‘Rakesh Sarkar’s uncle is the Minister for Commerce and Industry in the Indian government. Hans Pfeiffer’s sister is married to the German finance minister. Wú Dao-ming’s brother is one of the eighteen members of the Chinese politburo as vice chairman and secretary general of the National People’s Congress. Anastasia Casey has just bought into one of Australia’s largest media organisations, is on first-name terms with the prime minister and her grandfather was governor general. Ken Bass is a close personal friend not only of the vice president of the United States, but also of the prime minister of the UAE. His ex-wife is an old school friend of our prime minister’s wife. And finally Sergei Yermilov is intimately connected to the Russian president through his links to the president’s banker.
‘The only other thing that connects the parents in these kidnaps is that they are all billionaires – it has to be said that estimating Yermilov’s personal wealth wasn’t easy, although he did buy a luxury apartment in the Shard last year for fifty million, which must somehow qualify him.
‘We have, as yet, not found any clear, all-embracing reason why a terrorist organisation would target these individuals. While Kinderman is an obvious candidate for Islamic terrorism because of its work for the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan, Yermilov’s connection to the Kremlin might be of interest to a Chechen or Georgian organisation, Wú Dao-ming’s reach into the politburo might be of interest to rebel communities in Xinjiang, Anastasia Casey’s mining operations could antagonise conservationists and Aboriginal tribes, Hans Pfeiffer’s connection might excite rebellious elements in southern European nations who’ve grown to dislike the Germans, and the Sarkar family could be vulnerable to Pakistani terrorism just by being Indian. There is nothing they have in common that could make them the target of a single terrorist entity. And we at MI5 and GCHQ have not picked up on any new organisation that’s specifically targeting billionaires.
‘So in the absence of any obvious terrorist motive, until perhaps a more subtle one is revealed to us by the kidnappers, our first task is to try to establish the nature of the group who’ve planned and carried out these abductions. What we do know is that they have pulled off a series of expensively arranged and very well-executed kidnaps.
‘We have no idea how Rakesh Sarkar was taken. His car was eventually traced to a street off Ladbroke Grove with no CCTV cameras, so there is no record of how it got there or how he was removed from it. He was last seen by his girlfriend in Shoreditch at around 11.30 on the fifteenth of January. Hans Pfeiffer’s chauffeur, Klaus Weber, woke up dazed and confused at seven in the morning of the fifteenth in his Mercedes, which had been parked in a street in Plaistow. He has a recollection of going for a coffee with a fellow chauffeur, whose name was Jack, and who was waiting with him in a street near the Chinawhite nightclub, supposedly for Scarlett Johansson, but while we’ve been able to establish that she was in London, we know she was not in the club that night. Siena Casey’s friend Jerry Hunt says she disappeared from a party with a guy who’d given them some top-quality cocaine, but he was unable to come up with any name other than “Joe” and gave a sketchy description of the man he assumes she left with as “long blonde hair, goatee, very fit”. We might get more intelligence from the Sophie Railton-Bass kidnap once the special investigations unit gets to work on it. At least it happened in daylight, although it was in a mews and occurred under cover of a scaffolding sheet. Only in the first daytime kidnap, when the Yermilov boy was taken, are there possible breaks. Two police cars were spotted leaving the scene. The traffic on the Byfleet Road was stopped by two trucks and we have a description, but not of the drivers and no registrations. We are hoping for some clues from the ballistics.
‘What this particular kidnap shows is the organisation and confidence of the team carrying it out. The traffic was stopped for less than five minutes while the operation was in progress. In that time drastic decisions were taken to kill the driver and bodyguard, possibly because they would be able to identify their assailants, but also because, as mafia henchmen, they were probably prepared to take them on. Their Russian-made weapons were found at the scene.’
‘You seem to be implying that the level of planning and preparedness to take action would mean that these people are professionally trained,’ said the minister. ‘Possibly army or special forces?’
