Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (28 page)

“Duly noted,” Gray said.  “Last month, I was taken hostage by members
of Abu Sayyaf and you sent Len Smart and Simon Baines to rescue me.  You
gave them unserviceable ammunition in order to increase the chances of them
being captured and killed.  Is that correct?”

Farrar again acknowledged the statement as being true.

“When we managed to escape from the Philippines, you found out which route
we were taking and you hired a hit man to intercept and kill us in Durban.”

He looked at Farrar, who nodded.  “Correct.”

“The same hit man who killed British national Timmy Hughes in Singapore two
weeks ago.”

“Yes.”

“You also sent a hit team to kill Carl Levine, his wife Sandra and their
daughter Alana, as well as Jeff Campbell and his wife Anne.  They were
staying in a caravan in Dorset, which was recently destroyed in an explosion.”

“That’s right.”

Farrar noticed that Gray was becoming complacent, strolling around the room
as he made his accusations, and he’d taken his eye off the pistol near the
camera.  Farrar didn’t yet have an opportunity to grab the weapon as Gray
was still too close, but with a handful of cards still to be read, there was
still time.  He calculated it to be three steps, so even a two second
start should be enough.

He kept his focus on Gray, deliberately keeping his gaze off the gun, just
in case he telegraphed his intentions. 

The next question, when it came, caught him off guard.

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.  “You’re the one
who invented this nonsense.  I can hardly be expected to explain what goes
on inside your mind.”

“Then how about I give you the theory presented to me by Jeff Campbell?”

“By all means, go ahead.”

Gray read from the card, explaining how the government had made a deal with
the six surviving men in return for their silence, and how Farrar had been
instrumental in trying to eliminate everyone involved.

“Does that sound right?”

Farrar waved a dismissive hand.  “Whatever.”

Gray strode purposefully towards him, his face ending up inches from
Farrar’s, the venom in his eyes palpable.

“Don’t give me whatever!”  He shouted.  “
Is that what
happened?”

“Yes!  Yes!  Exactly like that!”

Gray straightened up.  He turned his back and walked away, studying
the next card in the pile.  Farrar watched him take two, three, four
steps, still concentrating on the next question, and he saw his chance.

Gray heard the sound of the chair leg scraping against the floor as Farrar
made a bolt for it, and by the time he looked at where his captive had been
,
he’d already reached the gun.  Gray started to charge
towards him but the pistol came up, pointing at his face.  He stopped
dead.

“The safety’s still on,” he said, hoping to get Farrar to take his eye off
the target.

“Nice try,” Farrar said.  “I know my way around a Browning and that’s
the first thing I checked.  I also know there’s a round in the chamber.”

Farrar ejected the magazine, the gun never wavering.  The clip was
full and he rammed it back into the grip.  “Turn the camera off.”

Gray moved slowly over to the recorder and hit the stop button.

“Give me the recording.”

Gray ejected the USB flash drive and threw it on the floor near Farrar’s
feet.  “Now what?”  He asked.  “Are you going to shoot an
unarmed man, a delusional imposter?”

“Enough games, Tom.”

“Oh, so now you acknowledge that I’m Tom Gray. 
Too
much of a coward to admit it to the world?”

“I said
enough
!”  Farrar shouted.  He tried to gather
himself, concentrating on turning this in his
favour
.  “Tell me where the others are.”

 “That’s not going to happen and you know it,” Tom spat.  “If I
don’t meet up with them in thirty minutes, they’ll disappear.”

“Tom, I’ll give you one last chance.  Tell me where they are and I’ll
make it a quick death, otherwise…”

Gray laughed.  “You know, when you try to sound intimidating it just
comes off as desperate.”  He sat down on the chair.  “And just what
would you do if you found them? 
Apologise
for the inconvenience you’ve caused over the last
year or so?  You’ve sent teams to kill them and they failed.  What
makes you think you can get it right this time?”

“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Farrar said.

Gray snorted.  “You haven’t got it in you.  You’re happy to sit
behind a desk and let others do the dirty work, but you’re nowhere near man
enough to pull the trigger yourself.”

Farrar took two steps towards him, the gun aiming at the centre of Gray’s
face.  “I’ll give you one last chance, Tom. 
Where are they?
”

Gray ignored the question.  “What are you going to do when this gets
out, James?  You can’t bury the truth forever, you know that.”

“Very apt choice of phrase,” Farrar said, “because that’s exactly what I
intend to do, starting with you.”

Gray just smiled back.  “It’s over, James.”  He got to his feet
and started walking towards Farrar.  He had three paces to cover, but only
managed one before the trigger sent the firing pin smashing down on the
percussion cap of the next round in the chamber.

Click!

Farrar looked stunned.  He ejected the round, thinking he had a
blockage.  He tried the next round, and the next, both with the same
result.

Gray grabbed the gun from him and pushed him to the floor.  He removed
the clip, then extracted the top bullet and pulled a penknife from his
pocket.  He eased the bullet from the cartridge and tipped the contents
onto Farrar’s chest.

“Sand,” he said, dropping the empty brass casing into Farrar’s hand. 
“Seems to be happening quite a lot these days.”

Farrar scrambled to his feet, his fists clenched, but Gray ignored him and
walked over to a pile of boxes covered by an old tarpaulin.  He dragged it
aside to reveal a television set, which he switched on.

Farrar looked at a picture of himself, streaming live to the nation via the
BBC news channel.  He raised a hand, and a moment later the figure on the
screen did the same.

Gray waved to the four corners of the room. 
“
Fibre
optic cameras and state-of-the-art microphones,
courtesy, ironically, of Her Majesty’s Government.”

