The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

monitor with the flight details and boarding gate numbers. His flight was now boarding. He drained the remnants of his beer and smiled.

Home stretch.

47

 

Rashid slipped his phone back into his pocket and opened the balcony doors. Ramsay was seated on the king-sized bed, a brandy and soda in one hand, his mobile phone in the other, eyes transfixed on the screen. Marnie had taken up position at the dresser. She was seated in the room’s only chair and was connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, linked through the MI5 server at Thames House and was call-conferencing with a technician with GCHQ. She wore wireless headphones with a wraparound mouthpiece and her fingers danced across the keyboard with the ease and deftness of a concert pianist. Beside her, Botha’s phone was open with a USB jack connecting it to the laptop. Botha’s laptop was running a reverse malware that would open his files without security settings. The connection to the running software not only broke Botha’s four-digit screen lock, but sent the details to GCHQ, where specialist equipment was running both a GPS history of Botha’s phone and the phone he was connected to. A picture was being built, created through cell grids, satellite relays and network masts.

“Important call?” Ramsay asked without looking up.

“Just me Mam,” Rashid replied. “She worries so…”

Ramsay shrugged. “Mothers…” he said somewhat cynically, his eyes not leaving the screen of his phone. He continued to scroll. “You’d tell us if your pal King ever got in touch, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good.”

“He’s your pal as well, right?”

“Of course.”

Rashid picked up his bottle of Heineken and sipped. He had decided on just one beer tonight, they had all decided on a drink, but it was a de-stressing tool, nothing more. They weren’t about to set Cape Town alight, but they needed something to calm them all down after the visit to Botha’s house. Ramsay had been distant. He had administered the dose of sodium panthenol, and the two shots of adrenalin had made the man’s heart beat like a drum. The MI5 field liaison officer did not seem comfortable with the way things had gone. Marnie had been quiet. Although she had not seen anything of the interrogation, she had seen more than her emit in the hallway. She had washed her shoes off in the sink in Ramsay’s room, as if washing the memory away as much as the blood in her tread.

Rashid perched on the edge of the second bed. Ramsay had secured three rooms, but they were using Marnie’s room as the hub. Marnie had been on her laptop for over an hour, ever since they had bid Ryan Beard goodbye and returned to the Victoria and Alfred Hotel.

“I put enough lead in Botha for him to die,” Rashid said quietly. “He may have got to hospital, but he wouldn’t have left. Besides, that was the deal for getting the information on him and access to him from the secret service.”

Ramsay drained his glass and placed it on the bedside table. “Why are you telling me this?”

Rashid shrugged. “I’ve killed before,” he said. “And I killed Botha. That’s all you need to take away from this.”

Ramsay nodded, smiled sagely. “Thanks.”

“Got it!” Marnie said triumphantly. “The IP address used for the transfer. And in turn, an address to the registered user.”

“Where?”

“Kensington,” she said. “But no surprise there, it’s Helena Snell’s property. Or at least registered to Ian Snell’s estate.”

“Damn it!” Ramsay snapped.

“No,” she said. “The IP address of the laptop has shown up at two separate locations.”

“Where?”

“Georgia.”

“America?” Rashid asked.

Marnie looked at him with enough contempt to show she was not over leaving her comfortable office in Thames House. And she blamed nobody else but Rashid. She wasn’t getting over it anytime soon. “No. The one next to Russia. Former USSR satellite country. Skhimili, to be precise. A small village or town near K’ut’aisi. Sandwiched between the Caucasus Mountains and the Lesser Caucasus Mountains.”

“Oh, yes. That one,” Rashid smiled.

“Where else?” Ramsay asked.

“Stockholm.” She looked at Rashid and sneered. “That’s in Sweden.”

“Nice…”

“You two!” Ramsay said tersely. He shook his head. “So, square one. The letter mentioned a safety deposit box in Sodertalje, a town outside of Stockholm. King went there and now two Russian mafia syndicates have been hit. Their leaders killed, at the very least. Helena Milankovitch had mafia links, in that she worked for them…”

“Was forced to work for them,” Marnie interrupted. “There’s a tremendous difference.”

“Why?” Ramsay countered.

“Because one way indicates a desire to take over, to use what she knows to get the opposition out of the way and broach onto their territories,” she paused, rubbed her tired eyes. “And the other means that this could be nothing to do with her wanting to branch out and everything to do with her wanting to pay them back. For the life she was forced to live, or for something else altogether.”

Ramsay nodded. “Okay. Well, we’ve got nothing more to go on here,” he said. “We need to get to where that laptop was previously used. Sweden is my bet, the logical place to go. It’s where King was summoned. In the meantime, you can still work with Thames House and GCHQ to find that bank account. Internet access permitting, that is. Get on the phone for updates whenever you can.”

Marnie glanced at Rashid. He could see she was not pleased to be going to Sweden. And nor was he, because it was a dead-end.

Marnie leaned back in the chair and sighed. “I’m fried. Are we eating anytime soon?”

Ramsay shrugged and looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said quietly. “You two go and eat. You can leave all this running, can’t you?”

Marnie nodded. “Sure. I’ll grab a bite to eat and see what’s happening when I get