickly.

‘The Mansion House,’ she repeated, her voice much calmer than her insides. ‘Do me a favour, Karen. Keep the search running. If he crops up anywhere else, let me know?’ There must have been something about the way she looked or spoke, because Karen’s demeanour changed. She seemed more alert as Alice stood up before hurrying out of the basement and up to her office on the fourth floor.