Power Play E-Book

Tony Kent

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Dempsey/Devlin
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 606

Beschreibung

'TWIST AFTER TWIST... IT BUILDS TO A BRILLIANT FINALE.' Daily MirrorA plane explodes over the Atlantic Ocean, killing hundreds of passengers, including controversial US presidential candidate Dale Victor. It appears to be a clear-cut case of terrorism. But as criminal barrister Michael Devlin is about to discover, everything is not as it seems.Also suspecting there are shady forces at work, intelligence agent Joe Dempsey is driven to investigate. Who would have wanted this potential new president out of the way - and who would commit mass murder to do it?All the way to the top of the US government, someone is determined to stop Dempsey and Devlin from discovering the truth. At any cost.****'An intricate, twisty minefield of geopolitics and absolute power gone rogue. Kent has outdone himself with this one.' DAVID BALDACCI'A gripping conspiracy thriller' IAN RANKIN'A high-octane conspiracy yarn'THE TIMES

Leseprobe

For my niece, Ellie.For you, anything is possible.

‘Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power’

– ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ONE

Three minutes . . .

David Webb and Jim Nelson turned their heads at the sound of four knocks. Webb instinctively glanced towards the cockpit door. Nelson did not, his eyes instead flitting to the small monitor to his left.

The screen showed two stewardesses. One was facing the door, while the other faced out onto the First Class section of the Pan-Atlantic Airlines Flight PA16. Standard security protocol for the few seconds that the plane’s control centre would be vulnerable.

‘It’s Jade,’ Nelson said.

He unclipped his safety harness as he spoke. Climbing to his feet, he took the few steps to the rear of the cockpit and released the one-way lock.

Jade Cox’s smile greeted Nelson as he opened the door. It came as no surprise. She was always happy, or at least it seemed that way to him. He had to concede, though, that he was perhaps not the best witness. In Nelson’s eyes, Jade could do no wrong.

He stepped aside, giving the young flight attendant enough room to enter. It was no easy task in the already cramped space, and was made more difficult by the fact she was carrying a large tray. But Jade had a practised routine and she manoeuvred her way around Nelson as he closed the cockpit door and returned to his seat.

‘I hope you’re hungry, Jim,’ she said with a smile.

Two minutes . . .

Nelson glanced down at the foil-covered dishes on the tray Jade had placed on his temporary table.

‘Looks great,’ he said, looking back up at Jade. ‘Whatever it is.’

‘You got one for me?’

David Webb’s voice was gruffer than Nelson’s. The sound of an older man.

‘Of course, Captain Webb.’ Jade’s tone was less familiar with the senior officer, but just as pleasant as she placed a second tray in front of him. ‘Here you go.’

‘What’s that?’ Webb was examining the dessert doubtfully.

‘Treacle pudding, Captain.’

‘Treacle pudding? Is that another English thing?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And here was me thinking we were on an American airline.’

‘We flew out of London, David.’ Nelson interrupted. He knew that Webb’s abrupt manner could make the younger crew uncomfortable. Whether the captain intended it or not. ‘We’ve got to cater for the Brits we’ve got aboard.’

‘I doubt our guest back there would agree with you.’

Webb motioned towards the cockpit door as he spoke. It was unnecessary; Nelson knew exactly who his captain was referring to.

Dale Victor. A candidate for the Republican nomination for the next President of the United States of America. And already the runaway favourite to win that race.

Nelson chose to ignore Webb’s political bait and turned his attention back to Jade.

‘Have you spoken to him yet?’ he asked.

‘I have, yeah,’ Jade replied.

‘And what did you think?’

One minute . . .

‘I thought he was bloody gorgeous!’

Nelson laughed. It was not quite the answer he had been expecting.

‘Gorgeous? Jade, the guy’s nearly sixty.’

‘Yeah, but still. It’s the charisma, isn’t it? It’s like you’re the only person up here with him when he looks at you. It’s . . . it’s . . . well, it’s a bit hypnotic.’

Nelson laughed again. He had flown with celebrities occupying the First Class cabin many times, often with Jade on the crew, but he had never seen her react so enthusiastically.

‘Have I got some competition back there?’ he asked, only half joking.

‘Course not,’ Jade replied. She waited a beat before adding: ‘I mean, he’s got his wife with him, hasn’t he?’

This time it was Webb who laughed. Loud and hard.

‘She’s got you there, buddy,’ he bellowed.

One second . . .

It is impossible to be sure what is faster: the speed of a human thought, warning that something is very wrong. Or the speed with which an explosion can spread throughout a fully fuelled commercial jumbo jet. And so it is impossible to know if any of them – David Webb, Jim Nelson, Jade Cox, or anyone else on Flight PA16 – was aware of the moment their lives were ripped away.

The explosion began in the luggage hold. A single case, filled to capacity with military grade C4 and a crude, home-made timer.

The C4 itself would have been enough to tear the plane in two. Enough to guarantee no survivors. But someone was taking no risks. The case had been carefully placed at the closest possible point to the base of the left wing, ensuring that the explosion ignited the fuel store within it.

The combination of the explosives and the fuel was devastating. The smooth, uneventful journey of the Boeing 747 was brought to an abrupt end, with white-hot, jet-fuel flames engulfing every inch of the massive flying machine.

No time for a brace warning. No time for oxygen masks. No time for crash positions. Just the sudden, fatal introduction of hellfire.

Flight PA16 from London’s Heathrow to New York’s JFK ended its journey in a violent storm of blazing debris, raining its charred remains across a five-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

TWO

Joe Dempsey sat in silence at the wheel of an aged Ford Galaxy people carrier.

The European-made MPV would stick out as unusually old in some parts of Manhattan – those neighbourhoods where a closet seemed to cost as much as a Midwest mansion – but it was entirely at home alongside the hard-worked cars and vans found in the island’s Chinatown district.

Lost in plain sight. Exactly as Dempsey intended.

‘How much longer?’

The question came from Dempsey’s right.

‘We’ll go as soon as SWAT’s ready,’ Dempsey replied, turning to face the speaker. ‘Not before.’

‘Then they need to move faster. Longer we’re here, more chance we get spotted.’

Dempsey did not reply immediately. Instead he just nodded his head in agreement, a smile threatening the corners of his mouth.

