Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (13 page)

Cottinger sat in the second of three rows of desks that swept almost the entire length of the room. Mounted on the wall in front of him were banks of oversized television monitors, but now he stared at his own terminal screen, which was showing a map of the earth. He double-clicked his mouse and the screen shifted at once to a real-time view taken from the nose of a drone, which the console told him was flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The view from the drone’s camera was over 120 degrees, extending from the surface of the terrain below to the thin clouds in front of and above the aircraft. When Cottinger nudged an icon on his touch screen, the focus automatically sharpened.

The trials of the drone were taking place somewhere deep inside the Gulf state of Oman – Cottinger could have supplied the precise coordinates of its location but it didn’t mean a hill of beans to him. On the screen, Oman looked as parched as his throat right now – an endless expanse of gravel-coloured desert. The only vegetation visible was the occasional patch of desert grass, little more than large ink dots on his screen; in ten minutes of watching, Cottinger hadn’t seen a single tree, or a human being.

He knew that one day soon he wouldn’t be able to tell the drone what to do, but for now he was still in charge. Which would have suited Cottinger just fine, if his head weren’t throbbing so much.

‘Stay at one thousand feet,’ he said into the mouthpiece of the mic strapped around his neck.

Now came the one interesting manoeuvre of the exercise – a sharp turn and a communication with a unit on the ground, three soldiers shaded from the blazing sun in a small bivouac in the packed gravel and sand of the Omani heartland. ‘Alpha One, turn ninety degrees west and stay at a thousand feet.’

He watched as the drone turned sharply, its long, wide wing dipping to facilitate its turn. He started to nod, but then he realised that the drone had turned completely the wrong way and was descending rapidly. ‘West,’ he said sharply. ‘Ninety degrees west. Not east.’ He realised he was talking to the vehicle as if it were human, but after all, that was the point of the exercise. Around him in the open-plan surroundings everyone had gone quiet.

He watched as the drone ignored him and headed east towards the sea – and towards the nearest habitations. It was still descending, without losing speed; in ten minutes it would be on the ground – crashed most likely, it seemed, since it showed no signs of lowering its landing wheels.

‘Alpha One, go back to a thousand feet. Climb!’ he commanded, resisting the temptation to stand up himself. That wouldn’t do any good. To make matters worse, Colonel Galsworthy was striding towards him, red in the face, and already shouting. ‘What is it? Cottinger, what’s wrong?’

But Cottinger barely heard him. He was busy on his keyboard, entering the drone’s current coordinates, its airspeed, and then the calculated rate of its descent. Within seconds a small window appeared at the corner of his screen, showing a magnified area of the corner of Oman, marking one point in particular with a large red star. The projected trajectory of the drone had it landing in eight – no, now it was seven – minutes, smack in the middle of Salalah.
Population 197,169,
read a small line in the window on his screen.

Christ, thought Cottinger. At least the drone was unarmed. But even so, for it to land on some house or shack or hovel – Cottinger had only the haziest idea of how Omanis lived – would be disastrous. Three tons of polymer and a tankful of fuel – the explosion and resulting fire could kill dozens of people. Innocent people, completely unaware that their government – in fact the Sultan himself – had lent their homeland like a game board for the Americans to play war on.

He continued talking to the drone, trying to put urgency into his voice, as if an unmanned aircraft would sense that its master was saying, enough was enough, you’ve had your fun, now
cut it out.
He realised Galsworthy was standing next to him, and one glance showed that his commanding officer had seen the little window on his screen and taken in its ominous forecast. ‘Can we shoot it down?’ he asked, his voice only faintly hopeful.

‘No, sir. The Omanis didn’t grant additional air space. If the drone makes it to the Arabian Sea, we could send something from a carrier, but there wouldn’t be much point if it’s going to crash in the water anyway.’

‘How much time have we got left?’

Cottinger looked at the digital clock on his terminal. ‘Five minutes, maybe six.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Galsworthy helpfully. ‘I’d better go call the Pentagon.’

He moved off at speed, and Cottinger kept talking: ‘Back off, Alpha One. Turn around, Alpha One.’ Then, in frustration, ‘
Behave
, you goddamn’ drone!’

Suddenly, like a naughty child that finally listens to its parent, Alpha One lifted a wing sharply, and began to turn round. Cottinger watched sceptically and decided not to give any orders for a moment. His hopes started to rise, and soon he began to smile in relief – Alpha One was on course again, heading back at speed for the safe environs of the desert.

Three minutes later, now gradually descending, the drone sent a message to the sweltering trio of American soldiers camped out below it, a message which they successfully relayed back to Cottinger at base. And ninety seconds after that, wheels down, the drone landed smoothly on the hard-packed temporary runway created by the Army Corps of Engineers six weeks before.

In relief, Cottinger put a hand on the back of his neck and found it covered in sweat. He turned to Galsworthy and said, ‘I don’t understand. One minute it was out of control, then suddenly it was a pussycat again.’

Chapter 20

Henri Leplan sat down at a desk in the SFI office at Geneva airport and signed the attendance book. It was his turn to do the morning shift, a job he disliked; there was rarely much excitement and you could spend the entire shift in the Immigration hall, just waiting for an alert from one of the desks when they thought they recognised a face or a dodgy passport. But too often nothing at all cropped up to relieve the boredom.

Today he particularly begrudged the time spent at the airport since his own inquiry into Steinmetz’s accident had reached an interesting stage. The previous evening, just before he’d left the office, he’d had a message from a contact in the German forensic service. The paint scrape along the driver’s side of Steinmetz’s car had matched a sample in their paint library. It had turned out to be a special hand-blended colour called Black Onyx. Most people would think it was just a shiny black paint, his contact had added, but in fact it contained finely ground gemstone, which made it particularly translucent. It was only available on top-of-the-range models, Audis, BMWs and Mercedes. What interested Leplan particularly was the information that any car with this paint would have had to be ordered specially. If this had been done in Switzerland, it shouldn’t be difficult to trace the person who had ordered it. Leplan was becoming more and more convinced that there was something sinister about Steinmetz’s accident and he couldn’t wait to get on with the next stage of his researches.

