Retribution Read Free

and was convinced he was about to be stopped by security guards at any moment. But nobody paid him the slightest attention.
    As he took his seat, he put his hand in his pocket and felt for the piece of soft blue material that accompanied him everywhere he went. As he did so, he muttered a soft prayer and made a firm vow to succeed.
    All the talking, the schooling, the training and testing – and the years of fighting – had been aimed at this moment.
    He was on his way.

THREE
    H arry Tate stared at the text on his mobile phone. It had bleeped seconds ago. He was trying to ignore it; calls when he was on a job were a distraction. Calls from the person who’d been trying to contact him for two days now, leaving voicemail messages, were even more so than most.
    Harry. Plse make Grosvenor Square tomorrow at 18.30? Urgent. Remember Mitrovica. Ken Deane.
    For no good reason that he could determine, Harry felt a ripple in his gut. Ken Deane and Mitrovica; the combination wasn’t good. Nor was being asked to remember the things he’d seen there. And if Ken Deane was still working for the UN, as he had been when they first met, it was the last thing he wanted. Take on a contract with the UN and you could end up somewhere hot, remote and deeply unfriendly.
    He looked up at the door of the house they were watching as a thickset man with ginger hair stepped outside. His name was Terry de Witt. He was supposed to be in hiding.
    â€˜He can’t be,’ Rik Ferris muttered in disbelief, and reached for the door latch of the Audi.
    Harry put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Forget it. We’re too late.’ He nodded towards the end of the street.
    A black Range Rover had appeared, ghosting along the line of empty cars. To outward appearances just another luxury Chelsea tractor looking for a parking slot, it was nothing of the sort. Three men and the driver, Harry noted.
    He knew what would happen next: the car would stop alongside de Witt, and the driver would ask for directions, friendly but puzzled. De Witt would pause and move closer, even though he knew this area of Primrose Hill in north London as well as he knew the far side of the moon. But his naïve side, the side which had got him traced in the first place, would come to the fore in spite of several warnings to stay inside, no matter what.
    Sure enough, the two side doors opened and two of the men got out. They were big and moved swiftly, hauling de Witt inside. It took seconds, with no exchange of words. Give it an hour or two, Harry knew, and de Witt, South African numbers man to an Albanian arms dealer, would be overseas and gone for good. Or dead.
    â€˜Do we stop them?’ Rik asked.
    â€˜Only if you want those boys to put some dents in your nice car. Follow at a discreet distance.’ Harry dialled the contact number for the security company paying the bill for this job. When the call was picked up, he gave the registration of the Range Rover, descriptions of the occupants and the direction of travel. This was strictly an observe-only assignment and not worth the grief he figured would accompany that particular car with those three men if he and Rik tried to get in their way.
    â€˜So what was the message?’ Rik was trying not to look disappointed at missing the chance of a hot pursuit through the city streets. He started the car and settled in a block behind the Range Rover, allowing a taxi to overtake to act as a screen.
    Harry read out the text. ‘That’s all I know. Something to do with Mitrovica in Kosovo. He’s persistent, I’ll give him that.’ Three voicemail messages and a text so far. It must be important.
    â€˜Grosvenor Square?’ Rik swerved to avoid a cycle courier. ‘That’s the US Embassy. What’s Kosovo got to do with them? Is Deane CIA?’
    â€˜Not unless he had a better offer since I last saw him.’
    â€˜When was that?’
    â€˜Pristina, Kosovo in ’ninety-nine.