THE KILL ORDER

 

A BLACKHAWK NOVEL

 

​

Copyright © M.F. Kelleher 2022, 2023, 2025

Fifth Edition

 

The right of M.F.Kelleher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any authorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

 

ISBN 9798800520255

Cover artwork by Claire Meczes

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

Gabrielle checks her watch - twenty past the hour. Everything is on time. The train is due in two minutes and will slow at exactly the point where she will be able to jump on to it after a thirty-yard sprint from her cover by the trackside. The sun moves out from behind a cloud and momentarily blinds her. She flips down the sun visor on the headset she is wearing. No sounds shatter the peace of the countryside around her, and she breathes out.

Then, it starts.

The wheels of the train are the first noise she hears from down the railway line. Her mind flips to the next three minutes and her objective. The engine noise builds, the wheels’ rhythm marking out each half-second. Gabby rises off her haunches and waits until the train appears around the corner of the trees. One second, two, then it’s there. She starts the run, her feet beat on the ground, the train is steady, the edge of the embankment is close, the edge comes before she knows it, and suddenly she’s in the air. The metal side of the carriage flashes by, she aims for the gap between cars three and four. She hits the metalwork with a groan, her black-gloved fingers close around the pole at the end of the carriage. She brings one hand across and latches onto the steel carriage side. Her body’s momentum continues, now pulled by the train’s movement too; her arms take the impact, her muscles strain, then pull down and finally bring her to a halt.

Gabby pulls herself up the pole and flicks her legs over onto the roof. She crawls along the top of the car, using the maintenance grab-bars that are equally spaced along its length, then repeats the same for each carriage. At the end of the train she grabs the struts that protect the roof of the last carriage and eases herself down until she can reach the locked end door. She pulls a train key from her utility belt, pushes it in and twists it until the end door pops open, then she disappears inside the train.

There are corridors running the length of each car. She rushes down the first carriage and into the second. She checks the compartment numbers; 7-1, 7-2, 7-3, then the place she needs, 7-4. She stops just before the glass door to the compartment and draws her Smith & Wesson M&P 9 handgun. The intel from London says that the close-in security for this target are two people, both military-trained; so they’ll be on to her as soon as she slides the door open. Gabby takes a breath, reaches out to the handle, curls her hand around it, waits for a half second, then pulls.

Morrison is seated in the far corner, the two security people opposite; one man, one woman. The man is first to rise within a second of Gabby’s entrance; the woman moves to cover Morrison and the man draws his gun. Gabby knows that the most unexpected move is often the most effective, she draws her body back then brings her leg up with speed, kicking the weapon from his hand. The woman has her weapon drawn as well now as Gabby moves toward Morrison. The male security grabs her shoulders and pulls her backwards, and hits him in the face, hard, twice. Gabby has her weapon trained on the woman and keeps moving towards her at pace in the confined compartment. When it comes, a second later, the impact of Gabby’s body pushes the woman up against the window. Gabby grabs the muzzle, pulls the weapon away and swings a punch to knock the woman out.

“With me!” she screams at Morrison and the scientist gets up looking scared. She takes his hand and they run down the corridor, across into the last car and all the way to the back of the train. The end-door still swings open from Gabby’s arrival. She checks her watch, thirty seconds before pick up. She can hear the chopper already in place behind the train; she looks out and it accelerates in the air, closing the gap with the last carriage. A steel winch line is dangling out of the helicopter’s side door and the winch man drops it further as the two vehicles close in on each other.

Gabrielle grabs hold of Morrison’s arm. She pulls out a harness from her U-belt, wraps it around the scientist, and clicks the bands onto the lock on his chest. The end of the winch is within twenty feet of the open doorway now and closing. Gabby assesses the velocity that the helicopter is approaching and reaches out into the space behind the train as the winch line sways in. Her hand grasps the metal end. She pulls Morrison out from where he is standing back from the edge, and attempts to engage the clip-lock. The metal opens, then just closes too early and the winch line swings away without its cargo. The chopper pilot pushes the machine closer and the line swings in again. She grabs the end again, and pulls Morrison, opens the lock and clicks the thing shut. She waves her arm to the winch man, takes a deep breath, and pushes the scientist out into the void behind the train. He swings violently away from the carriage, then swings back and nearly hits the carriage again but the pilot lifts the chopper and pulls away into the sky.