He forced that smile away. With the endless cultural differences between China and the West, Shui Dai might not understand it as an expression of admiration. And Dempsey would not risk an inadvertent insult. Not with Dai.

‘Agreed,’ he said to her. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He put his hand to his ear and activated his wrist-mic.

‘How long until the safety net? Over.’

‘Three minutes at the outside. Last birds moving up high now. Over.’

The reply said what was needed and nothing more, exactly as Dempsey had learned to expect from the NYPD’s SWAT unit.

‘OK, confirm when ready. Over.’

He changed the mic’s frequency with a flick of his finger before speaking again.

‘Alpha Two, you get that? Over.’

‘Confirmed.’ The response was immediate. Another American voice. ‘Ready to move in three. Over.’

‘Beta? Over.’

‘In place and waiting. Over.’ German this time. It was a clear, crisp response and would be worthy of a joke about Teutonic efficiency, if only the entire team were not equally well-drilled.

‘Hold to my mark,’ Dempsey instructed. ‘Out.’

He lowered his wrist and turned back to Dai.

‘Happy now?’

‘I’ll be happy when we get in there,’ she replied.

‘Then you won’t have long to wait.’

Dempsey did not speak again. There was little point. He had seen Shui Dai like this before. ‘In the Dai Zone’, he had come to call it. The expression didn’t translate well to Dai’s native Mandarin, and he’d given up trying to explain.

Dempsey, though, knew exactly what he meant.

It had been over two years since he’d joined the International Security Bureau, a multi-national intelligence agency formed by the United Nations Security Council. In that time he had worked with agents from all over the world. Some were good: well-trained, intelligent and resourceful. Others were not. But a few – a very few – were exceptional.

And none were better than Shui Dai.

Dai had been recruited from China’s Secret Service, an agency so effective that it had no official name, or at least no name known to the West. And while it had taken her time to settle in to New York City, where the ISB was based, Dai had taken to the Bureau itself like a fish to water.

Dempsey had rarely seen a more effective operative. Maybe never.

That Dai was smarter than most – certainly smarter than him – had come as no great surprise. But what had been eye-opening was her ability in the field.

Standing five foot one and weighing 115 pounds, Dai was over a foot shorter than Dempsey’s six two and barely half his 225 pounds, yet she had proved to be every bit as fearsome as her team’s English leader. Highly skilled and utterly ruthless, Dai’s diminutive appearance gave no hint whatsoever of her physical capabilities.

Capabilities she would soon get to display, as the receiver in Dempsey’s right ear whistled into life.

‘All birds are perched. Over.’

Dempsey glanced towards Dai. He had no need to ask if she was ready. He lifted his hand back to his ear.

‘On my mark.’ Dempsey opened the driver’s door as he spoke. Dai did the same on the passenger’s side. ‘Let’s move.’

The entrance to the run-down tenement block was a green door that led directly onto the Chinatown section of Lafayette Street.

A busy New York thoroughfare, Lafayette was usually packed with streams of both locals and tourists. Today was no exception.

Too many potential obstacles here, and no way to remove them, Dempsey had concluded. An operational nightmare.

Luckily for Dempsey, those inside the building faced problems of their own. The tenement’s blueprints revealed a bottleneck in the corridor that led towards Lafayette.

The slightest panic and that exit becomes a death trap, Dempsey had observed. No way they’d risk that. They must have another route out.

With Lafayette ruled out, there was only one viable way in and out of the building: the adjacent, much quieter Walker Street, by way of the tenement’s fire escape.

Sharpshooters from the NYPD’s SWAT unit were already in place, dotted high on both sides of Lafayette and Walker. All carefully chosen locations that offered clear, downward lines of sight into the target block. They provided a lethal blanket of firepower, ready to extinguish anything that emerged.

The ultimate insurance policy, should anything go wrong.

But still not quite enough for Dempsey. Although a SWAT team would probably be sufficient, he was taking no chances. He had placed two of his own ISB agents – both male, both Chinese – close to the green door. Inconspicuous and ready to react in an instant.

They’d be crazy to come that way, he had thought again, but there’s no accounting for bad decisions.

Dempsey and Dai passed the two covert agents at the Lafayette entrance, turned the corner into Walker Street and headed for a break in the first block of buildings. The entrance to the alleyway that contained the tenement’s fire escape.

As they approached the alley, Dempsey slowed his pace, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Coming towards them, from the opposite direction of Walker Street, were two men.

One was larger than Dempsey; several inches taller and significantly broader across the shoulders. A naturally huge frame that had been amplified by a lifetime of physical effort. And perhaps a few chemical enhancements.

The other man was much smaller than his companion. Barely five nine. Wiry build, with a hardness that cannot be honed in any gym.

The big guy was clearly armed. He was holding a rigid three-foot-long shape, poorly concealed by a sports coat he had draped across it.

‘What part of “covert” don’t you get, Sal?’ Dempsey spoke quietly as the four came together and turned into the alley.

Without waiting for an answer, Dempsey turned his attention to two ISB agents who were already there, waiting. The final third of his Alpha team, they had reached the alleyway first and brought the unit’s number to six.

In addition to Dempsey and Dai, the team was made up of Adama Jabari, a slim, quiet Ethiopian of Dempsey’s height who looked like he could have been aged anywhere from thirty to fifty. Dylan Wrixon, the hard, wiry Appalachian Dempsey had spotted on the street. And Kate Silver, a fierce-looking blonde in her early thirties who, at almost six feet tall and with the build of an Olympian, looked like a physical match for any man there.

Except, perhaps, for the big one. Salvatore Gallo, the team’s near giant.

Gallo had thrown the sports coat aside, revealing the M90 CAWS shotgun that had been so obviously beneath. Like every member of Dempsey’s hand-picked ISB team, Gallo was ready.

All six were dressed in casual, baggy sportswear. The clothing served as street camouflage, as well as concealing the firearms, ammunition and kevlar that were strapped across their bodies.

Those firearms were now in each agent’s hands. Small close-quarters assault rifles for everyone but Gallo.

Dempsey indicated to the lowered fire escape. He spoke quickly.

