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

man to call her back. Standing silently, waiting for the call had been a surreal experience. The nervous onlookers couldn’t take their eyes off the assault rifle in her hands and the car that was burning fiercely behind her, it’s tyres popping and rounds of ammunition cooking off in the heat. The two onlookers jumped each time the bullets went off, but Caroline was calm and silent, waiting for Mereweather to return her call.

The police, fire service and ambulance arrived and fortunately it was not too long before Ryan Beard arrived, spoke to the police, gained possession of the rifle over them and whisked Caroline away from the scene. The police hadn’t known protocol, and in truth, there wasn’t much the MI6 man could have done, but he baffled them with talk of SASS collaboration and that the secret service were keen to take control of the scene once they got an agent on site. Beard had called them, let them know about agent Kruger. He had convinced them that getting Caroline away for a debrief was imperative. He would liaise with the South Africans and tell them what he knew, but he would make sure that Caroline was on the plane before he did that.

It was obvious that somebody had influence within the SASS. Beard had Caroline in his vehicle and away before the police could protest. The MI6 man would deal with the SASS soon enough, but the fact he had helped Caroline twice meant the ledger between Britain’s two intelligence services was well and truly written in MI6’s favour.

“I’m going to take you straight to the airport. A colleague is arranging a flight right now and we’ll get you out using a diplomatic emergency travel document instead of your passport. We’ll take your photo and fill it in at the airport. The sooner we get you into a safe zone, the better.”

“But my things…” she hesitated. She realised it was only clothes and she had another passport at home. She would get a new mobile phone when she checked back in at Thames House. She shrugged, “I guess I don’t need anything.”

“I’ll sanitise your room, your things,” said Ryan. “Do you have money on you? Any credit cards?”

“No. It was all in my purse in my handbag,” she paused solemnly. “Back at the fire.”

She thought of both Kruger’s and Vigus Badenhorst’s bodies burning in the wreckage and shuddered. She had smelled the aroma of cooked meat over the stench of burning fuel and tyres, thought she would gag, but had fought the urge. She remembered King’s refusal to eat from a hog roast stall at a trendy food festival she had dragged him to once in the harbour town of Porthleven, back in Cornwall. Roast pork was the only food he wouldn’t touch, and it had come from his time in Northern Iraq helping the Kurds in their fight against ISIS, who had burned entire villages. He had said the likeness to the smell of burning human flesh was uncanny. To him, it was the smell of ethnic cleansing. She briefly thought about King’s moniker, his reputation. Did she really know him at all?

“I’ll sign over some cash for you. You can get some wash things, a meal or whatever you need at the airport.”

“I feel like I’m running.”

“You are,” said Beard. “But it’s okay to run. You’ve had two close calls. They won’t miss a third time, it’s the law of averages. They’ll throw too much at you next time.”

“I don’t even know who they are…”

“Better you find out from someplace safer,” he quipped. “They have influence within the South African intelligence services, that’s for certain. First your abduction, then this - and they were willing to sacrifice one of their own people in the process.”

Caroline nodded, loosing herself in the vineyards as they swept past. She wondered how Alex was, whether he was gaining progress with the investigation. She knew he wouldn’t be scared if the tables were turned. Wouldn’t be running. He’d be hunting. She wondered whether she was up to this, and that in turn saddened her. But it was more than that. Seeing Ryan Beard again reminded her of the anecdote in Switzerland. Of the man she had fallen in love with, and whether he was the person she thought he was, or a man she barely knew.

The Reaper.

36

 

King had taken the lift as far as Winchester. The couple were taking the ferry to Santander from Portsmouth. They were surfing, camping and partying their way down to Morocco. Perhaps further – they hadn’t decided yet. To King, it sounded brilliant, and as he had sat listening to the music and doing his best not to become too engaged in conversation, he thought how wonderful it would be to travel with Caroline. Maybe like this couple, Morocco would be a good place to stop off.

King knew Morocco well. But he knew a lot of places well, and had operated in the shadows all over the world. It would be difficult to holiday in countries where he had previously carried out his country’s dirty work. Maybe Morocco would be out of the question. He had taken out an Al Qaeda cell in the Atlas Mountains and exfiltrated via Casablanca to the Canary Islands. It wasn’t hitch-hiking conversation, so he had shaken his head when they asked if he’d ever been. He volunteered that he’d surfed a bit. Hire boards in various countries and some paddle boarding on the creeks near his cottage in Cornwall. He hadn’t even thought about the cottage, or what was left of it, until then. He would have to chase the insurers when he had time.

Winchester was a pleasant market town with a mixture of historical old-English architecture, remains of settlements dating back to King Alfred and more than its fair share of pound shops. King had stayed