‘As you know, Minister, there are now thousands of private security companies in the world. Most of their personnel are professionally trained. Some of the top security companies can attract people from special forces, for instance Anchorlight, who are the PSC under the umbrella of the Kinderman Corporation, have ex-Navy SEALs, Rangers and special ops people on their books. Many London-based PSCs have ex-SAS and SBS personnel on their staff. It’s also well known that the US military are making more use of private contractors than ever before, some of whom they train or retrain to perform the tasks they want them to do. There are over a hundred thousand of them in Afghanistan alone at the moment.’
‘So someone with an idea could easily recruit the personnel to carry it out?’ said the minister.
‘May I?’ said an American opposite Mercy.
‘Clifford Chase, London station chief of the CIA, please go ahead.’
Chase had straight blond hair, which flopped over his forehead so that he had to constantly brush it back. He had blue eyes under eyebrows that disappeared into his face and a mouth with no lips which made a fierce dark line below his nose. He was the epitome of the clean-cut American with the stamp of Ivy League on him.
‘I’d like to introduce Ray Sutherland, the head of counter intelligence for Europe and Russia, in the UK,’ said Chase.
Sutherland leaned forward, straightened his back. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, red tie. His hair was side-parted and dyed black. The only remarkable thing about his face was that his right eye winced permanently, as if he’d spent too much of his life looking through keyholes. Behind Chase and Sutherland were two men in identical dark blue suits, one with a red tie, the other with a blue tie. The red-tied man was shaven-headed and built like a US Marine; the blue-tied man was slim, with limp brown hair and green eyes. Mercy thought that all four men looked impervious to humour and incapable of charm.
‘It’s true that there are a lot of highly trained personnel out there,’ said Sutherland. ‘It’s also true that they go in and out of employment on contracts. So they could have done six months in Iraq, six in Afghanistan, a few months in Africa, South America. Not many PSCs have permanent staff other than administrative. But what we do know about this community supplying the PSCs is that it’s tight. All these guys talk to each other about what they’re doing. It would be difficult to set up a series of kidnaps like this without people hearing about what’s going down. Especially as most of these guys are motivated by money, and as I understand it, the “expenses” demands stand at one hundred and fifty million pounds, which sounds like a profit-motivated enterprise. So we at the CIA have put in motion within the US a deep investigation amongst all private contractors to the US military. I would suggest the same could be done here in the UK.’
Mike Stanfield nodded as if this had already been thought about, discussed, and agents were taking action.
‘Has anybody thought to calculate approximately how many people might be involved in a series of kidnapping like this?’ asked the minister.
‘It’s difficult to say with the night-time abductions,’ said Stanfield. ‘But the daytime ones we reckon would have required at least ten people to accomplish. We assume that because they happened on different days, the same team carried out both kidnaps. We’re not sure what happened with Sarkar, but his car was involved and the only way to get it to stop would have been by the police. We know they had access to police vehicles and uniforms. Klaus Weber has mentioned this other chauffeur, Jack, who would probably have had an accomplice to overwhelm Weber. We think it happened at about the same time as the Sarkar kidnap, meaning separate teams. The Siena Casey kidnap was pe
rformed by a lone male, maybe with backup. So that’s, say, three for the Sarkar kidnap, the same for the Pfeiffer and maybe just two for Siena Casey, plus ten for the two daytime ones and a further seven to ten perhaps involved in sourcing cars, trucks, spray-painting, co-ordinating and intelligence gathering. So maximum thirty people.’
‘And have the lines of communication already been agreed between, say, MI5 and MI6 and the CIA?’ asked the minister. ‘Has anybody heard from the SVR yet?’
‘Nothing from the SVR so far,’ said Stanfield. ‘And we already have good lines of communication with our allies in the intelligence field.’
That drew a weighted silence from the community around the table, which was broken once more by the minister.
‘And what’s happening with all these families who’ve lost their children?’ he asked.