‘As you were briefed: entry via the empty sixth floor apartment, then up one floor. All three seventh-floor apartments are supposed to be unoccupied. One of them won’t be. That’s where the hostage will be but we won’t know which apartment it is until we breach. Or how many hostiles there’ll be. Understood?’

All five agents nodded as one.

‘We breach from the inside. Beta will be covering the rear via the roof. We go in hard. Anyone we don’t hit, we herd towards Beta. Clear?’

Another five head movements.

‘Silent all the way up,’ Dempsey continued, ‘then every apartment cleared in sixty seconds. I want you fast and fatal. Other than us, only one person is leaving that seventh floor alive. Understood?’

Four nods. Dempsey looked up towards Gallo, who had remained motionless.

‘Think you can manage that, Sal?’

‘Guardami e basta.’

Dempsey had picked up enough of Gallo’s native Italian to know the meaning.

Just watch me.

It was all he needed to hear.

THREE

The six ISB agents had climbed the tenement’s fire escape slowly and – in spite of the age and underuse of its metal frame – without a sound. Their movement once inside the building, as they made their way from the sixth floor to the seventh, had been just as silent.

Dempsey stepped up to the last of three closed apartments in the corridor. He looked to his left. Dai and Jabari were perhaps ten yards away, in front of the second apartment. Wrixon and Silver another ten, poised by the first.

Gallo was with Dempsey. Each apartment would be a two-man job.

Their intelligence could only take them this far. The building was old, its windows small and shrouded in years of grime. Its interior was all but invisible from the outside

Probably why the building was chosen in the first place, Dempsey surmised.

Even SWAT and Dempsey’s Beta Unit – both positioned on adjacent buildings – had no clear view inside. It left them blind as to which apartment was holding the hostage; all they could be sure of was that two would be empty and one would offer resistance.

Just as well, then, that the Alpha Unit carried no weak link. Each apartment would be hit as hard and as fast as the others. No matter which one contained their targets – no matter which two-agent team breached – it would not end well for those inside.

Dempsey raised his open left hand, as if preparing a vertical salute. With one last glance to his left, he lowered his thumb.

It had the desired effect. His first four agents all visibly tensed for what was about to occur. His fifth – Gallo – adjusted his stance and placed the muzzle of his M90 inches from the third door’s secure lock.

A second later and Dempsey lowered his little finger. One more and his ring finger was down. Another and only his index finger was left up.

Time.

Dempsey’s remaining digit had barely touched the skin of his palm as the gunfire began. Three doors. Three weapons. One result. Two simultaneous semi-automatic three-round bursts saw to the locks on apartments one and two. A single round from Gallo’s shotgun devastated the third.

The agents moved like clockwork. Countless hours of close-quarters assault drills had seen to that.

Dai and Wrixon moved in sync through their two doorways, rifles raised to their shoulders as they both swept to the right. Jabari and Silver followed their respective leads, each taking the left.

Perfect execution of the manoeuvres they had been taught by Dempsey.

He and Gallo were equally well rehearsed. So was their reaction when they instantly saw that theirs was the occupied apartment.

The door had been shattered by Gallo’s single shot; the wood from a football-sized hole in its frame had peppered the back wall, sending the targets inside diving for cover.

Having spotted them, Gallo stepped to his right and made space, allowing Dempsey to flick a flash-bang grenade through the doorway.

‘COVER!’ Dempsey stepped back into the corridor as he shouted.

The warning was unnecessary. Gallo had already shielded his ears and turned his back to the door. The corridor wall provided both men with a barrier to the blinding light that would follow.

But still, old habits die hard. And good ones never should.

Even with eyes averted and ears covered, neither man could miss the detonation of the flash-bangs. And so both were moving again in an instant.

Gallo breached the doorway first. He covered the entire right half of the apartment’s reception room with one sweep of his shotgun.

Dempsey was a heartbeat behind, sweeping the room’s left side with his own Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifle.

The first thing Dempsey noticed were two long tables, each running the length of the right and left walls of the apartment’s main room. Both were covered with steel bowls, scales and – most telling – brick-shaped packages of solid white and brown powder.

Dempsey made the observation in an instant, and in the same moment he noticed something else: there was no hostage in this room.

Or in the apartment, he instinctively knew. The intelligence is wrong.

Dempsey’s experience allowed him to register every detail at once, and to see the picture those details painted. It was a skill learned over countless days in the Killing House in Hereford. Staged assault after staged assault. Every possible scenario covered. Every possible threat anticipated and enacted.

He’d been thankful for that training in the years that had followed. Time and again it had been the difference between life and death.

But today it told him that they were engaging the wrong targets. This was clearly a drug factory. Nothing to do with their hostage. And there was not a single thing he could do to change that.

The sound from Gallo’s M90 was like a physical blow as the Italian discharged it to Dempsey’s right. Once. Twice. The violence of the vibration could have disorientated even the most experienced soldier.

To Dempsey, it signified nothing more than an increased body count.

Two down.

The number was still passing through his mind as he noted the movement to his left. Four figures, dressed in sterile clothing. At first glance they looked like medics or forensic examiners – an impression ruined by the weapons each was now clumsily raising in Dempsey’s direction.

He aimed his own G36C, already at shoulder height, and applied four kisses of pressure to its trigger. Each touch discharged a three-round burst. Each burst found a target. Still disorientated from the flash-bangs, none of the four had a chance against a weapon far more lethal.

Six down.

Dempsey glanced towards Gallo. The Italian was already facing him. Like Dempsey’s side of the room, Gallo’s was now clear.

Dempsey lifted his right index finger and drew a horizontal circle in the air: the signal that they were now moving to the next stage of their choreographed assault.

This was not why they had come. These people were not who they were here to kill. But with the shooting started, they had no choice now but to see it through.

Gallo acknowledged the instruction with a nod and turned his back towards Dempsey’s own, his shotgun now covering the only entrance to the apartment. They slowly progressed towards the sole interior door that led off the main room.

Dempsey stepped forward slowly. Carefully. The ringing in his ears from the gunfire had temporarily robbed him of a key sense. Hardly ideal, but he would manage without it. It was far from the first time, and he would not be the only one suffering.

Another step. And another.

Dempsey’s eyes kept a laser-focus on the empty opening that led to the rest of the small apartment. He had no way to know if there were targets beyond it, but he had to assume there were. In his experience, drugs factories were always heavily defended.

