Now, it seemed that Ben was about to catch up once again with his former comrade.
If only he could find him first.
Chapter 7
Five days earlier
Jaden Wolf knew that from the instant he’d been caught on security camera, he was a marked man and his life as he’d known it was over. That was fine by him. After what he’d witnessed that night, he wanted out. All the way out. And he had no plans ever to return.
He’d encountered no resistance as he made it out of the grounds of Karswell Hall, but he knew that they’d waste no time in coming after him. The clock was ticking. He had to move extremely fast, or all escape routes would be blocked ahead of him and it would be game over. Failure to complete a mission was not an option at the best of times; now that he was a witness to such a dark and terrible secret, there was no way they’d allow him to live. If caught, he would be made to disappear as though no trace of him had ever existed. Reaching the perimeter of the estate he scrambled back over the wall and sprinted to his car. The Audi, like virtually everything else he owned, would have to be abandoned sooner rather than later. He threw himself behind the wheel and took off into the night with a squeal of spinning tyres.
Wolf drove eleven miles in seven minutes before the signs for a village flashed by in his headlights. It was a traditional old place, with a greystone church and cemetery, sleepy timber-framed and flint cottages, a quaint village square and a little stone bridge over a river. He parked the Audi under the shadows of a spreading oak tree, got out and spent a couple of minutes removing its number plates. That would help slow the police’s attempts to ID the abandoned vehicle. They’d soon find that it had no engine or chassis numbers, either. Being traced by the police wasn’t Wolf’s concern, however. More watchful and sinister forces were everywhere. He knew that all too well. He’d been one of their foot soldiers until tonight.
Wolf abandoned the Audi and moved fast and silently through the dark village streets for quarter of a mile until he found what he was looking for. Some of the newest and most hi-tech cars were also the easiest to steal, and Wolf was an expert. The DS 3 Crossback was parked just a few yards from the front door of its owner’s cottage. Wolf took a small electronic device from his pocket that boosted the signal for its keyless central locking while simultaneously relaying it to the key inside the cottage, fooling the system. The locks clunked open. Wolf was inside and away within six seconds.
From there, it was just a thirty-five-mile drive to London. Wolf sped through the night and covered the distance in a little over twenty minutes. He sliced through the city and parked the Crossback on a residential street close to the Imperial War Museum, half a mile from his apartment. He lived on the top floor of a handsome old building overlooking a little park where he often walked and fed crumbs to the pigeons. The apartment wasn’t large, but it was comfortable for a single guy who generally kept himself to himself apart from the occasional short-term lady friend. Wolf wasn’t so attached to the place that it would hurt him never to come back.
He had his pistol in his hand as he climbed the stairs and approached his door. Silently, stealthily, he slipped inside. He paused for an entire minute, until he could be confident that the apartment was empty. He was still ahead of the curve. None of his fellow agents had come for him – yet. But they could turn up at any moment and he intended to get out of here as fast as he could. Keeping the lights off he walked into his bedroom, where he kept a go-bag packed and ready. It contained all the essentials for a fast getaway, including another pistol and a quantity of walking-around money. Wolf snatched the bag and left. He did not return to the stolen car. Southwark underground station was four minutes’ walk away. It was on the Jubilee line, and this was a Friday, which meant the tube would be running around the clock. He donned a NY Yankees baseball cap from his bag and kept his eyes down as he entered the station, letting the long peak of the cap mask his face from the CCTV cameras.
Wolf travelled the night tube, constantly watching out for anyone following him. Nobody was, or he’d likely already be fighting for his life. He got off at St John’s Wood Station, and walked another quarter mile to a private security facility that offered twenty-four-hour access to safe deposit storage ranging from shoebox-size to a walk-in vault. Guards patrolled the facility day and night, and customers’ valuables were protected by a state-of-the-art biometric authentication system. Wolf had been using the place for five years, after a meticulous search for the most bombproof private security storage in London.
Also the most discreet. Which it needed to be, considering the nature of some of the items he kept in his personal vault. Those included a fully-automatic Heckler & Koch G3 battle rifle and an Uzi submachine gun – which he wouldn’t be bringing with him. It also included his cash savings fund of quarter of a million pounds, half of it in euro currency, and a collection of driving licences and passports in a variety of names – which he would. Some of the fake papers were ones that had been provided to him by his employers, but Wolf had taken the precaution of creating two additional false identities that nobody knew about. Neither Jack Cullen nor Douglas Baker would trigger any alert via passport control, and they were free to flit about the world as they pleased. Wolf decided that, for the time being at least, he would travel as Jack Cullen.
The money was packed in a black holdall. It was heavy, but manageable. He transferred the contents of his go-bag apart from the pistol, which he’d have to leave behind along with the one in his belt. Wolf locked up his vault, checked out of the facility for what he knew would be the last time and walked back out into the night. Now he was ready to leave Britain and never return. It didn’t bother him a bit. There was nothing here for him any longer. And he knew exactly where he was headed.
In a back alley a mile away from the security facility, Wolf bade a formal goodbye to his old self. He watched as the passport and driving licence in his real name, along with all his cards and other ID, burned away into a small pile of ashes and molten plastic. He walked for a long time through the night streets of London. The killers would no doubt have reached his apartment by now. Finding it empty, they’d soon be hunting city-wide for him. He was a step ahead. He meant to keep it that way.
A few hours later, a lone traveller by the name of Jack Cullen arrived at Heathrow Airport where he boarded a flight to Luxembourg, carrying a black holdall with him as hand luggage. One hour and seventeen minutes after takeoff, he was moving on once more, satisfied that he was leaving no trail that anyone could follow. He would soon be completely home free. That thought made him feel strangely liberated, almost happy. This was the first day of a new life for him. One that he had often dreamed of and should have begun a long time ago – but he’d never had the courage to take the step. In the most bizarre and terrible way, last night’s events at Karswell Hall had been the catalyst to set him free.
Over the next two days Wolf made his way across France. He slept rough at night, in remote spots where police patrols wouldn’t harass him. Hitch-hiking was the best way to avoid bus and railway stations or anywhere else his face might get picked up on a security camera. Even though French citizens were far less heavily surveilled than the subjects of the cynically mistrustful British state, you could never be too careful. Most of his rides were with long-distance truckers, in whose company he felt comfortable. His dad had been a lorry driver all his life, before lung cancer had punched his ticket. If Wolf hadn’t joined the Marines, he might have pursued the same freewheeling, solitary kind of existence.