Sleeping Soldiers: (Tom Marlowe Book 1), page 12
‘You should have paid more attention,’ he said, holding up a duct-taped second blade with his free hand. ‘I may have got in the back, but I also played around in the front. You know, I thought killing someone as legendary as you would be harder.’
‘What did you stab me with?’ clutching his arm, and staring at the pinprick, Chechik was wide-eyed as the surrounding area began bubbling with small white boils, with a redness spreading.
‘Ah, shit, it wasn’t supposed to work that fast,’ Marlowe said, waving the duct-taped EpiPen before tossing it aside. ‘You’ve just been injected with our latest toy, a painful little bastard comprising five ccs of methyl-chloride benzamide, and a shit-ton of vicious little additions. You’ll be dead in an hour if you don’t get the antidote.’
It was all lies, made up on the spot; all Chechik had been injected with was epinephrine, which would speed up his heart rate temporarily and give him a numb, tingling feeling. Add to this a pen top wiped in stinging nettles, and the immediate, allergenic rash the contact would cause gave a really nice visual to the scene.
‘It’s our little thank you for Novichok,’ Marlowe continued with a smile. ‘After an hour, you lose control of your bodily functions, but your sense of smell doesn’t go until well after you shit yourself.’
He held up two white circular tablets. They were nothing more than paracetamol, but Chechik didn’t know that.
‘But these will kill off the bulk of the symptoms,’ he said. ‘Not all of them, you’ll still have an awful couple of weeks, but at least you’ll be alive.’
He leant closer now, watching the sweating Ukrainian.
‘So, tell me about the US President, and why you’re killing anyone connected with Rubicon.’
Chechik shook his head.
‘You are too late,’ he whispered. ‘It’s already in play.’
‘Harris?’
Chechik reached for the tablets.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I cannot die.’
‘I’d also like you to live, Stepan,’ Marlowe replied. ‘I need you to prove my innocence. Where did you take Raymond?’
‘A safe house in London. One of your secret little archives.’
‘Why not Thames House?’
‘Because your MI5 does not know. Nobody visits the physical location, as it’s all online now.’
‘So, someone is off books,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Who’s helping you kill old spies?’
Something changed in Chechik’s expression, and suddenly he set his jaw, his teeth tight together.
‘I will not betray the motherland,’ he hissed through gritted teeth. ‘I will not betray her.’
‘No offence, Stepan, but I think she’s been betraying you ever since Glasnost,’ Marlowe joked, but stopped as he saw Chechik’s eyes bulge. ‘What are you—’
The foam flecked Chechik’s lips as his eyes rolled back into his head, and his mouth opened, his tongue slack, and covered in pieces of shattered tooth enamel.
Oh shit, Marlowe realised. He has a suicide capsule.
‘Chechik!’ he leant over, shaking the Ukrainian. ‘You bloody fool! I wasn’t going to kill you—’
But it was too late. Chechik’s eyes were glassy and vacant, the life having already left his body, slumping to the side in the SUV.
‘Dammit,’ Marlowe hissed, climbing out of the driver’s seat and opening the back door, he reached in, pulling Chechik back up. A quick pulse check proved the worst. Stepan Chechik had killed himself rather than betray Russia.
Looking around the car park, Marlowe realised he needed to leave, and fast. Luckily, any spook who found the body would understand what had happened, and the average passer-by would assume from the spittle that he’d had some kind of seizure. However, anyone who then went into the diner and looked at the security footage would see him meeting Marlowe.
Sighing, and closing the door to the SUV, Marlowe pulled on his sunglasses, pulled out a barely passable fake ID for Special Branch, and went to have a chat with whoever ran the diner’s cameras.
12
THE CLEANER
It took little to make sure the cameras were deleted. Marlowe had re-entered the diner and walked to the booth, looking for a “forgotten phone”, and with no obvious device there, he’d politely and quietly asked to speak to the manager, showing his Special Branch ID. He explained how the device had the contact numbers of several Whitehall names, and he had to find it, or it was his career on the line.
