Cross of Fire

COLIN FORBES

CROSS OF FIRE

Author's Note

All the characters portrayed are creatures of the author's imagination and bear no relationship to any living person. Also, the mansion Grenville Grange is non-existent, and the corporation The international Continental Union Bank, US, has no equivalent in real life anywhere in the world.

Cross
of Fire
first published 1992 by Pan Books.
First published in paperback by Pan Books 1993.

For Jane

Contents

Prologue

Part One Nightmare for Paula

Part Two Trigger of Death

Part Three Cross of Fire

Prologue

November.
Paula Grey was fleeing for her life...

Under a stormy sky, in Suffolk, England, she ran across the spongy marsh towards a dense copse of evergreen trees. Above the whine of the wind coming off the sea she heard
again the baying of the hounds, the shouts of the men
pursuing them.

She glanced over her shoulder. Her friend, Karin Rosewater, was some distance behind her, having trouble negotiating the treacherous ground. Paula thought of going back, urging her to hurry - but the sinister men chasing them were closing in.

'Head for the trees, Karin,' she shouted.

But her voice was carried away on the rising wind. She
ran on, ran all-out, gasping for breath, with fear. Then she was inside the shelter of the black firs. Clad in denims and
a
windcheater, she ran deeper inside the small wood. The
barking of the savage dogs was
closer. There was no escape.

There
had
to be. Hidden inside the firs she looked up at a giant spreading its branches like hands reaching out to grasp
her. Her denims were tucked inside leather boots with
indented rubber soles. She grabbed at a low branch, hauled herself up the huge trunk, forcing herself to move fast. Her
boots were wet from splashing through a creek a short
distance back. She continued her climb like an agile monkey,
thanking God she was slim and fit.

Near the top of the fir, which rose above the surrounding
trees, she perched herself, legs straddled over a branch, back
leant against the trunk as she waited to get her breath.
Looking down, she saw she was concealed from the ground
except for one small gap. She stared out across the marsh
towards the river Aide as dusk descended. To her horror,
she saw Karin running in the open, heading for a small boat
moored in a creek snaking in from the yacht basin. Close
behind her followed the hunters. Paula heard a sound
below, glanced down, stiffened with fright.

A large Alsatian, released by its handler, was sniffing
round the base of the fir. She waited for its head to lift, to
stare up at her refuge. Two of the pursuers appeared. Tall
men wearing Balaclava helmets with slits for vision, camouflage jackets tucked into military-style boots. Both men held
rifles.

Paula reached quietly into her shoulder bag, took out her .32 Browning automatic. Then she heard the sound of more men treading through the undergrowth. She was outnumbered. The Alsatian was moving in circles as though baffled. It ran away out of sight. Paula remembered the creek she had splashed through by chance. The beast had lost her scent. The two hunters moved away. She let out a sigh of relief.

Still seated, she stretched up to her full height, gazing in the direction of Aldeburgh, the strange town by the sea. Its
huddle of rooftops had disappeared in the dark. She had a
brief glimpse of a belt of sea with whitecaps and then that, too, disappeared in the moonless night.

Where is Karin? she asked herself.

As though in reply to her anxious question she heard a
penetrating scream piercing the silence of the marshes. It
came from the direction where Karin had run for the boat.
The agonized scream was choked off. The return of silence sounded dreadful. God! Had they reached Karin? What had they done to her?

Shivering with cold, she buttoned the windcheater up to her neck, checked the time by the illuminated hands of her
watch. 5.30 p.m. Experience warned her she must wait inside
her refuge. The hunters knew there had been two women.
And she still caught the distant sound of a dog barking.

Her legs were beginning to ache - reaction from the
desperate run across the marshes, from the strain of keeping still, straddled over the branch. The wind stirred the smaller
branches, brushed her face with prickly twigs. She waited
until 6.30 p.m. before hauling out the mobile phone from
her pocket. There had been no sign or sound of the hunters
for
three-quarters of an hour. She was frozen stiff as she
dialled the number of SIS
headquarters at Park Crescent.

Robert Newman, world-famous foreign correspondent,
drove his Mercedes 280E at speed through the night along the A1094, hardly slowed as he turned into Aldeburgh High Street, which was eerily deserted. By chance he had called
in at Park Crescent when the phone message for help had
come through from Paula.

Beside him sat Marler, slim, compact, small, and the most
deadly marksman in Western Europe. His Armalite rifle
rested on his lap. In the rear sat Harry Butler, in his thirties,
clean-shaven, well built, and a man of few words. Beside
him sat his younger partner, Pete Nield, slimmer, a snappy dresser with a neat black moustache.

