I’ve now been told officially to keep my nose out of it unless, or until, the security of the nation is at risk from an internal threat. Which, from this particular incident, it is not.”
“I’ve got some leave due,” she said, knowing full well the suggestion for any unofficial activity had to come from her. A tacit understanding between professionals. What someone does in their own time is their business, not the department’s.
“Good. I’ll let you know when to take it. There’s absolutely no sign of Max Gordon leaving the country. Passport control at all regional and international airports and ferry terminals has been flagged. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what his involvement is with Riga, nor why Danny Maguire’s body was mistakenly cremated in a supposed mix-up with another boy at a funeral parlor. I don’t know why I’ve been warned off by our government and Six. But I do know that I want to find out.”
“Can you speak to his headmaster? See if there’s a connection with Central America?”
“Not Peru?”
“Don’t know for sure; it’s only a hunch. And I’ve just remembered. I’ve got his laptop. His fingerprints will be all over it.”
She blew a bubble with a satisfying burst. She didn’t need anyone’s permission to lift those.
In the early hours of that morning, Max Gordon had walked away from the busy clamor of a city hospital. Easily lost in the crowds, he was minutes from an Underground station.
By the time the automated voice advised passengers that the train’s doors were closing, he was on a seat, his head nodding in exhaustion onto his chest. A woman with a big suitcase squeezed next to him. She nervously held on to her case’s strap, though Max reasoned it would take some effort to steal it in a hurry. It was obvious by the travel labels that she was going to Heathrow. He asked if she’d wake him when they got there. Then, with an arm hooked through his backpack, he fell into a deep and desperately needed sleep.
Max stood beneath the glistening ceiling of London’s Heathrow terminal five. Vast wings of glass, held fast seemingly to keep them from flight, spanned the concourse. There were a couple of hours to go before he boarded. Sayid had already checked him in online when he made the flight bookings. He could not risk using public email or phone to contact Sayid. It was down to the wire now. He had either got away with it this far or he hadn’t.
If anyone had rumbled what he had done, or if they had interrogated Sayid too strongly and forced his best friend to tell them everything, then Max would be picked up the moment he got to the boarding gate. He would soon find out. In the meantime, he needed a wash, food and a pharmacy. Not necessarily in that order.
Sometimes the small things in life help give you a boost-the airport cost five billion pounds to build, and the showers were pretty good. Max let the steaming water sluice away the grime and sweat. He stood for a long time, letting it pound his skin, allowing his mind to settle. He still had so much to do. And he wished there were a compass that pointed him in the exact direction he needed to go. He would use Miami as a gateway to fly down into the Caribbean and then strike inland through Belize, where he would try to find one of the remote border villages. Someone there had to know what had happened to his mother; a foreigner’s presence would not have gone unnoticed. Danny Maguire must have come close to finding out-and had paid the ultimate price. Max took heart from the fact that he had got himself this far.
By the time he presented himself at the boarding gate, he felt a different person. He had inverted his reversible jacket and settled the cheap reading glasses that he’d bought in the pharmacy onto his nose. He hoped that the brown color tint he had washed into his hair would not stay forever-the bottle’s label had promised him it would not.
He caught a glimpse of himself in a reflection and returned the counter clerk’s smile as she checked him through.
“Enjoy your flight to Miami, Mr. Lewis.”
Joshua John Lewis: eighteen years old, a final-year pupil at Dartmoor High. Max had also taken Lewis’s passport the night he broke into the vault.
Max Gordon had ceased to exist.
10
Riga went to an office in Canary Wharf. It was high up in one of the new towers that proclaimed themselves to the world as being very modern, very important and very expensive. None of which impressed Riga.
He waited while the ordinary-looking man spoke on a cordless phone. He stood with his back to the mercenary, making no concession to his presence. The balding head had close-cropped gray hair, barely covering the man’s scalp, but there was still a light dusting of dandruff on the crinkled suit. The man reminded Riga of a teacher who had taught English at his school in Finland. If you passed him in the street, you would not give him a second glance. Little did Riga know at the time that the mumbling teacher was a government agent, someone who kept an eye out for promising young men who would work for the state with blind obedience. Young men who could be trained to superfitness and given unpalatable tasks. And, like that teacher, this man speaking softly into the telephone wielded enormous power. Never judge a book by its cover. Never pick a fight with a stranger. Never believe the obvious. Riga had learned his lessons the hard way, and he knew that the man who now turned to face him was answerable to even more powerful people.
He replaced the phone and faced Riga with an ambivalent expression, giving nothing away. A professional. There was a hint of a German accent when he spoke, but Riga knew he was Swiss and that after this conversation, the helicopter on the roof of the building would whisk him away to another building in another city in another country. The extent of these people’s influence was global. His name was Cazamind.
“The Gordon boy is still in the country. Our people have double-checked the computer logs on all airline bookings,” Cazamind said.
“So why pursue him? It’s a waste of time,” Riga said, checking out the view, knowing he could speak freely because his services were so valued.
“I do not know the full details, but our friends”-he laid emphasis on the word
Riga wondered if anyone ever took him out to a restaurant and if the sight of that small snowstorm put diners off their food. He kept those thoughts to himself. He could stand his ground on any issue relating to his employment, but to discuss personal hygiene with the man who represented such powerful people would be a breach of etiquette. Even professional killers need good social skills.
“Gordon doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t look as though Maguire got any info to him,” Riga said.
“We cannot be certain. Not yet. He approached the man at the British Museum who was Maguire’s mentor; perhaps something passed between them before the old man died. What do you think of him? The boy.” Cazamind paused and, like a Swiss banker studying a balance sheet, gazed at Riga-reading between the lines, looking for anything not quite right. “Your professional opinion,” he said finally.
Riga gazed down at the bankers and traders scurrying out of their offices and into the man-made oases of food and drink. This was a small city-state created especially for the people who made the country’s wealth. In moments they would be jam-packed into expensive restaurants where they would have to shout to be heard in a conversation. Then an hour later they would surge back to their computer screens and play the equivalent of high- stakes poker with other people’s money. Meanwhile, Riga was a free man. Like the kid. Max Gordon was out there on his own, running scared maybe, being hunted, gone to ground, surviving. Riga respected that. He did not respect the moneymakers. Their risk was not the same as his and Max Gordon’s.
Riga turned back to Cazamind. “He’s resourceful. He’s got guts. He’s tough. He doesn’t give up. He knows how to survive, and he’s got a brain between his ears. If he has anything, anything at all that compromises the people you represent, the kid will exploit it. In a couple more years, I could train him up. He’d be an asset.”
“And you think that is even a remote possibility?”
Riga shook his head. Of course not. The boy did not have the instinct. He would not be able to stand the smell of a man’s fear as he moved in to kill him. He shook his head again.
