Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) by Adrian Magson Read Free Book Online

find her. Correction –
you
need to find her. If she’s out there too long, she’ll get scooped up. I’d rather that didn’t happen.’
    Harry felt a needle of cynicism. ‘You’re all at it, aren’t you? Secrets within secrets. Who are you protecting?’
    Ballatyne brushed the comment aside. ‘I’m not. Unlike the others, I cleared Jardine’s treatment in that unit with higher authorities. But placing a targeted Russian – and a former FSB man at that – in the same hospital was certifiably insane.’
    ‘Are you worried about her safety?’ Harry knew what Clare was capable of. ‘She’s no school kid. And she stayed under cover perfectly fine before she got herself shot.’
    ‘As you say, that was before she got shot and because she wasn’t important enough for us to go looking seriously. Now she’s walking wounded and it does matter, because on the one hand she’s a useful scapegoat in the event of an enquiry, and on the other they’ll want to stop her blabbing about what she saw or heard.’ He looked sombre. ‘I mean it, Harry; our people aren’t going to mess about. They’ll put some sub-contract ex-military attack dogs from one of the more iffy agencies on her trail until they get her. And if the people who knocked off Tobinskiy are still out there and looking to do the same, she’s as good as stuffed.’
    ‘Russians, you mean.’
    ‘Who else? Nobody else cared about him. I don’t have a line on who they are because it doesn’t really matter. But I’ll bet they’ve got the FSB oath of allegiance tattooed inside their eyelids.’
    ‘Why should they care about Clare? If it was a Moscow hit team they’ll be long gone by now.’
    ‘Maybe. Thing is, she might have heard something, put two and two together. And after the Litvinenko scandal, the last thing Moscow needs is someone leaping out of the woodwork proving they’re a ruthless bunch of bastards who’d murder a helpless man in his hospital bed to stop him talking.’
    Harry pushed his coffee away. He had a feeling Ballatyne was being unusually frank about Clare. Rik had already come up against one brick wall on the HM Prison Service transfers database, but was currently trying other ways in. Unless her name had been deliberately kept off any official list, she must have gone to ground for her own reasons.
    ‘So you want me to find her?’
    ‘No. I don’t.’
    Harry was surprised. ‘Then what are we doing here?’
    ‘We’re not. We didn’t speak, you haven’t seen me.’ He swept a hand out. ‘None of this took place. If you say it did, I’ll have you taken out and shot.’
    It explained the absent minders. Ballatyne was being very discreet.
    ‘So this is off the books?’
    ‘So far off, it’s on the other side of nowhere.’ Ballatyne looked grim. ‘I’m not kidding, Harry. You and I don’t know each other.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give me your mobile.’
    Harry did so, and Ballatyne keyed in a number and handed it back.
    ‘That’s how you contact me, but by text message only. It’s an untraceable number. If you need to speak, say so and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’
    Harry stared at him. He had never known Ballatyne to be so cautious before. Whatever was worrying the MI6 man had to be internal – something that he couldn’t talk about. Whatever it was, to be using ‘black’ phones and numbers, it was serious.
    ‘Find Jardine and make it toot-bloody-sweet,’ Ballatyne concluded. ‘If only to prove I wasn’t wrong in putting her in that hospital in the first place. I’ll work out a way of paying reasonable expenses, but it’ll be right under the counter, so keep the costs down.’
    Harry nodded. ‘In that case I’ll start here and now. First off, I’d like some clear photos from her personnel file, in case we need to show them around.’
    ‘Agreed. What else?’
    ‘Her home address. I doubt she’ll go back there, but it’s a start.’
    ‘You’d be wasting your time. She sold her flat