A Deadly Trade: A gripping espionage thriller

‘What the hell do you mean?’

Reuben hiked both shoulders, raised both hands, palms up in supplication. ‘It will be difficult but…’

‘I will not kill the boy.’ This took both of us by surprise. I cleared my throat, drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘It would be too tricky,’ I added. ‘He’s probably in a safe house.’ Seconds thudded past. Silence washed into the room like sea invading a stricken vessel.

At last, seemingly forgetting the boy, Reuben asked, ‘Who took out the contract?’

I shook my head. ‘His anonymity was part of the deal.’

‘You were paid well?’ Reuben’s voice thronged with cynicism.

‘Handsomely.’

He thought for a moment. Easy to guess what he was turning over in his mind: that no paymaster would rest easy with such a poor return on his investment. I was, in effect, a dead man walking.

‘What was on the hard drive, Reuben?’

He didn’t answer straight away. He seemed to be weighing something up in his mind. The stillness in the room was so tangible you could have heard a feather fall.

‘Have you heard of Project Coast?’ he said tentatively.

I shook my head, perplexed by the sudden change of subject. Once more he stared at me for a moment with what seemed genuine indecision, then when he finally spoke he had a certainty about him that I normally found reassuring. That morning I wasn’t reassured.

‘Project Coast was a programme that originated in South Africa. It involved the creation of an ethnic specific biological weapon. The weapon only attacked blacks.’

I wanted to interject, to lean forward. I didn’t flicker so much as an eyebrow. Reuben had taught me well.

‘The project was run by the Pretoria government. Deeply secret, it ran during the 1980’s. The then Defence Minister oversaw it. The work was still at the embryonic stage when the apartheid regime collapsed. Certain individuals assisted in the government’s twisted endeavours. One was an American, Dr Larry Ford, a gynaecologist who allegedly worked for the CIA, his role to create and develop biological weapons. Years later, he was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. The official version was suicide, his involvement with the CIA, as one would expect, denied. When the police opened the refrigerator in his home they found enough toxins to poison the entire state of California.’

I wondered why Reuben was telling me this. His information seemed rehearsed and readily given, a little too pat. Irrationally, I had the sudden sick sensation of being played. Resisting the temptation to speak for a second time and with a deep, growing sense of unease, I nodded patiently for Reuben to continue.

‘You knew nothing of this?’ he said, a sharp edge to his voice.

I shrugged my ignorance. It was Reuben’s turn to go silent. I realised what he was driving at. ‘You think I had a hand in Ford’s murder?’ Suddenly I saw the connection to Wilding.

He did not answer straightaway. He studied my face with the same penetrating gaze as a man shining a spotlight into my eyes. I hoped that he was satisfied with what he saw. I am a gifted liar, but I wasn’t lying this time. ‘It was a particularly inept piece of work,’ he admitted. ‘I would have been disappointed in you.’

‘When was this, exactly?’

‘Spring 2000.’

My mind reeled back. I was twenty-four. Russia. My first gig for Mikhail Yakovlevich, a Russian thug. ‘Nowhere near. I can prove it.’

Reuben sipped his drink, nodded in agreement, accepting my explanation at face value. Glad we’d cleared it up, I was less happy that I’d fallen under suspicion. ‘You think there’s a pattern, someone bumping off scientists?’

‘Perhaps.’

Shit, and now the security services were on my tail. ‘You were saying,’ I said, trying to lose the thought and get him back on track.

‘Certain groups of people have individual genetic characteristics. As you probably know, there is an entire industry devoted to the creation of drugs to target specific genes responsible for certain genetic disorders.’

I nodded.

‘An entirely commendable endeavour, of course, it involves the precise sequencing of DNA. But there is a less benign application. By a rigorous process of selection, there are those who hope to develop pathogens to attack targeted individuals based on either their racial orientation or their sex.’

‘Hope? You mean it’s been developed?’ I said.

Reuben’s accompanying smile was claustrophobic. What was once a sick dream had assumed a reality of nightmarish proportions and, well out of my normal sphere of operation, I confess it shook me. ‘Think how such a thing could be turned into a military weapon,’ he continued, without missing a beat. ‘So obsessed with the threat of nuclear destruction, most politicians retain a blind spot for other more diabolical possibilities.’

