Chapters (37)
- Cover
- 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
- Chris Ryan Readers’ Club?
- Letter from Author
- About the Author
‘Why?’ Bowman demanded. ‘What’s going on?’
‘John Mallet says hello. He wants a word.’
Eight
Eight
They gave him three minutes to pack his bags and insisted on waiting inside. Which meant there was no time to snort the crushed-up pill. Bowman left them watching TV while he hurriedly scraped the dust-like powder off the countertop and emptied it into the toilet bowl. He flushed, disposing of the evidence, then shoved his washbag into his black leather holdall, along with his spare kit and Glock. He grabbed the passport issued to him by the Wing under his cover story name. Checked the room one last time, then followed Henderson and Williams down the corridor. They took the lift down to the lobby and led Bowman outside towards a meteor-grey BMW 7 Series. He dumped his bag in the boot, then slid into the back seat. Henderson and Williams squeezed in either side of him, man-spreading their legs, their huge hands planted on their knees. A third guy with a buzzcut sat behind the wheel. He glanced at Bowman in the rear-view, nodded at his partners and pulled out into traffic.
Bowman sat quietly in the back as they took a circuitous route north and then east away from Marble Arch. There was no point asking where they were going, or why. Bowman had served with the Wing long enough to know how they operated. Henderson, Williams and Buzzcut were foot soldiers. Guys who could be trusted to do a job and keep their mouths shut. They wouldn’t have been told anything except the bare minimum.
But that didn’t stop him from fearing the worst. Questions pinballed inside his head. Why does Mallet want to see me at this hour? Why had the UKNs told me to bring my ghost ID? He decided it couldn’t be good news. Most likely Six had found out about his drug habit. Now they were shutting him down. They had called him out so Mallet could confront him with the evidence of his addiction, take away his ghost ID and tell him his time in the Wing was over.
They hit Middle Temple and scudded east along the Embankment. The city blurred past them. Bowman saw grandiose Victorian buildings and brutalist concrete offices, gleaming glass-and-steel towers and cranes slanted against the skyline, like the masts of sailing ships in a crowded port. All of it illuminated by the glow from a million street lamps and apartment windows. Buzzcut took the Blackfriars underpass and carried on east, through Cannon Street and Monument. At two in the morning, the roads were quiet apart from the trickle of black cabs and night buses.