guilt, relief, anger.
It had been such a relief to see the fire back in her belly. He’d even enjoyed her calling him on his pigheadedness like that, even though on the surface it meant losing face with the others. Frost had been around the block often enough to grasp Sir Charles’ game, and Lethe was too in awe of the whole spy culture they had going on to dare jeopardize his place in it. Noah was Noah. Unpredictable. Difficult to read. Konstantin was different. He came from a culture that respected power, even when that power was incontrovertibly wrong. Still, he had fled for a reason. So even the Russian would find something admirable in the old man being persuaded by her arguments. In truth her flare up only served to cement his position rather than undermine it.
He looked at the grandfather clock, with its tarnished brass pendulum swinging slowly to and fro, tick , tock , tick , tock . It made time sound so real, so vital. He heard Maxwell ushering them out, heard Noah saying something deliberately antagonistic to him, the car doors slam and then a moment later the peel of tires spitting gravel as the Daimler accelerated toward the airfield. They would be in the air in twenty minutes and halfway to Berlin, their first stop, before the sun was full in the sky.
How many hours did they have until the first attack? He knew he should have handed everything they had over to MI6. It was stupid not to. But it was 4 a.m. There was nothing the spooks could do that his people couldn’t. Indeed, free of the constraints of protocols and hierarchy, there was plenty the Forge Team could do that an MI6 operative legitimately couldn’t.
He was tired. There were still a few hours until dawn, and as he had told the others, these few hours might well be their last chance to sleep soundly for the foreseeable future.
Undressing, something that he had taken for granted for so long, was a physical trial. He was gasping and panting as he heaved himself out of the wheelchair and levered himself onto the hard mattress. There was nothing graceful about it. He writhed and wriggled like a beached whale trying to get beneath the covers. Sweat peppered his skin. He lay there staring up at the ceilg. Sleep did not come.
The sun did.
6
First Blood
Ronan Frost made the ride to Newcastle in a little over four hours, hitting the rush-hour traffic just as it was getting into full, air-polluting swing. The Ducati didn’t adhere to the same rules of motion that stifled the steady flow of people carriers and rusty, old cars. Ronan accelerated along the white line, weaving in between the bottlenecked Fords and Volvos. He skirted the edge of the city, coming in from Gateshead, over the Tyne Bridge and the redeveloped Quayside, swept around the Swallow House roundabout and leaned hard into the corner that took him beyond the university buildings toward the more affluent suburbs of Jesmond and Gosforth.
Lee had given him the names and addresses of the suicides. Three of them were in the Tyne Valley, making it the obvious place to start. Catherine Meadows, the Trafalgar Square suicide, had lived in Queens Road in West Jesmond; Sebastian Fisher, the Barcelona victim, around the corner on Acorn Road. He turned off the main drag and drove slowly passed Catherine’s apartment. It was a huge white building on the corner that had almost certainly been a nursing home or some such before being converted into luxury apartments.
Luxury didn’t extend to the fire escape, which looked like it was held together by rust and a prayer. The street outside was lined with parked cars, but there was a small private parking lot beside the building. Three identical black sedans were lined up side by side. They had government plates, not that Ronan needed to see them to know exactly what the three cars meant. MI5 were already here. Bureaucracy was the only thing in his favor right now.
Five and Six were curious beasts,
It had been such a relief to see the fire back in her belly. He’d even enjoyed her calling him on his pigheadedness like that, even though on the surface it meant losing face with the others. Frost had been around the block often enough to grasp Sir Charles’ game, and Lethe was too in awe of the whole spy culture they had going on to dare jeopardize his place in it. Noah was Noah. Unpredictable. Difficult to read. Konstantin was different. He came from a culture that respected power, even when that power was incontrovertibly wrong. Still, he had fled for a reason. So even the Russian would find something admirable in the old man being persuaded by her arguments. In truth her flare up only served to cement his position rather than undermine it.
He looked at the grandfather clock, with its tarnished brass pendulum swinging slowly to and fro, tick , tock , tick , tock . It made time sound so real, so vital. He heard Maxwell ushering them out, heard Noah saying something deliberately antagonistic to him, the car doors slam and then a moment later the peel of tires spitting gravel as the Daimler accelerated toward the airfield. They would be in the air in twenty minutes and halfway to Berlin, their first stop, before the sun was full in the sky.
How many hours did they have until the first attack? He knew he should have handed everything they had over to MI6. It was stupid not to. But it was 4 a.m. There was nothing the spooks could do that his people couldn’t. Indeed, free of the constraints of protocols and hierarchy, there was plenty the Forge Team could do that an MI6 operative legitimately couldn’t.
He was tired. There were still a few hours until dawn, and as he had told the others, these few hours might well be their last chance to sleep soundly for the foreseeable future.
Undressing, something that he had taken for granted for so long, was a physical trial. He was gasping and panting as he heaved himself out of the wheelchair and levered himself onto the hard mattress. There was nothing graceful about it. He writhed and wriggled like a beached whale trying to get beneath the covers. Sweat peppered his skin. He lay there staring up at the ceilg. Sleep did not come.
The sun did.
6
First Blood
Ronan Frost made the ride to Newcastle in a little over four hours, hitting the rush-hour traffic just as it was getting into full, air-polluting swing. The Ducati didn’t adhere to the same rules of motion that stifled the steady flow of people carriers and rusty, old cars. Ronan accelerated along the white line, weaving in between the bottlenecked Fords and Volvos. He skirted the edge of the city, coming in from Gateshead, over the Tyne Bridge and the redeveloped Quayside, swept around the Swallow House roundabout and leaned hard into the corner that took him beyond the university buildings toward the more affluent suburbs of Jesmond and Gosforth.
Lee had given him the names and addresses of the suicides. Three of them were in the Tyne Valley, making it the obvious place to start. Catherine Meadows, the Trafalgar Square suicide, had lived in Queens Road in West Jesmond; Sebastian Fisher, the Barcelona victim, around the corner on Acorn Road. He turned off the main drag and drove slowly passed Catherine’s apartment. It was a huge white building on the corner that had almost certainly been a nursing home or some such before being converted into luxury apartments.
Luxury didn’t extend to the fire escape, which looked like it was held together by rust and a prayer. The street outside was lined with parked cars, but there was a small private parking lot beside the building. Three identical black sedans were lined up side by side. They had government plates, not that Ronan needed to see them to know exactly what the three cars meant. MI5 were already here. Bureaucracy was the only thing in his favor right now.
Five and Six were curious beasts,
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