Until now. Saunders might have got him by the balls, and there might be no option other than comply with the man’s threat, but Ben was damned if he was going to let these bastards pry into his life for another minute or shadow his movements another mile. The fake passports were in the names of three fictitious individuals named Harris, Connors and Palmer. They were equally well-used and covered with visa stamps that read like a scrapbook of Ben’s adventures all over the world. The Palmer passport had expired but the other two still had some life left. Ben decided that he would travel as Paul Harris, with the Connors identity as a fall back. He tossed his real passport and the Palmer one onto the bed and stuffed the two fakes into his bag.

Now the phones. With his personal mobile compromised, it had to be ditched too. He tossed it on the bed next to the discarded passports and grabbed the two burners from the safe. Both anonymously paid for in cash and untraceable to their owner. The only other person in the world who knew their numbers was Jeff Dekker. And that was good enough for Ben.

Next he turned his attention to the handguns, removed them both from the safe and laid them on the bed, too. One was a Springfield XD, polymer-framed, all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the-art modern combat pistol. The other was the venerable steel Browning 9mm that he’d used for many years in the SAS. With its rugged design and fourteen-shot capacity the model had barely changed since its inception in 1935, because it hadn’t needed to. It was an old friend to him, fitted his hand like a tailor-made glove and had never once let him down.

Ben hesitated over the weapons. No question, he couldn’t go after a man like Jaden Wolf unarmed. But the travel issue was the sticking point. He could take the chance of finding a substitute once he reached his target location, but good, reliable hardware wasn’t always easy to get hold of in the field. On the other hand, smuggling a gun overseas was taking a hell of a chance. An even bigger one, if he was stupid enough to try to bring a firearm onto a civilian passenger plane.

But Ben had already decided that the fastest way to London was by car. And despite the risk, he had his ways and means. Making his choice, he stuck the old Browning and three loaded magazines into his pocket.