‘I think DCS Oscar Hines can help with that,’ said Stirling.
‘In the case of Hans Pfeiffer and Wú Dao-ming, who are in the UK, we’ve sent two kidnap consultants to the Pfeiffers’ house in Chelsea, one of whom is Chinese-speaking. They are in the process of setting up crisis management committees for both parents. Rakesh Sarkar’s mother is on her way over from Mumbai and the father will follow. Anastasia Casey will arrive tomorrow. I believe she has her executive director and an Australian consultant standing by. I have a Russian-speaking team at the St George’s Hill Estate advising the Yermilovs; they have told me that Sergei Yermilov has ignored them and spent every moment on the phone since his return from Moscow, pulling together all the resources of the mafia and the SVR, with permission from the president himself. I understand that the Kinderman Corporation have appointed their own kidnap consultant to run the negotiations for Emma Railton.
‘I will be director of operations and I have appointed DI Mercy Danquah as the co-ordinator of the special investigations teams. She will also take personal charge of the Sophie Railton-Bass case. I have given orders to four other special investigation teams, who will be looking into the other kidnaps. We also have a communications team setting up in our Vauxhall offices who will co-ordinate all the information gathered by the special investigation teams and disseminate it to all the consultants. I have a contact list here that I would like everybody to have, and for them to open lines of communication with the relevant personnel.’
One of the civil servants leaned in to the minister and whispered something.
‘Are we agreed on a media blackout for the moment?’ said the minister.
Everybody nodded. The minister stood and left the table with his small entourage. The discussion carried on for a further twenty minutes as contacts were established, and then the meeting dispersed. Deacon was talking to the CIA men when Mercy came over to say hello to Ray Sutherland, who in turn introduced the red-tied bull of a man as Hank Mitchell and the blue-tied blond as Troy Novak. She instantly intuited from their handshakes and eye contact that none of them were comfortable with two unalterable facts: that she was black and a woman.
‘As you’ve just heard, I’ll be running the special investigation units on the ground,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to let you know that if you have any questions about London or need any local knowledge, please don’t hesitate to call.’
They all nodded, but she knew she wasn’t going to hear from any of them, nor would they be a source of help for her teams. The three men said their goodbyes and moved away.
‘Genial trio,’ said Mercy.
‘They’re very edgy,’ said Deacon.
‘About what?’
‘The Kinderman involvement, the expertise, and the possibility that one of their own is involved. You know, an ex-CIA guy or a contractor.’
‘I didn’t get the feeling there was going to be a free flow of intelligence coming from them.’
‘Nor did I,’ said Deacon. ‘So much for the special relationship. Did you register the silence when our allies were mentioned?’
‘Heard the mice farting.’
‘By the way, Mercy, are you all right?’ he asked, appearing squarely in her vision.
‘What do you mean?’ said Mercy, thinking this man missed nothing.
‘You just look a little … preoccupied, that’s all.’
‘Me?’ she said. ‘When I’m just about to embark on the biggest case of my career? Preoccupied? You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Mercy.
‘Knightsbridge,’ said Boxer. ‘What’s this number you’re calling me on?’
‘Disposable phone,’ said Mercy. ‘Can we meet? I’ll explain.’
‘Are you around here somewhere?’
‘I’m about to start a very complicated job in Belgravia.’
‘I thought—’
‘That’s why I want to talk,’ said Mercy. ‘Give me the name of a place and I’ll be there in ten.’
‘Gran Caffe on the corner of Basil Street and Hans Crescent.’
Boxer hung up, turned back from Knightsbridge tube station and went to the café. He ordered an espresso and called Amy.
‘Did you speak to your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘I told her to come clean to her new boss.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Islington. I went home, changed, packed a few things and I’m on my way back to look after Siobhan.’
‘Any news from her?’
‘I doubt she’s gone anywhere in her state.’