Of course, the incredibly understanding manager, on discussing this loss had mentioned the security footage, and Marlowe had gratefully asked to check through it with him. And, while checking the footage from a CCTV camera in the diner’s corner, they watched as Chechik and Marlowe met, spoke and left, Marlowe walking with his hands clasped, and with no phone in sight. After a couple of passes, Marlowe then “realised” he must have left the phone in the car, and with a fair amount of embarrassment, thanked everyone for their help, and left to return to it.
About thirty seconds after he left, a vicious little malware daemon file set up while he was there blue-toothed into the computer and deleted all footage from that day. Marlowe hoped nothing serious – well, apart from a dead body in the car park – happened that day, as all evidence would have been removed with this one hack.
It meant that Marlowe was back to being invisible, but any spook who arrived and then spoke to the diner’s manager would work out quickly it was Marlowe who’d been deleting footage of a meeting with a pro-Russia, Ukrainian mercenary who was now not taking their calls, and a glance into the parking lot would find the reason. So, quickly and quietly, Marlowe set to work on fixing this issue as well.
Trix had left a small box of latex gloves in her rucksack, probably a throwback to her police days, but Marlowe accepted the gift, pulling on a pair of gloves to disguise his fingerprints as he quickly went through Chechik’s pockets, pulling out his gun and his wallet. There was a small USB drive in his jeans, and Marlowe wondered whether this was the information Raymond had passed to Harris.
Opening the phone, Marlowe used Chechik’s thumbprint to open the device, scrolling through it. However, this was not the time to start deep diving, so Marlowe closed the door, sliding into the driver’s seat, and started the SUV. It was a Range Rover, a button to start, and very similar to the ones seen driving high-up members of the Cabinet around London. It was automatic and Marlowe easily pulled out into the road, leaving the service station and following the road for another half a mile. He turned into a small country lane and then left into another lane – not more than a track, in fact – a farm road that didn’t look like it was used that much. Checking he wasn’t being followed, Marlowe parked up outside a field’s gate, making sure the Range Rover was off the road.
Alone, and with a far less chance of being interrupted than when he was in the car park, Marlowe took an antiseptic wipe from a pack in the glove compartment and wiped the dashboard and steering wheel down. He may have been wearing gloves now, but when he was playing the captive he wasn’t, and there was every chance he rubbed up against something.
Now it was time to set the scene. He could have checked through Chechik’s things first but, if he was interrupted, he’d have to explain why the dead man was spread out across the back seat. At least if Chechik’s body was in the correct position, Marlowe could bluff it out; he was walking and had come across the car, or more likely, he could get to cover and not be there at all as the body was found.
With this in mind, Marlowe repositioned Chechik’s body back into the driver’s seat with a small amount of effort. A dead body was harder to move than a normal person and the term “dead weight” was right on the nose. It wasn’t impossible, however, and apart from one stumble, where Marlowe almost dropped Chechik’s body onto the floor, he slid him into the driver’s seat with a sigh of relief, buckling the seatbelt as he did so.
This was mainly to confuse any investigators as his plan was to let the police, or any forensics examiners, see the cyanide tooth and make their own decisions. Perhaps Chechik accidentally bit down while driving? Perhaps he thought he was going to be executed and took the simple way out? The options were endless and, luckily for Marlowe, all aimed at the people following him. He knew Chechik would be found. The chances were whomever hired him had a tracker on the car, and when he didn’t answer the phone or turn up, they’d track the SUV down and find it eventually – and the body within.
But the logic was sound. Spooks would work out Marlowe was connected.
Police, however, wouldn’t.