Gabby grabs the stanchion at the end of the train with both hands and scans the countryside as she passes, looking for the pre-planned drop site. The gap in the trees is up ahead. She pushes out and off the train, a second in the air; she adopts the brace position as she flies across the gap between track and earth, then hits the ground, rolls, crashes into bushes and finally comes to rest. She immediately stands and runs into the woodland. Once hidden within the trees, Gabby pulls out her phone and logs into Oberon, the MI6 operations system. She selects Job 23.5-F, pushes the button marked ‘complete’ on the screen, then dives off into the woods to rendezvous with her extraction vehicle.

*

It is windless in Berlin. Gabrielle turns the corner to finish her morning run by going once around the park, two blocks from her flat.

The conversation she had two months ago with Sir Bernard Mackintosh, Head of MI6 Global Operations, keeps going through her mind.

One of the current big challenges for British security is countries using migration as a cover for bringing spies into the UK. Traditionally, spies have come in as part of the embassy staff numbers, but increasingly countries are using illegal entry as a way to get their security personnel across the borders. Sir Bernard told her that one route of particular concern runs from Minsk in Belarus and across the EU border into Poland. MI6 wants to infiltrate the gang running the route and control the operation. Sir Bernard asked Gabby to lead the work, which has been allocated the name Operation Windfall by London Centre. Her boss had been clear that this is a priority. He had already reassured the Minister, before he had spoken to her, that Gabby would make this a success.

Since that conversation, she has been running an agent in deep cover within Berlin to penetrate the cell who are preparing to run the route. Gabby had chosen Agent Laravelle for the job because of a big win the agent had, in her first field operation. It had resulted in the convictions for two men who had been running a prostitution operation trafficking girls from the Far East into Paris, then blackmailing British Embassy staff with compromising pictures of them and the girls in hotel rooms. Easily done if you know the parties that diplomats attend.

Windfall is a more complex operation, but Gabby had insisted on having Laravelle after they met in London and she had grilled the woman for three hours about exactly what she did at each stage of the previous op - what criteria she’d used to make judgements, and how she’d assessed what is the best action in a continually shifting set of circumstances. Laravelle had easily passed all of the tests.

Gabby needs to meet her and hear the latest news. She showers and dresses in black trousers and a black roll neck, then pushes her dark hair into a woollen hat. She slams out of the flat and pulls up the collar of her coat to protect against the chill of a March day in Berlin. She strides across to a battered VW Golf on the other side of the road. This car is part of the equipment provided by MI6 so she can remain anonymous when meeting her agent; nothing too showy or memorable Tech Branch had told her.

She travels to the Charlottenburg area of Berlin and parks on a side road near Kantstrasse then takes a long walk around two blocks as part of standard security procedure to deter tails. She doubles back to Location Gamma-64, which is a cheap café down a rubbish-strewn alleyway off a side road. The café was chosen, like many MI6 locations, as it has two exits just in case there’s a need to escape at some stage.

The place is empty as Gabrielle pushes the door. She finds a table in the far corner and orders coffee. As she waits, she thinks about Laravelle’s only real weakness. Her firearms ability is untested in the field. She would have had basic training, but now is the time to get her some more practical familiarisation before the enemy cell starts bringing people along the migrant route and matters get more dangerous.

Gabby has a reputation within MI6 of being a lone wolf, ignoring the rules when it suits her. But equally Sir Bernard knows that she is one of his best agents in Europe. One aspect of Gabby’s rebellion is to only agree to work with certain people, the people she trusts. One of the people in her inner circle is Catherine Grosvenor, Agent Coniston. An elite sniper with C9 Branch. Gabby pulls out her work phone, goes into encrypt and sends a message to Coniston asking for a day of her time to take Laravelle through some field firearms tutoring. A reply comes back within a minute; yes, she can do it, and yes, tomorrow.

The bell above the door jingles and Laravelle walks into the café. Her dirty blonde hair is swept to one side to reveal closely-shaved skin from her right ear upwards. She is wearing a denim mini-skirt which shows a tear in her black tights, and her make-up is intentionally badly applied to create the right impression for Sabrina Miller, Laravelle’s deep cover name.

Sabrina had grown up in the poorest area of East Berlin with a German father and Russian mother who hadn’t stayed together. She had been thrown out of school at fifteen for drug use, and had spent five years working in bars in Berlin and Hannover where she was arrested for prostitution twice and aggravated assault once before ending up, apparently, living in Berlin just around the corner from the flat being used by the Windfall trafficking gang. After three weeks of sitting in cafés and bars in the area, she had managed to get talking to the Romanian targets, Tereza Baciu and Oana Popa. Gradually, after long nights of alcohol, they trusted her enough to start bringing her more into the details of what they’re planning.

