He was sure he had enough time and that the risk was worth taking. It wasn’t that he had anything urgent to do, but that he must find relief from the boredom of what was going on around him. It had once been different, but that was before he found the source of complete freedom and no longer needed the political fanfare to support him. He would go through a few things at his London apartment, go out and enjoy a fine meal at one of his regular haunts, and then return to the committee sitting in plenty of time. He left the room at 5.40 p.m.
They worked quickly and with professional thoroughness, ensuring that everything was replaced just as they’d found it. When they were satisfied with the master bedroom, they went back down the spiral staircase to Latimer’s study and made sure that every cabinet and drawer was locked again. To do this and not leave a trace took time, but both men were experienced and did the job properly. Satisfied, they took a last look round and left the apartment, De-Luca using up more time than expected in locking down the door. They used the fire stairs again, negotiating them as fast as they could all the way to the bottom. They reached the hall and Dillon opened the front door.
The well-dressed man looked up startled as they almost knocked him off his feet in their haste to leave. He had almost got his key in the lock when Dillon burst out from the other side.
Dillon quickly said, “I do apologise. Are you okay?” He knew instantly that he was looking at Julian Latimer. He’d only ever seen a photograph; had never met him in person, but this was Latimer, all right.
Latimer gave a cursory smile but looked upon them with distaste and suspicion; he couldn’t place them and his expression suggested that they did not belong there. For some unfathomable reason alarm bells started to ring inside his head, but not because of his absence from the committee sitting. He took a good look at both Dillon and De-Luca, who had by now walked briskly off up the street without turning round. He would definitely remember their faces.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dillon took De-Luca back to Parsons Green and then drove straight to the Ferran & Cardini building in Docklands. Vince was sitting at his desk, monitoring a bank of six LCD screens mounted on the wall in front of him. As Dillon walked in, one of the screens went blank.
“What’s on?” Dillon enquired.
Vince glanced up to see who was interrupting him, smiled when he saw it was Dillon, and said, “One and two are currently linked to an American spy satellite over Santa Marta on the north coast of Colombia. One of our chaps is working with the CIA down there. Three and four are located inside the Saudi Embassy, here in London. We have a new girl on the inside, and I must say she’s done remarkably well to have placed them there at all. Five is aptly linked to the security service network. Old habits die hard, and it’s good housekeeping to keep an eye on what they’re up to over there.”
“And six?” Dillon asked casually.
“Oh, that one is highly classified.”
“Yeah, pull the other one big man. You’ve still got it connected to your DVD player, haven‘t you?”
“Absolutely not, mate. And it’s no use interrogating me about it, because you haven’t got what it takes or the necessary clearance to view that one.”
Vince grinned knowingly at Dillon.
“Anyway, why are you here and what do you want?”
Dillon placed the memory card from the digital camera onto the desk.
“Any chance you can download the images on the card and print off two sets of copies for me?”
“It’ll take me at least an hour. You okay to wait around for a bit?”
Dillon nodded, and went to his own office to make a strong black coffee and catch up with his emails on the internal mail system. Some he deleted without reading and the others he replied to immediately. One of them was from Tatiana, PA to the partners, and Dillon’s former partner asking about the status of his current assignment. He sat gazing at the monitor screen, reflecting on the recent past. Their two year relationship had fallen apart because of Dillon’s unwillingness to retire from active assignments and take up a safer position behind a desk. It still saddened him because he knew in his heart that it was his flat refusal which had compounded the rift between them and eventually had led to them going their separate ways. But life went on and that was the end of it. Or so he kept telling himself.
He sat with his feet up on the corner of the desk, the bland, windowless office causing mild claustrophobia and numbing his mind. He was thinking about coming face to face with Julian Latimer. De-Luca had never seen the politician, but felt as Dillon did; it had been a close call, and the repercussions would not have stopped with Latimer. As it was, the politician had taken a close look at them both, and would not forget.
Dillon was also conscious of the fact that he was restricting himself with every move he made, almost like playing chess against a Russian master of the game. He logged onto the firm’s database and opened the file document that held the current assignment data. He slowly scrolled down through each and every page. The only thing that he concluded from it all was that he knew very little about why or how Hart, Trevelyan, Power and Latimer knew each other. What was it that linked them together and for what reason?
Almost to the hour, Vince came in with the printed images. Dillon thanked the big Australian and studied one of the prints for a moment, satisfied with his handy work with a camera. He left the building and walked back to the parked Ford. It was the back end of rush hour and within minutes he was snarled up in the traffic. So he decided to take the side streets back to The Old Colonial Club.
In his rooms at the club he examined each page carefully. The list of names and addresses were confusing as they didn’t appear in any particular order and only covered the counties in the south of England, starting with Hampshire and ending up in the remotest part of Cornwall, a number of pages on. There were lists of names against each county; Dorset had two full pages of them. Almost all had names crossed out and others added, and against each was a location but only a few had an actual address. The others were starred — perhaps suggesting that they were lower down in the scheme of things, or that there were addresses elsewhere.
Dillon went through everything he had, but couldn’t find any additional information or addresses. He gathered up all the copies that he’d placed over the bed, taking them to a writing bureau with a small lamp under which he could study the images more carefully. There had to be more meaning to them than just a list of names and locations. He started on the tedious task of counting the names.
Hampshire had the highest number with twenty-five, but most had been crossed off, leaving only seven. These were dotted around the south of the county in the New Forest area. Dorset had fifteen original names: they were mostly towards the west. The original locations had been roughly spread out along the coast from Poole to Lyme Regis.
By the time he’d gone over the copies for the third time, he was tired and very confused. When he checked the time it was well after 11.00 p.m. and he was feeling hungry. He put the copies back into one of his canvas holdalls and went out to find something to eat. Even if it had not been too late for the club’s restaurant he wouldn’t have eaten there — the less contact he had with the other guests, the better.
The best he could find was a late night bistro around the corner that was happy to make him a tuna-filled Panini, which he smuggled back up to his rooms. Halfway through eating, he decided he should contact Havelock again, perhaps even risk meeting with him. He dialled his number but got no reply. He supposed Havelock was entitled to go out, but why tonight of all nights? He phoned Havelock’s office number but didn’t really expect anyone to answer, and he was right. Havelock didn’t have an answering machine at home, believing that if someone wanted to contact him badly enough they would ring back or try his mobile number. If they didn’t have his mobile number then they obviously weren’t that important to him. This was logical enough, but of little use to Dillon. He dialled his mobile number, which immediately went to voice mail.