Renegade, p.17
Renegade, page 17
Ryker balled his fists in his pockets. He could open the door, grab the guy, pull him out and turn the tables. Figure out who’d sent them, what they’d been told, find the answer as to who – if anyone – had been inside his home and what they’d taken.
No. There was simply no point. The very fact they were here told Ryker all he needed to know. If he wanted to keep going with this investigation, the only way forward was to slink away into the darkness.
Head down, he crossed over the road and walked into the convenience store that took up the bottom corner unit of his apartment building. He bought a pack of mints, eyes busy on the street outside. Nothing. No indication anyone was coming from the vehicles to intercept him.
He headed back out, glanced to the van and the car parked further along. He was in the clear. Ryker turned and casually walked away. He looked over his shoulder several times as he moved, but there was no one following him. Even so, ominous thoughts burrowed into his mind as he walked.
Was he kissing goodbye to James Ryker for good? Not that James Ryker was even his real name, but it was an identity that meant something to him. An identity he’d taken after he’d come through the other side of a dark life with the JIA. Before that, he’d been Carl Logan. James Ryker was a name that had marked hope and a new beginning.
But just like Logan’s existence, perhaps now James Ryker and the life that name represented was coming to an end.
The time was edging past 1am when Ryker emerged on a street in Islington that was lined with handsome five-storey Georgian terraces. He’d been here before, though not for some time, and he wasn’t sure he’d be overly welcome tonight. At this hour the street was quiet, no one in sight, even though the ever-bustling Islington High Street, with its bars and restaurants, was only a hundred yards away.
Ryker arrived at the steps to number twenty-six and headed up to the magnetically-locked doors. The vast majority of the houses on this street, and those around, had been broken up into multiple apartments over recent decades. This building was slightly unusual in that it contained only two apartments; the first two storeys and basement belonging to one, and the top three storeys to another.
Ryker didn’t head up the steps to the front door, instead moved around to the arched alleyway that led to the modest back gardens of twenty-six and its neighbour. Ryker scaled the gate, ignored the security light that clicked on, and confidently moved over to the fire escape at the back of the building. The security light soon turned off again without so much as a glimpse out of a window from anyone inside the nearby properties.
In the clear, Ryker continued up the metal staircase until he was pressed against the window – a restored wooden sash – for what he knew was the kitchen for 26b. On the inside of the window frame were two jammers to make it harder to jimmy the unit open, as well as a contact sensor linked to the home security system.
Not to worry, Ryker wasn’t going to open the window, as such.
He took the knife from his pocket and carefully drew it along the edges of the bottom pane of the window, all the way around, cutting underneath the outer wooden beading which he was then able to prise off. He next cut through the silicone sealant, the only thing still holding the glass unit in place before digging the blade in, beyond the wood frame and the glass, until the tip of the metal poked through on the inside. A gentle leverage was all that was then required to pop the sealed double-glazed unit from the window casing. Ryker carefully took the glass in his hands and laid it onto the metal gangway he was standing on.
Job done, he climbed inside.
The kitchen was quiet, and dark. Up in the corner of the room a little red light blinked away – an infra-red motion sensor detecting his every movement. That was fine. Ryker had foreseen this and planned ahead. A basic radio-signal jammer he’d bought earlier, tuned to the right frequency, was enough to ensure the wireless sensor could no longer communicate with its base station. Not that the system in this house wasn’t up to standard, it was simply that Ryker knew this place inside out, and how to exploit every weakness.
Ryker carried on through into the entrance hallway. The only other room on this floor was a grand living and eating area. He wasn’t going in there. On the middle floor were three bedrooms, and on the top floor another bedroom plus home office plus some other room which didn’t really have much of a function.
Moving as deftly as he could, Ryker headed up the stairs to the office. He left the lights off as he entered. There was no covering over the two skylights in here and the light of the moon was enough to show the basic layout, even if Ryker hadn’t known already.
A computer hummed away under a desk. Ryker headed for it and quietly eased himself into the sturdy leather chair. He fired up the computer, the desktop whirred and the screen flickered to life.
After a few seconds he was prompted for a password. Not a problem. He put in the password, and after setting up some basic security to mask his online presence here and on this machine, he was soon inputting his own credentials to gain entry to the government servers he had access to.
The government servers he used to have access to, at least. Because every single one of them was now locked.
Ryker angrily grit his teeth. This wasn’t exactly unexpected, yet it still riled to know that someone had actually taken the decision to make it happen. Kaspovich?
Ryker wondered whether his attempt at access had sent out an alert. Most likely yes. That was fine. Whoever was receiving that alert wouldn’t be able to pinpoint Ryker’s location. At least not until they’d done a lot of investigative work to peel back the layers he’d put in place to disguise the IP address he was using. He’d be long gone from here before then.
One more thing to try. Not his access details, but someone else’s.
Bingo. Ryker was in.
First things first. The picture from the building site. He found it in his cloud data and uploaded it to the facial recognition search facilities of over a dozen government organisations. The desktop chugged away and within minutes was spitting out results. Negative results mostly. But one database did have a hit on the man, although not the woman. An SIS database. SIS, the official title for what was more commonly known as MI6. The only problem was Ryker – or at least his host – didn’t have the right privileges to view the results.
