The stranger couldn’t be bluffing. He seemed to know too much for that. But if he really had read Ben’s military file, that meant he had access to high-level classified information. Which in turn meant he wasn’t just anybody. He was also talking far too openly about matters that were not meant to be public knowledge.
Ben glanced around him at all the vacant seats, and wondered whether it was just a coincidence that he’d been seated in an almost empty section. Whoever had arranged this cosy meeting could easily have made ghost reservations for half the plane, ensuring that the conversation would not be overheard. And Ben had let himself be caught right in their trap. He felt angry and powerless.
‘All right,’ he said to the stranger. ‘You’ve seen my record, and you know who I am. Which means you’re obviously bothering me for a reason.’
‘You’re quite correct. I thought we could have a little chat before you got home. Easier this way.’
‘You got me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m your captive audience. So is this the part where you cut the crap and tell me what you want?’
‘To retain your services,’ the stranger replied, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘What else?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re wasting your time there. I’m self-employed. Meaning that I get to choose who I work for. Me.’
‘Of course. Of course. And I hope you can forgive me for intruding on your privacy like this. But I think perhaps you’ll feel more amenable to speaking to me once you’ve seen what I have to show you.’
‘Show me?’
‘Indeed.’ The stranger reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, slender tablet phone that he offered to Ben.
‘No, thanks. I’m not interested.’
The stranger didn’t take the tablet away. ‘Please. I insist.’
Ben reluctantly took it. The tablet was black and glossy and looked brand new. The screen was displaying what he immediately realised was a paused video file.
The stranger said, ‘Watch.’
Ben tapped the screen, and the video began to play. For the first few moments it could have been a still photo image, as nothing was moving on the screen. It showed the inside of a dark room. Ben had to peer closely to make anything out. He still had no idea what this was about.
But as he began to make sense of what he was looking at, he felt every muscle in his body tighten with alarm.
Chapter 2
Because the scene in the video clip was a bedroom. A bedroom he recognised and had got to know well over the course of the last three months. The same bedroom he’d last slept in himself, before getting up early to catch the plane from Inverness.
In the dim, grainy image on the screen he could see the curve of Grace’s shape beneath the bed covers, turned on her side, gently rising and falling to the rhythm of her breathing, her black hair spread out across the whiteness of the pillow and both hands clasped under her cheek, the way she often slept. Like she was praying in her dreams. Praying for what, Ben had often mused as he lay there watching her.
The video had not been filmed from a static hidden camera. That would have been bad enough – but the slight tremor and sway of the frame told him that it had been captured on a phone or other device by someone inside Grace’s bedroom. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
‘In case you were wondering,’ the stranger said, ‘this was taken this morning, just minutes after you left. Looks peaceful, doesn’t she? Like Sleeping Beauty.’
Ben said nothing. He couldn’t speak. He just wanted to cram the tablet sideways between the stranger’s teeth and pound it in until it disappeared down his throat. But before he could react either way, a movement on the screen made him tense up even more. Because whoever had slipped unnoticed into Grace’s bedroom to film her hadn’t come alone. The second man who stepped out of the shadows the other side of the bed was clad all in black, head to toe, apart from the three pale ovals of the eye and mouth apertures of his balaclava. His hands were gloved. One of them held a semiautomatic pistol. That was black, too, like the long, tubular sound suppressor fitted to the end of its barrel.
The second man stepped up to the edge of the bed. Raised the muzzle of the silenced handgun a few inches from the back of Grace’s head, almost close enough to brush against her hair. He held it there for a few seconds as she went on sleeping, oblivious, as serene as a dormant child. Then he lowered the weapon, stepped away and melted back into the graininess of the shadows as though he’d never been there. With that, the video clip ended and the screen went black.
Ben knew how this game was played. What he’d just been shown was a classic textbook warning. A display of power. Telling him, See, this is what we can do. We can do it easily. We can do it any time. And nobody will even see us coming.
The stranger said, ‘Needless to say, she had no idea of what was happening. Around the time you were boarding your flight at Inverness, she was getting up and preparing to go off to work. That’s where she is now. Going about her police duties without the faintest clue that her every move is being monitored around the clock by a team of operatives ready to move in on command and execute their orders. Nor does she ever need to know, so long as you play your cards right and cooperate with me and my colleagues. I expect I have your attention now, don’t I?’
The trap had just sprung shut, with Ben neatly snared inside it. He said nothing.
The stranger went on: ‘Oh, you can play it cool if you like. But I’m sure you must be full of questions. For example, you’re probably wondering who I am. For the purposes of this conversation, you can call me Saunders. As to the rest, such as whom I work for and what interests I represent, that’s not your concern. You can simply rest assured that this is not a bluff, and that you need to take what I’m telling you with the utmost seriousness. Am I making myself clear?’
‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Ben said.
There is a special kind of anger that goes beyond all possible limits of normal furious, burning rage. It starts deep in the pit of your stomach and gradually spreads to the extremities of the whole body, turning the blood to ice water, boosting adrenal output and focusing the mind more sharply than a combat fighter pilot’s. The hindbrain becomes hyper-aware, the physical senses are greatly amplified, and time seems to move in slow motion.
That was the kind of anger Ben was experiencing at this moment.
The man calling himself Saunders said, ‘Good. Now, here are the ground rules. You are about to receive a set of mission instructions, which you will follow very carefully and exactly. If you refuse to take the mission or comply with said instructions, the team of men who will be watching over Miss Kirk day and night are under orders to dispatch her. A task they will carry out in the most professional, quick and humane manner, but even so I’m sure you prefer to avoid that outcome. Once your mission is complete, the team will stand down and she will never know they were even there.’
‘Really? I can trust you on that, can I?’
If Saunders detected the sarcasm, he didn’t show it. ‘You have my word.’
Ben said, ‘I’m still waiting for the rules.’