Laravelle orders a coffee from the woman behind the counter, and sits down opposite Gabby.

“How are you?” says Gabrielle.

Laravelle rolls her lips together. “Tired.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t sleep for some reason,” says Laravelle. “Well, on and off, you know?”

“Are you worried about something?”

“Apart from being best friends with two violent criminals?” A smile flickers across her face and Gabby echoes it.

“Give me an update, Jenny.”

“Tereza is getting more aggressive,” says Laravelle. “She leads all the planning now, but she’s prone to push people around and the two of them argue all the time.”

“How ready are they?” says Gabby.

“Advanced,” says Laravelle. “They have four people in Belarus as sweepers who have been working for at least three weeks. The market for people to get out is huge, but it’s about identifying who has the funding in place.”

“London is tracking the movement of all assets that are of interest to us in Minsk,” says Gabby. “So we’ll know when anyone significant is booked onto a lorry.”

“It doesn’t really work like that,” says Laravelle. “There aren’t passenger lists and I’m not likely to see any names of who signs up, only the people in Minsk know who’s paid and which lorry they’ll be on. As long as they pay, no one cares about identity.”

“How many people on each run?”

“Ten,” says Laravelle. “Packed in behind legitimate cargo.”

“Do we know which crossing?”

“Terespol,” says Laravelle.

“What about timings?” says Gabrielle. “When’s the first run?”

“Three or four days’ time, everything’s nearly in place,” says Laravelle.

“There are two things I need you to do,” says Gabby. The other woman waits. “Firstly, tomorrow, you’ll spend the day on armaments training. You did the basic module but you need some more practice. Coniston is coming to Berlin tomorrow to take you through some more advanced aspects.”

“OK.”

“Second,” says Gabby. “We have an asset in Belarus who we need to get out.”

“Who?”

“Asset Coda.”

“Any background on them?”

“They’re in Minsk, they’ve helped us but now they’re under threat of arrest or worse. You’ll get more briefing when you get there.”

“When I get there?” says Laravelle. “There are no plans to…”

“You’ll need to change the plans.” Gabby’s face shows no emotion. “Do you think you can do that?”

“I’ll need a valid reason to suddenly change what I’ve been saying to them, you know? I was supposed to be your ears and eyes in Berlin,” says Laravelle.

“Comms Branch have created more back story for you. Sabrina has a boyfriend, Fedor Adamovich; he lives in Belarus and you want to go and see him. His father needs to get out of the country but can’t get papers because of his criminal past. Agent Panama is based in Minsk, he’ll be Adamovich.”

Gabby pulls out a package from her pocket and places it on the table between them.

“Your flight leaves Berlin Brandenburg the day after tomorrow at 9pm, direct to Belarus,” she continues. “In that package is a Russian passport for Sabrina, so you can get through passport control. You’ll rendezvous with Panama in Minsk then you’ll both ensure Coda gets onto the lorry. Tell Tereza and Oana your boyfriend will pay double to guarantee a place for his father on the first run.”

Laravelle nods and is quiet for a second while she takes in the new information.

“I guess this Coda’s significant?” she says, looking up at Gabby.

“They’re a friend of the UK, yes.”

“Dangerous?”

“No, an old man.” Gabby watches Laravelle. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” says Laravelle. “Oana wants to get her brother out in that first run too.”

“OK,” says Gabby. “What’s the story?”

“Just young, wants to get away. Their whole family is connected to crime, so like with Coda, official papers get delayed; the authorities don’t want them to leave.”

“How old is he?”

“Seventeen.”

“Does his presence increase the risk?”

“I don’t think so,” says Laravelle. “I’ll keep across it, but he seems to be just a trapped kid.”

Laravelle looks at her watch. “Sorry I need to go, I don’t want them to see us together. They’re twitchy about leaks.”

“They don’t suspect anything?”

“No, I just want to keep it that way.” Laravelle picks up the bundle of documents, gets up and walks out without looking back.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

The sun occasionally breaks through the cloudy sky over London, casting long shadows across the MI6 Headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the south bank of the Thames. Sir Bernard Mackintosh, the man in charge of all British security operations outside of the United Kingdom sits in a large chair wearing a blue shirt, pin-striped trousers and a waistcoat. He has worn the same uniform since his first day at work, which was over three decades ago. His mop of greying hair is cut short and his long fingers grasp a fountain pen with green ink in it, as is the tradition for his job.

