“Yes, but don’t get your hopes up — and we’ll do it my way. Understand?”
“Dillon, I know you think I…”
“Don’t say it.” He placed a finger against her lips. “Kirill was lying, I know. But I’ve got a really bad feeling about this — and yet, if Ezra is still alive, if the mad bastard did survive that fall, and managed to escape those two Assassins, and get off the island unseen… Well, he’s just about the only ally we’ve got. It’s not as if Kirill was any great enlightenment… All we got out of him was a name — Ramus — a name we already knew.”
Claudia had come up behind the two and Dillon spun his gun in her face. He smiled weakly. “Sorry, force of habit.”
Claudia waved his apology away. “You said a name just then, didn’t you?”
“Yes I did, Ramus. An international terrorist; originally a Russian mafia hit-man, based in Moscow. Graduated from Cambridge with a First in applied mathematics, with distinctions. His link with Kirill is most likely kept deliberately fluid, which is why there’s only the sketchiest details about him or his whereabouts. Have you heard of him?”
Claudia nodded. “Heard of him, met him, turned down an offer of sex with the creep. Thought I was going to get fired.” She laughed softly. “Wish I had now.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Very little. He visited the facility on a number of occasions. He was a pent-up tough looking guy. One of those stereotypical ruffians
— but he had a certain refinement about him, that made him very different from others.”
“Sounds like a really nice bloke,” said Dillon, staring into the distance.
“You want to know an amazing coincidence?”
Dillon met Claudia’s gaze. She smiled gently. “Sorry, I’ve been eaves-dropping. But I think you’d like to know this… Ramus, well, on the occasions when he visited the facility, I overheard conversations with Kirill — said he’d come straight from The Bahamas.”
“New Providence, by any chance?” Said Tatiana, frowning.
“Nassau,” said Claudia.
“Well, there’s a coincidence,” said Dillon grimly.
“So what now?” asked Tatiana; Dillon could see it in her face. She knew the dangers, knew that there was the strong possibility of the whole thing being a set-up, a plot to ensnare them. But she wanted
— needed — had to know if Ezra was still alive.
Dillon looked into her eyes for a moment, thinking. Was she the bait to lure him into a trap?
They’re either extremely clever and manipulative, thought Dillon. Or Ezra is onto Ramus… he’s still alive, and on the trail of those dedicated to creating global chaos…
Decision time.
He scratched at the stubble on his face. He placed a hand on Tatiana’s shoulder. “We’ll go,” he said softly. And smiled. “I have a lot of friends in the Bahamas.”
Night was falling as the quad bike reached the SAS depot. Vince was there and was sitting at a small fire he had lit; his almost trademark metal tea pot brewing over the flames. “Dillon, it’s good to see you back in one piece, mate. What took you so long?”
“It’s a long story,” Dillon said, with a quick glance at Tatiana. “Is there any of that tea on offer? I think we could all do with a hot drink.” Vince nodded, and poured out three mugs.
He raised his gaze in Claudia’s direction, and then looked at Dillon quizzically. “You been picking up waifs and strays again, Dillon?”
“This, Vince, is Claudia Dax. She escaped from the facility shortly after the Assassin’s started killing all of her work colleagues.”
“Streuth. You’re one lucky lady, then.”
“Claudia has a master copy of the Chimera Programme!”
“Well, aren’t we the lucky ones, then. I suppose you know that Ezra is still alive?”
“How do you know this?” Tatiana snapped.
“He emailed the partners at Ferran & Cardini, telling them to thank me for his Chameleon Para-vest. Said it saved his life when he jumped off that cliff on Santorini.”
“Well I’ll be, so it’s true.” Dillon said softly. “Tats also got an email from Ezra. He’s in Nassau in the Bahamas. And wants us to meet him there within 24 hours.”
“We going?” Vince said excitedly.
“Yes. But the problem is how do we get there?”
“You leave that to me, mate. I know just the man who can fix that for us.”
“Who?”
“Edward Levenson-Jones.”
Dillon felt his head ache at the mere mention of LJ’s name. “Does he know that I’m back on the payroll, so to speak?”
Vince looked up at Dillon sheepishly, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” He resumed tapping furiously at the laptop’s keyboard, and a moment later he punched the enter key, and said.
“There…”
“There?” Dillon mimicked.
“Dillon. Don’t you know that, there, is a highly technical computer nerd’s term?” Tatiana said laughing. Claudia joined in as well.
Vince looked up at them, unimpressed with the joke. The laptop made a strange pinging sound, announcing an incoming email. “Ah ha, LJ has sent back an encrypted response.”
“That was bloody quick. It’s good to see that he still works all hours, what does it say?”
“Well, I asked him for an aircraft to be made available and ready to take us all to Nassau.”
“And…” Dillon said impatiently.
“And there’s a Navy helicopter on its way to pick us up, with instructions to take us to the nearest military airfield. From there a Ferran & Cardini Learjet will fly us to the Bahamas.”
“Estimated time of the chopper’s arrival?”
“ETA is twenty-five minutes, give or take.”
“Good. I think that we can safely assume, then, that LJ and the Partners are treating this whole Kirill affair seriously.”
“Oh, they started to take this threat seriously, when the Scorpion squads started being assassinated, and Scorpion HQ was destroyed…”
“Great,” said Dillon. He sipped the tea, and then held out the mug for a refill.
“What do you think, Claudia? Are we walking into a trap?”
Tatiana shot Dillon a sharp glance. “Dillon?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s with asking the opinion of the girl we’ve just picked up and know nothing about?”
“I wouldn’t say that, Tatiana. We know that Claudia worked at the facility, and that she has a full working copy of the Chimera Programme. What more do we need to know?”
Claudia hesitated before saying,” Well, if you look at it logically, it is highly probable that you’ll be walking straight into an elaborate trap. But, my gut instinct is that it’s not, and that tells me that Ezra is still alive and on a mission — to stop Ramus.”
“Thanks, Claudia. That’s settled, then. We go — even if only to get away from the infernal cold of the Scottish Highlands.” Dillon said finishing the last of his tea.
They could hear the distinctive sound of rotor blades beating the air long before the Sea-King came into view. They all looked skywards as the Royal Navy helicopter approached, creating an enormous downwash as it hovered into land.
The Westland Sea-King was noisy and relatively uncomfortable. But Dillon couldn’t help feeling at home in this British made antisubmarine helicopter with its fully computerised warfare control systems, and Rolls-Royce Gnome engines. Dillon was sitting opposite Claudia, he’d decided that she could be of use; after all, she was at the centre of the Chimera Programme, and she happened to have a master copy of the full programme in her rucksack — something which Dillon acknowledged could probably be useful.
As the Sea-King buzzed low over the lush green landscape, the pilot worked hard to maintain their speed at an altitude of only twohundred feet. Dillon looked out of the small porthole, watching the terrain race by below them, and it occurred to him that maybe Ezra was alive and had been captured by the Assassins. If he had been tortured, blackmailed, whatever, then maybe the Chimera master copy could be used in an exchange situation.