The Locker (27 page)

fifty-four

When Ruth arrived next
morning, the Hardman house was being systematically taken apart by a team of security people. Furniture was being searched and scanned with hand-held scanners, the floorboards were being taken up and the walls were being tested and scanned for recent re-painting or plastering work. The woman in charge answered to the name of Mitchell; no rank, no details. She was standing in the kitchen when Ruth was allowed inside by a constable on duty at the front door.

There was no sign of Nancy, Gina, or Vaslik.

“What's going on?” Ruth demanded, although in the wake of the meeting in Hyde Park yesterday evening, she could guess the answer. That man then had merely been a
front-runner
. His task had been to lay out the reasoning the security agencies were following. What was happening now was the hard reality of security work. They had a suspect and this was to see what, if anything, lay beneath the fabric of the building; what secrets lay behind the façade of the Hardmans' seemingly everyday suburban existence.

“I've got the necessary paperwork if you want to see it,” Mitchell replied, although she made no move to produce it. A
tough-looking
woman in her forties, with hair cut short and the businesslike attitude of a professional, she gave a ghost of a smile. “Not that you have the authority to ask. But I like to be polite. Ruth Gonzales, isn't it?”

Ruth nodded, nettled by Mitchell's superior tone. “That's correct. We searched the place already. What are you looking for?”

Grey eyes settled on her. “You know what the householder is suspected of doing?”

“Yes.”

“Then you'll know what we're looking for. Anything and everything.” She gave a puff of air and a wry smile. “Not that it's looking too promising right now. Interesting set of listening devices, though.” She nodded at the kitchen worktop where a scattering of tiny electronic components had been dropped. “I'd love to find out where they originated from. Somebody else is interested in the Hardmans, I take it?”

“Yes. We're just not sure who, though. Where's Mrs. Hardman?”

“Upstairs with Fraser. Now there's an odd choice for this work. I thought she was classified unfit for service. Or does the private sector not worry too much about the fine detail, like if someone's still traumatised and a danger to herself and everyone around her?”

It was a long speech but Ruth was determined not to rise to the bait. Mitchell was merely setting out their respective turfs: Ruth's in the private sector, her own in the official one where the firepower was infinitely greater. “Gina's fine. She's solid, in fact. Are you going to put any of this back?” She was referring to a thick layer of plaster on the floor and worktops where a man in overalls was digging into the wall with a hammer and cold chisel. Some of the cabinet
base-boards
had been kicked in to search the cavities underneath, and the sink was hanging by the water pipes while another man lay on his belly checking the furthermost corners of the kitchen with a flashlight.

“Of course. It'll be back in top condition by close of play today. The owner won't even know it's been touched.”

An exchange of voices came from the front door. Moments later Andy Vaslik appeared, barely restrained by the constable, who was looking red in the face.

“Sorry, ma'am,” the officer muttered. “He insisted.”

“That's fine,” Mitchell nodded. “Let him in. You must be Vaslik.”

“That's me.” He waved a hand. “Don't worry—I can see you're having fun.” He looked at Ruth. “You got a minute?”

Ruth didn't, after his vanishing act the previous evening, but it was better than staying here listening to the sounds of destruction going on around them.

She excused herself and followed him outside.

“I'm sorry about last night,” he said immediately, and sounded genuine. He nodded towards the end of the street. “I don't trust this place enough to talk freely. Let's walk.”

He led the way a half pace ahead of her, his shoulders set, and Ruth followed, intrigued by his manner. He looked shaken, his lips tight, as if he hadn't slept well. Eventually he began talking.

“After hearing what the spook said yesterday, I had to talk to somebody. It turns out we have what some would call a situation.”

“No shit,” she muttered. “I knew that much last night. Why the secrecy?”

“Because I had something I wanted to check and I could have been wrong. I like to get my facts straight.”

“And?”

“I wasn't wrong. I now know who's behind the kidnap.”

fifty-five

Ruth stopped walking. They
were out on an open street, with nobody within earshot. She wondered what she was about to hear.

“Go on. Yours or ours?”

He explained, relating the phone conversations with Drybeck, the threats and the call to Washington yesterday evening that had told him what he had begun to suspect. He admitted that a tiny part of him still wasn't sure he believed it.

She listened carefully, wondering how much he was leaving out.
She still didn't know him well enough to trust him completely, but she had a feeling he wasn't being entirely open.

“I'm guessing this Drybeck is higher up the pole than your pal Eric. How come you know him?”

“I don't, not really. He's a Washington power player and sits on at least one security committee.” He hesitated. “That's all I know for now. I'll tell you more later.”

She leaned towards him, sensing he was being evasive. “Bullshit. You've been acting strange right from the start of this job, Slik. Actually, forget that—
Andrei
. Is Vaslik even your real name or is that a load of bullshit, too? The Russian family background and the balalaika crap—real or not?”

“It's real.”

“Great. Pity I'm not sure if I believe you or not. You've had me fooled, you know that? But then, it's not too hard to pull the wool over my eyes, is it? I'm just an
ex-cop
, whereas you're—what are you really—CIA? FBI? One of those black ops departments run out of a Washington brownstone with a budget the size of our national debt?”

“I'm what I said, which is freelance. It was after I got the job with Cruxys that I was contacted by Homeland Security. I was asked to be on standby while I was here in London. There was no threat to you, Cruxys or your country; I was told it was purely a watching brief and to be ready to give whatever assistance I could if requested. I was misled. I didn't know Drybeck had gone rogue.”

Ruth said nothing, so he continued.

“The DHS is now one of the biggest departments of the federal system. They work with other agencies and sometimes wires get crossed—which is kind of what happened here.”

“Well, that's OK, then.” Her tone was brutally cutting and made him wince. “Did somebody not get the memo?”

