Sleeping Soldiers: (Tom Marlowe Book 1), page 18
He thought back to that moment when he watched Raymond being placed into the SUV. He’d been angry, holding a cloth to his temple, before getting into the car. Marlowe had seen this as the actions of a captive, but it could also have been that of a man whose mission had failed. Could Raymond have been working with them? What was Curtis, on the phone, deciding?
One of Chechik’s comments in the diner came back.
‘Your insistence has changed the plans, so I will fulfil contract.’
Marlowe wasn’t supposed to escape. They didn’t realise he’d rigged the garden with gas canister explosives.
Marlowe was nodding to himself as Bridget watched.
‘You’re working it out, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been staring off into space for five minutes now.’
‘They changed the parameters when I proved to be awkward,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘They expected me to go by protocol. Go to ground, go off grid. Like the rest of my team. Not abduct their lead hunter.’
He looked back to Shaw.
‘But why all the cloak and dagger?’ He frowned. ‘Raymond aimed me at Brad. Why bother?’
‘Because he couldn’t find him,’ Bridget replied. ‘None of us could. The porcelain doll went to Marshall, but Raymond intercepted it.’
‘Why hunt Brad in the first place?’
‘For the key he took from Amélie Blanchet,’ Bridget glanced out of the window. ‘Poor woman. Chechik was supposed to get it, but Brad already had it.’
Marlowe felt a shiver of ice slide down his spine; the brass key they were talking about was currently in his trouser pocket.
‘Where are we going?’ he said, noticing they were passing Bow Station.
‘London,’ Shaw said airily. ‘We have a safe house.’
Something niggled at the back of Marlowe’s mind, and he played a hunch.
‘Chechik was going to London,’ he said. ‘It was on his sat-nav.’
‘Where?’ Bridget asked.
‘Westminster,’ Marlowe lied. ‘I didn’t get much though because Curtis sent some kind of hack down the phone, aimed at detonating explosives.’
‘Westminster,’ Shaw smiled, visibly relaxing. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t be going anywhere near there. In fact, we’ll be following the A12 all the way to the end, and then more.’
Marlowe forced himself to stay relaxed as he casually nodded. He knew where the A12 ended, a little north of Canary Wharf. Where Chechik had been heading.
‘So, what do we do about Brad?’ he enquired calmly. ‘I don’t appreciate the son of a bitch deserting me.’
‘He’s CIA, what do you expect,’ Bridget sniffed. ‘Never was a reliable source at the best of times. What was your plan?’
‘We were going to hack into the MI5 black archive’s server,’ Marlowe admitted. ‘It has a direct link into Thames House, so we could grab the list.’
‘And this led you to a Chelmsford crack house how?’
‘Favour for an arms dealer who was giving us a way in. Brad was also going to see if he had any contacts who could help with the key.’
At this, he saw both Shaw and Bridget sit up.
‘You saw the key?’
Marlowe smiled.
‘Yeah. Big iron bugger,’ he lied.
‘Good to know,’ Bridget said, her attitude changing, an element of disbelief sliding into her tone, watching out of the window. ‘Look, Tom, I don’t know how to say this, and I’ve been holding off speaking … but Marshall … we learned—’
‘He was on the list, wasn’t he?’ Marlowe played a hunch.
Bridget’s eyes widened.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘He was in a Gulag before the end of the Cold War, came home with an ex-Stasi wife,’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘I mean, I never met her, but there had to be warning signs.’
Bridget nodded. ‘I believed in Marshall, but I’ve since learned he was up to terrible things,’ she said. ‘Shaw told me you were in the room when Harris spoke of his actual death?’
Marlowe nodded, watching the road. They’d passed Canary Wharf on the right and were heading towards Millwall. This was where Chechik had been driving to, and this was where Raymond had mentioned an MI5 black archive, the same one Marlowe had talked about breaking into but moments earlier.
He didn’t have his gun anymore, but he had a knife in his sock; casually and slowly, he reached to grab it, slipping it up his sleeve.