In a shoulder holster Newman, of medium height and in
his early forties, his favourite Smith, & Wesson Special.
Butler was armed with a 7.65mm Walther, and Nield also had a Walther.

Newman was the only member of the team not perma
nently employed by the Secret Service, but was fully vetted
and had helped with a number of dangerous missions. He
was also fond of Paula, another member of the SIS.

'You'll wake the dead,' Marler drawled in his upper crust
voice.

'At eight in the evening the place is dead.' Newman
snapped.

'You seem to know your way,' Marler observed.

'I should. I've spent time here recuperating. Most of it
walking. I reckon I can take us straight to that copse of trees
Paula described over the phone ...'

'If she's still there. It's a God-awful night. Wind howling like a banshee. Wonder what it's all about.'

'We'll know when we find her,' Newman said grimly
and hoped Marler would shut up.

Newman was driving with his headlights undimmed. In
the beams Marler saw the High Street as a collection of
shops and houses, old and with the roofs going up and
down. A weird atmosphere.

'Dotty sort of place,' he commented.

'Quaint is the word,' Newman growled. 'We're nearly at
the end of the line for driving. We hoof it from the end of
the town, which is here ...'

The road surface beyond where the town stopped
abruptly had deteriorated. In the headlight beams it was a
wide track of gravel. As they alighted they heard above the
wind the boom of surf waves hitting the unseen beach. It
was a wild night. Newman checked his watch. 8 p.m. It had been about 6.30 p.m. when Paula had phoned.

'Where does that track lead to?' Marler enquired. 'And
what is that huge bank with
cranes atop it?'

'Reinforcing the sea defences. If it breaks through it will flood the marshes we have to cross.' He switched off the headlights, locked the car, stood for a moment to get back his night vision. 'The track leads to the Slaughden Yacht Club. Slaughden village slid into the sea years ago. Like Dunwich further up the coast. I can see the copse of firs. Let's pray to God Paula is still there. Alive...'

He led the way off the road down on to the marsh. The
other three men automatically spread out to make a difficult target. In her brief message Paula had warned of men with guns. Using a powerful flashlight, Newman picked his way
across the ooze, stepping from grassy stump to grassy
stump. One wrong step and he'd sink into the slime of mud.

The night air was bitterly cold but Newman had called at
his flat to put on ankle-length boots. Like the others he wore
a padded windcheater. Torch in left hand, revolver in the other, he was the first to reach and enter the fir copse. He
began to call out softly. 'Paula ... It's Bob ... Paula ...'

His boots pressed down the mush of dead bracken. He
swivelled his torch upwards at the foot of a giant fir. The
beam shone on his face. He stiffened as a fragment of the fir
fell to the ground.

'Bob! I'm up here! I'm coming down. God! It's
freezing...'

He was carrying an overcoat he'd grabbed during the brief
visit to his South Ken. flat
en route
to Suffolk. He wrapped it
round her as she jumped to the ground. She threw her arms
around him and he hugged her tight.

'It's all right now, Paula.'

'There were men with rifles ...'

'And we have men with guns. Myself, Marler, Butler, and Nield.'

'We must look for Karin at once.'

'It's dark. Pitch black...'

'We
must
look.' she insisted, freeing herself from his grip. 'I saw the direction where she went. I know the area. Give me the torch.
Please,
Bob ....'

They emerged from the copse and Newman's three companions were waiting for him. Shining the flashlight downwards Paula moved stiffly but at surprising speed across the
marsh towards the yacht basin where a number of craft
were moored to buoys, their hulls covered with sheeting for winter.

Aching in every limb, Paula gradually loosened up as
she pressed on over the grassy tufts, avoiding pools of oily
water. The others followed, using their own flashlights. Within five minutes Paula had scrambled up the embank
ment hemming in the anchorage.
Switching off the flash
light, she stood on the narrow footpath following the ridge
of the
embankment. Her eyes swiftly became accustomed to
the dark, and her sense of direction had been good. She was close to the craft she had seen Karin running towards before that hellish scream.

Switching on the flash again, she hurried along the
footpath. Every step was an effort after her long vigil up in
the fir but her determination carried her forward with
Newman close behind. The elevated footpath was even
more exposed to the wind blowing in from the sea. Out in the anchorage the masts of the moored craft swayed back
and forth. She stopped, directed the beam down towards
the small craft moored in a creek some distance from the
main river.

'What is it?' Newman asked, raising his voice.

'Look. That craft is empty. That was the one she was
running towards.'

'You heard a scream.' he reminded her quietly. 'I don't
want to assume the worst, but it will be easier to search the
area in daylight.'