‘Be careful of Siobhan,’ said Boxer. ‘You seem fascinated and I can understand why, but she’s difficult, by which I mean economical with the truth. She’s also had the benefit of some training from her father, and I’ve just spoken to Simon Deacon, who tells me that Conrad’s long career has not always been pretty.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘There’s been some spying and it’s clear to me that some of those techniques have been passed on to Siobhan. He’s also been involved in the uglier side of interrogation,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ve spoken to Tanya, too. I know there’s no love lost between them, but I’ve seen and heard enough to know that Siobhan is at best unpredictable and at worst dangerous.’
‘All right,’ said Amy. ‘You’ve made your point. I’ll be careful.’
Boxer saw Mercy appear out of the crowds in front of Harrods. He hung up, ordered her a flat white.
‘What’s with all the secrecy?’ he asked. ‘And where’s George?’
‘Do you know Colonel Ryder Forsyth?’ asked Mercy, sitting down opposite, tearing her gloves off.
‘Colonel?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, Ryder Forsyth … from your time in the Staffords.’
‘Yes, I know him,’ said Boxer. ‘But let’s start at the beginning, Mercy. As in … what the hell’s going on?’
‘I’m on a job,’ said Mercy.
‘You said it was complicated.’
‘It is. Kidnaps … lots of them, a whole series. And you know me. Got to keep the brain on the go.’
‘I just spoke to Amy. She said that she’d told you to come clean.’
‘I weighed it up and decided against,’ said Mercy. ‘What did Glider tell you?’
‘Not much. I don’t think he’s involved, if that’s what you mean. He’s promised me some leads,’ said Boxer. ‘But Mercy, let’s just talk this through. Your head’s not on straight.’
‘Tell me about Ryder Forsyth.’
‘We fought in the same unit in southern Iraq in the Gulf War.’
‘Was he an officer?’
‘Not then. He was an NCO. He annoyed people by always volunteering our unit for the most dangerous possible missions,’ said Boxer. ‘He applied for a commission afterwards and was made captain.’
‘Did you keep in touch?’
‘We weren’t friends but I knew about him. Simon Deacon kept up with him. He used Ryder when he was on the Africa desk then lost touch. I came across him through one of my American contacts and we worked together once in Colombia rescuing hostages from FA
RC rebels. I was the consultant and he did the gung-ho stuff.’
‘Was he any different to when you knew him in the Staffords?’
‘He’d been through a lot. He was a recovered alcoholic. And when running the security on a film shoot in Ecuador, he ended up having an affair with a famous and married American actress, which ended badly for both of them. He’d also had a triple bypass and a hip replacement and had lost an eye, which he covered with a black patch in those days. He’s that sort of person. Never does anything by halves. But what’s Ryder Forsyth got to do with anything?’
‘He’s the consultant on one of the kidnaps,’ said Mercy.
‘But he’s freelance. Since when did the Met … ?’
‘It’s no different to how you and I ended up working together on the D’Cruz case,’ said Mercy. ‘Forsyth’s kidnap is the most important one, politically speaking. So I’m acting as his personal special investigations unit and co-ordinating all the other SI teams.’
‘Don’t do it, Mercy. Come clean and get out now while you still can without hurting anybody.’
‘As soon as I know why they’re holding Marcus, I’ll make my final decision.’
‘You’ll be in too deep by then and you know it. They’ll make sure you won’t be able to extricate yourself. It’s a set-up. It’s been planned.’
‘We don’t know anything until we know it.’
‘Have the gang holding Marcus been in touch again?’
Silence.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Boxer. ‘Tell me.’
More silence as Mercy stared hard out of the window.
‘Another threat?’ asked Boxer.
‘They’re watching me,’ said Mercy. ‘They must have seen me with Amy because they said she’d be next if I talked.’
‘This is out of control,’ said Boxer. ‘You can’t go into a job with this background music. Who is Ryder Forsyth working for?’