He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk, pulling towards him the log of the night shift. The only thing of interest was the notification at 23.15 the previous evening of an unscheduled private plane coming in from Moscow, due to land at 10.20 this morning. Some bigwig coming for something or other, he thought. Can’t be a delegation, or we would have been notified sooner. He looked at his watch: 8.30. He picked up the phone and dialled traffic control. ‘Any lowdown on this Moscow arrival?’ he asked.

‘It’s an ambulance flight. Notified last night. Expected to arrive at 10.12. We’ll be landing them at the charter terminal. Crew of four, plus doctor and two nurses. Picking up and leaving straight away. Don’t think anyone’s intending to go landside but Immigration will know.’

Leplan finished his coffee and strolled over to the Immigration hall, weaving his way through a hubbub of excited children. All was quiet in in the office behind the desks.

‘It’s a diplomatic flight,’ said the duty immigration officer. ‘One of their guys has had an accident and is being repatriated for urgent medical attention. They didn’t give us a name and we have no powers to ask, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s authorised by their Ambassador. A stretcher case, they said, so we’ve agreed the ambulance can drive airside to load the stretcher on. No one’s landing and they’re going straight off.’

‘God help them, whoever they are,’ said Leplan. ‘They’d get much better medical attention here. Maybe it’s a fatality. I think I’ll go over and watch proceedings. Might have a word with the ambulance crew. I assume they’re locals?’

The immigration officer nodded. ‘See you there,’ he said.

At quarter to ten Leplan and the immigration officer watched as an ambulance was cleared through the barrier of the charter terminal. A dark-suited man got down from the front passenger seat and showed a document to the guard, and the ambulance was waved in. Leplan didn’t recognise him from where he stood, but he knew the camera at the guard post would have taken a good shot of his face. Exactly on time a small plane landed and parked. The ambulance drove up to the door, and a stretcher on which was strapped an inert figure wrapped in a blanket was quickly loaded on board by the ambulance attendants, supervised by the dark-suited man. Within fifteen minutes the plane was taxiing for take-off.

Hmm. That was a pretty smooth operation, thought Leplan as he waved the ambulance to a halt by the barrier. I wonder what it was all about.

It was not until Liz sat down in the café in the Place du Bourg-de-Four that it struck her how strange it was that Sorsky had chosen this as a meeting place. Until now their meetings had taken place on park benches with a clear view of the surroundings and she had received the impression that he had taken extensive precautions against surveillance. But this café was in a crowded little square, where it would be impossible to spot surveillance. She wondered why he had changed his operating methods. Did he have some reason to think there was no longer a risk?

She selected a table inside, by the wall at the back, so she would at least see everyone who came in. But the disadvantage was that she could see nothing of what was going on outside. The café was almost empty; it was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. She ordered coffee, unfolded her newspaper and kept her eye on the door.

Sorsky was late again. She glanced at her watch for the fourth time. It was 11.45, three-quarters of an hour past the time he’d given her. How long should she wait? No longer than an hour, she decided.

At five to twelve she rang Russell White.

‘It’s no show,’ she said. He would recognise her number.

‘No show?’

‘Yes. Have you heard anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘OK. I’m coming back.’

‘All right. See you shortly.’

Chapter 21

Liz dropped her bag on the floor, closed the door and leaned back against it. Home, she thought. Through the open door of the sitting room she could see the sun shining in through the sash windows on to the carpet. She’d bought this place a couple of years ago with the proceeds of the sale of her basement flat in the same large Victorian house and a mortgage she could only just afford. She’d loved the basement flat too when she’d bought it – the first property she had ever owned – though it was rather shabby and dark, and for several years she’d had neither the time nor the money to improve it. But when she’d returned from a posting to Northern Ireland, this ground-floor flat had been on the market. She’d viewed it first out of curiosity, with no idea that she might be able to afford it, but the estate agent had surprised her with his estimate of what she might get for the basement, and her mother, who had never liked the basement flat, had encouraged her to go for it, and suddenly to her great surprise she had found herself the owner.

She still had too little time to look after the flat properly, and she hadn’t yet got round to employing a cleaner to replace her old one, who had retired to the South Coast; after several days away the dust lay in a thin layer on the surfaces and last weekend’s newspapers were still in the heap on the floor where she’d left them. But it was Saturday and she’d soon have the place tidied up.

As she dusted and vacuumed, she smiled at the contrast between her humdrum cleaning and what she’d been doing twenty-four hours earlier. After waiting fruitlessly for an hour in the little café in the Place du Bourg-de-Four, she had spent the afternoon at the Embassy with Russell White. As soon as he’d learned that Sorsky hadn’t shown up, he’d put a surveillance team on to the Russian Trade Offices and another man at the Russian Embassy to try and get a sighting of Sorsky. Each hour they phoned in to report; each hour they repeated that there was no sign of the man. Then White got one of his colleagues, who had grown up in Normandy and spoke French with a regional accent, to ring the Russian Trade Delegation and ask for Sorsky. The receptionist had said that he wasn’t in the office, and no, she didn’t know when he would next be there.

Liz had cancelled her flight reservation and rung her mother to explain she wouldn’t be home in time for lunch the next day. She’d spent a sleepless night in the hotel, kept awake by the uncertainty of the situation. Could Sorsky have had a change of heart? It was always a possibility, especially if he had found out nothing further and felt that he’d already done all he could to alert the West to the threat to Clarity.