Ezra was silent. He lifted Dillon’s 9mm Glock and played with it in his bear-like hands.
Dillon calmed his heart rate; he relaxed his muscles and readied himself — for Ezra’s body language was all wrong, it was the body language of someone in preparation.
Dillon’s eyes surveyed the available weaponry and he realised, realised too late that maybe he had overestimated Ezra’s ability to forgive and forget.
And then it came to Dillon, an understanding that Ezra was the same. The same as Dillon, the same breed…
“This is dangerous,” Dillon’s sub-conscious told him.
Dillon closed his eyes momentarily as pain seared through his exhausted mind, through his head, burning bright red with white hot edges; he dropped slowly to his knees, cold sweats gripping him, and Ezra no longer existed and nothing mattered and the adrenalin that had been keeping him going for so long was no more there. His head rolled from side to side as a cloak of darkness wrapped itself around his mind. A low moan growled through his lips and Tatiana was with him, holding Dillon in her arms. She stroked his brow free of sweat, rocked with him at the foot of the steps and looked up at Ezra.
“Get him inside. In the cool. Now!”
“What is wrong with him?” Came Ezra’s deep voice.
“I don’t know. He’s most likely exhausted… Help him, uncle. Please help him.”
Ezra gestured and the biggest bodyguard approached, lifting Dillon easily and carrying him up the steps and into the villa and depositing him in one of the guest bedrooms. Ezra stepped into the air-conditioned room behind Tatiana, “I will help him now, Tatiana. But I cannot guarantee what will come later.”
“What? You really can’t see it, can you?”
“See what?” Growled the big Greek.
“You can’t see for the red mist of anger and hatred. Haven’t you realised after all these years, that you and Dillon are the same. You call him an Assassin; a force to be reckoned with. And what the fuck were you when you were a Ferran & Cardini field officer? What the hell were you doing in Berlin, and Istanbul, and then later in South Africa, in the first place? You are kindred spirits… and you are a fucking hypocrite.”
Ezra stood for a moment, staring hard at Tatiana. She lowered her eyes then, a feeling of overstepping the line causing her face to redden with embarrassment. Ezra stepped forward and placed his large hands on her shoulders and then kissed her on the forehead. “I have missed you, young lady. And despite everything I said to you before, I wish you no harm. I’m over the moon that you’ve come back to your uncle Ezra.”
“And what about Dillon. Do you wish him harm?”
“Dillon will come to no harm while he is a guest in my home. I promise.”
Ezra lifted Tatiana’s head. Wiped tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry. Can you ever forgive me for what I said just now? I do know that Dillon is fundamentally a good man, honest, and loyal to the end. But I also understand that you’re pissed-off with him for putting a bullet in your ass, but he did save your life.”
Ezra raised his hands in mock submission, “Let us not dwell on this now. I will hopefully see you both at dinner, which will be served at eight o’clock on the south veranda.” The big Greek then turned and left the room as the afternoon sunlight drifted through the plantation blinds.
GCHQ Transcript 5. INTERCEPT OF RECENT NEWS INCIDENT LEVEL 5 CLASSIFICATIONS.
At 04.30 AM (GMT), a number of leading banking institutions from a number of EU countries including Italy, Austria, Belgium and Germany reported computer system failures, leading to an involuntary suspension of trading for a 30 second period.
When systems were re-booted, bank officials found that during this 30 second involuntary shut-down, certain government holding accounts had been accessed and an undisclosed amount taken from each of them. However, early speculation by some experts estimate up to seven hundred million Euros of tax-payers money had been snatched from each account that had been hacked into.
Prior to this, no bank had reported any technical failures or any suspicious factors.
A spokesperson for Interpol made this comment: Interpol is working closely with Intelligence Services from all of those countries who have suffered this computer hacking disaster. We are comparing data of organised crime syndicates including terrorist organisations and are also combining computer crime departments in order to maximise available resources.
Chapter 12
The small private Boeing jet flashed through the moonlight, engines whining in deceleration. Mountains reared all around, snow capped peaks soaring skywards. The sleek aircraft banked and came smoothly down to land amid and seemingly within the mountains, undercarriage dipping as tyres made contact with the tarmac runway.
The plane taxied to a halt and a single emergency vehicle at the rough rocky perimeter of the runway sat watching in the extreme cold, headlights blazing through the light snow fall. A black Range Rover raced across the apron as the cabin door was opened and the on-board steps lowered.
The only passenger aboard the private jet stepped out, the fur collar of his coat pulled up around his face, shielding him from the biting north wind. He was a man of small build with sandy coloured hair that was softly greying at the temples and was neatly trimmed and combed. He wore an expensive Italian suit and the finest handcrafted Italian shoes. He carried a slim aluminium briefcase in one perfectly manicured hand, and descended the steps with measured care, apparently unaffected by the Arctic conditions of cold that contrasted so dramatically with the comfortable conditions of the recently pressurised aircraft cabin.
“Professor Kirill, welcome back, sir.” The voice was heavily accented, and Kirill nodded at the man garbed in black military combat gear. Kirill seemed unconcerned that his bodyguard was now more heavily armed and carried a black Heckler & Koch MP6 carbine, and a webbing belt sporting half a dozen hand-grenades.
The driver of the black Range Rover opened the rear door and Kirill climbed into the warm air-conditioned interior. The door clicked solidly shut, protecting the occupant from the inclement weather outside. The military-clad man climbed into the front passenger seat, and a moment later the heavy off-road luxury vehicle was purring and driving off the tarmac runway and onto an un-made track carved between two mountain ranges.
They drove in silence. At first the track was pot-holed and rough and, then merged into a narrow country road, slushy and strewn with natural debris from recent storms. They drove around tight bends and along even narrower lanes until they were almost at their destination, the Range Rover’s heavy off-road tyres humming and bumping, and eventually came to a crossroads. All the while Kirill sat, perfectly composed, eyes closed, mind-set calm.
They turned left, the track started as a gentle incline and after half a mile became steeper as it wound its way up the mountain side; and as the terrain became more hostile, the Range Rover demonstrated its ability to cope with even the worst off-road conditions. Kirill allowed himself to smile at this rough and, some might say inhospitable, Godforsaken place that was such a contrast to the luxuriant interior of the vehicle he was travelling in. The thought pleased him.
They had to stop once, while the track was cleared of fallen rocks. With a wave of apology, the bodyguard slowly — painfully slowly
— removed the debris out of thevehicle’s path and Kirill was on his way without emotion flickering even for an instant on his neatly barbered face. His bright eyes stared straight ahead.