Sir Bernard’s assistant, Lawrence, walks into the room followed by a middle-aged man who looks tired and slightly nervous. “Agent Daventry, sir,” says Lawrence, using Marcus Murphy’s field name.

“Have a seat, Marcus,” says Sir Bernard indicating the two red leather chairs in front of his rosewood desk. Murphy sits and waits while Sir Bernard finishes writing in the margin of a paper file in front of him.

“Just adding some thoughts to this Operation Brightside report,” he says without looking up. “Have you seen it?”

“I have, sir.”

“What did you think?”

“I think it was under-resourced, Sir Bernard,” says Murphy as flatly as he thinks is reasonable.

“It was a massive cock-up, Marcus,” says the older man, stopping and looking up at his visitor over his glasses.

He considers, then rejects the idea of continuing that particular conversation.

“I wanted to discuss Morrison,” he says, talking to the window.

“A successful snatch op, sir,” says Marcus.

“Any injuries?”

“No, Morrison is fit and well and holed up in a safe house in Copenhagen.”

“And we keep him there until the Russians have calmed down over the snatch?” says Sir Bernard. Marcus nods. “How long do we think that will be?”

“Three weeks, maybe,” says Marcus.

Sir Bernard takes a long, low breath out. “What about the onward journey?”

“Comms Branch has nearly finished constructing a new life for him in the States, they’re working with the CIA. He’ll get a new name, new face, and a job at Harvard.”

“Make sure we have the deal written down,” says Sir Bernard. “We’re not giving them this chap with his knowledge of biological weaponry with nothing in return. The deal is fifty-fifty on his research findings for the next decade, Marcus, or no deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Marcus.” Sir Bernard starts reading the documents in front of him.

Marcus gets up and walks out.

*

March is Ela Peretz’s favourite month, and London in March is her favourite place to be. She pulls on her coat and wraps a scarf around her neck then unlocks her front door and walks outside. The cold air hits her face making her blue eyes water slightly. She turns left up the hill and heads for the common; even though she went there yesterday, she feels the need to get out, away from the things that keep digging at her mind.

As she crosses the road and starts to walk on the grass, her phone vibrates in her pocket and despite promising herself that she wouldn’t look at it until this evening, she can’t resist to see if Stefan is messaging her.

They met six weeks ago. Stefan had talked to her in a café as she was trawling through work on her laptop. Every MI6 computer has a veneer application, as Tech Branch call it - with the swift pressing of a combination of keys, the screen displays pages connected to her cover job, which is as a researcher in a media company. In reality, Ela is one of the Heads of Research in the MI6 Investigations Branch.

Stefan had seemed open and honest from the outset and they have met every week since that first day. Two weeks ago they slept together on a Saturday night in his flat in Southfields, twenty minutes from her place. She’d walked home the next day passed the Wimbledon Tennis Ground, the sun had been shining and she felt happy for the first time in too long.

Even though all new personal contacts are supposed to be reported the day after you make them, she had held off, just to make sure. She didn’t want to appear to her colleagues to be picking up men all the time. But at last, on Friday, she had completed the 23J form, known colloquially within the security services as the Threepee. Its formal title being, Permission to Progress a Personal Relationship. She had left the form, unsent, in her drafts until Monday and she will send it then. After that, another Head of Research will lead an investigation into Stefan’s background and explore every detail of his life so far, his parents, his previous friends, his job, even where he had gone on holiday.

But the message on her phone isn’t from Stefan, it’s an encrypt from work. She slides her finger across the stage one unlock pattern and waits for the code to be sent to her phone to get through stage two. The message is from MI5 Ops Control, MI6’s sister service focused on domestic UK intelligence. Requests from 5 come through all the time, particularly for European data that her team has access to. Ela reads off the screen, the duty controller is tracking a police operation in Bristol and the targets have been talking about European contacts that MI5 need to know about. She hits the button and makes the return call.

“Frank’s Laundry,” says the voice on the line.

She had memorised today’s pass code before leaving the house and says it into the mouthpiece.

“How are you, Ela?”

“Who’s that?” she says.

“Exeter,” comes the reply, the field ops name for Major Marjorie Allardice, Duty Ops Controller with MI5.

“Are you enjoying your Sunday off, on Wimbledon Common?”