I had no tremendous interest in politics, but I was certain this wasn’t true. Governments knew, all right. Only the general populace remained ignorant. And thank God for that. Reuben picked up on my dismay. With cool, he disregarded it.

‘Which is why there are secret departments to counter the possibility of such an odious attack.’

‘You think Wilding was involved in this type of research?’

Reuben shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Never a good idea to jump to conclusions, but it is credible.’

I blinked and cursed my stupidity. Even for a man like me there’s a big moral distinction between slotting bad people one at a time and annihilating innocent individuals en masse. What if such a weapon fell into the hands of a rogue state or terrorists? Aside from what they could do with it, it would provide the perfect means for blackmail. Christ, you could hold entire countries to ransom with that kind of leverage.

‘You think this was why she had to die?’ Already I was thinking her death politically motivated and unconnected to organised crime. For sure, the security services would be after my hide.

Reuben did not answer, just looked. I scratched my ear. ‘The U.K. is a melting pot of races. Which target group are we talking about?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘Can’t?’

‘Because I genuinely don’t know,’ he spread his hands.

‘But, surely, there are treaties and agreements…’

‘Which can be broken.’ He leant towards me once more. ‘Government exists to protect its people. One has to fight any threat, however vile, accordingly.’

I didn’t speak. Not for a moment did it occur to me that Reuben was mistaken. Whatever Reuben said about being out of the game, my old mentor had always been the kind of man who kept his ear close to the ground. There was no reason for me to suspect that this had changed. What scared me more, instead of coming to Reuben to pick his brains and borrow money, I’d discovered a conspiracy of unimaginable proportions. And I was at the centre of it.

‘Let me show you something,’ he said, climbing to his feet. He gestured for me to follow and retraced his steps through the kitchen and back out into the long hall. On his left, a wooden door, which I’d assumed led to a cupboard under the stairs. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door, opened it, flicked on a light, and descended a short flight of wooden steps to a basement room where, against the farthest wall, there was a sofa. Facing the sofa, and fixed to the wall nearest the stairs, a fifty-inch plasma screen sitting astride an antique desk, the remaining walls lined with books.

Reuben invited me to take a seat. I obeyed and watched as he touched a catch underneath the drawer in the desk revealing a false compartment from which he removed a brown sealed envelope that he placed to one side. Sliding the back panel of the dummy drawer to the left, he revealed a secondary hiding place. From this, he picked out a DVD with skull and crossbones drawn crudely in black marker pen along the spine. Reuben slipped off the cover and fed the disk into the DVD player. Nothing much happened. A lot of flicker. No sound. Lots of grainy moving images like the flaky footage you find on a pirate video. Then Reuben switched off the lights and it felt as if I was being swallowed whole. I blinked, fused in concentration.

Picture the image: a cavern, sides made of solid rock, wide metal ducting as if to pump fresh air into the bowels of the earth. At ground level, men dressed like astronauts walking slow-limbed. Some, who wore thick gloves and held clipboards, had their attention fixed on a chamber with transparent walls around twelve metres wide by twelve metres high, although difficult to tell. A metal tube fed into the domed glass roof. Inside, a group of people: an emaciated-looking white guy and a young teenage couple holding hands alongside two other men and women who stood separately. If I had to take a guess I’d say the non-whites were Chinese, Korean maybe. Their tattered clothes hung on them like shrouds, their expressions one of mute rank terror, the like I had never seen and I’ve seen a lot of fear in my time.

A cursory nod from one of the ‘astronauts’ or rather scientists, as I now believed them to be, signalled that something was about to happen, but I didn’t understand what. I pitched forwards, straining to comprehend, rapt by the figures in the glass dungeon. Within seconds all seven cupped hands over their faces and fled to the outer extremities of the see-through prison. The young couple herded desperately together, eyes agape with fear. Within a minute, two of the women were vomiting. One man, with blood issuing from his nose and mouth, crashed to the ground. Another turned purple, leaking through every orifice, body in spasm. The white guy, unaffected by the spreading contagion, collapsed to the ground and, with hands over his head, knees to his chest, rocked in despair. Blood and bile, faeces and vomit spattered the floor and glass. They were shouting, screaming, but I heard no sound, only a chorus of unheard voices. I am rarely moved, but my fists curled and found their way to my mouth. I longed to look away, to escape, and to empty my mind but I remained transfixed.

