Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (37 page)

She gave him a deadpan look, then a fixed smile. ‘No, Luke Carlton. I have not been shopping for lingerie. I’ve got us tickets to see Ellie Goulding at the O2.’

‘Great. When?’

‘Next Saturday.’

Luke said nothing.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Elise, ‘don’t tell me you can’t make it?’

There were some things Luke just couldn’t hide. All those years in Special Forces successfully giving his interrogators the blank poker face on escape-and-evasion exercises. Name, rank and number, that was all. Anything else: ‘I’m sorry, I cannot answer that question.’ Yet here he was now, transparent as a pane of glass when it came to Elise. He knew that a week hence he could be anywhere. In fact, the chances were he probably would be somewhere else, given what they had learned today. Would they have found the device by then? What if the patient had been bluffing and London, not Manchester, was the real target?

His brain racing, Luke found it hard to picture himself skipping off to an Ellie Goulding concert when he was one of the very few people who knew that a radioactive bomb could go off anywhere in Britain at any moment. ‘It’s fine,’ he lied. ‘I thought I had something on then.’

But Elise knew him too well. ‘Bollocks,’ she said calmly. ‘It’s me you’re talking to. I’m not one of your squaddies, remember? If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, I get it. Just don’t give me any BS. I thought we’d agreed on that.’

‘You’re right, and I’m sorry.’ Luke ran his hands through his sandy hair and let out a deep sigh. He had so much on his mind he wondered if now was the time to break protocol and let her in on some of it. But how many other couples were in the same situation? He was damned if he’d be the first to break the circle of trust and leak.

‘Luke,’ said Elise, pulling him closer and kissing him again on the lips. ‘Luke, I love you – I hope you know that – but some things have got to change. Things haven’t been right between us these past few weeks. It’s OK, I’m not about to accuse you of
anything, but you have to admit you’ve been quite distant, haven’t you?’

Luke could hardly deny she had a point. But where was all this leading?

‘So I’ve been thinking,’ she continued. ‘Now would be a really good time to consider moving to something . . . a little more . . . stable?’

Luke met her eye. ‘Elise, I have a stable job. I work for the Foreign Office. Well, let’s call it a branch of government anyway. They pay me a monthly salary. Remember?’

‘Yes, I know that and I don’t want to stop you doing what you like. It’s just that you’re hardly ever here, are you?’

‘I’m here now,’ he replied, and she shot him a look. ‘Sorry,’ he added, ‘that was crass. Where are you going with this?’

‘Well,’ she said, brightening, ‘you remember Hugo? At Goldman Sachs?’

Luke groaned. ‘Oh, God! What’s the golden boy up to now?’

‘I know you don’t like him,’ continued Elise. ‘A lot of men don’t. But hear me out. Hugo’s brother, Jackson, runs the family investment business.’

‘Of course he does.’

She ignored his interjection. ‘Well, Jackson wants to meet you. He’s looking to hire someone with your skills.’

‘My skills?’ Whoever Jackson was, he couldn’t have the faintest idea of the sort of thing Luke had spent the last few years doing. If he did, it would probably give him nightmares. ‘And what kind of a name is Jackson? Is he in entertainment?’ Almost as soon as he’d said it Luke regretted it. He was coming across as an arse.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I’m just out on my feet here. If that’s what you’d like then, sure, I’ll meet him.’ Go through the motions, thought Luke. At least you can say you’ve made the effort. Listen to what he’s got to say, pretend to consider it, then make your excuses and leave.

‘Great.’ Elise smiled. ‘I’ll set it up.’

She forgot to mention the mystery woman at the art gallery.

WHILE LUKE SLEPT
fitfully, the wheels of government machinery were rolling through the night, unseen by the public. The single word ‘Manchester’, uttered by a sick man in a London hospital, had triggered a national response. The Prime Minister and senior members of the National Security Council were alerted; authorization was quickly given for full preventative measures to be taken. One of the first calls made from the task force operations room in Thames House was to the Police National CBRNE Centre at Ryton, in Warwickshire. Located south of Coventry, and 130 kilometres down the M6 from Manchester, it was judged the most suitable base to respond to the new information. All leave was cancelled: officers were called at home, brought back on duty, then organized into four-strong search teams, equipped with FH40 radiation detector pagers: grey devices that resembled a bulky mobile phone. Every available scientific detector van was mobilized, with two being diverted from East Midlands airport and sent up to Manchester. Under Operation Cyclamen, the joint venture between the UK Border Agency and the Home Office to prevent radioactive materials entering the country, a light aircraft with detection equipment was put up to criss-cross the night skies over Greater Manchester.