“Yes, it’s a beautiful day,” says Ela. “What do you need for this op?”

“Background checks on two contacts that I’m hoping are in the MI6 system,” says Marjorie.

“Got any names?”

“Danilo Savchenko, Ukrainian national and Stefan Lakatos, Moldovan.”

Ela’s hand shakes as she holds the phone up to her ear, suddenly her body feels tired. It can’t be her Stefan, but the surname is the same too.

“Can you say those again?” Ela puts all her effort into stopping her voice tremble.

“Savchenko and Lakatos,” says Exeter again.

Ela’s mind spins, she wants to end the call and run but she knows she can’t. She has two options, declare her personal knowledge, now, of one of the men, or say nothing.

“I…,” she begins.

“Yes?” says Marjorie.

“I may know one of those men,” she says quietly.

“Which one?”

“Lakatos.”

“In what capacity?”

“Personal.”

“Sexual?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Did you think he could be part of a foreign intelligence service?” says Marjorie.

In that second, a wave of consequences seems to roll out of the phone and hit Ela’s mind. “I didn’t.”

“Did you log the Three Pee?”

“I was just going to.”

There’s a moment's silence from the other end of the line.

“Ela,” says Marjorie. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow. We can talk it through. Can you get your team to dig out details on the other guy?”

“Of course,” says Ela. There’s another pause, then she says. “Will you report me?”

“Let’s chat first. I’ll send you a location. Two o’clock OK?”

“Sure.”

The line goes dead.

*

Catherine opens a window on her Mac to check her work queue that is fed by both London Control and by Europe Control, depending on which hub is leading on an operation.

Two messages are sitting in her inbox. The first is from Agent Riverside, who has tried to keep in touch since their trip to France six months ago. She has ignored him until now, and does so again as she deletes the message.

The other message is a kill order. The target is the leader of a cell in Verona who has been flagged as dangerous and a liability. Catherine has been allocated this job as her patch is Switzerland and Northern Italy. She reviews the field analysis provided in the job and recognises the street layout near to the target location. There’s a time critical need to act swiftly for his particular case, and she decides to drive down immediately to carry out the order.

The journey over the mountains in her Jaguar F-Type has taken a little under five hours. Catherine drives down the Via Goffredo Mameli in Verona then cuts off north to the village of Avesa in the suburbs. After passing blocks of flats on either side of the road that lay close by the kerbside, the road starts to climb and the houses get scarcer. The slope rises to a summit then drops down the other side into a village. The air is still and the place is silent as she steers the car passed white houses with red-tiled roofs. She pulls over and checks the location of the target’s house which is on via Premuda, five minutes away.

The main road that cuts the village in two is wide with homes set under trees that would provide shade during the long, hot summers of Northern Italy but are bare and skeletal now. The sky starts to show the first traces of dusk as Catherine turns off into Via Premuda. She drives the length of it, but it only leads to an alleyway with no exit for vehicles, making it unsuitable as an escape route. She drives back and around the block then parks in a street that runs parallel to via Premuda. She will need to cut through the garden of one of the houses here and across the fields beyond to end up at the rear of the target’s home. The street is narrow, with the walls of houses not much wider than her Jaguar in parts, but it’s her only option. Parking further away will give her too far to run to make her escape after the event.

She sits in the Jaguar, flips open her laptop, goes through security and navigates to the job file. The target is Riccardo Fasoli, a small-time crook who had caused havoc in his home town of Verona as a teenager by repeatedly attacking the police. He had been put into IPM, Istituto Penale Minorile, the Italian youth detention system. He had served eighteen months and come out just before seventeenth birthday. The police records abruptly stop after that, and the researcher from Investigations Branch, who provided the documents that she is looking at, has written a note saying, ‘likely records wiped due to local police corruption’. The next time that Fasoli materialises is a newspaper article from five years ago. He was 24 years old by then and the article is talking about how he was likely behind a number of smuggling gangs operating from Verona and up across the mountains, through Slovenia and Croatia into the Serbian capital, Belgrade. There is more intelligence in the file that confirms he now has connections into the Serbian Mafia and one of his key associates is a central figure in Belgrade’s crime scene, Florin Barbu. Fasoli is trusted, and this trust has increased his standing as he’s been allowed to move up from drugs to arms smuggling. In the last year, he has started bringing small weapons in containers from Moscow and funnelling them out across the EU.

