2016 - Takedown by Stephen Leather

Author:Stephen Leather [Leather, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-12-13T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 36

Passport checks were little more than cursory on Eurostar and Harper’s Sean O’Donnell Irish passport was merely glanced at. He had a business-class ticket so had a free meal on the train and even managed a cat-nap before arriving at the St Pancras terminal. From there he caught a taxi to Paddington and reached the mailbox centre in Praed Street at three o’clock in the afternoon. He showed his Sean O’Donnell passport to the shop assistant, a tall Eastern European brunette with pale blue eyes. She handed over the padded envelope that had arrived by courier from Charlotte Button. Harper paid her and left.

He waited until he was back in his hotel before opening the package. There was a small key and the business card of a Birmingham safe-deposit company with a nine-digit identification number on the back. He put the key and the card into his hip-pack, then spent half an hour wandering around Bayswater making sure he wasn’t being followed before catching a black cab to the ops room.

Hansfree was ecstatic. McGovan had apparently moved up a gear and over the past three hours had met with two more Yankees. Hansfree had housed them both – they were low-level jihadi agitators with criminal records who were already known to the authorities.

‘How’s he doing the recruiting?’ asked Harper. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’

‘Maybe someone else is pointing them at him,’ said Hansfree. ‘They go to him and not vice versa. ISIS sleepers, maybe. Sent here over the past few years and waiting to be activated. By McGovan. Or maybe for McGovan.’

Harper agreed. ‘Maybe he doesn’t do the initiating. They’re told to contact him and he gives them their instructions. Makes sense.’

‘I’m worried by how poor he is at anti-surveillance,’ said Hansfree. ‘He should be better than this, a lot better.’

‘Why worry?’ Harper said. ‘It just makes him easier to follow.’

‘Exactly, but if he’s that careless, it suggests that either he’s not as good as we thought he was, or he isn’t close to going operational. If he was, he’d be taking a lot more care. But however unprofessional and careless he appears to be, we still can’t afford to relax for an instant. If he suddenly switches on and we’re not on our game, the whole operation could be blown. We’ve already worked much too hard and invested too much time to let that happen.’

Hansfree was right. ‘I get the feeling you have a suggestion,’ Harper said.

Hansfree grinned. ‘More people,’ he said. ‘More feet on the ground.’

‘I’m reluctant to increase the size of the team.’

‘Lex, we don’t have any choice. We’re way too stretched as it is.’

Harper sighed. Again, Hansfree was right. And to make matters worse, he was going to have to go to Birmingham the following day on Button’s errand. ‘I’m guessing you have a suggestion, name-wise.’

‘I’ve got a few people I can call, Lex. All first rate, all reliable, all prepared to work on a daily rate of a grand a shift.’

‘They’d have to be reliable.

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