He clicked his throat mic. 
“All yours, Andrew.”

*
* *

Harvey entered the room accompanied by two armed police officers. 
“Don’t forget to read him his rights,” Harvey told them as they forced Farrar
to the floor and cuffed him.

Farrar was dragged to his feet and marched out of the building. 
Harvey and Gray followed them, and Tom watched his nemesis take a seat in the
back of the unmarked car.

“We got some great footage,” Gerald Small said, handing Gray a tablet
PC.  “You ought to be on the stage.”

“Can I get a copy?”  Gray asked, handing over the comms kit.

“Already done,” Small smiled.  “I’ll get Andrew to drop it off at the
safe house later today.”

Gray thanked him for his help and joined Harvey in the Ford saloon. 
They drove away from the city, heading for the quiet residential area which
housed the four-storey building Gray and the others would call home for the
next few days.

There was no telling what immediate effect his transmission would have,
though Gray knew the Prime Minister’s spin doctor would no doubt be working
overtime to play it down.  The next step was to get a live interview on
the BBC and give his side of the story before the political machine had a
chance to bury the story as a hoax.  Paul Gross hadn’t been convinced that
he’d be allowed to broadcast a live interview, but Gray would simply take it to
the other news outlets if the BBC hierarchy refused to play ball, and he’d
already created a home video that would hit the top dozen social media sites if
no broadcaster was willing to run the story.

Harvey’s phone chirped and he put it on speakerphone. 
“Hi, Hamad.”

“Andrew, we may have found Mansour.”

“Abdul Mansour?”  Gray asked, perking up on hearing the name, and
Harvey suddenly remembered he wasn’t alone in the car.  He went to take
the phone from its dashboard mounting but Gray stopped him.  After all
he’d been through at Mansour’s
hand,
he thought he was
entitled to hear this.

Harvey saw the look of determination, and decided not to make a fight of
it.  “What did you find, Hamad?”

“Remember the lady we followed through the airport this morning?  The
one we thought was walking strange?”

“Yeah, but we discounted her.  She showed her face to the border
guard.”

“I know, but there were no other hits, so I went back to her.  If the
guard hadn’t seen her face I would have been certain we had our man, so I
checked him out.  Turns out he had over thirty grand of gambling debts
until three years ago,
then
they were suddenly paid
off.  He’s been debt free since.”

“That’s not unusual,” Harvey said.  “Maybe he just stopped gambling.”

“That was my thought, but I checked with the casino he used to frequent. 
He still goes there six days a week, and spends an average of two hundred
pounds a night.”

“Doesn’t sound like something you could do on a border guard’s
salary.
”

“I know,” Hamad said.  “Someone’s been giving him a shitload of cash
each month, and you’d expect him to be giving something in return.”

“Such as turning a blind eye now and again,” Harvey agreed.  “So
assuming it is Mansour, where did he go once he left the airport?”

“We tracked his car through the Highway Agency’s network of cameras to a
place in Stratford.”

Harvey pulled over and asked for the address, which he typed into the
satnav.  “I can be there in twenty minutes,” he said, and pulled out into
the traffic.

“SO15 won’t be there for another thirty,” Farsi said.  “They’re in the
middle of an operation at the moment.”

“Okay, I’ll hang back when I get there.”

Harvey steered the car through side streets, trying to avoid the main
arteries of the city that would be clogged at this time of day.

“Abdul Mansour is here, in the UK?”  Gray asked, incredulous, and
Harvey nodded.  He explained that they’d received intelligence and were
working it up, though he didn’t go as far as telling Gray about the specific
threat.  “We think he came in dressed as a Muslim woman and was helped
through customs by an officer on the take.”

 They arrived at the target street seventeen minutes later. 
Harvey parked close to the junction and told Gray to wait in the car.

“I’m going to do a walk past,” he said, taking the phone from its
holder.  “I want you to stay here, Tom.”

Gray nodded.  It wasn’t his operation, and the last thing he wanted to
do was
antagonise
Harvey
after all he’d done for him.

*
* *

“Abdul, we may have a problem!”

Mansour had just finished taking a shower and he went to the living room to
see what Mohammad, the house owner, was concerned about.  He found the man
looking through a small gap in the net curtains.

“What is it?”

“A stranger in the street,” Mohammad said, and Mansour watched the man
walking slowly past the house.  He was on the other side of the street and
didn’t seem to have any particular destination, simply ambling from one end of
the street to the other.

“He could be a salesman, or an estate agent.  How can you be sure he’s
a threat?”

“Because he parked his car down there,” Mohammad said, pointing to a Ford,
“and there’s someone in the passenger seat.”

Mansour could see the occupant of the car, but couldn’t make out the facial
features.  He asked Mohammad for a camera and he used it to zoom in on the
car.

His heart almost stopped.  He instantly
recognised
the man from his time in the southern
Philippines and a strange, alien feeling washed over him.

It took him some time to realise that it was fear.

Mansour was torn between confronting the man and running, and prudence dictated
he choose the latter.  He took a photo of the man and handed the camera to
Mohammad.

“You are right,” he said.  “I must leave, but I want you to find out
who this man is.”

“What of the operation?”

The cameraman was due to arrive in twenty minutes to collect the virus, but
Mansour knew it was too late.  Somehow they had found him, which meant it
was time to disappear again. 

“It is postponed.”  He ran up the stairs and threw on the
burqa
,
then collected the inhaler and spare canister and put them in his pocket. 
He left the passport as it had probably been compromised, but he grabbed the
cash on the dressing table.