Fasoli has been watched by the AISE, Italy’s MI6, for three years with growing concern as his power has increased and he has become more influential. Now, the Italian and British Governments have agreed that this one small cog in a network of people has the potential to be a threat to Western security, and he needs to be stopped - hence the kill order dropping into Catherine’s inbox.

She looks out at the sky, now almost black. There is no moon visible tonight. She checks her handgun, pushes it back into the underarm holster, zips up her jacket and steps outside. There are lights on the road but one streetlight is broken, providing a pool of shade that will mask her entrance into one of the gardens. She slips out of sight, over the back wall and into the rough ground that creates a no man’s land between the two streets. She runs fast, guided only by the few lights from the houses ahead of her.

Within two minutes, she is at the back wall of the via Premuda houses. She unfastens a standard HA-6 climbing cord from her utility belt and throws it over the top of the wall. She pulls the cord and it latches on the other side. Catherine pulls the base lever and a set of footholds collapses out from the cord providing a makeshift ladder which she starts the climb. She moves silently and rapidly towards the top, then jumps down into the back garden of the Fasoli residence.

These are old houses that have been gutted and gentrified at some time in the last decade. She walks to the back door of the house, listens for activity and hears none, then produces a set of short metal tools and inserts them into the lock. Two swift turns and she hears a click inside the mechanism. She unholsters her Beretta M9 handgun and raises it to her shoulder height, then turns the door handle.

Inside, the first room is the kitchen. Two sidelights are on but there is no one in sight. She steps across the floor tiling, black and white against her black leggings and boots. She can hear her breaths; steady, measured and impatient. Catherine pushes her head around the door frame into the next room which is the lounge. Again, no one is there and she steps lightly through into the space. A fire is alight at the far end of the room and she can feel the heat from twenty feet away.

She waits. Taking in the layout of the room. There are stairs on one side, sofas and two chairs and no evidence of inhabitants, but they must be somewhere.

Catherine takes a breath out and moves one long leg towards the base of the stairwell. She hears a slight click behind her, stops, starts to turn, then feels pain on the left side of her head and her world goes dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

It had been threatening to rain before Sir Bernard had left Vauxhall Cross. His dark blue Jaguar Sentinel is stuck in traffic around Parliament Square on the short journey to the white stucco building next to 10 Downing Street that contains the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. His driver, Percy, asks if Sir Bernard would like him to use the bus lanes as they are allowed to do so in emergencies. Sir Bernard declines the offer as he doesn’t approve of overt shows of privilege. Eventually, Percy pulls up at the road entrance of the Ministry and waits while the officer on duty checks the paperwork. Once through the outside gates, Percy parks up and walks around the car to open the door for his boss.

On the second floor, Sir Bernard is shown into a dark, oak-panelled meeting room with a view over Whitehall. Within thirty seconds, a door opens at the far end of the room.

“Bernard, good to see you.” The man walks quickly and offers his hand.

“Ralph, how are you?”

“Good, good” says Sir Ralph Coltrane, looking intensely at Sir Bernard.  The words leave Sir Bernard with the feeling there was more that Ralph was going to say but decided not to at the last moment.

Sir Ralph Coltrane is tall and thin, his expensive suit hiding a wiry frame that can be seen jogging along Whitehall each lunchtime from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square, then back through Admiralty Arch and passed the Churchill War Rooms. He has a broad, open face, salt-and-pepper hair cut short and royal blue eyes with lids that blink just more often than most people’s do. He is the Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office, the most senior civil servant in the ministry, responsible for managing the relationship with the Foreign Secretary, whose role includes responsibility for MI6 and the listening station, GCHQ, but oddly not the domestic service, MI5.

“I have been meaning to arrange a lunch for us,” says Ralph. “But diaries, you know?”

They both smirk knowingly at the most common excuse there is to not meet someone.

“Sit, sit.” Sir Ralph pulls out one of the ten chairs that are pushed under a mahogany table that dominates the room. They both sit down, and a man in a dark suit brings in a tray with tea in a pot and a plate of biscuits.

“Thank you, Richard,” says Sir Ralph, then waits until the man has left and the door closes behind him.

“I wanted to get you in for a chat about this scientist chap.”

“Morrison?” says Sir Bernard.

“We now have one of the world’s leading biological weapons experts hidden away in Denmark, " says Sir Ralph. “The Russians, whose company he was enjoying until last week, are not best pleased that we have their chap. Question one is, will they do anything about it?”

“Highly likely,” says Sir Bernard.