At last, buckling under the vicious assault on her nervous system, the last surviving girl, bloodied and broken, leant towards the dying boy and kissed his mouth. I thought my hardened heart would seize up.

Reuben’s voice shattered the silence. ‘The killing process took three minutes,’ he said matter-of-fact, switching off the film and switching on the lights. Same length of time I’d allowed myself to steal in and out of Wilding’s home, I registered.

‘What about the white guy?’

‘He was taken out and shot. Experiment over.’

‘So he was immune?’

Reuben nodded, held my gaze in a vice-like grip. ‘In simple engineering terms, it’s a tremendous feat to divide one human genome from another, but…’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, stumbling past Reuben and upstairs.

‘The cloakroom is on the right by the front door,’ he called after me.

I found it and threw up in the sink. Adrenalin dump, I convinced myself, totally unconnected, to what I’d just watched. Splashing water over my face, I gaped at my reflection in the mirror. Apart from my obvious pallor, I thought I’d be unrecognisable. I thought the man I believed myself to be was hiding but he wasn’t.

‘You are shocked,’ Reuben said as I emerged and rejoined him in the kitchen.

‘We’re talking about biological genocide,’ I snapped. ‘I take it the clip is genuine?’

‘It has been authenticated although we are not entirely certain where this took place. The footage emerged over a decade ago.’

‘Bearing in mind you didn’t show me this shit as a form of entertainment, what’s the exact connection to Wilding?’

‘I am simply making you aware of possibilities,’ Reuben said, pulling his punches, ‘I’m giving you the context within which I believe she worked.’

‘Why?’

An unnerving gleam entered his eye. ‘To save your soul.’

Too late for that. Redemption was beyond me: I’d committed too many acts of violence. I shook my head.

‘You are indifferent to death?’ he said, his turn to be shocked.

‘I’m indifferent to life.’

Reuben frowned. I think he found my response glib and irritating. ‘Joshua,’ he said, with a stern and penetrating expression. ‘What about the lives of others?’

I took a deep breath. I’d spent my entire professional life singularly unconcerned by the lives of others. I didn’t do noble and I didn’t do self-sacrifice. And yet…

Reuben was still talking. ‘I do not know how far such weapons have progressed because I no longer have the kind of connections I once had, but it’s a safe bet that you are mixed up in something of apocalyptic proportions.’

In spite of the outward show, the content of the video-clip and the spectre of mass murder taunted me. I thought about Wes, about the so-called data on the hard drive. Assuming Wilding had been engaged in defending the nation, someone had stolen it with the intention of neutralising our defence capability. It might also have been stolen to trade with individuals intent on carrying out an atrocity. Like it or not, I had to face the possibility that certain unscrupulous people, individuals I dealt with on a daily basis, wanted this type of material to sell on. I didn’t give a damn about my own survival but, as Reuben had already pointed out, the lives of others were now at stake. Locating the hard drive suddenly assumed increased urgency. What I was going to do with the material when I got my hands on it I hadn’t a clue.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hiding me in the rear footwell of his Volvo Estate, Reuben drove me into town, dropped me off and I returned as quickly as I dared to my lock-up near King’s Cross. My only official claim to property it housed the tools of my trade and, aside from weapons, included bikes, wigs, uniforms, props like walking sticks, and hair dyes; anything that could aid a metamorphosis in my appearance. There, I had a quick shave, changed into a smart cashmere coat over tailored trousers and brogues, and popped contact lenses into my eyes, transforming them from blue to brown. It was a detail. It would only count if someone got up close and personal but as detail had tripped me up I wasn’t keen to repeat the error. To complete the disguise, I chose a pair of glasses with plain lenses in black rectangular frames. I took a briefcase containing a pair of high-spec binoculars and a Cannon PowerShot digital camera, a false passport and false credit cards linked to the passport. It’s commonly assumed that these are difficult to acquire. They are, but fifteen or so years ago, when I was starting out, and the Identity and Passport Service was lax, they were a doddle.

