‘I’ve been telling myself that all night, but the image won’t go away . . . Perhaps I’m going insane.’
Gabriel got to his feet and took a deep breath. ‘You’re right though. We must go . . . No one can escape their destiny.’
He picked up his bag, turned away from the window and walked to the door. Stratton followed him, past the captain who looked somewhat bewildered, and they headed down the stairs and out of the house.
The captain led the way along a street, away from the harbour and up an incline. A minute later they stepped out on to a gravel track where a Greek army Land Rover was waiting for them, a driver behind the wheel and two armed soldiers in the back.
Gabriel, still looking as if in a daze, climbed into the back, Stratton behind him, and the captain got in beside the driver. He barked an order and the vehicle moved off, circling the back of the town before leaving it behind to climb a steep hill.
The sound of an aircraft penetrated the noise of the Land Rover’s engine and a second later Stratton saw a Hercules C130 transport aircraft turning low over the water before disappearing behind them.
The Land Rover crossed the island, the sea to the south coming into view, and followed the winding track back inland. A few minutes later they reached the top of an incline and the road levelled out. A few hundred yards further and the road quickly widened and a runway appeared in front of them. Up ahead, coming towards them, was the C130 having touched down and making its way to the end of the runway.
The Land Rover stopped and waited for the aircraft to come to a stop, whereupon the rear ramp began to slowly open.
The captain said something to the driver and the vehicle moved off and pulled to a halt under the tail. Stratton climbed out amid the feverishly loud engines and acrid exhaust fumes clotting the air and helped Gabriel to step down on to the tarmac.
The captain climbed out and straightened his uniform, his task at an end but hoping to be of further use if possible.
‘Thanks, Captain,’ Stratton said, as he led Gabriel up the ramp.The captain came to attention and threw up a smart salute, holding it until the two men were aboard.
The loadmaster, in full green air suit, stood at the top of the ramp, his hand hovering over a button in a box mounted on the bulkhead, and as Stratton and Gabriel stepped into the cabin, he said something into his headset while at the same time pushing the button. A high-pitched whine filled the back of the plane as the end of the ramp began to rise off the tarmac, while at the same time an opposing section of roof, hinged beneath the tail, lowered to meet the end of the ramp and close off the Greek captain and his soldiers from any further view inside the mysterious aircraft.
The engines gradually increased power but the pilot kept the brakes applied and the plane still, an indication the runway was short and that they wanted to catapult the craft off its blocks. The two sections of ramp met and locked into place, fitting seamlessly to seal off the tail section, and much of the engine noise was immediately muffled.
There were several rows of aircraft seats halfway along the cabin, and at the front, against the bulkhead that sealed off the cockpit, was a desk with three swivel seats fitted around it, all occupied. On the desk were several communication systems and three flat-screen monitors.
Gabriel was invited by a crewman to sit in the regular seats while Stratton headed to the front where he recognised two of the men: Sumners was sat on one side of the table, and on the other, talking into a phone, was Sumners’ boss, the man from the Grenadier pub. In the middle seat was a young, nerdy assistant in an inexpensive black suit. The type was familiar enough, recruited young, usually straight out of university, because of either their family connections or their brilliance, and put to work in an administrative capacity to learn the ropes. This youngster was obviously one of the smart ones since his cheap suit suggested he did not come from wealth.
Stratton’s first introduction to MI6 many years ago, and where he first met Sumners, was during an operational training session. He had been sent to the secret Military Intelligence training school in Portsmouth to teach a batch of young MI6 agents, all quite brilliant academically, most of them able to speak several languages, how to climb the side of a three-storey building using a caving ladder. It seemed basic stuff but it had to be technically sound so as to be adaptable to a variety of structures and conditions. Stratton discovered two of them were later selected for an espionage job in Eastern Europe from which one never returned, rumoured to have been killed in action. Stratton found the differences between Special Forces operatives and these types interesting. MI6 operatives’ idea of light conversation was quantum physics, and sometimes for fun they would discuss topics in Latin or a mixture of several different languages at once. But practical things, such as instantly recognising the difference between a pull and tension-release booby trap, or how to quickly turn a semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic machine gun, appeared to be beyond most of them.
‘Take a seat, please,’ the loadmaster said to Stratton in a perfunctory manner, as he headed into the cockpit.
Stratton dropped into one of the hammock seats against the bulkhead behind Sumners who appeared to be deliberately ignoring him as he scrolled through data on a computer monitor.
The engines screamed in a chorus of painfully high-pitched tones and the aircraft vibrated so strongly it seemed the rivets holding the skin together might pop. The brakes were suddenly released, and the bulky craft lunged forward and lumbered down the runway, quickly building in speed. Had it been carrying its full capacity it would have needed a far longer runway or a set of rocket boosters to achieve take-off velocity. Being relatively empty, a few hundred yards later the nose tilted up as the pilot eased back on the stick, the wings bit into the air and the craft rose gracefully off the tarmac. The ground dropped away as the wheels retracted and within seconds there was nothing below but sea and the island was a colourful mound in the green-blue water getting ever further behind.
The cabin tilted as the pilot banked the aircraft steeply on to its heading and Sumners’ boss put down his phone and swivelled in his chair to face Stratton, wearing what looked like the same immaculate dark suit he had worn in the Grenadier. If the suit was a different one, the cold, empty smile he wore was not.
‘Stratton. Are you well?’ he asked.
‘Fine, sir,’ Stratton replied.
Sumners turned in his seat to face Stratton wearing his own stock smile.
‘Good,’ Sumners’ boss said. ‘Fine job, young man. Fine job.’Then, as if he’d had an idea, he leaned close to Sumners to say something privately into his ear. Sumners gave him an equally private and short reply and the boss picked up a phone, punched in a number and concentrated on his call.
Stratton could only wonder what he had done so well that resulted in the boss himself requisitioning such an expensive trip to pick him and Gabriel up from the island, and so rapidly too. They must have left the UK only a few hours after his call to Sumners.
Sumners got out of his swivel chair and sat in the hammock seat beside Stratton. ‘Well,’ he said, as if he had a lot to say and did not know where to start. ‘Are you wondering why we’re here, the boss included, and at great expense to the taxpayer?’ He sounded like a children’s talk-show host.
Stratton did not want to take part in Sumners’ little panto and offered him only a smile. The man was evidently in a good mood about something and would no doubt reveal why in due course.
Sumners took Stratton’s lack of interest as his usual, cold standoffish self. If he did not want to be chummy when the opportunity was offered, then that was his loss.
‘The name Mikhail Zhilev mean anything to you?’ Sumners asked, getting down to business.
Stratton wondered why the name had a familiar ring but could not place it. He shook his head.
‘What about Vladimir Zhilev?’
An image suddenly popped into Stratton’s head. ‘The tanker engineer?’ he asked, not entirely sure.
‘Correct,’ Sumners said like a schoolteacher.
‘Mikhail Zhilev is Vladimir’s brother. Your hunch about checking the tanker was a good one.Vladimir was the only Russian on board. Latvian to be precise. I immediately put the name through to our good friends in the FSB,’ Sumners said, emphasising the words ‘good friends’ for its irony. ‘They were surprisingly forthcoming, although I must say they have been recently . . . I made my inquiry sound as if it was nothing more than a next-of-kin search, of course. They provided a profile almost immediately but it only covered his youth and the last seven years or so, which immediately suggested something else - when the FSB omit large blocks of years in an adult’s life it usually indicates those years were spent in some sort of government service.We made another more urgent request, this