If someone saw Chechik and the car later that day, perhaps a nosey farmer, or a dog walker passing by, they’d find a man dead with no other evidence around. Even MI5 would surmise Chechik met their killer here, whether or not it was Marlowe. And a suicide capsule meant suicide. The people in suits would more likely spend time working out why Stepan Chechik drove to a deserted track and killed himself. Eventually they’d realise he met burned spy Tom Marlowe, but then that was also in a diner down the road. This could still be plausibly denied as an assassination.
Looking around the lane, Marlowe reckoned there’d be an hour or two before people found the body. Add time for the spooks to arrive, and then for them to retrace his steps back to the diner and the unfortunate CCTV issue which screamed “spooks were here”, and by then they’d know Marlowe was involved, but also that Marlowe was gone.
It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was enough to do something.
As expected, Chechik was holding the bare essentials: a gun, a phone, a wallet with around a grand in twenty-pound notes, and an ID for SCO19, the armed unit of the police, stating Chechik as Peter Bradley, a Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officer, or CTSFO, ranked as a Sergeant.
Marlowe grinned at the audacity of this while quietly applauding. CTSFO teams in the UK were often on standby, ready to respond to terrorist or major crime incidents in London, but also at the national level. This was the ID badge equivalent of the US’s National Security Agency badge, where a simple wave and the mention of “terrorism” and “national security” were enough to open all doors. In addition, if his team were also identified as CTSFOs, then running around Cambridge with Heckler & Koch rifles wasn’t likely to gain a second glance.
But to have these was a high-level forgery. Few people dared to do this, as the principal people who’d be checking these would be equally positioned, genuine officers. With guns.
Or, these were real.
Marlowe didn’t want to consider this option, that someone in Whitehall had rubber-stamped these IDs for Chechik and his men, knowing what they intended to do … but it was still an option.
Marlowe considered replacing the ID, as to find it missing would alert whoever was looking for him, but that horse had bolted, and there was every chance Marlowe could use this somehow.
Leaning back against the driver’s door frame, Marlowe considered his next steps.
First, he had to clear his name, but this was an end goal more than the next thing to do.
Second, Brad Haynes was a logical step, as finding the CIA agent could fill in some blanks. Bridget Summers had worried he’d killed Amélie Blanchet and run, but Chechik’s confession to her murder meant Brad was likely looking after himself here. Which meant he’d be difficult to find, but likely to help once he realised it was in his best interests. And if he had a key, he could have taken this from Amélie, or been given it, before she died. Maybe this key was the reason Chechik had killed her, even.
Third, he needed to find Rubicon.
This was going to be the hardest of the tasks, even harder than clearing his name; the list would be deep within a server, and until he could gain the list, he wouldn’t be able to accurately work out who the moles in the security services were. It could be Curtis, Harris, both or even neither. Luckily for Marlowe, the server wouldn’t have any remote access opportunities, but also wouldn’t be in Central London. It was easier to find an out-of-the-way server farm, somewhere with a redundant backup protocol, where he could slip in and locate the file on site, than it was to return to Thames House.
Of course, this probably wasn’t a one-man job, either. Which meant he needed a team. Trix would be a good start, but he’d sent her off into the Chiltern Hills about eight hours earlier. Tessa was with her, too, so bringing Trix in would involve a two-for-one deal, and Tessa’s safety would be his concern once more.
But it was something that could wait. For all he knew, Marlowe could speak to Haynes later that day and suddenly have the CIA at his beck and call, although that wasn’t as likely.
And walking into a server farm with the CIA would definitely kill his chances with Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
And then there was four, his immediate next move.
He picked up Chechik’s phone once more, now having the time to use the thumb to open it, taking his time to slowly check the device. He’d connected it to one of his burn phones and cloned it as he left the car park, but this wasn’t like the movies. Anything encrypted would be harder to crack without the onboard app the phone would have, and even the best equipment often missed things. It was far better to use the item itself when possible.