Which was odd to say the least.
A dead end, though one that had given Ryker a lot to think about.
Next up was the information Ryker had gathered earlier in the day at Akkan’s warehouse or office or whatever that place was; the names of the people and various companies he’d seen paperwork and goods for.
His searches soon turned into something of a minefield, with vast networks of inter-linked companies and shell corporations. It was hard to fathom what many of them did and where ultimate ownership lay. Still, bit by bit, Ryker was able to hone the search until his area of focus was much narrower indeed. Although he wasn’t yet at the top of the chain, in many cases the data pointed to a group of companies in the Cayman Islands. One in particular cropped up multiple times, the cryptically named B56L.
The Cayman Islands, a tax haven, is a country notorious for its lack of publicly available data on companies incorporated there. Which was often the sole reason why so many millionaires and billionaires had dealings there. For the most part it was nearly impossible to identify the beneficial owners of Cayman Island entities. But Ryker wasn’t most people, and after some more searching and cross-referring he was staring at a recognisable, though entirely unexpected name.
Footsteps on the stairs. Quiet, someone treading carefully. No, not on the stairs, closer than that.
The door sprang open, the lights flicked on.
‘Ryker!’ Winter bellowed.
Ryker closed the browser screen, the name Bastian Fischer swimming in his mind.
33
‘What the fuck are you doing in my house?’ Winter blasted.
Ryker was a little taken aback. Not by the seething anger, but by the swearing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Winter curse, ever, and there’d certainly been plenty of times that warranted his doing so.
‘I asked you a question,’ Winter said.
‘There were MI5 agents outside my apartment,’ Ryker said. ‘And all my accounts are blocked. Seemed like a good place to come to find some answers.’
Winter stepped in and gently pushed the door to, then moved a little closer. He was being quiet, despite his initial outburst.
‘Mrs W in?’
‘Of course she is. It’s one in the morning. How dare you come here like this.’
‘What choice did you leave me?’
‘Choice? Don’t you try to put any of this on me!’
Ryker glared at Winter who stared right back.
‘Moreno’s gone,’ Ryker said. He looked for a tell in Winter’s face. Any reaction at all that would give away that this wasn’t news to the Commander. He saw nothing. Other than the anger which remained.
‘What do you mean gone?’
‘As in she’s not at the hospital anymore. And I think someone took her.’
Ryker briefly explained the situation. Moreno’s mystery visitors. What he’d seen on the CCTV. Winter’s anger slowly subsided, though he didn’t say a word.
‘A cool head, Ryker, that’s the most important thing right now,’ Winter eventually spoke after a tense few moments of silence.
‘No,’ Ryker said. ‘The most important thing now is to find who took her and make them pay.’
‘Is it? Or is the most important thing to find Moreno and make sure she’s okay?’
Surely that didn’t even need to be said, Ryker thought. But then again, why hadn’t those words come from his lips? Why was it the thought of revenge that dominated his mind?
Perhaps because he’d been here before. Too many times in the past those closest to Ryker had wound up missing and dead, so it wasn’t a leap to think it was already too late for Moreno. He would always blame himself for the mistakes he’d made, for those who’d lost their lives in the past because of him, and while he couldn’t bear the thought that Moreno was now another life gone too soon because of him, he was damn sure that he’d avenge her if it came to that.
But Winter was right. Finding Moreno alive, was the priority.
‘How on earth did they manage to hack into the CCTV system like that?’ Winter said.
It was a good question. Not that Ryker felt it was that impressive a feat – he was sure he could have done the same. The point was he wasn’t most people. This wasn’t random, this wasn’t some bunch of idiots. Whoever had taken Moreno was clever, conniving.
‘This has to be related to Parker.’ Ryker saw no other explanation.
Winter raised an eyebrow. ‘Just because that’s the obvious explanation, doesn’t mean it’s the only one. Or the right one.’
‘I’ve been under surveillance ever since the Parker meet went tits-up on Monday.’
‘By who?’
Now it was Ryker’s turn to give Winter a scathing look. ‘Well there’s a good question.’
‘You’re blaming me?’ Winter looked genuinely offended.
‘JIA. MI5. The list of people who do this sort of thing isn’t long.’
Winter seemed to mull it over, and didn’t bite back. Did he know something?
‘Honestly, I think you’re reaching,’ he said eventually.
‘Plus there’re the two spooks I saw Moreno with last night.’
‘Two spooks? You know that how?’
Ryker huffed but didn’t say anything to that.
‘Moreno is still officially on the payroll of MI6, you know,’ Winter said. ‘There’s nothing suspicious about her getting visits from colleagues.’
‘That’s not what this was. She would have told me.’
Now Winter looked really dubious.
‘Ryker, she’s a spy. I know you two are close, in many ways I think you two were made for each other, like bloody peas in a pod or something, but do you really think she’s always going to tell you everything?’
Ryker still said nothing.
‘Anyway, this is beside the point,’ Winter continued. ‘The point is, she’s gone, and–’
‘And I’m going to find out who took her. My way.’