He didn’t yet know who was on whose side, and he was now worried he was about to walk willingly, straight into the lion’s den.
‘I was,’ he said. ‘But feel free to update me with anything else.’
18
WAITING ROOM
It was another five minutes before they pulled up outside a warehouse just north of Millwall Docks. It was early, but the area was already buzzing with activity, which was strange for a Sunday morning. That said, Marlowe hadn’t been here before, and this could have been completely normal.
Shaw parked in a parking spot beside a warehouse marked 13, and both Bridget and Shaw left the car leaving Marlowe sitting alone, lost in his thoughts until Bridget rapped on the window.
‘Are you coming or not?’ she asked.
Marlowe smiled, waved and climbed out. He’d been so busy trying to work out the gameplay here, he’d zoned out.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No sleep last night, minimal the night before.’
‘You can catch some winks in the break room,’ Bridget smiled as they walked towards the entrance. ‘We won’t be debriefing until noon.’
‘Debriefing?’ Marlowe raised an eyebrow at this. ‘That sounds very “security services”.’
Bridget scrunched her face in embarrassment.
‘Once a spook, always a spook,’ she gave as response.
The warehouse was simple: a wide-open area where three vans were parked, and a rest area behind a large reception. If anything, it looked more like a high-end garage than MI5 location, but that was because everything wasn’t as it seemed.
The building was small, but linked to three others, each with graphics on the side revealing them to be printing companies, infrastructure providers, and even a pole dancing school. But the windows of the two floors above were all blacked out, something that seemed cosmetic, but mainly because this was where the magic happened.
Walking to the stairs and away from the entrance, Marlowe noticed the subtle changes in security. Now, CCTV cameras were more prevalent. The doors were steel, rather than wood, the glass bulletproof and at least an inch thick.
More importantly, there was an elevator door: metal, unmoving and out of place in such a location.
‘You have people with disabilities?’ he asked.
‘It’s the twenty-first century,’ Bridget said humourlessly. ‘Of course, we do.’
Marlowe nodded, following the two women, but mentally noting the elevator had two buttons on the outside, one for up, and one for down. Buttons like this on the inside were commonplace, but something here felt off.
Why would a ground floor elevator door have a down button on the outside? This was the lowest it could go. All you could do was go up.
There was a guard, in black combats, an armoured vest and with no visible weapon in his hand, but Marlowe was pretty sure, should he pull his knife out, he’d be taken down in seconds. And, although he didn’t recognise the man, there was a vicious-looking red burn on his cheek, recently attended to.
Could he have been one of Chechik’s men?
Marlowe decided not to raise this until he knew more about what was going on. He didn’t trust Shaw, but Bridget had seemed sincere when they met. And since she’d worked with Marshall for years, he’d never mentioned her being shifty—
He’d never mentioned her.
Marlowe wanted to punch a wall but forced himself to stay calm. In all the time he knew Marshall Kirk, not once did he mention Bridget Summers. Even Tessa’s comments hadn’t set off alarm bells.
‘Bridget? Woman who used to work with my dad? I haven’t heard her name mentioned for years!’
If Tessa was right, Bridget had worked with Marshall, but they weren’t close. And if she was connected to all this somehow, within days of Primakov meeting Marshall, the Russian was dead, likely killed by the same people who killed Amélie Blanchet, one of whom looked to be guarding the room he was about to enter.
‘Here, rest up,’ Bridget smiled as they entered a recreation room. There was a TV, a sofa with a coffee table beside it, and a small kitchen area with a microwave, kettle and tap. ‘There’s coffee on the counter, it’s instant but it works. Toilet and shower through the back. I’ll be back in a few.’
‘Is there any chance of some breakfast?’ he gave a hopeful expression. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘I bet it has,’ Bridget kept smiling, and now, watching her, Marlowe knew it was as fake as her sincerity. ‘I’ll sort a flapjack and some crisps from the vending machine. We don’t have much here, it’s not usually manned.’