He didn’t expect much; spies weren’t that stupid when it came to things like this, but a last number that called, or even a last number he called, even without contact details, was something Marlowe could use. Flicking through the phone, Marlowe saw there was also a map app, a phone sat-nav which had a couple of addresses marked down within the “recent journeys” tab. Checking his own phone, he saw one was the location he’d seen Chechik meet with the others back in Cambridge, but the most recent was unknown and, more importantly, still active.
This had been the sat-nav journey he’d been taking when Marlowe interrupted.
Checking the location against his own maps app, Marlowe saw Chechik had been heading back to London, and in particular, to a warehouse in Canary Wharf. Not the sparkly, chrome and glass business side, but the area to the south, before you reached Millwall Docks. It was still an area filled with building works and construction projects, but the docks and wharfs along there were isolated enough for a safe-house, or some kind of warehouse space.
He remembered a line Chechik had said. A safe house in London. One of your secret little archives. Could this also be where the backup could be found?
‘I know there’s something in a black site in Canary Wharf somewhere, because that’s where Primakov gained his data in the first place.’
Raymond’s statement also returned to the forefront of his thoughts. If the secret archive was where Raymond had been taken, there was a chance to kill two birds with one stone, but until he knew more, there was no point removing the academic from the jaws of whatever Government beast currently had him. In fact, if they thought Marlowe might be after him, wherever he was right now could actually be the safest place for Raymond Sykes.
No, this was a journey for later. For now, there was another task to perform. Because the number that Chechik had called while in Cambridge – an outgoing number for a mobile phone – was still in the memory.
So, Marlowe dialled it.
After a few rings, however, it went to voicemail. There was no message, just the incredibly familiar, computerised “the person at x isn’t available to take your call right now. Please leave a message after—” answerphone message, which had been halted near the end as Marlowe disconnected the call and immediately redialled.
He’d received the same message the second time, but on the third call, the phone answered, and an irritated voice said, ‘What?’
Marlowe paused.
He knew the voice.
‘Hello Curtis,’ he said. ‘Small world.’
‘Marlowe?’ the voice of Curtis seemed surprised. ‘How did you get this number?’
‘I gained it from Stepan Chechik,’ Marlowe replied calmly. ‘In fact, I’m using his phone right now. You know Stepan, I’m sure.’
There was a pause on the line, and Marlowe wondered if this was while Curtis tried to gain a tracer on the line.
‘Is he with you?’ Curtis asked, his voice sounding more curious than angry. Probably trying to work out if his pet enforcer was playing for the other team now.
Marlowe looked at the dead Chechik beside him.
‘He is, but he’s busy,’ he replied. ‘I can get him to send a message.’
‘Look, I don’t know what your plan here is—’ Curtis started, but Marlowe cut him off.
‘My plan is discovering and then stopping your plan,’ he replied, checking his watch.
Ten seconds before they could lock onto his position.
‘I’ll save you time and hassle,’ Marlowe continued. ‘I’m duplicating the SIM and the phone, so even if you do find me, I’ll be long gone. But whatever you’re doing, I’m onto you. And I won’t let you continue.’
‘I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about,’ Curtis said. ‘This is—’
At this point the phone screeched in Marlowe’s ear and, pulling it back, Marlowe saw the screen corrupting as lines of data slid up and down it.
He was being hacked.
As much as he wanted to find out more, this was worse than he could hope for; someone was trying to take hold of Chechik’s phone, which, if successful, could even open the phone’s camera, or Bluetooth connect to anything nearby.
Quickly jumping away from the car, Marlowe threw the phone onto a slab of concrete at the base of a gatepost, using a hastily grabbed rock to slam down hard on the screen, the high-pitched data scream instantly ceasing.
Looking around, Marlowe forced himself to relax. There was no way MI5 or Curtis could have done this remotely, so fast, but that wasn’t the concern here. There was every chance the cyber-attack was aimed purely to set off some kind of detonator inside the phone. It would have been a small, shaped charge, not enough to do a ton of damage around him, but enough to blow his head off, if he’d been staring at it when it went off, or if he’d been holding it against his ear.