And even if this one was not, it was diligence that kept professionals alive.

One more step and he would be through the inner doorway.

Gripping his weapon with his right hand, Dempsey took his left away from the rifle’s magazine, slowly moved it past his own back and tapped Gallo’s hip. The Italian – his own eyes still fixed on the apartment’s main door – responded by placing a single flash-bang into Dempsey’s outstretched hand.

It was their only cover for the breach that was to come. Or at least for the breach they expected to come.

There is a difference between being deafened and being unable to ‘hear’. The key is to recognise the vibrations elsewhere. To detect that feeling that would ordinarily be called ‘sound’.

It was this vibration that Dempsey absorbed, just as he lifted the flash-bang towards his right hand. The sensation of movement, emanating up through his boots. Too light to be a footstep. Almost too light, even, to be noticed.

Almost.

The small, brown object that rolled into the doorway was as rudimentary a hand grenade as Dempsey had ever seen. Barely larger than a squash ball and almost featureless, the antiquated fragmentation grenade’s blast zone would be small, but it was still perfectly capable of tearing Dempsey and Gallo to pieces.

Dempsey stopped the deadly ball with his left boot, scooped it up from the floor and sent it arching back from where it had come. In the next instant he unpinned Gallo’s flash-band and threw it in the same direction.

‘COVER!’

Dempsey grabbed Gallo hard by the shoulder as he shouted, using his full strength to pull the Italian to the floor and behind whatever protection the interior wall could provide.

It was not a moment too soon.

The sound of the first bang would have been deafening if either man could still hear, while its flash – fifty per cent of its disorientating arsenal – was harmless on this side of the partition. Even alone, the weapon would have been effective.

But it was not alone.

The fragmentation grenade exploded almost simultaneously. As soon as it hit the floor, Dempsey assumed. Its devastating effect made the first device seem like a child’s toy.

Large fragments of the grenade pierced the drywall that divided the main room from the rest of the apartment. None struck Dempsey or Gallo, thanks to their position on the floor. Had either man been standing, the result would have been very different.

‘LET’S GO!’ Dempsey yelled. If anyone was still alive through the doorway, they could not be given time to recover.

Both men were on their feet in an instant, with Dempsey first through the doorway and Gallo a step behind him.

The sight that met them was like a snapshot of hell. Whatever damage the grenade had done through the wall was multiplied ten times over on the partition’s other side.

It took a literal headcount for Dempsey to determine that a further four targets had been eliminated in the explosion. Two in the tight corridor off the main room – presumably the original source of the grenade – and two on the threshold of the first bedroom.

None of the four bodies were fully intact.

Ten down.

Dempsey was not distracted by the carnage. He continued along the corridor without missing a step.

He swept the first bedroom at speed. The two dead bodies in the doorway told him that the room had taken the brunt of the blast. The odds of a survivor were slim, but still the area had to be cleared.

‘NEXT ROOM!’

This time it was Gallo who shouted. He had passed Dempsey as the British agent took the first door, and it seemed that his search had borne fruit.

Dempsey covered the few feet between rooms at speed. He entered to find Gallo with his shotgun raised to his shoulder and aimed towards the room’s large open window. A thick black curtain billowed in the breeze, obstructing both agents’ view.

Dempsey stepped forward, placed his palm on the barrel of Gallo’s M90 and guided it down. Gallo glanced towards him and Dempsey simply shook his head. He knew what was to come: the sound of three rounds, discharged just outside.

Eleven.

Dempsey lowered his own weapon and stepped towards the window. He moved the curtain aside and stepped through, onto the metal fire escape outside. Ahead of him was the body of a white man, his bloody eyes staring lifelessly into the sky.

‘Empty apartment, Kate?’

Dempsey looked across to the furthest end of the fire escape. Kate Silver was standing with her rifle raised to her shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ Silver replied. ‘Unlike yours.’

Dempsey pointed towards the first apartment.

‘No sign of a hostage in there, I take it?’

‘No.’

‘What about Dai and Jabari?’

‘I don’t know.’

Dempsey put his hand to his ear and reactivated his wrist-mic. He switched the frequency to the ISB band.

‘Dai, you there? Over.’

The mic crackled to life.

‘I’m here. Over.’

‘What have you got? Over.’

‘Nothing. Apartment empty. Over.’

Dempsey looked down at the body close to his feet. The man had been armed. He had worked in a drug den. There was no doubt that he was a criminal, and maybe he deserved his fate. But he was not the man the ISB were here to find. None of them were.

‘Dammit.’

FOUR

Michael Devlin held a champagne-laden ice bucket under his left arm, a glass of sixteen-year-old Lagavulin in his left hand and a cold Pinot Grigio in his right as he manoeuvred his way through the packed room.

The temperature outside was only a degree or two north of zero. Still, the wood and glass main doors of the busy wine bar were wide open. With so many warm bodies rammed inside its two rooms, the colder fresh air was badly needed.

With the bar filled past capacity, the sheer size of the crowd made Michael’s journey from bar to table difficult. His recognition of what seemed like every second face slowed him further: a succession of colleagues and opponents from almost two decades in London’s criminal courts, all wanting to say ‘hi’ – in some case much more – and transforming Michael’s few necessary steps into a nightmare of forced smiles and inane pockets of conversation.

Daly’s Wine Bar had been an icon of the British legal system for as long as Michael could remember, and probably much longer still. Well positioned just outside of Temple and a stone’s throw from the Royal Courts of Justice, the place seemed to possess a homing beacon to which the majority of working barristers responded. Michael was not in that majority.

He had never understood the appeal. A bar filled to the brim with drunken lawyers, many of them lying to the others about their recent successes? Michael could think of many places he would rather be.

But tonight’s venue had not been his to choose. Tonight was a celebration. One he would not miss.

Finally through the tightly packed first room and into the much clearer second, Michael was able to speed up over the final few feet. Just as well, as he could feel the ice bucket under his left arm beginning to slip. He reached the table just in time, placed his own glass down and used his now free left hand to grip the wet metal container.

‘Here you go.’ He handed the glass of wine to the only man at the table. ‘White wine for Will, champagne for everyone else.’