Of course, one awkward question was troubling those
directing the operation. What if ‘Manchester’ was just a red herring to distract everyone from the real target?

‘We can’t take any chances on this one,’ said Alwyn Hughes, the national security adviser. It was one a.m., a full five hours since Luke and Jenny had reported in from the hospital, and he was speaking on a secure line to the director general of MI5. ‘The advice the Home Secretary and I have given the PM,’ he said, ‘is that we maintain those assets up at Manchester but be prepared for this device to crop up in any of our cities. Especially London.’

‘We’ve put out feelers with all our CHISes around the country,’ replied the MI5 boss, ‘and the Greater Manchester Police Counter-terrorism Unit is working its sources now. Kelly’s gone straight up there to oversee it.’ There was a brief buzzing on the line.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that,’ said the national security adviser. Who?’

‘Kelly Little. The national coordinator for CT.’

‘Of course, good. Look, I don’t think we can maintain this level of activity for very long, so the pressure is on your people to find this thing, and it’s only going to get worse.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ said the director general.

‘Of course you do. Forgive me,’ said the Welshman. ‘It’s just that sitting where I am right now is bringing this whole thing into focus. I’ve just signed an order to break open the strategic reserve of casualty bags. Three hundred.’

ANA MARÍA ACOSTA
was not an impatient woman. But the journey from 94 Ashburnham Gardens to the house in Twickenham took her nearly an hour, during which time she used the horn no less than seven times. Driving her beloved midnight-blue Audi RS 5 convertible through the lurching late-afternoon traffic of south-west London, she went over the priorities. Suarez had been quite explicit on the phone. Drop everything, get over to the safe house where the hired muscle were staying and sort things out. Use your discretion, he had told her. From the sound of it, something had gone very wrong in that house and things were unravelling fast. They couldn’t have that, not at this late stage in the operation. It needed to be dealt with immediately. Her plan for the English spy’s girlfriend had to be put on hold.

She parked in the quiet suburban street and reached onto the back seat for her outsize tan leather handbag. She locked the car, walked up to the door and pressed a manicured finger to the entry phone for the ground-floor flat. Ana María grimaced. The buzzer was smeared black with over-use and slightly sticky to the touch. She wiped the tip of her finger on her jeans. ‘
Sí?
’ came a disembodied voice from inside.

‘
Final
,’ she replied. It was the simplest of prearranged code words and she was buzzed in.

The room stank. That was the first thing she noticed. That and
the unmade beds, the empty beer cans, the discarded fast-food containers and the scattered porn mags they had made little attempt to hide. Ana María stood there in her dark denim skinny jeans, her immaculate leather shoes, her tailored jacket and her crisp white shirt, which revealed only a hint of cleavage, and took it all in at a glance. Five men, sitting, squatting, sprawling among all this detritus. Three were smoking, drawing long gasps on those coarse Pielrojas black-tobacco cigarettes from South America. Another was cramming the last of a takeaway doner kebab into his mouth, absent-mindedly wiping his greasy fingers on the thin yellow bedspread beside him. Then he licked them. These men disgusted her.

‘
Que barbaridad
,’ she remarked, curling her lip in contempt. ‘Which of you wants to speak up?’ They looked from one to another in silence. ‘Fine.’ She pointed at the man who had just finished eating his kebab. ‘You!’ she commanded. ‘Tell me, in your own words – and please take your time – what in hell has gone wrong here? You were given a simple task. Collect the merchandise, bring it to London, store it somewhere safe. Other people, smarter than you, will take over. But no. We’ve lost two people. They’re in hospital and the alarm has been raised. This
bastardo
government knows what is coming now. The net will be closing in on us. So?’

