The Hostage by Duncan Falconer Read Free Book Online Page A

Healy replied as if talking to a child.
    ‘Like what?’ Tommy asked, lighting a new cigarette with his old one.
    Healy would normally prefer not to get into a conversation with any person who had a single digit IQ, as this one obviously had, but when it came to his work he could talk about it to anyone who would listen. ‘Well, there’s tone for one,’ he said. ‘You can hear urgency, or lack of it. You can sometimes tell if it’s just casual communication or if it’s important, such as an operation. And you can tell, more or less, how many people are on the network. That’s quite a lot of useful information in the right hands.’
    Tommy stared at Healy unconvinced. ‘Sounds like a load of bollocks to me.’
    ‘Which is why you only get to operate that nice big wheel in the front of the van and I get to play with all these little ones in the back,’ Healy said with a genuine enough smile. Healy had long since got used to spending his time with thickoes; wherever he worked he always had a driver or bodyguard and it was too much to expect anyone from that stratum to have any intelligence.
    Healy first arrived on the scene in the seventies, a cocky, arrogant genius, bragging he could crack any code if he was given the time and equipment and volunteering his services to the IRA. That was in the days before secure scrambled communications. The IRA was willing to take a chance on him and gave him the money, the time and the place in which to prove himself: Belfast. He was as good as his word and within a year had successfully cracked the codes used by Britain’s most elite Northern Ireland undercover group, compiling lists of vehicles, number plates, photographs of operatives and the codes for every important location in the province. In the back of Healy’s mind he knew there was a good chance he would get caught eventually. In fact, as the prison psychologist said, from the start he really wanted to be caught because he craved the acknowledgement of his genius. After he was arrested he was all too ready to crow to the British, offering to show them how to prevent against any such future technical invasions. Didn’t the Americans employ German geniuses after the Second World War? How naïve he was to think they would forgive him, let alone ask him to join them. He never got over the shock of the public trial and the ten-year jail sentence. He was released after six years, a marked man and with any hope of a career in Western intelligence in tatters. If there was any solace he might gain from his circumstances, it was that it was due to his success in breaking the British military codes that the new secure communication system he was listening to at that moment had been introduced.
    Another garbled transmission came from the speakers. Healy frowned as he concentrated on it. Then he smiled, nodding in recognition and self-satisfaction as he jotted something down on a piece of paper. Tommy leaned over to read what Healy had written.
    ‘Mary? Who’s Mary?’
    ‘It’s a voice,’ Healy replied. ‘Listen to the transmissions long enough and you start to recognise different voices.That was Mary. I’m certain it was. She’s been with the detachment almost a year now.’
    ‘How do you know her name is Mary?’ asked Tommy, looking confused.
    ‘I don’t.That’s just the name I’ve given her.’ Healy adjusted some controls on his panel. ‘And by the signal strength I’d say she was getting closer.’ He then checked his watch, curious about something. ‘There’s one element missing,’ he said, more to himself.
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Tommy.
    ‘I’d have thought it would be up by now. A bit slow. Which is good, I suppose.’
    ‘What’s slow?’ Tommy asked, a little annoyed at being ignored.
    Healy looked at him as if just remembering Tommy was in the van with him. ‘The helicopter,’ he said.
     
    Stratton drove at speed along the airbase access road and arrived at a collection of long, narrow