Chapters (58)
- Cover
- Also by Oliver Harris
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
‘Okay. Now we move forward. Akan will be in touch.’ He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one against the box. That was when I saw his fingernails. They were blackened and stunted – where they’d grown back at all. It meant someone had seen fit to remove them at some point. Time spent in the hands of those people explained the care with which he moved, the unblinking eyes. I imagined seeing him through bars, without the suit, in Kabul’s Policharki prison, in Baghdad’s Karrada district hellhole. What else did it explain?
‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked.
‘I don’t live here.’
I returned to my reflection in the mirror: the bruising, the new coat I’d stolen. You start operations in control, you end up looking like you’re on the run. Reza messaged back: Golovkin = high alert. What do you know? Call me.
I returned to the case, picked it up and walked out.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
FIFTY-ONE
I got into an open lift and hit the button for the ground floor, hearing Golovkin’s steps approach. The doors closed. The feeling I had was that I’d spent a long time in a dream someone had subjected me to, and I was ready to walk out now, and that was going to involve punching through doors. I had a message from GL5: the car was ready in the basement car park. Confirm delivery. I crossed the ground floor to a doorman who held the doors open for me and my case as we walked out.
Then I ran.
I took the tracker out of the case, threw it into the back of a pickup waiting at traffic lights, and kept going. Half a mile south I stole a boxy old Honda Civic from beside the university. I threw the case on the back seat, put another mile between myself and the Triumph.
An unmarked car screamed past, 50 miles per hour with a siren on and someone sitting in the back, head bowed. Police were everywhere now, stiff with live rounds. They’d turned the adverts off on the sides of buildings. Main roads were being used by the military. My instinct was to get out of the city. I kept to the back roads and sank low in my seat, cut towards the airport.
I called Reza as I drove.
‘Who is Golovkin?’
‘Elliot, you’re on an Interpol red notice.’
‘Issued by who?’
‘The States.’
‘Under what name?’
‘Your own. If you are actually Elliot Kane.’
A Red Notice was an instruction to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition. It was issued by Interpol when a member country had produced a valid national arrest warrant.
‘I’ve been set up.’
My phone vibrated. I had an alert from Cognizance, the facial-recognition app, which meant a face resembling my own had shown up online. I groaned.