like her so it was taken very recently.’ He continued to eat with one hand while he wrote a series of numbers on a page of Muir’s notebook with the other. ‘This is the cell-phone number of the woman in the photograph. The phone was brand new, probably bought within the last twenty-four hours. She hadn’t bothered to take the screen’s protective film off. It’ll be a prepaid handset and SIM, as will be the phone that this number belongs to.’
He wrote another number beneath the first. ‘That’s the only number Francesca called. It’ll belong to either Leeson or his driver. Like Francesca’s, it’s no doubt a prepaid bought just for this meeting. But maybe they haven’t ditched them yet and if you’re quick you might be able to use GPS to track their locations. It’s a long shot, but worth the effort.’ He wrote down a series of numbers and letters and then another. ‘This first one is the licence plate number of the taxi that picked me up from the airport. It’s a genuine cab, so that will be a genuine plate. The second number is the Budapest city taxi licence of Varina Theodorakis, a Greek woman who the licence belonged to before Francesca Leone got hold of it. Either Theodorakis is a clueless victim of theft or she’s compliant and has information.’
He wrote down a sixth number. ‘That’s the serial number of the Makarov pistol Francesca was armed with. It’s at least thirty years old and it’ll be part of a batch commissioned before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Chances are you won’t be able to trace ownership, but you might get lucky because there wasn’t a single scratch in the paint and I could still smell packing grease, so it hasn’t been long out of the crate.’ He wrote down another long series of numbers and characters. ‘The site where I met Leeson was a demolished industrial complex approximately thirty minutes’ drive north from the airport. There’s likely no connection to the site and Leeson, but it was gated so either they broke in or had keys. I don’t know the area, but that’s the latitude and longitude of the location.’
Muir slid the notebook back to her side of the table, looked at it, then sat back, the white of her eyes obvious behind her glasses.
‘Procter told me you were good.’
TWENTY-TWO
Budapest, Hungary
The man who some people knew as Robert Leeson relaxed in the back of the Rolls-Royce Phantom. He had removed his hand-crafted brown loafers and rested his feet on the chair opposite. The seating position that resulted was exceptionally comfortable. The window curtains were drawn and the partition between the compartment and the driver’s cab was closed to provide Leeson with the privacy he both required and relished. He lounged in darkness, cocooned and protected from the savagery of the world outside. The compartment was so well insulated that Leeson was barely aware of the fact he was inside a moving motor vehicle. The ride was wonderfully smooth. No jolts from the suspension. No vibration.
No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin.
As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.
From one of the console’s compartments he took out a satellite phone and powered it on. He entered a phone number known only to himself and to the person who answered when the line connected. The satellite phone sent out a signal scrambled by a custom encryption algorithm created by a code-writing genius currently rotting in a Siberian jail because he refused to use his skills for the Russian intelligence services. He would change his mind eventually, Leeson knew, when youth faded into maturity and blind idealism became secondary to the pursuit of life’s little luxuries. Leeson knew this because he had once been an idealist. But he had grown up, albeit younger than most did.
‘How did it go?’
The voice that sounded through the phone’s speaker was clear but did not belong to the person on the other end of the line. It had been manipulated by a scrambler that altered the tone,