“What?”

“Snatch him back possibly or take one of our assets if they can’t locate Morrison.”

“And we have good people looking after him?” says Sir Ralph.

“Naturally.”

“What about them snatching someone else?” asks Sir Ralph.

“All of our assets are constantly monitored.”

“Could they retaliate against the agent who grabbed him?

“Potentially, it was one of our best European field ops people, they’ll know who she is as she didn’t eliminate the security around Morrison, so they will have ID’d her.”

“Does she need pulling out of the field?”

“She can look after herself.”

“When do you move Morrison?” says Sir Ralph.

“Two or three weeks.”

“I need to brief the Minister,” says Sir Ralph. “She’ll want to know accurate timings.

“I can’t give you anything more accurate yet, Ralph. It depends on many factors, mostly relating to Morrison’s safety.

“Understood,” says Sir Ralph, then he pauses. “This one is a top priority, Bernard.”

“Meaning?”

“The Minister is meeting the Yanks next week, she wants to give them commitments.”

“To what, exactly?” says Sir Bernard.

“Cooperation across a range of initiatives, including this Morrison thing.”

“I’m not sure I understand you, Ralph,” says Sir Bernard. “We have the man, we will move him into US hands as and when it is safe to do so under our agreed safety protocols for moving high-value civilian assets.”

“The Yanks are nervous,” says Sir Ralph.

“About what?”

“Morrison.”

Sir Bernard, who is beginning to get irritated at Coltrane’s questions, shifts in his seat. “Ralph, you can assure the Minister, and she can assure the Yanks that our best people are on this,” he says. “The agent who snatched Morrison will oversee the transfer, she’s a one woman army if needs be, and Morrison will be treated as an utmost priority.”

“Thank you, Bernard.” There is an uncomfortable pause between the men with Sir Bernard still unclear what the other man was really getting at.

They talk for another half an hour on other issues, then Sir Ralph has to go. As he leaves, Sir Bernard can’t help thinking that there is some sort of plan in flight about Morrison that Ralph hasn’t been totally open about.

*

The Ivy restaurant in Wimbledon sits at the top of Wimbledon Hill in what locals call The Village. Expensively-dressed women inhabit the cafes and restaurants in The Village at all times of the year apart from the tennis fortnight, when the place is overrun with tennis fans, and the locals are absent, having rented their houses out to players at exorbitant rates.

Ela is early and is shown to a table at the far end of a broad room that gives a view of a garden beyond. The place is half full and the gentle buzz of conversation gives the impression of discrete gentility. A woman approaches the table. She is in her forties, her brunette hair is curly and pushed back behind her ears, under her open camel coat she wears a dark blue suit.

“Hello, Ela.” She holds out her hand. “Marjorie Allardice.”

Ela stands to shake hands and they both sit.

“I haven’t been here before,” says Marjorie.

“No, nor me.”

“Isn’t it just up the road from your flat?”

“Just not the sort of place I eat normally,” she says. “I’m more pubs and pizza.”

A waitress approaches, Marjorie already knows what she is having without looking at the menu and Ela feels the pressure of the women watching as she decides.

“How long have you been with us now?” says Marjorie, both of them aware that their conversation will have to be guarded in a public place.

“Six years.”

“A Head of Research after six years - impressive,” says Marjorie.

Ela smiles mildly.

“Cambridge wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Girton.”

“And a first in Modern History. Enjoy it?”

“Yes,” Ela says, wondering where this is going.

“Why did you choose us for a career?”

“I like research, I saw an advert, nothing weird.”

Marjorie watches the younger woman. “Tell me about Stefan,” she says with a smile.

“We met a few weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“A pub.”

“He approached you?” Marjorie pulls apart a bread roll on her side plate and butters it.

“Yes, he approached me.” Ela’s pupils are large, she is aware, but she doesn’t want to look guilty of anything.

“Does that happen a lot to you?” says Marjorie. “You’re a pretty girl.”

“Male attention?” says Ela. “I guess.”

“Why didn’t you send in the Threepee?”

“I wasn’t sure the relationship would go anywhere.”

“That’s not the rule.”

“I know.” Ela’s emotions rise in her voice.

“Did you send it in after we spoke yesterday?” says Marjorie.

“Not yet, you said you wanted to talk.”

“Here’s what I think,” says Marjorie. “I can help you here. As you haven’t declared the relationship, it will look suspicious now, so I’d advise you not to say anything. I won’t either.”

