Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,96

suggest Purkiss himself had failed to stop it? The Jacobin reached for his phone, into which he’d copied the web address of the tracking site. No internet connection.

A car was emerging in the distance through the gates of the airfield. It stopped beyond the gates and a man got out and closed them behind the car. The Jacobin started the engine of his car again. It wouldn’t do to be noticed sitting in a stationary vehicle this close to the airfield. Nor would it be a good idea to turn round immediately and drive away, in sight of the car. The Jacobin continued along the road that ran past the airfield.

As he approached the other car, which was heading towards him, he glanced at its occupants, as one would naturally do when passing another vehicle on such an empty road. Three of them. Although none was familiar, he recognised the type. Kuznetsov’s people, soldiers by background, grim faced. They wouldn’t recognise him, had never met him before. No sign of Purkiss in the car. They would be the backup, the Jacobin assumed. The crew who were to meet the chopper out at sea.

To follow them, even at a distance, would invite suspicion, and if they turned on him the odds were hardly in his favour, not just numerically. He punched the address of a location he knew on the coast into the car’s satellite navigation system. It directed him to continue the way he was heading. The Jacobin put his foot down, glancing every now and again at the display on his phone.

*

Through the windows of the cabin the sky was changing almost perceptibly to slate. Below, a light ground fog blurred the details of the fields and the sparse network of roads between them. The weather didn’t matter greatly, Venedikt reflected. The handshake would take place in anything short of a hurricane.

He sat on the bench facing Fallon, forcing himself not to prowl about the cabin. Dobrynin was leaning into the cockpit and asking something of Leok and Lyuba, the pilot and co-pilot. Dobrynin was as excited, as moved as he was, Venedikt knew. He was simply more reserved in his personality and therefore didn’t let it show.

Two missiles would have been ideal, one as backup for the other. The finances wouldn’t have been a problem. The haul from the hijacking of the bank vans would have stretched to a second one. Availability was the stumbling block, as the arms dealer had told him. The missile was one of the most sought-after pieces of weaponry in the world, and therefore the most closely guarded. Still, one would be enough.

The dealer had given Venedikt a choice of warhead. After consultation with Dobrynin he had gone for the Penetration/Blast/Fragmentation warhead rather than the High Explosive Anti-Tank round. There was no armour to be penetrated, and the PBF had bunker-busting capability and in terms of destructive power over a wider area it was the surer option. The War Memorial would be destroyed, of course. Had it not been for the context, Venedikt would have baulked at this. But the symbolic power of such an outrage… it was almost as important that the Memorial fall as that the President be sacrificed.

The window was a wide one. The handshake was scheduled to take place at eight a.m. precisely. Even if there were a delay – Venedikt doubted it would take place ahead of time, these things never did – he had a radio link to the memorial site to guide him. The handshake would last a good few minutes for the benefit of the world’s cameras. Then the two leaders would step up to their podiums and deliver their respective speeches of hope. Perhaps twenty, thirty minutes in total. The missile travelled at a velocity of one hundred and fifty metres per second. Over ten kilometres, that amounted to a little more than one minute from firing to impact.

A wide window, indeed.

The Black Hawk was capable of a speed just under three hundred kilometres per hour. There was no reason to hurry, and Leok and Lyuba kept it at well below a third of the maximum velocity. Beyond the smudged rim of the horizon, past the fields and the treetops, Venedikt began to catch the glitter and shift of the sea.

*

Encased in his crowded coffin, aware of the pressing down of at least one human body on the lid, Purkiss felt the claustrophobia ram its suffocating fist down his throat. All that stopped him