‘Thanks,’ replied one of the four women. A slim blonde in her early thirties, she had taken the natural lead. ‘But are you sure neither of you will join us in some bubbles? It is a celebration.’

‘Not for me. I can’t stand the bloody stuff.’

Michael had not met Will Duffy before tonight, but he knew the man’s reputation. Duffy was maybe ten years older than Michael, a busy criminal solicitor with a loyal following among the capital’s organised crime families. He was known as a rough, bluff Glaswegian who rarely sugar-coated his words.

Michael, on the other hand, was a natural diplomat.

‘Doesn’t agree with me, Jenny,’ he said, giving Duffy’s answer no time to land. ‘Besides, the only fizzy stuff an Irishman should drink is Club Orange.’

‘Suit yourselves. More for us.’

Jenny Draper reached out, picked up the open bottle of Krug and filled the four champagne glasses that were already on the table. Once done, she turned back to face Michael with an expectant smile.

Michael took the hint and raised his glass. He then waited for Duffy and for Draper’s three younger friends to do the same.

‘I think a toast is in order,’ Michael began, having fully understood Draper’s unspoken message. ‘To Jenny. A terrific lawyer. A wonderful friend. And, as of today, the youngest Recorder I’ve ever heard of. Be respectful and be nice, all of you, because the way she’s going she’ll be running this profession in no time.’

Draper beamed at the compliment but, tellingly for Michael, she did not blush. It proved what he already knew: the young lawyer was every bit as ambitious as his few words had suggested.

‘To Jenny,’ he concluded.

‘To Jenny,’ the rest of table echoed. Four voices as one, each keen to toast Draper’s professional success. It brought a smile to Michael’s face.

The two barristers had met less than a year ago, when Michael had been appointed in his first case as Queen’s Counsel to represent a young man charged with murder. Draper had come with the case, already attached as junior counsel, and she had brought her reputation with her. But Michael had seen through the smokescreen, behind the single-minded ambition, and he had found a brilliantly talented woman. The events surrounding that case had been horrifying for them both, but there had been at least one positive outcome: Michael and Draper had formed a bond. A genuine friendship.

And now here they were celebrating her success. A Recordership is the first step towards life on the bench, serving a few weeks a year as a judge and the rest as an ordinary barrister. It was a much sought-after honour and hard to obtain, and yet, at the age of just thirty-one, Draper had secured one of the most important positions a lawyer could achieve.

Michael had no doubt in his mind that she was up to the task.

‘So, Michael. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Will Duffy had the voice of a man raised rough and proud of it. It pulled Michael out of his own thoughts.

‘How come we’ve not done a case together?’ Duffy asked in his thick Glaswegian accent.

‘We have, Will,’ Michael replied. ‘Just not for the same clients.’

‘Well, I’ve not seen you in court. I reckon we need to change that. I mean, seems we’ve got a bit in common, eh?’

Michael hesitated for an instant as he considered Duffy’s words. They could be referring to a number of things: some good; some bad. Michael could do nothing about the rumours that surrounded him. Not least because most were less sensational than the truth. But references to his past – real or imagined – still made him uncomfortable.

‘I thought most of your firm’s good stuff went to Jenny’s place,’ Michael said, moving the focus of the conversation to the rival set of barristers’ chambers where Draper was based. ‘They wouldn’t be happy to see you using me or Eight Essex Court.’

‘Her place is not what it was,’ Duffy replied. ‘Jenny aside, last ten years they’ve recruited a bunch of public school boys. It’s weakened ’em. Left ’em with no one who connects with the people I represent. No real experience of that world. Not like you and me, eh?’

The final sentences removed any doubt: Duffy – as blunt as his reputation – was referring to Michael’s background.

Michael did not respond immediately. Instead he focused on Duffy, trying to read his intentions. Michael was a private man. Most knew that, and so any mention of his past was usually deliberate. An attempt to put him on edge.

But Duffy didn’t know him well enough for that.

As Michael studied the man he observed for the first time the small, almost imperceptible facial scars and the damaged knuckles, both of which suggested a tougher start to life than most. He also seemed unusually fit for his age; a hangover from a life where the ability to handle himself was essential, perhaps?

The observations caused Michael to doubt his own reaction. Perhaps Duffy did just see him as a kindred spirit?

Whatever the reality, it did not make the subject any more welcome.

‘The past’s the past, Will,’ Michael finally offered. ‘You can’t judge people on where they’ve come from. Any more than they should judge you. And besides, there’s plenty of people in Jenny’s place we’d love to poach to Eight Essex. They’re a strong bunch.’

Duffy nodded. He took a deep drink of his wine before speaking again.

‘You’re probably right,’ he replied with a smile. ‘Usually are, I hear. But don’t think I won’t be sending you a case anyway.’

‘Well, if I can’t talk you out of it . . .’ Michael laughed, happy that the conversation was moving in a more comfortable direction. ‘Now listen—’

He didn’t finish his sentence.

Interrupted by a chime from his iPhone, he instinctively glanced down and read the breaking news headline displayed. An annoying habit caused by his inability to switch off the news notifications, it was usually no more than a flicker of the eye. But not this time. This time the words on screen brought the conversation to an end.

‘Jesus.’

Michael was speaking to no one in particular.

‘What is it?’ Draper asked, an instant before her own iPhone’s screen came to life. Its message was identical to the one Michael had received.

Michael did not answer the question. Instead they both turned their eyes towards the silent television screen that took up much of the room’s left wall. It was displaying live footage beamed directly from London’s Heathrow Airport, obviously the subject of the muted commentary from a young reporter, familiar to them both, who was positioned front and centre.

But neither Michael nor Draper needed to hear Sarah Truman’s report. The news alert had said it all: ‘Death at Thirty-Five Thousand Feet: Pan-Atlantic Airlines Flight PA16 from London Heathrow to New York JFK crashes into the Atlantic Ocean two hours into flight. All 534 lives lost.’

FIVE

Nizar Mansour picked up his heavy, outdated Nokia handset and activated its darkened screen.

He had no idea how many times he had done this in the last hour. Ten? No. Twenty at least. Maybe more. And each time the result had been the same.

The screen showed no alerts.

No missed calls. No messages. Nothing.

