The half hour journey passed quickly enough, and Cole was soon peering through the windows at the illuminated beauty of Marble Arch as they turned with the traffic, heavy even at this late hour, onto Park Lane.
The black cab stopped outside the imposing façade of the Dorchester at quarter to one that morning. It was late, and so there was no waiting doorman to take Cole’s bag, which was good, all things considered. The driver was duly paid, and Cole made towards the huge gilded entrance, veering away as he saw the taxi pull away back into the steady stream of traffic.
Instead, he pulled his collar up against the icy wind and started to trudge towards Oxford Street, on his way to the Devonshire. It would take no more than half an hour, he figured, and so he was assured of a good night’s sleep. Because even five hours was considered a good night’s sleep on operations; and until Cole was safely at home with his family, he still considered himself to be very much involved in his mission.
29
Cole finally slipped into bed a short time after three in the morning. He stretched out underneath the warm, luxurious sheets, his body aching from the thousands of miles he had travelled in the last forty-eight hours, and the debilitating after-effects of adrenaline from the short but crucial period of action.
He had not walked straight to the Devonshire, but had followed a circuitous route instead. By walking in a certain unpredictable pattern, by taking unlikely diversions across the London underground, and by generally using anything but the easy route, he would be able to pick up on any surveillance that might be watching him. It was a habit born out of years of experience.
As he had approached Oxford Street, he decided that he would need a change of clothes for the meeting later that morning. On reflection, Cole also decided that it would be prudent to destroy the clothes he was wearing. After all, there was no point walking around covered in potential DNA evidence.
He therefore entered a clothing store on Oxford Street at one o’clock that morning, selecting a light blue cotton shirt, conservative grey business suit, a plain silk tie, and new underwear. From the camping store a few doors up, he also purchased some more casual travelling clothes and trekking boots, and he then obtained some leather brogues and a new leather holdall from a gentlemen’s outfitters just a few minutes walk away. Not for the first time, he was grateful for the twenty-four hour culture that this country had finally embraced.
At half past one, he descended the steps of the Tottenham Court Road tube station, and changed into his new casual clothes in the cubicle of the public toilets. He stuffed his old clothes and shoes into his original holdall and transferred his documents to the new one. He then put his suit and other clothes into the new bag, and all the shop’s plastic packaging into the old one. Satisfied, he caught the next Northern Line train to Warren Street.
After ascending to street level once again, Cole strolled easily for five minutes, before heading down one of the dark alleys off Great Portland Street, where he set fire to his old holdall and all its contents. He watched it burn, until all that was left inside the skeletal carcass of the holdall was a large pile of ash. He scattered the ashes over the rain-slicked street of the back-alley, then threw the useless, burnt leather bag into a nearby wheelie bin.
He had then continued, via Portland Place, on to the Devonshire Hotel in Devonshire Street, confident that he had not been followed. After a quick check-in he had gone up to his room, where he had indulged in a wonderfully long, hot bath before crawling into bed.
Stretching complete, Cole reached over to set his alarm for half past six, rolled back, and was asleep.
30
Sarah noticed the tiny pinprick of light as she stared out to sea. Ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it. After the coded message she had received from Mark though, her paranoia level had increased considerably.
Not that there was anything unduly worrying about the content of the message — he had merely been informing her that he would be delayed by a couple of days.
However, Mark had always stressed that whenever there was a deviavtion from the norm, precautions should always be taken. And so here she was, Ben and Amy fast asleep in bed, staring out across the Caribbean and looking for anything out of the ordinary. And the light out at sea, so late at night, fell directly into that category.
It was certainly worthy of further investigation, she decided.
Dan Albright didn’t like the fact that the yacht’s sidelights were on, but those were the orders from the harbour-master, and it would be even more trouble to get into a conflict with him. Because the last thing Albright wanted to do was to bring any untoward attention down on him and his men.
Besides, he didn’t expect Sarah Cole or her children to notice their presence. Not until it was too late.
31
Cole strolled down the street towards the safe house, the air crisp and cold. There was a fresh layer of snow covering the road, although the snow was no longer falling. In fact, there were no clouds in the sky at all as far as Cole could make out, and the sun was trying its best to pierce the icy atmosphere. But despite its efforts, it was still bitterly cold, and Cole observed how his breath crystallised as he exhaled. The snow would soon turn to ice, he knew, and then just the very act of walking would become somewhat treacherous in his leather-soled brogues. He was glad he’d be able to change into his new boots after the meeting.
The small terraced street was a quiet place, running off a much larger and busier road nearer to the park. It held long stretches of large, four-storey Georgian town houses on both sides, and seemed well cared for. It was certainly an affluent area, and Cole wondered for how long the CIA had kept a safe house here. He felt certain that it would have been several decades at least, as current property prices would now scare off government purchase of such a site, even with the generous black budgets currently enjoyed by the US intelligence services.
Such safe houses were remnants of the transatlantic ‘special relationship’ enjoyed between the US and the UK and, although press reports indicated that it wasn’t what it once was, the intelligence community was still pretty tight. In this day and age, with terrorism a global concern, it had to be. And so the British government was only too happy for the American intelligence services to have their own stations within the UK. It allowed the CIA and other US agencies to perform aspects of their work away from the prying eyes of Congress, whilst Britain received reciprocal favours in return.
The street was quiet, perhaps due to the time of year, and Cole could see nothing at all out of the ordinary; which was, he thought ironically, odd in itself. But all in all, he was satisfied with the location. He was sure that his movements were now being monitored by electronic surveillance, but he was not concerned. His appearance was sufficiently different to his file photographs to ensure that a match would not be made. And anyway, he was officially dead — any agents now watching him wouldn’t even have access to his file.