Winter sighed and looked away. ‘Ryker, you can’t go on like this. The world has moved on from twenty years ago.’
‘I’ve no idea what you mean by that.’
‘Then listen. This case. Parker, Yedlin, Akkan, Moreno, if she’s even linked to this at all. I’ll admit I don’t know everything, and I’ll admit that MI5 and others aren’t being entirely forthcoming, but you have to see how badly this is playing out. The media are all over what’s going on. The three dead guys in the Range Rover, the dead guys in that garage, there’s footage of it all over the internet, and the conspiracy nuts are jumping on it big time. But conspiracy nuts aren’t what they used to be. Many of them are now legitimate commentators. The mainstream press are even starting to question what the hell is going on in the nation’s intelligence services, and why everything related to these deaths is being kept so hush-hush.’
‘Then why isn’t it being buried? Some smokescreen story so it all goes away.’
‘It’s not that simple anymore. I hate to say it, Ryker... you’re putting a lot of people in jeopardy. MI5 made this happen, but everyone has been told to disassociate from you because–’
‘I’m a liability?’
Winter didn’t need to reply. Perhaps he was right. The world was moving on. The actions of governments, police, armed forces, intelligence services were so much more in the public spotlight than at any point in history. But that didn’t mean that Ryker should or would just slink away.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not done. I will figure this out, and I will get Moreno back.’
Winter looked exasperated. ‘Have you processed a single word I’ve said?’
Ryker looked back to the computer screen. ‘The pair who visited Moreno–’
‘Ryker, haven’t we done this one already?’
‘Have we? The CCTV footage the night Moreno vanished is gone. But so is the footage from when those two showed up.’
‘So you’re saying they’re the ones who took Moreno?’
‘That’s more plausible than there being two sets of people who could gain access to the hospital’s security system and doctor footage in exactly the same way.’
Winter didn’t say anything, which confirmed Ryker’s point.
‘Then–’
‘Are you seriously suggesting that MI6 have kidnapped Moreno?’
‘No,’ he said after a few moments. ‘But I am saying someone in MI6, or maybe MI5, can give us answers. The thing is, I found their faces.’
‘Who?’
‘The man and the woman. The CCTV footage was erased, but I still got them.’
‘How?’
‘Doesn’t matter. The man, he shows up in SIS’s–’
‘Ryker, what are you doing?’ His exasperation was clear.
‘Why would his profile be locked? To you?’
‘Because this is nothing to do with me! Or you!’
Ryker shook his head.
‘Tell me about Bastian Fischer.’
Silence.
Not good.
‘You know who Fischer is, right?’
‘Of course I know the name,’ Winter retorted. ‘He’s not exactly a recluse.’
‘No. He’s not. And he’s a multi-billionaire. One of the richest men in Europe, probably in the world. How is he involved in all this?’
‘Who says he’s involved?’
‘I do.’
Winter shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Ryker, I can’t help you with this.’
‘No, you could help me. The problem is that you won’t.’
‘And it’s not because I doubt that you’d do what needs to be done. But at what cost?’
A very strange answer indeed. Winter wasn’t even trying to hide he knew more than he was telling.
There was a faint thud downstairs. Both men paused. Ryker got to his feet.
‘Peter?’ came the questioning voice, drifting up the stairs.
Winter relaxed a little. ‘Coming, honey. Sorry, just replying to a message.’
‘At 1am?’ she shouted. ‘Idiot!’
Ryker stifled a laugh. Winter took the reprimand on the chin. Clearly it was a common enough occurrence.
The upbeat moment didn’t last for Ryker. He checked his watch. He’d been here too long. Given the way this conversation had gone, there was a good chance Winter had already somehow sent out an alert and Ryker didn’t fancy another confrontation tonight.
‘Last chance. What do you know that you’re not telling me?’ Ryker demanded.
Winter paused, as if trying to decide if he would open up or not.
‘All I know is that sometimes it’s best to walk away.’
Ryker shook his head, disappointed. ‘That’s not good enough for me.’
‘You’re not the guardian of the world, Ryker, and one way or another, everything you think you’re stumbling across will get figured out. The right way. But I’m asking you, as a friend, to stop. Before you go so far that even I can’t pull you out.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Then I think this is it between us. And I truly do mean that. I can’t have you put not just my job, but my whole life at risk.’
‘Your whole life has been at risk every damn day you’ve worked for the JIA. I don’t see why this is any different.’
Winter said nothing as he stepped aside from the doorway.
Ryker moved forward, eyes locked with Winter’s. He paused. There was so much left to say, but he couldn’t find the words.
He said nothing, just walked away.
34
At least she wasn’t in the basement. Not yet. She was in room ten. A formal and functional room that wouldn’t have looked out of place as a conference room in a modern office block, with a large, oval glass table, black leather chairs and grey walls and carpets. Except this wasn’t a conference. Haan was seated on a chair by the window, pulled away from the table. She wasn’t cuffed or tied down or anything like that, but this certainly felt more like an interrogation than a friendly discussion, even more so than the last time.