Marlowe smiled in reply, and Bridget gave him a second, awkward hug, one which felt a little more forced than the one in the Nellie Dean pub a couple of days earlier.
‘That’d be great,’ he said, slumping onto the sofa. ‘I’ll grab some sleep.’
Bridget nodded silently and closed the door behind her, and Marlowe was sure he heard the door locking. Without making a show of it, Marlowe lazily scanned the room, looking for the CCTV cameras that were likely to be in here. He knew someone somewhere would be watching him, so he made a show of yawning, stretching his arms and rising from the sofa, walking over to the kitchen counter and grabbing a glass, pouring himself a drink of water from the tap. Sipping it, he leaned back, checking the room from a different angle.
If there was a camera, it was well hidden – he had to say that for them. All he could think was that somewhere, in a shadowed corner of the recreation area, a small Wi-Fi camera was in the room, but at the same time, MI5 might have allowed this area to be the one exception, or maybe he was overthinking what was going on. Was he sure he was being lied to? Maybe Shaw and Bridget didn’t know who they were working for, either?
Turning back to the counter, he placed the glass down and, holding the front edge, stretched his arms as he bent over, hearing the clicks of his spine as he moved things back into place. He was about to rise and move on when something in the waste bin beside the counter caught his eye.
It was small and had obviously been tossed in without a second thought. It was compressed and solid, nestled into the liner bag and staring up at him. Marlowe wanted to reach down and examine it, but he knew the moment he did, it’d be picked up on a camera, if there even was one in here.
But he didn’t need to pick it up. He’d recognise a prawn cocktail crisp packet folded in on itself anywhere.
Marlowe returned to the sofa, his mind spinning. Could Marshall Kirk be alive? If what Harris said was true, there was no body in the coffin. And a body, shot and then burned to a crisp, would be hard to identify quickly. Could Kirk have been here, stuck in this room, before him, eating vending machine snacks and working out how to escape?
No, this was too much to ask for. Kirk had to be dead. No matter what the cause was, everyone seemed convinced of this. And Marlowe knew without a doubt that, if Marshall Kirk was still alive, he’d have passed a message to Marlowe, or even Tessa.
Who was currently off the grid, with no way for anyone, apart from Marlowe, to contact.
Dammit. If he was alive, why would he be here? Did he try to stop Rubicon? Was Bridget the one who caught him? Or was he brought here unknowingly, thinking he was with allies, just as they’d tried to do with Marlowe?
One thing was for certain, he had twenty-four hours at most to work things out before the US President touched down in the UK. He’d wanted to break into a black-site archive, and now here he was, smack-bang in the middle of one. All he had to do was work out how to get out of the damned place, with the NOC list, and possibly Marshall Kirk.
Although that said, he was interested in seeing what else would happen if he just stayed here. After all, if they wanted him dead, they could have left him with Maguire. There had to be something—
With a sudden feeling of dread, Marlowe rammed his hand into his trouser pocket, rooting around for the brass key Brad Haynes had given him the previous night.
It wasn’t there.
Now, there was every chance he’d lost it during the night, or even at the house in Chelmsford, but Bridget’s questioning of him about the key, and the awkward hug a few moments earlier, made Marlowe question this. Raymond had wanted Brad and the key he’d taken from Amélie Blanchet, and here Marlowe was literally giving it to them.
You goddamned bloody idiot.
There wasn’t much in the room to work with so Marlowe walked to the bathroom and opened the door, checking the shower, toilet, and sink. Apart from trying to drown someone in it, he didn’t really have many options. He had the knife which had been in his ankle holder still, and that knife was now in the sleeve of his jacket, ready in case they attacked him in any way, but apart from that, his list of usable weaponry was small.
There were sounds of movement from the other side of the door, and as Marlowe walked back to the sofa, he saw Shaw walk in, a flapjack and cup of takeaway coffee resting on a file folder.
‘Vending machine doesn’t have much, I’m afraid,’ she said, placing both onto the coffee table. ‘White, no sugar. That’s how you take it, right?’
