Ghost Flight (8 page)

He turned the cover with a heavy sense of foreboding.

Looking up at him from the title page was a stark image stamped in black. Jaeger stared at it, his mind reeling. Just as he’d feared, his memory hadn’t lied or played tricks on him.

The dark image was that of a stylised eagle standing on its tail, wings outstretched below a cruelly curved beak – its talons gripping a circular symbol etched with unreadable markings.

11

Jaeger sat at his kitchen table, his gaze turned inwards.

Before him were ranged three photographs: one, that of Andy Smith’s body, eagle symbol carved deep and bloody into his left shoulder; two, a photo that Jaeger had taken on his smartphone of the eagle symbol on the inside cover of the Operation Werewolf document
.

And the third – the photo of his wife and child.

During his time in the military, Jaeger hadn’t exactly been the marrying type. A long and happy marriage and a life in special forces didn’t often go together. Every month was a new mission – pitting himself against a sun-blasted desert, a sweaty jungle or an ice-clad mountain. There had been little time for prolonged romances.

But then the accident had happened. During a high-altitude freefall jump over the African savannah, Jaeger’s ’chute had malfunctioned. He was lucky to have survived. He’d spent months in hospital with a broken back, and though he’d fought his way back to physical fitness, his days in the SAS had been numbered.

It was during that time – the long year’s recovery – that he’d first met Ruth. They were introduced via a mutual friend and at first they hadn’t got along at all well. Ruth, six years his junior, a university graduate and a diehard wildlife and environmental campaigner, had assumed Jaeger to be her polar opposite.

As for Jaeger, he’d presumed a tree-hugging type like her would despise an elite soldier like him. It was down to a mixture of his razor-sharp, teasing humour and her feisty attitude, coupled with her striking good looks, that they’d gradually grown to appreciate each other . . . and eventually to fall in love.

Over time they’d realised they shared a common bond – a burning love of all things wild.

Ruth was three months pregnant with Luke on the day of their wedding, at which Andy Smith had been best man. And via Luke’s birth and the months and years that followed, they’d experienced the miracle of having brought a mini version of their two selves into this world.

Every day with Luke and Ruth had been a wonderful challenge and an adventure, which made the void of their dark loss all the more impossible to bear.

For close to an hour Jaeger stared at those three images – a mouldering yellow Nazi document and a police photo of an alleged suicide victim, both displaying that same eagle symbol; and the photo of Ruth and Luke – trying to fathom the connection that lay between them. There was a feeling he couldn’t shake that somehow that eagle symbol was linked to the death – no: the
disappearance
– of his wife and child.

In some unknowable way – some way that he couldn’t for the life of him seem to grasp – there was a disturbing sensation of cause and effect here. Call it a soldier’s sixth sense, but he’d learned to trust that inner voice of his over the years. Or maybe this was all complete bullshit. Maybe three years in Bioko and five weeks in Black Beach Prison had finally got the better of him, the paranoia eating into him like a dark and corrosive acid, rotting his mind.

Jaeger had almost no recollection of the night his wife and son had been ripped out of his life. It had been a still winter’s evening, one of a crisp, breathtaking serenity and beauty. They’d been camped out on the Welsh hills, the sweep of the starlit sky wide and wild above them. It was the kind of place where Jaeger had been at his happiest.

The fire had died to ashes and the last conscious thought Jaeger had had was of crawling into the tent, zipping together the sleeping bags, and his wife and son wrapping close to him for warmth. He’d been left half dead himself – the tent pumped full of a toxic gas that had rendered him utterly defenceless – so the lack of any further recollection was hardly surprising. And by the time he’d come to, he was lying in intensive care, his wife and child many days gone.

Yet what he couldn’t fathom – what terrified him – was the way in which that eagle symbol seemed to dig into those long-buried memories.

The army shrinks had warned him that the memories would be in there somewhere. That one day they would very likely start to resurface, like driftwood washed ashore by a storm-lashed sea.

But why was it this – this dark eagle symbol – that threatened to reach so deep and drag them back to the light?

12

Jaeger had spent the night alone in the apartment.

He’d had the dream again; the one that had for so long haunted him after Ruth and Luke had disappeared. As always, it had taken him right up until the moment of their being snatched away from him – the images crisp and clear as if it were only yesterday.