“But, what if Stefan really is part of the Moldovan security service?” she says, whispering.

“I can keep that off any official records.”

“Why would you?” says Ela.

“You remind me of how I was in my twenties,” says Marjorie. “I made mistakes, and in this business those mistakes go on your record and you can never shake them off. You’re a high-flyer, this could affect your career, and we need more women higher up in both of our organisations.”

“I don’t want to break the rules,” says Ela.

“It’s not breaking the rules. No one will know, but we can use this situation to our benefit.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Access to Moldovan intelligence,” says Marjorie, her eyes are unblinking and locked on to Ela’s face.

“I don’t understand.”

“If Stefan does have access to the Moldovan intelligence network,” Marjorie’s voice is as flat as a pancake. “We can use that opportunity to benefit us both.”

Ela says nothing, and then their food arrives. Marjorie diverts the conversation to a comparison of their childhoods, which runs throughout the main course, then they order coffees.

“The topic we were talking about earlier,” says Marjorie. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what it means.”

“Before we do anything, let me have some conversations,” says Marjorie. “I’ll explore his background and if there’s anything valuable that we need from him.” She stops and inserts a reassuring smile at Ela. “I want to help and I don’t want to see a great career ruined from one silly mistake.”

*

Agent Carling sits with his feet up on the windowsill of the third floor flat of 32A Overgaden Oven Vandet. The street runs along the canal bank that connects at both ends to the main Copenhagen Harbour waterway. He leans forward and flicks the ash off his cigarette and out of the open window as his eyes trace the rooftops of the Christianshavn District of central Copenhagen that lays beneath him. He likes this area as it is full of hip cafes and vegetarian restaurants, and it frustrates him that he and his ward, Professor Michael Morrison, cannot venture out more than once a day to take in the richness of the surrounding area, and even then only for thirty minutes to avoid being too conspicuous.

Carling has a round, boy-like face with a moustache and eyes set close together, all surrounded by light-brown hair in a ponytail. London Centre encourages their agents to blend in with the area they are allocated to and Carling’s patch is Denmark and Sweden. He felt it only fitting to grow his hair long, which his mother had described as full-on hippy when he saw her a few weeks ago on a visit home to Norfolk.

This baby-sitting job is not the sort of thing he ever likes doing as part of his duties, he’d rather be out doing some undercover work or real spying than looking after some old man. But the Prof as he’s started to call him, is alright, they have kept their brains alert by playing cards and chess every evening. The Prof sleeps late but is a good cook, and they have been enjoying long lunches to pass the time. Their daily walk is due any minute. Morrison likes to keep to a timetable, like he does when doing research work.

Morrison appears in the doorway behind Carling.

“Francis,” he says, using Carling’s cover name. “Time for our daily sojourn.”

“Right you are, Prof,” he says. He throws the butt of his cigarette out of the window, grabs his coat from a hook behind the door and the two of them make their way down to street level.

They have been walking for ten minutes before Carling becomes aware that they have a tail.

He directs the Prof around a couple of corners to check the stickiness of the tail and the man follows their path albeit a hundred yards behind them. As they pass a café, Carling suggests they stop for a coffee and they go in and sit at a table by the window so that Carling can have a good view of the street outside. Morrison is unaware of anything untoward, and Carling wants to keep it that way. They order drinks and chat about the state of research in the West versus China.

By the time they finish their coffees, Carling has seen no sign of the tail again, but tells the Prof to stay seated for a minute while he goes out to check something. Carling walks out into the Copenhagen day, the sun has broken through the clouds and it feels warm on his face. He turns right out of the café and scans the faces along the street as he goes. Suddenly, he sees the tail again, near the entrance to an alleyway between two tall buildings. The guy slips out of sight and Carling walks towards the alley and looks down the passage. As he does so, he sees the man go through a gate at the far end. Carling runs towards him, but the man stays put and turns the key in a lock on the gate before Carling reaches the fence.

“Too late, Agent Carling,” he says, then turns and disappears round the corner. Carling tugs at the gate, then looks up at the fence but it’s eight foot high and decides not to climb up.

What did the guy mean, too late? Carling turns back up the alleyway. Then, his brain catches up. He starts to run, turns the corner and arrives at the café. There’s a crowd of people in the doorway.

“Move aside please, move aside, police,” he shouts.

Then, he sees Morrison.

The old man is lying across the table with a blood stain seeping into the fabric of the back of his jacket.