CHAPTER FORTY
Chad Winters had an obvious and quite sickening superiority complex. You would have thought the CIA director had just won the Nobel prize for uniting gravity and quantum theory. He showed us to our seats and then surveyed us over his glasses as if we were errant schoolchildren.
"So, what can I do for you, gentleman... and lady."
I didn't have to glance at 61 to know how much that pissed her off.
"You can tell us," said A1, keeping his voice level with obvious effort, "why several of your agents have been accompanying some Iranian gentlemen around the world blowing up scientific laboratories."
"I'm sure you understand that our operations must be kept top secret."
"And I'm sure you understand the diplomatic implications of your people going into other countries and committing murder and industrial espionage."
"Have you never killed anyone, Mr White?"
I zoned out of the conversation for a while and rooted around through the various sounds that were vying for the periphery of my attention. There were two people, very quaintly, listening outside the door. Old school. There was something else that unnerved me but I couldn't identify it. I set some software running to analyse it and tuned back in to hear the Prime Minister speaking.
"It violates all existing transatlantic treaties for you to turn up uninvited in our country and shoot at my agents. You were a few inches away from killing one of them. Anyway, I have several of your agents, most of them dead, cluttering up my life and causing me a great deal of extraneous paperwork. Not to mention what you did to this agent," he added, nodding in my direction.
"I've never seen this man before in my life," said Winters, throwing me a sickeningly well rehearsed smile.
I wished I'd been fitted with a remote lie detector, but I wasn't sure that was even feasible.
"What about this man?" he asked, pulling out a photo of Peterson.
A tiny flicker in his eyes betrayed him.
"What is this visit about, gentlemen?" he said, pointedly not denying anything.
"It's about you pissing all over our sovereignty," said the PM, rapidly losing his patience, "and trying to blow up bits of our country."
Suddenly the software completed its task and, for reasons best known to itself, sent an alarm to my phone.
The director almost jumped out of his seat and he began for the first time to lose his smooth demeanour.
I looked at my phone.
"We need to leave this building immediately, there's a bomb nearby."
Before I had finished saying the word 'nearby' three Close Protection Officers had lunged at the PM and virtually thrown him towards the door.
"It's a very small device and it's under this desk," I shouted. "Estimated impact zone no more than twenty feet."
"That's not possible," said Winters, but he was visibly shaking and I'm sure it wasn't fear of the impending explosion.
The two CIA men who had been standing outside the door had their weapons drawn and tried to stop us leaving but 61 and Close Protection dealt with them.
"I'm not quite sure what the etiquette for this situation is," said A1, dragging Winters from his seat and placing his pistol to his head, "but as you've just tried to blow up our Prime Minister I think you'd better come with us."
There followed a bizarre standoff as we very slowly exited the building in a series of stalemate moves.
Once all ten of us were inside the gargantuan prime ministerial limousine we were immune from their weapons and sped away as fast as the traffic would allow.
"Where are we going?" asked the bewildered driver over the intercom.
"Anywhere, just fucking drive in a straight line," shouted the PM.
"This is completely..." began Winters. A1 fixed him with an implacable, quizzical stare and he knew he had no comeback.
"Who the hell do we call about this?" said the foreign secretary.
"Nobody for now," said the PM, "we just drive."
A1 leaned over and whispered something to the PM, who nodded his agreement. A1 then whispered to me to find the nearest secluded spot where we could securely hole up and to tell the driver.
I closed my eyes, which helped me concentrate and block out all external stimuli whilst I communicated with my software. The nearest suitable place I could find was over thirty miles away but I supposed that we wanted to put some distance between us and the CIA headquarters. In this car we weren't exactly difficult to track.
I sent the map of the location to my phone and showed it to A1. He approved and I sent it to the driver's display unit. He gave a thumbs up through the bullet proof screen and pulled an extravagant u-turn.
A while later, 61, myself and two of the Close Protection got out of the limo and began to patrol the surrounding area of hopefully deserted woodland while everyone else remained inside.
"I don't like this," said Kev, "we should be getting back to the plane and the fuck out of this country."
"We can't do that," said 61, "your boss and ours both still have to meet the president. In fact, that's just become even more spectacularly bloody urgent than it already was. Just keep your eyes and ears peeled."
She came over to me.
"Can you find the nearest van hire place?"
"You have a plan?"
"Yes, a plan with a van, if there's somewhere near enough."
I dove into the map once more and found the required information.
"If you go back the way we came... hang on, I'll send it to your phone."
A few seconds later she was surveying the route.
"It's much quicker if I go across country," she said, "good job I chose to wear trainers today. A quick run and hopefully I can grab a cab on the main road. I'll need some cash though."
"I'm sure between the occupants of the car we can have a whip round," I said. "What's the plan?"
"I hire a transit van, or a people carrier with tinted windows if I can get one, and we use that to transport the PM and FS back to the plane. Then we can deal with Winters without having Close Protection flapping around us. In fact, they could take the van and we could be a decoy with the limo, whatever."
"Sounds like a good plan," I agreed.
"I'll see how much cash I can raise, I've no idea how much it costs to hire a van."
"I'll get their price list," I said.
We both walked over to the limo and I motioned to A1 to get out.
We filled him in and he agreed that it was a good plan.
"I'll need three hundred dollars," said 61, "that'll cover a cargo van, it's like a transit. Not comfortable in the back but very anonymous."
"Sounds ideal," said A1, "good thinking, Hannah. I've been too preoccupied with the smarmy bastard to consider our wider situation."
"Any answers yet?" she asked.
"He's stalling - I think he hopes he'll be rescued soon."
"I couldn't detect any kind of electronic tracker on him," I said, "and the PM's car has all the latest scramblers installed. So unless they followed us they can't know where we are."
"We definitely weren't followed," said Hannah.
"Here's four hundred dollars, get yourself a mars bar when you get there."
"Actually, can you grab me a bottle of water from the car," 61 added, "I haven't been running for ages."
A1 leaned into the limo and got her some water.
"Hopefully the paperwork won't take too long," she said, leaning over and stretching. "I'll phone when I'm leaving and you can meet me half way up the track."
She ran off into the woods and A1 got back into the limo.
"Where's she gone?" asked Kev suspiciously as I returned.
"To get you a van so you can get the PM and FS back to the plane."
"Oh. Good."
The two of them went back to keeping their eyes and ears open and I went back to keeping my software open.