Ghosts

“Best you don’t try and justify what you did,” he warned. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Rose found the evidence in the car that they were using to blackmail me. Photographs, financial records. She brought in the pictures and showed me. I tried to brush it off but I knew it wouldn’t wash. She’d guessed what had happened and that didn’t leave me with any choice.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I sent agents to dispose of her.”

It was a flippant choice of synonym and he regretted it at once. He saw Milton stiffen and the gun jerked around so that it was facing right at his chest.

“And?” he said.

“And that was a fuck up, too. Chisolm shot her husband and Rose stabbed her in the throat. Spenser took her daughter and she fled. I have no idea where she went. We never heard from her again.”

“Because she knows that if she comes after you, you have her girl. An insurance policy.”

“She was taken into protective custody.”

“Come on,” Milton snapped angrily. “Don’t waste my time.”

“There might have been something about using the girl to concentrate the mother’s mind.”

Milton passed the gun from his right hand to his left.

“What’s going on, Milton?”

Milton told him. He spoke for five minutes, explaining how A

“Why does he want her?”

“Because he wanted to talk to her about what happened that afternoon,” Milton said. “He knows you didn’t get everything she took from the car. She copied the drives. She hid them before she came to see you. I’ve got them now. I collected them this afternoon before I came here.” He swapped the semi-automatic into his left hand, reached his right into a pocket and retrieved a clear bag with six flash drives in it.

“It would be better to give those to me,” he said.

“I’m sure you’d like that.”

“You’re going to give them to the Russians?”

“Of course not. I needed an insurance policy of my own. This is it. And just so it’s clear, I’ve downloaded these myself. They’ll be attached to emails that I’ll set to send in the future. Unless I delete them, they’ll go far and wide: government, the press, everywhere I can think of. It’s my dead man’s switch.”

“So what do you want?”

“First, I want Beatrix’s daughter. She has grandparents in Somerset. You’re going to deliver her to them. I want fresh passports for both her and her mother.”

“I can do that.”

“And two million dollars paid into a bank account of my designation.”

He bit his lip. “Two million?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not so easy…”

“I need the Russian girl put under surveillance. She’s Shcherbatov’s proxy. She came into the country with me and she should be at the Holiday I

“Fine. Anything else?”

“The third thing: you’re going to help me go and get Pope.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“A six man team, full load out, logistic support.”

“Are you mad? Pope is in Russia, man. We can’t send six of you to conduct an operation on Russian soil.”

“Yes you can.”

“No…”

“The Russians will help.”

“You’re going to have to explain that.”

“I know they asked you to go after Shcherbatov for them. Pope told me. You want to tell me why?”

Control felt helpless. Milton knew everything; he had no cards to play. “Fine. The colonel has gone rogue. He’s old school, from before the fall of the Wall. He hates the west, and he hates the thought that the motherland is pandering to it. They want him out of the way. They can’t be seen to conduct an operation against one of their own, especially on home turf, and he’s been around a long time. He has too much on the Kremlin for them to risk getting rid of him themselves and it all going wrong, especially as it appears that he is a hard man to kill. They knew we had assets who could do it, he put himself into a position where it was possible and so we assigned him a file.”

“Having the man we sent to kill him in his custody doesn’t do the Kremlin any good, does it? How long do you think it’ll take someone like Shcherbatov to break Pope and find out that his own people asked us to send him?”

“Pope’s strong. But…”

“But we both know he’ll break eventually. No. You can persuade them to do this, Control. You tell them we’ll go in, we’ll get Pope and we’ll take out Shcherbatov. Properly, this time. You’ve tried twice already. I’ll make sure it’s done right.”

Control furrowed his brow. It might work, he thought. “Maybe,” he said.

“A team of agents of my choosing, under my command.”

Control was about to rule out Milton’s involvement but then he caught himself. There was another way he could play this; perhaps he could come out on top in the whole deal after all. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ll need to think about it.”

“That’s what I want,” he said. “There’s no negotiation and the alternative is bad for you. It’s your call.”

Milton stood. He obscured the light from the lamp and Control could see his face properly for the first time: the implacable, powder blue eyes; the horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose; the whiteness outlining his lips. There was no softness in that face. No pity.

“What happens to the information about me?”

“If you do as you’re told? Nothing.”

“You’ll return it?”

“No. I just won’t publicise it.”

“This will need discussing.”

“With who? You can’t take this to the government. It’s your call. Pick the girl up tonight. If she reports I’m not playing ball then this is all moot and our deal is off. The first priority is to manage her. And then you need to sort out Rose’s daughter. You can do that tonight, too. I want her to be on her way to her grandparents by noon.”

“You think it’s as easy as that? Just make a few calls?”

“I don’t care how easy or how difficult it is. You just need to get it done.” He crossed the room until he was standing next to him; he knelt down so that their faces were on the same level. “You know me well enough, Control. You know me better than almost anyone. And you know that if I say I’m going to do something, I do it.”

“I know.”

“So here it is, just in case you need reminding: if anything happens to Beatrix Rose, I’ll be back. If I get a whiff that you’re about to do something I don’t like, I’ll be back. That’s a promise. I’ll be back with your gun, in this room, waiting for you. You’ll never see me coming. You know who I am, Control, don’t you?”

He felt his throat thicken. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“I’m a bad man, Control. I’m a bad man who kills bad men. And you are one of the worst.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

A