But the instant the dark terror struck, he’d woken, moaning, in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets. It tortured him – this inability to go there, to remember, even in the comparative safety of his own dreams.

He was up early.

He grabbed a pair of running shoes from the wardrobe, and set out to pound the frost-kissed fields. He headed south, following an easy slope that led across a shallow valley, crowned by the woodland of Grove Coppice on the far side. He hit the track that steered a wide loop through the trees, and upped his pace, settling into a familiar ground-eating rhythm.

This had always been his favourite part of the circuit – the thick wood shielding him from prying eyes, the tall ranks of pines deadening any sound of his passing. He let his mind settle into the beat of the run; let the meditative pulse of his footfalls quieten his troubled consciousness.

By the time he burst into the sunlight once more, at the northern end of Pheasant’s Copse, he knew exactly what he had to do.

Back at Wardour Castle, he showered quickly, then powered up his desktop. He sent a quick message to Captain – now Colonel – Evandro, hoping that his email address remained the same. After the usual niceties, he popped the question: who were the other parties that had bid against Wild Dog Media to undertake the coming expedition?

In Jaeger’s mind, if there were people out there with a motive to murder Andy Smith, surely the rival bidders had to be first amongst them.

That done, he gathered up the precious photo of his wife and child, replaced the secret papers in their hiding place in Grandpa Ted’s war chest, locked the apartment and fired up the Triumph. He took a leisurely ride down Hazeledon Lane; it was early and he had time to kill.

He parked at Tisbury’s Beckett Street Delicatessen. It was nine o’clock, and they were just opening for business. He ordered poached eggs, hickory-smoked bacon and black coffee. As he waited for the food, his eye was drawn to the newspaper rack. The headline across the nearest paper read:
Central African coup: President Chambara of Equatorial Guinea captured.

Jaeger grabbed it and flicked his eyes over the story, relishing the news along with the excellent breakfast.

Pieter Boerke had been bang on: his Gotcha coup had delivered all that he had promised. Boerke had somehow managed to ferry his men across the Gulf of Guinea during the height of a tropical storm. He’d chosen to do so deliberately, for local intelligence – most likely Major Mojo’s – had suggested that Chambara’s forces would be stood down due to the appalling weather.

Boerke’s men had struck from out of a howling, rain-lashed devil of a night. Chambara’s guards had been taken by utter surprise, their resistance fast crumbling. The President had been caught as he tried to flee the country in his private jet, at Bioko airport.

Jaeger smiled. Maybe he would be getting the seventh page of the
Duchessa
’s manifest, after all – not that it particularly seemed to matter now.

Fifteen minutes later, he pressed a finger on to a doorbell. He’d left the Triumph in the village and walked up the hill, having first phoned through a warning to Dulce that he was coming.

Dulce.
Sweet.
Smith’s wife had certainly proven true to her name.

Smith had met her in Brazil, during their second training mission, Dulce being a distant cousin of Colonel Evandro. Marriage had followed a whirlwind romance, and Jaeger couldn’t say that he blamed Smithy for grabbing his girl.

Five foot nine; dark, smouldering eyes and burnished skin – Dulce was smoking hot. She was also the perfect marriage material, as Jaeger had made clear in his best man’s speech, while at the same time gently reminding Dulce of Smithy’s bad habits but enduring loyalty.

The door to the Millside opened. Dulce stood there, striking as ever, a brave smile on her shadowed features. But there was no hiding the grief that lay raw and fresh just below the surface. Jaeger handed her the hamper that he’d purchased from the delicatessen, plus a hastily scribbled card.

She made coffee, while Jaeger filled her in on the short version of his three missing years. He’d maintained contact with her husband, of course, but it had been mostly one-way – Smithy reporting by email that nothing had been heard of Jaeger’s missing wife and child.

The deal Jaeger had cut with his closest friend was that his whereabouts would remain a closely guarded secret until he chose otherwise. There had been one caveat: if Smithy died or was otherwise incapacitated, his lawyer would release details of Jaeger’s whereabouts.

Jaeger figured that was how Raff and Feaney had found him, but he hadn’t troubled to ask. With Smithy dead, it was all pretty much an irrelevance now.