‘Señora . . .’ He was a big man with big fists, but spoke meekly. Ana María Acosta had acquired a certain reputation within the underworld. ‘We followed our instructions. We did exactly as you ordered. The pick-up in Cornwall went without any problems. We covered our tracks on the beach, we made the rendezvous at . . .
Como se llama?
What was it called, that place?’ He turned to the others behind him.

‘Jamaica Inn,’ they chorused.

‘Yes, Jamaica Inn. We made the switch there, then drove up here to Londres. We came off the M4 at the junction as planned, and took that road on the map. And now,
mira
, we are here, in Twicken Ham.’ He stopped, catching his breath.

‘So what went wrong?’ she pressed.

‘At first everything was to plan. We have housed the cargo at the address they gave us. It’s in a lock-up, not far from here and—’

‘Take me there.’ She cut him off in mid-sentence. ‘I need to see it.’

‘Señora, please, we cannot go in there. Not now. Not after what has happened. You see, they called us, the two
submarinistas
. They called us from Plymouth when they began to feel sick. They warned us. This – this
instrumento
we have been transporting, it makes anyone who goes near it fall sick. It is not safe to be around it.’

Ana María scanned their faces. Was anyone here going to man up and finish the job? Apparently not. ‘So does this mean,’ she spoke slowly and deliberately, ‘that you will not be completing the job you have been asked to do?’

All five men looked down at the carpet, too embarrassed to speak.

‘That’s OK,’ she said gently. ‘I understand. Just do me this one favour. Write down the address of the lock-up and you can all go back to your lives. You will be taken care of, don’t worry.’ The men brightened. She took out a pen and a small notebook and passed them to the man still squatting there. She waited patiently, still close to the door, as he scribbled down the address and returned the notebook to her.

‘And now I must pay you all your farewell bonuses,’ she said. Her back to them, she reached into her handbag.

Later, safely buckled into the Audi, she reflected on their expressions when she had turned to face them. Priceless, something she would always treasure. It was the look of despair, the acknowledgement of failure, the acceptance of punishment. The silenced Czech-made Skorpion machine-pistol had bucked and trembled in her hand as she emptied the entire magazine into the room, sweeping it from side to side, slicing through the worthless trash who had let her and
El Patrón
down. Thirty rounds should do it. When the shooting stopped she had sniffed and smiled, the weapon still warm in her hands, savouring the familiar smell of
cordite smoke from the spent cartridge cases that littered the floor at her feet. God, how she missed killing: there were so few opportunities now in this job.

Ana María punched a number into her phone. In another part of London a man with slicked-back hair and a ponytail answered the call. ‘
Hola
,’ she said. ‘It’s me. It’s done. Send someone to clean it up.’

‘
IS THAT IT?
All that fuss for this?
Madre de Dios
, it’s nothing special, is it?’

For a long time they just stood there, staring at it, keeping their distance but fascinated by its latent power, by what it could do, the damage it could cause. Behind them, the heavy metal door of the lock-up had been bolted shut. The instructions had been clear. It was paramount that nobody should see what was inside. Outside, just beyond the industrial park, the residents and workers in the shops, the off-licences and law-abiding businesses of Twickenham went about their daily lives, oblivious to what was hidden in their midst. The ‘pig’, the cylindrical object that had been conveyed halfway across the world to them, was unremarkable to look at. True, it was an unusual shape, like a giant metal Thermos or a miniature milk churn. Its only distinguishing features were its two metal handles and the small yellow and black sign near the top with the triangles. But to Ana María, standing at a respectful distance, it was all about what it could do. To her, it was beautiful.

‘This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?’ said Silvio, the man with the slicked-back hair.

‘What? The drivers?’ she replied, surprised. ‘Of course not. They’ve played their part and now no one is to know. Suarez is already choosing the replacements for the next phase.’

‘And the welder?’

‘He’s ready. He’s been working hard for us.’

Silvio nodded. Then a frown creased his forehead as he remembered something important. ‘You know,
El Patrón
is concerned about this contamination issue. He’s not worried about the two submariners. They, too, have played their part. But he wants to know if this is going to affect the operation.’