“Something like that. Nobody will admit to it publicly, but there's a lot of competition and rivalry between departments and agencies. Sometimes bad choices get made trying to do the right thing.”

“Oh,
boo-hoo
,” Ruth muttered savagely. “So the right hand doesn't know when the left hand is stabbing itself up the arse. That's no excuse. How long have you been in on this?”

“Not as long as you think.” He raised a hand to stop her and continued quickly, “Let me go right back to the beginning. A few days after arriving here I got a call from the DHS. I knew the woman who rang me; she told me they might need my help if anything came up.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes. It was a
stand-by
call, that's all.”

“And you, of course, told her to get lost. You already have a job in the private sector; you're no longer on the US government payroll.”

“No, I didn't do that. Would you?” When Ruth didn't say anything he carried on. “I thought she was talking about a terrorist attack, something big aimed at a major target.” He took a deep breath.
“I asked and was told it might be a kidnap attempt on an important American. I thought they'd jumped on my credentials as a specialist.” He gave a bitter smile. “I didn't think we'd be the ones actually running the kidnap.”

“It was a rogue group—Grant said so.”

“Same thing; it was done on our behalf.”

“And the rendition of Michael Hardman? Did you know about that, too?”

“Of course not. How could I?”

“But you said nothing, even when you knew Beth had been taken—even when we were running all over the place looking for her and her mother was going mad.”

“I wanted to, Ruthie—”

“Don't call me that! You don't get to call me that.”

He blinked at the forcefulness in her voice, and looked for a moment as if he might turn and walk away. But he said, “I couldn't tell you. As soon as we began working together I could see how it was going to end, but I was in a bind.” He looked up at the sky. “You're relentless, you know that. You don't fucking stop. Nobody counted on that.”

It was the first time she'd heard him swear. “What do you mean?”

“You're on the case and you dig and dig; you rip things open and never stop thinking things through.” He turned away then back again. “Christ, I was told I'd have a partner who hadn't done this kind of stuff before, so I could lead the investigation, control the flow of events. But that didn't happen because you didn't allow it. You took this thing by the balls and ran with it.”

“You thought we were a bunch of hicks, is that it? Is that how we're seen by you and your
people
?”

“No. Not at all. There are guys I've worked with who would have obeyed orders; taken whatever intel they could get on this and closed it down, stuck it in a file and passed it to a higher pay grade for action. In other words, they'd have done the minimum, the obvious. But you didn't. You continued digging because it's what you do. You got too close.”

“I'm sorry for being such a disappointment.”

He blew out air. “All I could do was follow and hope you didn't run into the others.”

“Others?”

“The kidnap team; the ones waiting to take down Hardman when he came in.”

“What would they have done if he had come in?”

“I think you saw what they were capable of. I don't even want to think about it. They were out of control, that's all I know.”

Ruth breathed deeply, not willing to let it go. “I may be a former cop but I can read body language like anyone else. I knew there was something deeper going on.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Crap. That napkin you picked up from the O.P. across from the Hardman place: I know that deli—it's just round the corner from the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. You took it away as if you wanted to hide something. Want to tell me why?”

He breathed deeply, then said, “As soon as I saw it I knew what you'd think. What are the chances? We already knew there was some kind of American angle, and a napkin from a deli right near the embassy? It was too much. I admit I jumped to the same conclusion and wanted time to look into it. I shouldn't have done it but I did. I'm sorry.”

“And?”

“And in the end it was meaningless. I had no way of checking. What if the neighbour next to the observation house worked near the deli? We'd be chasing our tails for nothing. It was a dead end.”

“Now you're talking like a cop.”

“Just like you. And know there's a point where evidence fails to become proof. That's where I got to. Then this came up.”

“You still haven't told me where your chat went. Or is that a big fat secret?”

Vaslik nodded and pulled a wry face. “I told him Hardman's here in London.”

“You did what?” She stared at him. “What the hell for?”

“Because it's the only chance we have of getting Beth back. They will bring her, I'm certain of it. It was the one condition I threw in and an easy one for Drybeck's people to deal with.”

“And what if it goes wrong?”

“It could do that anyway. They could lose patience and simply kill Beth like they did the nanny.”

“We don't know that for sure. It could have been a mugging gone wrong.” But even as she said it, she knew in her heart that Tiggi Sgornik would never have been walking the streets by herself and fallen prey to a random mugger. She would have stayed with Beth. The fact was, she had undoubtedly been an asset who'd become unreliable, even threatening. The fact that she had a label stitched inside her clothing pointed to her amateur status compared to the others in the group.

And amateurs were never fully trusted.

He sensed her doubts. “They're getting desperate. They'll get to a point where they will cut their losses and get out of town. We'd never know what happened. This way we have a slim chance of getting Beth back.”

“Us and whose army?”

“Just us. The guys running this are
ex-military
pros; they'll spot other pros in seconds.”

“But they know our faces—Clarisse saw to that.”

“True enough,” he conceded. “And Drybeck will have fed them our backgrounds. But that's where we might have an edge.”

“How?”

“Drybeck's an arrogant prick and former military. He'll have told them we're simply
ex-cops
, so no contest. They'll see us as easy meat.”

She chewed it over, trying to decide whether to believe him or not. He had a point, though, about the way seasoned pros looked down on ordinary cops. But it was mention of Beth that was the decider. “OK. You're on. But don't bullshit me again, Slik. I need you to trust me, too.”

Her phone buzzed, interrupting further discussion. It was Richard Aston.

“Can you come in?” he asked. “We need to talk—urgently.”

“On our way.” She cut the connection and said to Vaslik, “Something's up. I'm wanted back at base. And don't think about bunking off—you're coming with me.”