‘Was there anything?’ Jaeger asked, as the two of them shared some of Dulce’s
pasteis de nata
, a Brazilian delicacy, across the kitchen table. ‘Anything that might have suggested he was unhappy? That he’d take his own life?’

‘But of course not!’ Dulce’s eyes flashed with a spark of Latino anger. She always had had a fiery side. ‘How can you ask? We were happy. He was so happy. No. Andy would never have done what they say he did. It is just not possible.’

‘No money worries?’ Jaeger probed. ‘No grief with the kids at school? Help me here. I’m floundering around trying to find something.’

She shrugged. ‘There is nothing.’

‘He wasn’t drinking? He’d not hit the bottle?’

‘Jaeger, he’s gone. And no,
amigo
, he wasn’t drinking.’

Her eyes met his. Pained. Smoky. Storm-laden.

‘He had a mark,’ Jaeger ventured. ‘Kind of like a tattoo. On his left shoulder?’

‘What mark?’ Dulce looked blank. ‘He had nothing. I would know.’

Jaeger realised then that the police hadn’t shown her the photo of the dark eagle carved into her husband’s shoulder. He didn’t exactly blame them. It was already traumatic enough for her; she didn’t need to be confronted with the full gory details.

He moved swiftly on. ‘This expedition into the Amazon, how was he about it? Any trouble with the team? With Carson? The film company? Anything?’

‘You know how he was about the jungle: he loved it. He was so excited.’ A pause. ‘There was maybe one thing. It troubled me more than it did him. We used to joke about it. I met the team. There was this woman. A Russian. Irina. Irina Narov. Blonde. She thinks she is the world’s most beautiful woman. We didn’t hit it off.’

‘Go on,’ Jaeger prompted.

She reflected for a moment. ‘It was almost as if she thought she was the natural-born leader; that she was better than him. Like she wanted to take it – take the expedition – away from him.’

Jaeger made a mental note to get some deep background checks made on Irina Narov. He’d never heard of someone committing murder for such tenuous a reason. But hell, a lot was arguably at stake here: with global TV exposure, the promise of international fame and the potential fortune to follow.

Maybe there was a motive after all.

Jaeger pressed north, the Triumph eating up the miles.

Somehow, oddly, the visit to Dulce had settled him. It had confirmed what he’d known in his heart – that all had been good in Andy Smith’s life. He hadn’t killed himself; he’d been killed. Now to trace the murderers.

He’d left Dulce promising that if she or the kids needed anything –
anything
– she only had to call.

It was a long drive from Tisbury to the Scottish borders.

Jaeger had never quite understood why his great-uncle Joe had chosen to move there, so far from friends and family. He’d always felt that the man was hiding, but from what exactly he didn’t know. Buccleuch Fell, east of Langholm, lying below Hellmoor Loch – you could hardly find a more remote and tucked-away location and still be on planet earth.

The Triumph was a hybrid road/off-road bike. By the time Jaeger turned on to the track that led up to Uncle Joe’s Cabin, as they’d always called it, he was very glad of it, too. He hit the first dusting of snow, and as the track climbed higher so the conditions worsened.

Lying between Mossbrae Height and Law Kneis – each a 1,500-foot peak – the cabin nestled in a rare clearing in a vast expanse of forest, at close to a thousand feet. Jaeger could tell from the thick layer of snow that no one had driven this way for many a day now.

He had a box of groceries strapped to the bike’s rack – milk, eggs, bacon, sausages, porridge oats, bread. He’d done a pit stop at Westmorland services, one of the last before he’d turned off the M6. By the time he pulled into Great Uncle Joe’s clearing, he was using both his feet to stabilise the bike, as it slewed through humped snowdrifts a foot deep or more.

In the summer, this place was something close to paradise. Jaeger, Ruth and Luke had found it hard to keep away.

But in the long months of the winter . . .

Three decades back, Great Uncle Joe had bought this land off the Forestry Commission. He’d built the cabin pretty much single-handedly – though it was far too sumptuous to warrant the name. He’d diverted a stream on to the land, and excavated a series of small lakes, one cascading into the other. All around had been landscaped into an eco-paradise, complete with shaded corners for growing vegetables.