Mansour placed the phone on the table ahead of him and watched its screen fade back to black. An appropriate colour. For five days, his mood – his life – had been darker than he could remember. Only one thing could change that. One call.

As every minute passed, that call became more and more unlikely.

Mansour forced his eyes from the handset and the thought from his mind. Obsessively counting the seconds only made things worse, he realised. He needed a distraction, and that was exactly what the long bar at the far side of the room offered.

His unsteady legs at first struggled to support him as he climbed to his feet. It was by now a familiar sensation; the anxiety that had eaten away at his gut for almost a week made his usual calm demeanour a distant memory. If he had expected the almost two pints of imported Belgian lager he had sunk in the past hour to counter that effect, he had been very mistaken.

Not that Mansour was in any place to learn that lesson. The alcohol had failed to bring him the hoped for calm, but anything that took his mind elsewhere remained welcome.

He drained the final third of his glass in one swallow, reached deep into his pocket and pulled out the few remaining coins inside.

Four pounds sixty-five pence. Enough for one more.

The price differences between London and Aleppo had long since lost their shock value and Mansour gave no thought to the cost of his single pint order. But the contrast in strength between Syrian beer and the imported lagers popular in the UK? That was harder to ignore. Mansour was no drinker, not back home and not in London. On the rare occasions he went beyond a single order, the alcohol hit him hard.

And his next would be his third.

The Rose and Crown pub on Stoke Newington Church Street was unusually quiet for a Wednesday evening, even for early January. If Mansour had wondered why then he would have blamed the weather. Who wanted to leave a warm home for a cold beer when the conditions outside were near arctic? But the question did not cross his mind. Tonight, only a single thought concerned him.

The walk to the bar. The order. The pour. The payment. With less than ten customers in the cavernous barroom, the whole process took barely a minute. And yet not for an instant did Mansour’s mind stray from his phone.

Barely a minute more and he was back at his table in the corner of the room, Nokia in hand, its illuminated screen still blank.

‘Ibn il sharmoota!’

Mansour slammed the handset onto the table as he spoke, his frustration irresistible. The few sober eyes in the barroom turned at the sound, forcing him to regain his composure.

‘Idiot,’ he hissed under his breath, irritated by his own outburst. He pushed his fingertips deep into the skin around his eyes, as if to push the pain of his stress – the pressure – back down.

What was he thinking, calling attention to himself?

They could be in here, he thought. They could be anyone.

He couldn’t take the risk. Not after everything he had done. He had to see this through to the end.

But why have they not called?

He forced his gaze away from his phone. The obvious alternative was the large projection screen at the rear of barroom. No doubt installed to fill the bar with drinking customers, keen to see whatever sports event would attract the biggest crowd. Tonight there was no football, no rugby, no boxing. And so the screen was silent.

But it was not blank.

What Mansour had experienced in his thirty years of life had, he thought, prepared him for much. Loss. Violence. Fear. They had been commonplace in Syria and, at least for Mansour, non-existent in the UK. That had all changed five days ago. The fear had returned. A terror beyond anything he had felt before. Since then it had gripped him for every waking moment.

As his eyes settled on the headline displayed on the screen, he felt that grip tighten.

SIX

Sarah Truman spat a lug of mouthwash into the sink and wiped its residue from her lips. The taste was harsh – antiseptic – but much preferable to what it had replaced.

‘Shit,’ she said aloud, placing the mouthwash bottle down and reviewing her reflection in the ladies’ room mirror.

The face that looked back at her gave no indication of the nausea she felt. Her stomach was still turning, threatening to send her rushing back to the vacant toilet cubicle. But thankfully her discomfort was invisible. Her hair was still in place; her make-up the very definition of professional.

She could not explain how, but it was a win. She would take it.

Maybe we can pull this off. If I can just keep the rest of my damn dinner down . . .

One more breath – deep and long. The nausea was going nowhere. That much was clear. But she would not let it affect her work. Not here. And especially not now.

She took one last look in the mirror as she steeled herself to leave, physically shaking her head, shoulders and arms in an exaggerated, prolonged shudder.

She spotted a few last drops of mouthwash at the bottom of its plastic bottle.

Can’t hurt, she thought.

Sarah took a slug, swirled it around her mouth and spat it into the last of the row of sinks as she strode towards the restroom door.

‘Are you OK?’ Nathan Benson sounded concerned as Sarah rejoined him. ‘You ran off a bit quick.’

‘I’m fine.’

The impatience in Sarah’s tone was unmissable, even to her. Harsh enough that Benson instinctively straightened his back in response. Like a military brat brought to attention.

He doesn’t deserve that, Sarah thought, noticing his reaction. Cut him some slack.

‘Look, just, er, just ignore that. Ignore me. I felt a little queasy, that’s all.’

Benson visibly relaxed, the tense moment over.

He had been Sarah’s regular cameraman for almost a year and she knew that he counted himself lucky. Because Sarah’s was a career in a million. Just twenty-nine years of age, she was the Senior Home News correspondent for the UK’s Independent Television News – second to only the BBC in size and coverage – and already far ahead of any other reporter of their generation. Benson’s career could only benefit from their connection but, like anyone, he deserved respect. And that was exactly what Sarah gave him.

She looked around the large, plain room. Row after row of makeshift seating was occupied, each and every chair taken by reporters she recognised. But Benson had ignored the seating, as every other camera operator had done. Instead they had all positioned their recording equipment in front of it, for a clear, unobstructed view of the long table now set up at the front of the room.

‘Sorry I couldn’t save you a chair,’ he whispered as he made final adjustments to his camera. He looked behind them. ‘I think there are still a few at the back.’

‘I don’t need a chair,’ Sarah replied. The answer was a lie, but she was not going to let her nausea slow her down. ‘It’s more important you have the shot.’

‘But how will you get a question in?’ Benson asked. The concern had returned to his voice. ‘If you’re not seated with the rest? They won’t see your hand.’

‘They won’t be answering anything that’s worth asking. Not today. We’ll get a statement about the crash, a few safety passes with answers straight from that same statement, then they’ll disappear. These things always go the same way. All that matters is that you catch that first statement.’

Benson nodded his head but he didn’t seem convinced. Not that it mattered. The decision was Sarah’s to take.

