okay?’
Gabriel nodded without looking at him. ‘He was still very afraid of what he was planning to do, but also determined to do it . . .That was many days ago, Stratton. I think we will be too late.’
Stratton stared at him a moment then walked away.
His footsteps echoed down the wooden stairs and a second later the front door banged closed. Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed and looked at a worn Persian rug on the floor, then at his hands.They were trembling.
As Stratton made his way down the street back towards the harbour he pulled his satellite phone from his pocket and scrolled through the numbers until he found the one he was looking for, pushed the call button and held it to his ear.
‘Sumners? This is Stratton.’
Sumners was reading a newspaper on the sofa by lamplight in the small living room of his terraced house in Hampstead. As the satellite phone on the desk beside the sofa chirped and Sumners reached for it, his wife automatically got up out of the armchair to turn down the television and then without a word left the room to go into the tiny kitchen to make a pot of tea.
‘Yes, Stratton,’ he said, still reading the article.
‘I think I have something. Not sure. Probably nothing, ’ Stratton said.
Sumners lost focus on the paper. He might have been irritated with most of his other agents for ringing with a comment like that, but Stratton would never call unless there was an underlying importance to his empty introduction.
‘Nothing?’ Sumners asked anyway.
‘It’s vague enough as it is, but since this isn’t mauve you’ll have to bear with me.’ Stratton was referring to the mauve secure phone system. The system did not work on wireless systems such as mobile and sat. phones. That required an altogether different scrambling encryption, which was difficult to implement on an international grid.
‘Understood,’ Sumners said, putting down the paper. ‘I take it you arrived at your planned destination.’
‘Affirmative,’ Stratton said, then paused to choose his wording. ‘I need you to think of another team to relate this party to. Last week you stopped me from heading elsewhere. You with me?’
Sumners reached for a notepad and pencil as he considered the first of what he expected to be several clues. He wrote down the word ‘Norway’ since it was where Stratton had been going when Sumners redirected him to Rhodes. ‘Yes,’ Sumners said.
‘That place is where our team used to play their team.’
Sumners’ pen hovered above the page - where Stratton’s team used to play their team. Play meaning to operate against. Their team meaning the only people they operated against in Norway - the Russians. ‘I’m with you,’ Sumners said as he jotted down ‘Russians’ on the notepad.
‘My colleague gave you some letters written in that team speak,’ Stratton said.
Sumners jotted down ‘Gabriel’ then ‘Viewer notes in Russian??? - Thetford’.
‘I have no meaning for that yet,’ Sumners said.
‘Understood. Reference the big fish I caught recently that prompted this party,’ Stratton said.
Sumners wrote down the word ‘Supertanker’. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Find a connection between the fish and the team national,’ he said.
Sumners drew brackets connecting ‘Russians’ with ‘Supertanker’.
‘A team national came through this location recently.’
Sumners scribbled the word ‘Kastellorizo’ then connected it to the word ‘Russians’.
‘My colleague believes the hare came through here recently. Reference where my colleague got a dent when I wasn’t watching.’
Sumners scribbled down ‘Thetford Forest’. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Possibility it was the same national.’
Sumners connected ‘Thetford Forest’ to ‘Kastellorizo’ and ‘Russians’. ‘Understood,’ he said.
‘Here’s the wild card,’ Stratton said. ‘The national is in possession of something portable. My friend’s concerned about such a thing.’
‘Unclear,’ Sumners said.
‘Me too. But there is a lot of reference to it. That national carried something here. Bear it in mind and maybe it’ll fit in somewhere.’
Sumners scribbled down the words ‘portable object???’. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘I’m gonna wait till morning,’ Stratton said. ‘See what daylight brings.’
‘Understood. Speak to you later,’ Sumners said, and disconnected.
He studied his notepad for a moment then got up, went to his writing desk and reached for a mauve-coloured phone.
Stratton pocketed his sat. phone and looked out over the water wondering if there was anything he had overlooked. He decided not to spend any more time concentrating on it. In his experience, unsubtle or not obvious connections tended to make their own way to the surface, and not always quickly.
He headed back towards the house.
Chapter 8
Zhilev cut the boat’s engine for the last time and it