The Angry Sea

‘Make yourselves decent,’ he said.

Charlotte slowly wrapped the sheet around herself, but Martha Percival simply stared vacantly at the ground, until one of the men threw the cloth over her.

Another man produced flatbreads, dates and a bottle of water.

‘Eat,’ said Kadyrov. ‘And drink.’

Martha Percival stared at her feet and said nothing.

Charlotte Morgan looked up at him.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can kill me if you like.’

‘All in good time, my dear,’ said Kadyrov, with a smile. ‘What is your expression? Good things come to those who wait. I won’t force you to eat, but it has been some hours since you were taken, and I cannot allow you to die of thirst. So…’

He nodded at the man, who grabbed Charlotte’s face, forced her mouth open, and thrust the bottle into it.

She choked and spluttered, but a good half-litre of water found its way into her stomach.

When the bottle was removed, Charlotte looked at Kadyrov, defiance blazing from her eyes.

‘Very well,’ he said. He turned back to the other men and said, almost benevolently, ‘Now tape them. This one first.’

Two of the men approached and seized Charlotte by the arms and legs, and a third began winding white duct tape around her ankles. He worked quickly and methodically, and by the time he was finished, her entire body was taped solid; a fourth covered her head, so that the only visible parts were her feet, her mouth and the top of her hair. She looked like a mummy.

During the entire time, Charlotte Morgan said and did nothing. She knew that resistance was futile, and, while her mind was reeling in panic and fear, she was determined not to show it; she would not give them that satisfaction.

When both women were taped, Kadyrov leaned forwards and spoke to Charlotte.

‘Welcome to our lands, my dear,’ he said. ‘We do things differently here, as you will learn. We are going to travel now on a journey, about three hours, to Saïdia. It’s a beautiful place, but ruined by your people. At Saïdia we will catch a boat and go back to the sea.’ He chuckled. ‘Your intelligence people, we think they will be expecting us to stay on land,’ he said. ‘But they are not so clever.’

He turned and gestured towards the Land Cruisers.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you must be placed in the back of one of these vehicles. We have made a special place, under the seats. Because we do not wish you to perish from heat exhaustion, we have fed the cold air through it. But it will be uncomfortable. You must be careful to make no noise. If we are stopped by any authorities, you say nothing. It will not help you, anyway – even if they hear you, some of the police are on our side, some are very stupid, and the others we can either bribe or intimidate. But still, remember this: you say nothing. If you disobey, you will die.’

He looked at the men standing nearby and nodded.

They lifted Charlotte Morgan’s stiffened, mummified form and carried her to the rear of the nearest 4x4.

It had, indeed, been modified, so that a narrow channel led from under the rear compartment’s floor to the passenger seat.

They pushed her into it, head-first, bodily.

Snapped it shut.

She heard them replace the carpeted floor.

Load some bags on top.

Then nothing for quite some time.

Outside, in the warm moonlight, Kadyrov turned to Argun Shishani and sighed, contentedly. ‘I can’t believe how well things are going, brother,’ he said. ‘Ride with me.’

They climbed into the rear of the first 4x4, and a few moments later the two vehicles set off in a slow convoy.

Beneath and behind them, in the lurching claustrophobia of the Land Cruiser’s secret compartment, Charlotte Morgan was fighting an inhuman terror which was total and absolute and almost all-consuming.

It was like being in a coffin: her body touched the sides of the compartment, and her head was pressed against the end. Her nose was inches from its roof.

After a minute or two the heat was already almost unbearable, despite the air-conditioning.

She wanted to call out, and scream, and beg, and plead, but she knew that it would not help.

She told herself to stay calm.

Breathe.

Started whispering a mantra: ‘You’re going to be alright, Charlotte, you’re going to be alright.’

Somehow, she had to get through this – one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time.

What was to come she did not know. All she did know was that she was alive, and her friends were dead.

She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and concentrated on how she might kill these evil bastards.

And, strangely, she felt her pulse slow a fraction, and her strength return.

Revenge is a powerful incentive.

36.

A LITTLE WHILE earlier, the police had finished with John Carr.

The main development was that they had been able to locate a shot of the man with the dark eyes, taken from a CCTV camera at the marina, for Carr to identify.

It wasn’t very clear – the best angle was a three-quarter face, shot from above – but it was a start, and it was now being flashed to every friendly security service and police force in the world, to see what came back.

Inspector-Jefe Javier de Padilla had arranged for Carr and his son to be dropped back at the villa.

As soon as she saw her father, Alice flew at him, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing.

It took a while to calm her down, but eventually she settled.