And he’ll learn, she thought.

‘I’m heading outside,’ Sarah said. ‘I need some fresh air.’

‘You said you were quitting those,’ Benson observed.

‘What are you, my mother?’

‘Someone has to look out for you.’

‘Lucky I have you then, I guess. But no need for you to worry. I really do mean fresh air this time. I just need to clear my head.’

Benson’s expression moved from amusement to its previous concern. He seemed to want to say something more. Instead he reached for a pile of what had looked like thick rags at the base of his camera stand. Out of it, he picked a grey tracksuit hoodie.

‘At least put this on,’ he said. An instruction rather than a request. ‘You’re already sick and it’s bloody freezing out there.’

Sarah smiled. She was as bad at taking orders as she was at apologising. Both were weaknesses in a world of alpha personalities vying for advancement. But Benson’s concern was genuine, and on this occasion his instruction was harmless.

And besides, Sarah thought, it is bloody cold out there.

The British Airways branding that dominated the exterior of the Waterside Building was impossible to miss. The UK carrier’s insignia seemed to be emblazoned on every spare part of the wall. A branding campaign that left no hint of the complex’s other occupant: Pan-Atlantic Airlines.

People sure as hell know it’s here now.

Sarah stood for a moment and stared out across the Waterside car park, at the mass of outside broadcast vans occupying it.

The sheer number of them was not unusual. These days Sarah rarely covered a story that didn’t attract the full attention of the rival news networks. But for that story to take them somewhere big enough that they could actually park?

That was new.

She looked away from the vehicles and down at her hands. They were shaking in the cold of the night.

Benson’s hoodie was doing its job well. Every covered inch of Sarah’s body remained warm, despite the rapidly falling temperature. But her hands were exposed. Sarah needed them out so she could watch the press conference on the increasingly shaky screen of her phone. It was a sacrifice she was fast coming to regret.

She used her left hand to hold her right steady as she watched the opening remarks, the sound relayed crisply through the handset’s wireless earphones.

The voice speaking was American; East Coast, like Sarah, but maybe two hundred miles further south. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I can sadly confirm that at four p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, the one fifty-five p.m. Flight PA16 from London Heathrow to New York JFK lost contact with control over the Atlantic Ocean.’

Why’s David Edleson chairing this? Sarah wondered.

She hadn’t known that the Pan-Atlantic Airlines CEO was even in the UK.

Her thought was interrupted by the feeling of a physical presence beside her. It made her look up, away from the screen and towards a uniformed British Airways pilot standing a few feet away.

He glanced at Sarah as he lit a cigarette, careful to make eye contact. Sarah’s own eyes must have flitted towards the lit smoke, encouraging him to hold the packet out towards her.

‘Thanks.’ Sarah reached out and took a Marlboro from the open pack. ‘One way to warm up, huh?’

The man smiled back and held up a silver lighter, its flame ready.

Well, that’s been tried and tested.

Sarah could spot a well-honed flirting technique when she saw one. She would let him down lightly in a moment. But first things first. She put the cigarette to her lips, leaned towards the flame and inhaled.

It did not have the effect she was expecting. The taste of the smoke hit first. The same taste she was used to, and yet somehow completely different. It caused a wave of her earlier nausea to flow over her. An urge to throw up that she barely suppressed.

Pull yourself together, Sarah. You’re all out of mouthwash!

It was an easy demand to make. A harder one to obey. She hadn’t reacted that way to a cigarette before. She threw it away and took a deep breath. Her suspicions about the source of her nausea were looking increasingly likely.

‘Are you OK?’

The pilot’s voice sounded confused. He looked it, too, when Sarah glanced towards him. Flustered and still feeling unwell, she did not think before she answered.

‘Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I just shouldn’t be smoking. I . . . I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.’

She felt herself freeze as she heard her own words, the first time she had said them aloud. And who was she sharing it with? Some guy who, moments before, thought he was on track to pick her up.

The final thought amused her, and, for the first time in days, Sarah felt herself smile.

‘Which I guess is the last thing you wanted to hear, right?’

Sarah opened the door to the conference room and placed herself against the back wall.

David Edleson’s statement was coming to an end. She had missed almost all of it, but that did not matter. The content was always the same. Sarah could have written it for him, from memory.

‘. . . speculate at the cause of the loss of Flight PA16 at this time. Our entire focus is instead dedicated to the five hundred and thirty-four passengers and crew who lost their lives in the tragic events of this afternoon. Within those parameters, I will now take questions.’

Perfect timing.

Sarah had been at more press conferences than she could remember. Back in the day – before Trafalgar Square, before Belfast

– they had been almost daily. So she knew what to expect, as she had told Benson.

An empty statement, followed by questions that just echoed that emptiness. The story would not reveal itself here. Not tonight. It would come in the days to come.

That was the way these things worked.

Or at least it was how they were supposed to work.

At first Sarah couldn’t hear any individual questions. The press conference had descended into the usual shouting throng, with fifty reporters speaking at once. But then her sharp hearing picked one out against the background noise.

And she felt her entire body go cold.

‘Mr Edleson, Mr Edleson, can you please confirm that potential presidential nominee Dale Victor and his wife were aboard Flight PA16?’

Sarah did not move a muscle. She could not quite believe what she had just heard. Or that others still seemed to have missed it.

The question was asked four more times as the noise gradually died away, the surrounding media shocked into silence.

Finally there was quiet enough that the question could be heard clearly by all.

The entire room went still. Waiting for the answer. But Sarah did not need to hear it. She had watched David Edleson at the moment he had first heard the question, while it was still mostly lost in the surrounding noise, and she had noted his reaction.

The shocked look. The ashen face. The whispered consultation. All of them could mean only one thing.

Finally Edleson removed any doubt:

‘Yes. I can sadly confirm that candidate Dale Victor, his wife and a small number of Mr Victor’s corporate and campaign staff were on Flight PA16. Tragically they were all among the lives that have been lost today.’

SEVEN

Apartment 35D of The Stratford building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side had little that marked it out as ‘special’.

Its front door was one of an identikit number that lined both sides of the thirty-fifth-floor corridor. It opened directly into a living area that was longer than it was wide, but not by much.

