‘Where to?’
‘Sometimes to Guantanamo, under the CIA. Some of them went to places like Egypt or Morocco. Renditioning. And others we shipped to Britain.’
Purkiss felt his pulse quicken. ‘Dennis Arkwright,’ he said. ‘Do you know him?’
Ericson closed his puffy eyes, nodded. ‘Arkwright was the liaison man from Britain. He was nominally an employee of Scipio Rand, but that was a cover. We didn’t know who he really worked for. I assumed he was with SIS or Five, though he didn’t look like an intelligence agent. More like a thug. He used to turn up here when we had a new shipment of prisoners come in, interrogate them briefly, and pick a few to be escorted back with him to the UK.’
‘Did anyone accompany him on his trips here?’ asked Purkiss.
‘No. He always came alone.’
Purkiss gazed off across the desert. Damn it, he’d thought it sounded promising at first, but it wasn’t really much at all. He was learning very little that was actually new.
‘These prisoners,’ he said. ‘How did they get here? Did Scipio Rand send escorts to Iraq to pick them up?’
‘No,’ Ericson said. He grimaced as he tried to make his arms more comfortable, secured as they were still behind his back. ‘They came with escorts of their own. Military.’
‘Coalition troops?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ericson. ‘Though they were always British. And it was always the same pool of people. Different combinations at different times, but the same basic ten or so men.’
Something flickered at the periphery of Purkiss’s consciousness, something that darted away before he could get a grasp of it. ‘British soldiers,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Ericson, and coughed. ‘Paras, as it happened.’
Purkiss went still. ‘Paras. The Parachute Battalion.’
‘Right. I know that because a couple of our boys are ex-Paras, and got chatting with them. I think it was Two Para, but I can’t remember.’
Purkiss felt the excitement rising, crackling inside him.
He squatted down before Ericson, fed him water, allowing him to drink his fill this time.
‘Ericson,’ he said. ‘Do you remember any of these men? The escorts? Their names, what they looked like?’
Ericson’s head lolled back against the car, his eyes narrow slits against the sun. ‘God… I don’t know. I don’t think I can — ’
Purkiss began to run through random names he made up as he went along.
‘Peter Tallis.’
‘I don’t think — no.’
‘Chris Major.’
‘No.’
‘Derek Thompson.’
‘No. I’m sorry, I really don’t — ’
‘Tony Kendrick.’
Ericson’s lips moved silently, his eyes still almost closed.
After a second, he said, ‘Yeah. That name rings a bell.’
Purkiss stood up. He turned away from the sitting man, his eyes ranging across the broad, clear sky.
One by one, the pieces started to fall into place.
Forty-three
Purkiss thought about taking Ericson straight to one of the city’s hospitals, but decided he was more likely to be stopped and asked for an explanation if he did so.
Instead, once back within the city limits, he pulled in alongside a bus shelter on a quiet residential road where there was nobody about, hauled the man out of the back seat, dumped him in the shelter, and dialled the emergency number. After establishing that the operator spoke English, Purkiss gave the street address and asked for an ambulance for a man suffering from heat stroke.
He left Ericson propped in the shelter. His wrists were still tied, but his legs weren’t, and he could easily have walked away. It didn’t matter. He was no threat to Purkiss now. His employers at Scipio rand would already know Purkiss was at large, and would be looking for him. They’d have the airport staked out, and probably have a welcoming committee waiting for him there.
Purkiss drove until he found himself in a run-down part of town, where the Audi’s shattered rear window wouldn’t be as conspicuous. He stopped again, sat behind the wheel, and ran over the connections in his head yet again.
Yes. It added up. There were some missing details, but most of it fitted together.
And he’d been blind.
He picked up his phone. The second call he made was to Vale.
‘John. Are you — ’
‘I’m operational.’ Purkiss took a moment to collect his thoughts. ‘Two things, Quentin. First, I need a chartered flight out of here. Preferably from a private airfield, if you can manage it, but if not, from one of the other commercial airports. I can’t go back to King Khalid. It’s being monitored, and this time I won’t get away.’
‘I can arrange that,’ said Vale.
‘The second thing is, tell Kasabian the person we’re looking for is Hannah Holley. She’s a Security Service agent I’ve been working with on this. She’s the person we need to apprehend. But she’ll have gone on the run.’
And Purkiss explained.
Forty-four
Monday morning came, and with it the increasingly pressing need for Emma to start getting things ready for the children’s return to school the following week. New uniforms, stationery, all the paraphernalia of a fresh school year.
She’d been planning to do it herself, but after Brian had left for work, she gave Ulyana the nanny a list and some money, and packed her off with the kids to get the necessary.
After finding the second bug, or whatever it was, in the lipstick tube yesterday, Emma’s instinct had been to turn the entire house upside down. But, mindful of her promise to meet Brian and the rest of the family in Hyde Park, she’d hurried away, her mind churning. She’d found them near the ponds, the children leaping and cartwheeling, Brian smiling and presenting her with a bouquet of flowers he’d bought. For a while, as they enjoyed the Sunday afternoon ambience, Emma had almost been able to put the other matter to one side. Almost.
But in the darkness of the bedroom that night, Brian snoring gently beside her, the fears had crowded in once more.
She had no doubt now that James had planted the tiny and strangely malevolent-looking objects in her lipstick and her handbag, and who knew where else. He’d done so during their trysts in the assorted hotel rooms they’d booked. But as for his reasons, Emma was utterly baffled. Didn’t he trust her in her role as personal physician to Sir Guy Strang? Was he listening to hear if she discussed Sir Guy’s health with her husband, her friends, her fellow doctors? She understood that as Sir Guy’s head of security, James had a responsibility to protect his boss; but this appeared to be taking the notion to ridiculous lengths.
Emma hardly slept, drifting off a couple of hours before dawn crept through the curtains. She was awoken abruptly, not by a noise but by a thought.
Was James spying on his own boss?
Befuddled by lack of sleep, Emma sat up, padded into the bathroom without waking Brian, and got in the shower. The cool water dragged her to full alertness. She returned to the thought.
Had James planted the objects — bugs, she supposed, though the word sounded silly — on her in order to eavesdrop on her conversations with Sir Guy? Again, it seemed ludicrous. James was closer to Sir Guy than almost anyone else she knew. Closer in many respects than Emma was. And surely James would have plenty of easier opportunities to listen in on his boss’s conversations than by going the convoluted route of planting bugs on Emma.
With Brian, Ulyana and the children gone, Emma set about systematically searching the rest of the house. She moved on to the garage, even the garden shed. Three hours later, sweaty, exhausted, she flopped down on a sofa.
Nothing.
She peered at the bug she’d found in the lipstick yesterday.