‘What happened?’ said Carr, to Chloe.

‘When you and George went, we went for a swim,’ she said. ‘We’d only got in up to our waists when they started shooting. It was… There were bullets everywhere. A little boy was killed just in front of us. We just swam further out and came back in up in the town.’

‘It was horrible, Dad,’ said Alice, wiping away tears. ‘He was a toddler. There was so much blood. He screamed and then he went quiet. I wanted to help him, but I was too scared.’

‘You couldn’t have done anything, sweetheart,’ said Carr, stroking her forehead.

As he spoke, he felt a cold rage building in his soul.

Carr had no qualms about killing those who truly deserved it. Throughout his long career in the Regiment, he had come up against plenty of men who had deserved it, and he had killed them without emotion, and had walked away without a backward glance.

The battlefield had allowed him that space; the civilian world, a world he was still getting used to, was different. It was a world of prevarication and second-guessing, and judgment by men who had never picked up a weapon and stood firm in their lives, and could not and did not know what it meant to look death in the eye and prevail by sheer force of will.

He lived now by the rules of the civilian world, so he forced his rage back down into the dark depths, and hid it from his little girl.

They talked for a while longer, but eventually the two young women started to flag as the adrenalin died away.

He put his daughter to bed, reassured her that he wasn’t going anywhere, and then padded out onto the veranda, into the muggy Mediterranean air, and dialled a number.

Fifteen hundred miles north, at her home in County Down, his ex-wife picked up the phone.

‘How are they?’ said Stella, the anxiety palpable in her voice.

‘Physically fine,’ said Carr. ‘Alice saw things she shouldn’t have seen, but she’s unhurt. George did well.’

‘How do you mean?’

Carr quickly recounted the events.

‘Oh my God, John,’ said Stella. ‘Oh my God.’

‘He grew up today, Stell,’ said Carr. ‘Never took a backward step.’

They chatted a little more – Carr reassuring his ex-wife that he would be cutting short his holiday and flying Alice home the following day – and then ended the call.

A few moments later, George appeared, still in his Union Jack shorts, carrying a couple of cold San Miguels.

Three large candles were burning on a big wooden table, and the two of them sat there in silence for a while, drinking their beer in the cooling humidity, listening to the crickets and mosquitoes, and watching kamikaze moths fly into the flames.

A big white gecko scuttled up a wall.

Overhead, the stars drifted slowly by, oblivious to the momentous events of the day.

In the town below, the lights of emergency vehicles lit up various streets.

Carr sent George in for more beers, and when he came back he saluted him with a bottle.

‘You did well today, son,’ he said.

George felt a warm pride suffusing his body: his old man wasn’t big on unearned praise, and he knew what he was talking about.

‘What now?’ he said.

Carr took a deep swig and felt the cold lager fizzing in his throat.

‘We get shitfaced, I reckon,’ he said. ‘I’m taking your sister back home tomorrow. You stay out if you want. Lightning won’t strike twice.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What did you mean?’

‘How are we going to get our hands on the bastards who got away?’

Carr looked out and down to the sea, a mile or so distant, and the lights of Marbella twinkling merrily and incongruously in the black water, from which death had emerged so suddenly, and into which it had retreated just as quickly.

‘Not our problem.’

George finished his beer and went to fetch two more.

‘Maybe I’ll get a chance if I pass Selection,’ he said, when he came back.

‘Maybe,’ said Carr. ‘But that’s a big if.’

George turned away, looking dejected.

‘Hey, son,’ said Carr, reaching over and punching him on the shoulder. ‘Nothing against you, you’re as good a candidate as any I’ve seen. But it’s tough, and shit happens. I’ve seen good guys go down with injuries, or lose it in the jungle, or on combat survival, or just purely can’t hack it. There’s no guarantees.’

George Carr nodded.

‘Remember what I said when you told me you were trying for the Paras?’ said Carr.

George looked at him, grinning slightly. ‘Not to come home if I failed, because no son of yours was failing.’

Carr threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Go and join the Foreign Legion. But I knew you’d pass. And I know you’ve got what it takes to pass Selection, too.’

A smile spread across George’s face.

‘But if you do fucking fail,’ said Carr, finishing his beer, ‘you can go and join the fucking Foreign Legion.’

37.

LIAM HAD INPUTTED the information he’d gleaned from the surviving couple, and Justin Nicholls picked it up on MI6’s confidential feed just after midnight UK time.

There was varying levels of background on each of the eight members of the party.

All under thirty years of age.

A Times journalist – Charlotte Morgan’s boyfriend, Edward Hanson.