Confident that I could not be recognised, I felt more at ease and made my way to the hotel to hook up with Wes. Despite his outward show, I’d always had the impression that he was a nearly man; nearly made it into the higher echelons of organised crime; nearly made it into accountancy. Never had enough bottle for the former and lacked application for the latter. Now I had my doubts. Now I believed he was more involved in the Wilding job than I’d given him credit. Why else would Wes lie about the boy and the reason for the scientist’s murder?

Stepping into the large foyer with its L-shaped reception area, I veered to the right into a wide corridor with booths down one side, lifts on the other. It was cathedral quiet. At that time the place was virtually empty. Wes was sitting three slots down. His eyes flickered with lust as a handsome-looking forty-something woman wearing a power suit and heels clicked by. He never could resist the call of the wild. As I approached he glanced up, no recognition in his eyes. I strode past as though making for the grand staircase. Like a guy who has forgotten something, I checked my pace, turned, strode back and slipped into a seat opposite. Wes blinked wide, sharply retreated into the leather, his olive skin two shades lighter. I met his startled gaze with a level expression.

‘Fuck, and holy fuck.’ His body braced. His dark eyebrows assumed two angry points in his forehead. For a moment I thought he was going to lean forward and punch me hard in the face. Fortunately his survival instinct kicked in.

‘Hello, Wes.’

Wes jerked towards me. ‘Have you seen the news? It’s on every television channel, every radio station. And the boy was there. He saw you, man. Your identikit picture is gonna be in every mother-fucking newspaper. You fucked up, Hex. You screwed me over.’

I glanced away, let out a long slow breath, a technique to control my urgent desire to smash his jaw into five pieces. ‘I screwed you over?’ My voice sounded ugly.

Wes looked me straight in the eye and leant in close. Fat beads of sweat dotted his brow. I realised then that he feared his employer more than he feared me. ‘The British security service is all over this one,’ he hissed.

‘And the Russians and Israelis. Now why would that be?’

‘Russians?’ He had the desperate look of a man crashing through a rain forest trying to evade a Cassowary.

‘You didn’t know what Wilding was up to her pretty white neck in?’ I said, a do me a favour expression on my face. ‘And you’ve got the fucking cheek to get me here to deliver a lecture.’

His shoulders dropped and he glanced away. ‘The employer is getting mighty jumpy.’

‘Then he needs to get a grip.’

Wes ran his fingers through his dark hair, his expression flashed from anger to anxiety to beseeching. ‘You have to find the material.’

‘I don’t have to do anything.’

He held my gaze for a moment then looked down. ‘You have three days,’ he mumbled.

Wes wasn’t making a lot of sense to me. What he said, his body language, everything about him was off. ‘Three days until what?’

He hiked one shoulder then he seemed to collapse into himself. He did not look up.

I let out a laugh to cover my nerves. I was thinking about the snuff movie with the biological twist. ‘Is this a threat?’

‘They hire you for slotting,’ he said, looking me in the eye again, this time urgent. ‘They have their own for torture.’

Oh do they? I thought. ‘Who is this bastard?’ I said.

His face was a stone. ‘We had a deal.’

‘We did, but the deal is off and the rules just changed. You can have the money back.’ Which was a fair offer and, in any case, I didn’t want it any more.

‘No way, man. I’m risking my skin already.’

I am an infinitely patient individual, but Wes was pissing me off and I was getting nowhere. I struck hard and fast, grabbed his throat with one hand and dragged him half way across the table.

‘I’m going to run through possible candidates and you’re going to agree or disagree.’

This was bluff on my part. I wasn’t going to disclose my personal list of clients to some creep like Wes.

‘Break my neck, if you like,’ he managed to croak.

I increased the pressure. Wes’s spaniel eyes popped. His lips clamped shut. ‘I suspect our dead scientist was engaged in a little more than finding the cure for the common cold. Right?’ I didn’t get a nod. I got a double-blink. Good enough. ‘She was working in strategic defence against bio-weapons.’ I didn’t know this, but it would do. I said nothing about my source, nothing about secret departments. Wes tried to swallow, difficult under the circumstances. ‘In an enterprise like this I’m guessing we’re talking dirty bombs, chemical warfare, terrorism. Nod if I’m on the right trail.’ He didn’t nod. I released my grasp. Wes coughed, cleared his throat, and shook himself like a wet dog after a walk in the rain.

‘I have to go to the men’s room,’ he rasped, standing up.