Inside and to its immediate left was a doorway that led to a poorly equipped, narrow galley kitchen. A few feet further on, along the same wall, was a second door. Behind it was a strong contender for New York’s smallest hallway and the entrances to a bathroom and a single bedroom, both barely furnished.

At the apartment’s far end – a term that stank of exaggeration when describing a distance that could be covered in five good strides – was a steel-framed window and door that matched the width and the height of the living room.

Even in high-rise heavy New York, buildings as tall as The Stratford were rarely built in clusters. With no other residence close enough to view into the apartment, there was no need for curtains or blinds; 35D’s position on the top floor of the block was privacy enough. And so even a single step inside revealed a clear view over the neighbourhoods of the Upper East Side from a height of thirty-five storeys.

It was this view that drew the eye of any visitor; it made every other of the apartment’s deficiencies irrelevant.

Joe Dempsey picked the antiquated kettle from the electric stove at the first hint of its ear-shattering whistle. The sound of bubbling water had already told him that the liquid inside had boiled. The kettle’s in-built ‘alarm’ was an unnecessary and annoying addition to the exercise.

He turned 180 degrees, to the cracked wooden worktop opposite the bulky cooker. Two mugs were waiting. Both were hospital clean and hospital basic: a description that could be well applied to almost everything in Dempsey’s apartment.

Two minutes later and Dempsey was done. He exited the kitchen, a steaming mug of hot English tea in each hand. He headed for the far end of the room. Towards the large, picture-frame window and the concrete balcony that sat on its other side.

The door on the left-hand side of the window was ajar, letting the cold air from the late New York afternoon into the apartment. Even a relatively warm January in Manhattan would be thought cold in Dempsey’s native London, but the loss of the apartment’s heat did not concern him. Extremes of weather had been an occupational hazard during his military career. Four degrees Celsius – or thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, as his American thermometer insisted – was nothing.

The small, basic balcony that sat beyond the metal framed door would win no awards for aesthetic design: a concrete rectangle that nudged out into the sky, 350 feet clear of the streets below. And yet the moment Dempsey stepped out and felt the cold waterproof resin beneath his socked feet – as soon as he saw the top of The Carlyle Hotel in the distance – the tension between his shoulders begin to lessen.

The little that was special about Apartment 35D was all out here. On its balcony. It was the reason Dempsey called the place ‘home’, and he was reminded of that every time he looked out across the city.

‘Come on, man. You just gonna let that tea go cold?’

Dempsey had not noticed that he was standing in place until the deep, accented voice broke through his distracted thoughts.

He turned with a shake of his head and held out one of the two mugs to Father Sam Cooke.

‘It’s a hell of a view,’ Dempsey said, explaining his pause with a hint of a smile.

‘Get used to it. It’s not going anywhere,’ Cooke reached out and took the mug Dempsey had offered. ‘And neither are you, at least for a while.’

Dressed head to toe in black, Cooke had removed the clerical collar that otherwise explained his clothing choice. Dempsey knew why. Constantly identifying as a priest prevented Cooke from also being himself: a tall, thin miner’s son from County Durham in Northern England. And a man who enjoyed a dirty joke, the sight of a beautiful girl and even the occasional foul-mouthed blasphemy.

Cooke did not get to be that guy around many people. Dempsey was one of the few exceptions.

The tea was still steaming as Cooke took one of the two seats that sat beside a tall metal table at the far right of the balcony.

‘Still warm enough for you?’ Dempsey asked. The same small smile had returned. He already knew how Cooke would respond.

‘It’s alright,’ Cooke replied, with the tone of someone who thought otherwise. ‘Not like I can send it back anyway, is it?’

Dempsey laughed to himself as he took the second seat. The table formed a buttress between the two chairs, with both facing outwards across the darkening sky.

Neither man spoke as they slowly drank their tea, enjoying the warmth of the drink as the cold began to bite. They were surrounded by the sounds of the streets far below – horns, shouts and sirens – and the whipping wind that crashed between the high-rises and skyscrapers.

It was comfortable. Two men who knew each other well, and who did not need to fill silence with meaningless chatter. For Dempsey, at least, it was the ideal version of a friendship, and only when he noticed Cooke drain his cup did he finally speak again.

‘Need a refill?’ he asked.

‘Could you be any more English?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’ve known you for two years and in that time I’ve been in your place, what? Ten times? And every one of those has been after someone died.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Dempsey replied, not even convincing himself. ‘And what does that have to do with me being English?’

‘I’m telling you it’s right. And what do you do whenever I first get here? You avoid the real subject and you talk about tea. Like I said, you couldn’t be more English if you tried.’

Dempsey had no argument. He knew that Cooke was right. But then, when was he not? It was the reason Dempsey turned to him in times like this. Not because of Cooke’s faith; Dempsey was far from convinced that the priest was a full-on believer. And Dempsey’s own Catholicism was as confused as it came.

No. It was Cooke’s mind that Dempsey needed. His sense of right and wrong. And his habit of telling the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Dempsey had met Cooke on his first day with the United Nations’ newly formed International Security Bureau, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in New York.

As an officer in the British Army and later as an agent of the UK’s Department of Domestic Security, Dempsey had seen the world. He had operated for months at a time in little-known locations in Asia, Africa, even South America. And yet somehow his experience of New York – the closest thing on Earth to a world capital city – totalled a single three-day holiday, too many years before.

And so Dempsey had arrived a stranger, living out of a suitcase in a downtown hotel room. It was an existence that had suited him. One he was used to. But his superiors at the ISB had seemed less happy. Less secure in their Primary Agent’s isolation. It was for this reason, Dempsey was sure, that he’d found himself introduced to the only other Englishman on staff.

Not that Sam Cooke considered himself a part of anyone’s staff.

Cooke had been in the United States for fifteen years by the time Dempsey joined the ISB. Most of his working life. In that time he had moved from parish to parish, never finding a permanent home until appointed as Catholic chaplain to the staff of the Secretariat Building. This was four years before Dempsey’s arrival and it technically made Cooke an employee of the United Nations, which owned the entire UN Complex in Manhattan’s Midtown on an extraterritorial basis.

If Cooke accepted that status, he certainly didn’t show it.

‘So it’s a no to the extra tea?’ Dempsey asked.