‘Looks like a farm to me.’
They were huddled in front of Abby’s monitor. With the mouse she altered the view so that they were sweeping in almost horizontally, trees and buildings rendered in squat, distorted three-dimensional images.
‘That was our impression,’ said Purkiss.
The property covered ten acres, a curving driveway leading down from a gate set in a stone wall to a low but two-storied building which appeared to be the farmhouse. There were smaller buildings scattered about: stables, a couple of sheds, what looked like a garage for a tractor. The stone wall surrounded the entire property in an approximate rectangle. The gate was in the south wall, set back from the road, and the north of the property was carpeted in fields and woodland. A couple of cars were parked outside the farmhouse, but their details were obscured.
‘How up to date are these pictures?’ asked Purkiss.
‘They were taken some time in the last three years,’ said Abby.
Kendrick: ‘This isn’t real time?’
She shook her head. ‘You’d need direct access to a satellite for that. The military, the CIA have that capability. I don’t.’
‘My three Service friends might,’ said Purkiss.
‘Want to ask them?’
‘No.’
Purkiss stood and stretched. ‘You brought what I asked for?’
‘Yep.’ Kendrick had brought a rucksack and he rummaged in it and pulled out two pairs of night-vision goggles.
‘Okay, good.’ He paced to get the blood flowing. ‘We circle the wall, see if there are any other ways in. If not, we go over. Ideally we want to have a look in that farmhouse, but if we manage to take captive anyone there, quietly, that’ll be good too. Abby, we’ll stay in phone contact with you all the time. If you lose both of us, contact these people individually and tell them where we were.’ He gave her the numbers of each of the three agents. ‘It’ll mean we’ve failed, but at least they’ll be able to alert the police and have the farm raided.’
He paused, looked at them in turn, said: ‘Ready?’
Kendrick shrugged on his jacket. ‘Farms. I come all the way here on a city break and you want me to get my feet covered in cow shit.’
‘The fresh air will do your complexion good.’
‘It’s all right for a swede basher like you. Some of us, the ones whose brothers aren’t also their dads, prefer city life. You know, cities? Where people respect species boundaries.’
‘He’s been learning some big words lately,’ remarked Abby as she opened the door for them. ‘Now leave me alone so I can work on that memory stick.’
On every street it seemed there was the wash of police lights, the corralling of traffic into fewer lanes than usual. Purkiss spotted several shop fronts with blown-up pictures of the two presidents. Instead of using the satellite navigation system in the rental Fiat and running the risk of being directed up roads that had been newly cordoned off, he headed for the familiarity of the coast road. Here too he was struck by the security presence. Police not only swarmed over the road and pavements but cruised the dark, glittering bay in small tugs. Packs of sniffer dogs rooted around by the side of the road.
Purkiss pointed to the Soviet War Memorial. ‘That’s where it’s happening. The handshake.’ As he’d expected a wide area around the base of the needle was cordoned off and men with bomb-sweeping equipment roved about.
Kendrick said, ‘You think it’s going to be a bomb?’
Purkiss shook his head. ‘No. Security’s too tight.’
‘A rifle?’
‘More likely, but again I doubt it. There’s no real vantage point. And the crowds are going to be kept right back, there’ll be no plunging in for a grip and grin session at the end, so a handgun wouldn’t get close enough.’
‘So…’ Kendrick frowned out the window. ‘A full-frontal attack by this Kuznakov’s — ’
‘Kuznetsov’s.’
‘Kuznetsov’s private army? Some kind of suicide attack?’
‘It’d be suicidal, all right, but it wouldn’t achieve much else. Say he’s got twenty people. With the numbers of police and probably military there are going to be on the streets tomorrow, they’d be cut down before they got within half a mile.’
The needle and the mass of activity beneath it dwindled in the mirror.
Kendrick said, ‘This Fallon geezer.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think he’s acting on his own.’
After a pause Purkiss said, ‘I don’t know. I think he’s connected to the Kuznetsov crew but not in a way they’re fully aware of. I believe he’s hijacking their operation in some way, letting them do all the hard work and then planning to, I don’t know, take the credit for it, add a twist of his own. Something.’ He rubbed his eyes in frustration. ‘Ten minutes with him. All I need.’
‘You’ll need longer than that if he’s as hard a nut as you say.’
‘Ten minutes.’
Kendrick grinned sourly. ‘The bedwetting bleeding-heart liberal I know. Gone in forty-eight hours.’
Purkiss said nothing, fists tightening on the wheel.
Kendrick said: ‘So how long are we going to leave it to find Fallon before we hand everything over to the coppers?’
‘As soon as we get him, SIS and the police get everything else. The location of the farm, Kuznetsov’s involvement, all of it. That’s their business, not mine, beyond how it helps me to find Fallon.’
‘That wasn’t my question.’
‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’ He glanced over at Kendrick. ‘Getting hanged hasn’t softened you up, has it?’
Kendrick chuckled. ‘No, mate. Just wondered if you were planning on chickening out early.’
The roads were less familiar in the darkness and after a time Purkiss punched in the address of the farmhouse so as not to get lost. At one point he saw the strobing of emergency service lights through the trees ahead. As they rounded a curve, the place where he and the other man had gone over the edge earlier that afternoon came into view. A makeshift barrier had been constructed and clusters of police remained, waving traffic past.
After that there were no lights for miles. They seemed to be tunnelling into the forest, its massive presence almost mountainous around them. A few miles on, the foliage began to thin out, the odd field to appear. The satnav indicated their destination was five kilometres ahead.
Two kilometres short he pulled in at a layby. He killed the engine and the lights. Purkiss thumbed Abby’s number into the phone, heard it ring and then cut out. He looked at the display.
‘Damn it.’
‘What?’
‘No signal.’
‘Told you. The trees. I hate the countryside.’ Kendrick checked his phone. ‘Mine’s no good either.’
‘Let’s walk.’
They moved down the road, keeping on the left hand side where the forest was, ready to duck between the trunks at the sound of an approaching vehicle. After a while Purkiss stopped and tried the phone again. This time he got Abby.
‘Signal’s not brilliant out here.’
Kendrick got out his phone and they linked up in conference call mode, both men putting their earpieces in. Presently they came to a wall, hand-built from stone. It wasn’t the one, yet. They moved along it. More forest, and then another wall, this one reinforced with concrete and curving away from the road, a recess and gates visible