Two lawyers, Charlie herself and a trustafarian solicitor called Emily Souster.

An investment banker called Nick Chandler who had travelled with Souster.

Jeremy Percival, who was a director at Percival Wareham, the London estate agency, and his wife, Martha.

Finally, the two lucky ones: financial adviser Thomas, and his nursery teacher girlfriend, Jemima.

Much of the focus would be on the three women who had been taken, but there was a decent new lead – the young guy in the Manchester United shirt who had followed them from Málaga arrivals, and then been seen on the beach. Some decent CCTV imagery of him had been found, and was being distributed.

And then there were the two who’d been shot dead; the results of DNA tests and fingerprint lifts from those bodies would be available soon.

If any or all of the men could be identified in some way, this would be a major start in working out where they were from and, most importantly, where they had gone.

It was early days, but they had a thread to pick at.

On the muted TV in the corner, tuned to the rolling twenty-four-hour Sky News channel, they were showing pictures of grieving family members starting to arrive at Málaga airport.

It was alternating with looped footage from Whitehall, showing people climbing into cars after the Civil Contingencies Committee meeting in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room.

Truth was, that wasn’t much more than theatre: the media loved COBRA, but the real work was being done elsewhere.

He looked at his watch.

Nicholls had developed the ability to work for long stretches without sleep, but he was also long past any macho need to prove himself by staying longer, working harder, sticking at it.

There would be days ahead when he needed to pull longer hours, and he had to save his strength for those.

He switched his work station off, pulled on his jacket, and left the office.

38.

JOHN CARR WOKE with a start in the cool morning light, feeling damp and gritty-eyed.

It took him a moment to realise that he’d fallen asleep outside, on one of Konstantin’s sun loungers.

He looked at his watch.

05:45 hrs.

He rubbed his eyes, stood up from the lounger, and padded into the villa through the open glass doors.

A security guy was asleep on the sofa.

Carr walked past him into the kitchen.

Made himself a cup of tea, and walked back out to the poolside with that in one hand and a stale chocolate brioche in the other.

Thought for a second, went back inside and prodded the security guard with his foot.

The man awoke with a start and a gasp.

‘Morning, pal,’ said Carr, cheerily. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Yuri,’ said the guard, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in shock. ‘I…’

‘You report to Oleg, right?’

Oleg Kovalev was Konstantin Avilov’s head of security, a former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spook and a good friend to Carr.

‘Yes.’

Carr bit into the brioche, started chewing.

He wiped a smear of chocolate from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and looked down at the Russian.

Early fifties, he guessed, and thickset, with that hard, Eastern European look about him.

‘Spetznaz?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Yuri. ‘VDV.’

‘Airborne,’ said Carr, with an appreciative nod. ‘Me too. Afghanistan?’

‘Yes, for two year,’ said Yuri, proudly. ‘Also, First Chechen War.’

‘That’s some bad ju-ju,’ said Carr, with a grin.

He took another bite of the brioche.

The Russian security man relaxed, and smiled back at him.

‘You know my wee daughter’s asleep upstairs?’ said Carr.

The smile faded slightly, shading into confusion.

‘So answer me this, Yuri,’ said Carr. ‘When you were on stag – you know, sentry duty – in Afghanistan, or Chechnya, did you fall asleep?’

Now the smile well and truly fell from the Russian’s face. ‘No,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Carr. ‘I bet you didn’t. Because the Muj didn’t fuck about, did they?’

Yuri said nothing, but Carr knew he’d understood. On more than a few occasions, Soviet sentries had dozed off, and had awoken to find their camp overrun, and themselves and their muckers about to be skinned alive by gleeful mujahideen.

Carr finished off the sweet bread, and washed it down with a mouthful of too-hot tea.

He paused.

Trying to decide whether to bollock the fucker, or punch him.

The look of contrition in the Russian’s face softened Carr a little.

‘Listen, Yuri,’ he said, ‘I’m going to let it go this time, but if you let me down again you and me are away round the back of the block, and then Oleg’s going to have a go, and then when you get out of hospital you’re looking for another fucking job. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes,’ said Yuri. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Good man,’ said Carr. ‘Don’t worry about it. But it doesn’t happen again, understood?’

The Russian nodded.

‘Go and make yourself a strong black coffee, splash some water on your face, and keep alert.’

Carr took his tea outside and drank it while watching the sun rise over the hills to the east.

Felt the humid air warm a degree or two.

Another day in paradise, for some.

He finished the tea, threw the dregs into a flowerbed, and went back inside.

Had a piss, and a quick shower, and then padded along the cold tiles to the study.