Marlowe picked up the coffee cup; it was the standard plastic-lined paper cup you got from most chain coffee shops, with a cardboard holder around the middle to stop your fingers burning, and a plastic lid on top, with a small hole to drink from. Marlowe pulled off the lid, staring at it.
‘You don’t trust us?’ Shaw asked.
‘I was seeing if it was a flat white,’ Marlowe bemoaned, sniffing it. ‘Italian roast. You have a coffee shop nearby?’
‘We have an excellent machine,’ Shaw said as Marlowe raised it to his lips to drink, pulling back instantly.
‘My tonth!’ he hissed. ‘I burd my tonth!’
‘Yeah, it’s hot, I should have warned you,’ Shaw smiled maliciously, as Marlowe waved for the water on the counter. Walking over to it, she graciously picked it up, returning to Marlowe, who’d now replaced the lid and placed the coffee back on the table, gratefully dipping his tongue into the water for a second.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That hurt like a bitch.’
Swapping the water for the coffee, he blew into the hole to cool it down.
‘So then, what’s the file?’ he asked.
‘News you probably don’t want to hear,’ Shaw replied. ‘Did you take the USB from Stepan Chechik?’
Marlowe knew it was pointless to lie, so nodded.
‘It had a picture on it,’ he said.
‘We believe Raymond gave him that, and he was on his way to MI5.’ Shaw opened the folder, pulling out two sheets of paper, stapled at the top and filled with names. ‘It held the Rubicon list on it.’
Marlowe mocked surprise, widening his eyes at this. Trix hadn’t come back to him yet with what was in the image, or rather, he hadn’t had the time to check if she’d sent a message, but he was realising quickly this wasn’t a situation where he was going to be told the truth. If Chechik had the list, then there was a different reason here.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ he watched her suspiciously.
‘Because you deserve to know why MI5 doesn’t want you back,’ Shaw said, pointing at a name on the list. ‘Your mother was on it.’
‘Bullshit,’ Marlowe leaned back on the chair, raising the cup to his lips as he considered this.
‘I’m sorry,’ Shaw continued, showing another name. ‘And so was Angela Weber, Marshall’s wife. And, because of this, both Marshall and Tessa have been compromised.’
‘Kirk’s no traitor.’
‘But his wife was.’ Shaw watched Marlowe carefully as he continued sipping at the coffee. ‘Raymond intends to use this to take the list and cause an international event.’
‘Why don’t you go to MI5 with this?’ Marlowe asked, his voice slurring slightly. ‘Marshall—’
He stopped, staring at the coffee cup.
‘What did you do?’ he whispered.
‘Ah, about time it started working. You’ve been sipping at a sedative, laced with a little smidge of amobarbital and sodium thiopental,’ Shaw smiled, taking the papers and putting them back into the file. ‘It makes you a little more suggestible to telling the truth, before putting you to sleep.’
‘You … killed Marshall.’
Shaw’s face didn’t change as she replied coolly.
‘The less you know, the better,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m the one asking questions. What did Brad Haynes tell you?’
‘Nothing,’ Marlowe slumped against the sofa, struggling to rise. ‘He was … nothing but a drunk. Why are you doing this? You’re … MI5 …’
‘So what?’ Shaw hissed. ‘You think they give a shit about women like me? Curtis will get the promotion I deserved. Curtis, who you bettered twice, I might add.’
‘You’re … on the list …?’ Marlowe was struggling to stay conscious now, dropping the cup beside him, the lid falling off and splattering him and the corner of the sofa with the last remnants of the coffee.
‘No,’ Shaw smiled. ‘But I have several friends and mentors who were. That’s the problem with Rubicon. When it was analogue, it couldn’t be changed. But the moment someone stuck it on a server, it became anyone’s, no matter how deep you bury the original.’
‘Russia?’
‘You think too small,’ Shaw shrugged. ‘Countries aren’t the world powers anymore. And the UK will see that soon.’
‘The … key?’