I stood up opposite him. ‘I’m coming with you.’ It would be easier to work him over in the tiled confines of a public lavatory.

He gazed up at me with defeated eyes, saw I wasn’t screwing with him and, with the same raised hands that had undressed dozens of women, showed me his palms in surrender. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, slumping into the leather, ‘but you didn’t hear it from me.’

I sat back down. Right, now we were getting somewhere.

‘Wilding was working on a blueprint.’

‘A blueprint for what?’

Wes looked round, furtive. ‘Some new kind of drug, works in a different way. I don’t know. I’m not a chemist.’

I stared at him and read deceit in his eyes. Again I cursed my own stupidity, lack of professionalism and downright criminality for embroiling me in something unspeakable. Without doubt, I was treading on unhallowed ground.

‘Honest, that’s all I know,’ he burbled, distracted. He ran a hand through his hair again. It stuck up in dark tufts. Pale, his face a mass of lines and edges, he looked genuinely stricken. I hadn’t just opened a can of worms. I’d eaten them.

‘I don’t believe you.’

He squirmed in his seat, desperate to escape. There was no escape. He seemed to come to the same conclusion because the fight went out of his body and he leant in close and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Drugs that kill certain types of people.’

My face stiffened. ‘This is a bit of a departure from your usual line of business, isn’t it? I thought the object was to get addicts hooked, not kill them. Who exactly?’

Wes shook his head, his expression contorted. ‘I don’t know,’ he said shooting me another beseeching look. ‘On my mother’s life.’

I looked him hard in the eye. ‘Fuck’s sake, Wes, don’t you care?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Man, it’s business. It’s money. Just money.’

I swallowed hard. No point in getting into a fight with Wes, snake that he was, about moral distinctions. I had no stomach for it and it would have been supremely hypocritical. ‘So the data for the blueprint was what I was ordered to steal, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who wants it?’ I’d tried before and got nowhere, but I was all for catching Wes unawares.

He recoiled as if I’d thrown boiling oil in his face. ‘I can’t, man. He’ll kill me.’

‘I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.’

‘You have no idea what this guy does. His victims suffer agonies.’

‘Then tell me and I’ll kill him before he gets the chance.’

A flame of indecision flickered in his eyes, guttered and blew out. There weren’t many men who could inspire that level of fear. Impressive, I thought.

‘Okay,’ I said, resigned. Something I’ve learned in life: don’t expend energy on people or things you can’t control.

Wes’s relief was plain to see. ‘Can you do it?’ he said. ‘Can you find it?’ His eyes glistened with hope and fear.

‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t telling the truth. I had to find it but when I did I wasn’t going to hand it over to Wes, or anyone else. ‘Let me get this straight, Wilding wanted to trade but welshed on the deal?’

Wes swallowed. ‘Yeah, I think.’

‘Think?’ I snarled. ‘How much was she paid?’

‘I don’t ask questions, man. I follow orders.’ He swallowed again, looked at me pleading.

‘There’s something not…’

‘Three days,’ Wes said, scrabbling to his feet. ‘Meet me in the usual place, usual time.’

‘Are you insane?’ Our usual hook-up was the Placa de Catalunya, a square in Barcelona.

‘Thursday morning. Be there. Make sure you have the hard drive with you.’

CHAPTER SIX

Even if I found the goods, no way was I travelling on a scheduled flight. My description would already be circulated to every customs officer in Europe. I still intended to show up at the appointed hour on the appointed day because my gut told me that if I were smart I’d find the man who’d employed me for the job. If I could pump him for information, it could give me the vital lead I needed to find who was also in the market for the stolen hard drive. It was a risk. Wes might turn up in Barcelona with backup in place.

I decided to call in a favour. A fan of the two birds with one stone scenario, I also wanted to chase down the Russian lead.

One of my main clients, Mikhail Yakovlevich, was currently in London. He had houses in Russia, France and Britain. His British home, in Kensington, was worth a cool ten million. Having made his fortune in the steel trade, he’d specialised in supplying raw materials to factories in short supply. This was the shorthand version. In reality he had clawed his way to the top of his particular grubby pile through the cultivation and maintenance of friendships within the FSB (formerly KGB) and the relentless elimination of his enemies. I knew this because I’d carried out most of the eliminating. His FSB connection was what interested me.