‘Ben, where’s the remote?’ he asked his six year old son.
‘We don’t have the remote, Daddy,’ said Cole’s daughter defensively, instinctively defending her older brother.
‘Okay, okay, get off,’ their father cajoled, levering himself upright as they jumped off onto a large Persian rug. The rug had been a personal gift from General Abbadid of Pakistan, given to him only months before his capture and imprisonment in that same country. He kept it as an ironic reminder of the fickle nature of fate, and the priceless memento now stretched over a large portion of the gleaming wooden floor in the huge, open-plan living area of Cole’s home.
Cole spied the remote control on a nearby leather sofa, and reached to get it. As Cole turned to change the channel, the picture suddenly came back on of its own accord. But instead of a live feed from Stockholm, there was a shot of Bill Taylor, one of the regular CNN newsreaders, back in the studio in New York. A look of shock was written plainly across his face; despite his experience, something had badly shaken him.
‘I’m sorry for the interruption to our live broadcast,’ he began hesitantly. ‘We’ve … lost communication with our field crew. It seems there’s been an explosion of some kind and —’
‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Ben asked, seeing the strange look of concern, curiosity and, perhaps, a hint of excitement in his father’s eyes.
‘Ben, I’m going to have to listen a bit more first, but we can talk about it later. Why don’t you and Amy go and help Mommy in the kitchen?’
Reluctantly, Ben took Amy by the hand. ‘Okay, Daddy,’ he said, before turning to his sister. ‘Come on, Amy.’ Smiling back, she skipped away with him to the kitchen, leaving their father transfixed to the television screen.
4
A bead of sweat trickled down Lao Shin-Yang’s temple. What now? he asked himself in despair. He’d watched the whole thing on television in his room at the Stura Masta, the small but centrally-located hotel from where he had monitored the whole operation.
And what a disaster it had turned out to be. First the missiles had missed their target — and Shin-Yang had no idea whatsoever how that could have happened — then Kang and his team were all killed, live on TV. And now he’d learned that not only had the yacht been obliterated, killing six more of his men, but that the drivers at the two emergency rendezvous points had also been spotted by police, and were also now dead after a short but fatal fire-fight.
He was the only one left. His entire team was gone. Was there a leak? Surely not. Security was watertight. But what else could it be? Could it be that the European intelligence services were that good? He thought not. Am I even safe in this hotel? he asked himself fearfully for the first time.
Frantic, he had used the secure radio to contact his Control; he would know what to do. His Control, surprisingly, had not been shocked, and Shin-Yang found this somewhat impressive, yet at the same time disconcerting.
He had been told to wait in the hotel room, and had been assured that there were no leaks; he would be safe until someone came to get him.
That had been twenty minutes ago, which was twenty minutes too long in Shin-Yang’s opinion. Should he radio his Control again? No. The man had been quite firm on that; with the massive security crackdown that had commenced after the attack, even a secure radio link could not be trusted entirely.
Should he try to escape on his own? In his nervous state, this was highly tempting, but he knew it would be fruitless — any person who appeared to be of even slight Oriental appearance would be rounded up and interrogated, and the Human Rights Act be damned.
Nobody at the hotel had seen him; the room was registered to a Jake Dolman of Canada, and he’d picked up the key from a safety deposit box at the train station the day before. No, his Control was right. He was better off where he was, riding out the storm until –
A knock on the door pierced his reverie, as short and sharp as the crack of a bullet. His heart rate increased in an instant, adrenaline flooding his body. He’d served as a Captain in the People’s Republic Army, which was why he’d been chosen to act as the coordinator for this particular mission; all the other members of the team had been enlisted men. But that had been different. He’d trained for open warfare, not the clandestine, nerve-wracking uncertainty of small-unit covert operations. He and his team had undergone a good deal of specific preparation and training for this mission, but this was the first time he had been truly tested in the field. His team had so far failed; how would he measure up? he wondered anxiously.
Moving to the door, his sweaty hand gripped around his pistol, cocked and ready to fire, he bent forwards to look through the eye-piece in the door’s centre. Looking through with one eye, Shin-Yang stifled a gasp of surprise.
The man on the other side of the door was his Control, in person, here in Stockholm. He had obviously wanted to monitor the operation more closely than Shin-Yang had been led to believe. Doesn’t he trust me? he thought uneasily. Does he blame me for the failure?
‘Who is it?’ asked Shin-Yang reluctantly, starting the code.
‘Fred Sizemore,’ answered the man on the other side of the door. Shin-Yang had tried to place the man’s accent before, but couldn’t. Still, all Westerners sounded the same to him.
‘Our meeting’s not ’til three,’ he continued.
‘Sorry, I thought it was one. Can I come in anyway?’
‘Of course.’ The code complete, Shin-Yang unbolted the door. He decocked his pistol, but didn’t holster it.
As the man calling himself Fred Sizemore entered the room, closing the door behind him, Shin-Yang started to instinctively defend himself and distance himself from the mission, a skill honed whilst serving in the highly politicized atmosphere of the PRA. The best method of defence was attack, and Shin-Yang reasoned that if his Control was going to try and lay the blame for the mission’s failure on him, then he was going to go down fighting.
‘Sir, there must be a leak somewhere, I can’t explain it, perhaps one of our own men — ’
Shin-Yang’s Control cut him off with a raise of the hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lao,’ he said in perfect Mandarin. ‘Don’t worry. These things happen. Missions don’t always go to plan. Now we need to get out of here, but we need to take this gear with us.’ He gestured at the electronic communications equipment sprawled over the room’s small living area.
Shin-Yang nodded vigorously, happy that he wasn’t being blamed as he’d feared, and newly confident in their chances of escape. He even started to dare think that, despite the mission’s failure, his Control might yet keep the promises he had made about the future of Shin-Yang and his family.
Finally relaxing, he turned round to start getting his kit together, the pistol going back into his belt. As ‘Sizemore’ was presented with Shin-Yang’s back, he withdrew a Chinese-made Tokarev semi-automatic pistol from his own belt, a large and sinister Hakker silencer already in place.
Shin-Yang was still thinking about his family when his brains were blown out across the hotel room’s cheap beige carpet.
5
Cole was stymied by what he saw on the television. He had changed channels from the bemused CNN presenter to a live feed from Fox News.
The scene was one of devastation; a huge crater scarred the roadside, emergency crews tended to the dozens of injured people, and there was a trail of dead bodies scattered around the area, unattended due to the chaotic melee that had ensued.