He booked a pair of lunchtime flights back to Heathrow for himself and Alice, and then went to pack his kit.

39.

JOHN CARR HAD just loaded Alice’s suitcase into the boot of the villa’s Range Rover, when his mobile rang.

Number withheld.

He tended not to answer unknown callers, but under the circumstances this could be a friend or a relative.

He clicked green, climbed into the driver’s seat, and turned the engine on to get the AC kicked in.

‘Yes?’ he said, looking at his daughter.

The expression on her face, he’d seen it many times: it was the vacant look of a young squaddie who’s just gone through his first real firefight.

He couldn’t help smiling, slightly.

‘John, it’s Justin Nicholls,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.

Carr said nothing.

‘We met at your flat a while back?’ said Nicholls. ‘You, me, and Guy de Vere.’

A mental image of Justin Nicholls appeared in Carr’s head: nicely cut pin-stripe suit, expensive shirt, pinkie ring, discreet silver watch.

Black shoes with a mirror shine.

Sitting, uncomfortably, in Carr’s place in Primrose Hill.

With Guy de Vere, Carr’s old platoon commander from 3 Para, turned 22 SAS CO, then DSF, and now Commander Field Army.

A meeting to offer Carr a role in a new outfit being set up, strictly on the QT, by certain people at MI6, in the British Army, and various other interested parties.

For various unspecified tasks.

‘Aye,’ said Carr. ‘I remember you.’

‘I understand you’re in Marbella,’ said Nicholls. ‘I’m sorry to hear that your daughter got caught up in it.’

Carr didn’t even bother asking how he knew.

‘She’s fine,’ he said.

‘And I’ve been reading with interest of your exploits.’

‘Oh, aye?’

‘Yes. First thing I saw this morning. We have pretty good sources in the Spanish police. Mind you, we’re not the only ones with sources in the Spanish police.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You’re all over the Daily Mail this morning.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. With a photo.’

‘Aye?’

They must have taken it as he left the cop shop – the place had still been crawling with media.

‘Yes,’ said Nicholls. ‘Not a very good one.’

‘Hard to take a bad photo of me, Justin.’

‘Low light,’ said Nicholls. ‘Taken from the side. You wouldn’t know it was you.’

‘What does the story say?’

‘“Hero Brit on beach of hell”,’ said Nicholls. ‘That’s the headline. You can look it up online.’

‘What does it say about me?’

‘It names you, and says you’re in your forties, and believed to be a former soldier.’

‘Does it mention the Regiment?’

‘No. It says you live in Hereford. I suppose people will work it out.’

‘Does it mention George?’

‘Who?’

‘My son. He was with me.’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

‘Anyway, I understand you may have seen one of the attackers?’

Carr chuckled – it amused him, the way the English upper classes tap-danced around things, using euphemisms and hints and never getting to the fucking point.

‘Justin, you know I saw him. I’m sure you’ve already read my statement to that effect. Why else would you be calling me?’

‘Ha,’ said Nicholls. ‘I haven’t yet seen the statement actually. Though I expect I will fairly shortly. Would you mind giving me a heads-up?’

‘Not much to tell. I saw a guy staring at the girls. Just thought he was a dirty old man at first. They pulled a picture of him off of the CCTV. Mean-looking fucker.’

‘Speaking of the girls, do you know the identities of the women who were taken?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘It’s all over social media.’

‘I don’t use social media.’

‘One of them was the daughter of the Prime Minister.’

It took a lot to shock John Carr, but that certainly knocked him back.

‘I see,’ he said, after a few moments.

‘Yes,’ said Nicholls. ‘I understand you’re booked on the one o’clock into Heathrow.’

Carr said nothing.

‘Anyway, I wondered… If anything occurs to you, if you remember something you didn’t tell the Spanish police, would you mind giving me a bell?’

‘Sure.’

‘You’ve got my number?’

‘In my head,’ said Carr.

He smiled to himself: it was actually stored in his phone under ‘James Bond’, but he wasn’t going to tell Nicholls that.

‘Great. Thanks. Look, I’d better get off. It’s chaos here, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

Carr certainly could imagine: he had a vision of the MI6 HQ teeming with headless chickens.

Chinless, clueless, headless chickens, at that.

But he just said, ‘Aye.’

The call ended and Carr turned to Alice.

‘Buckle up,’ he said.

‘Who was that?’ she said.

‘Your granny,’ he said.

‘For fuck’s sake, Dad,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘Why’s everything got to be secret squirrel with you?’

He chuckled.

‘I’m a leopard, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I cannae change my spots.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.