Crooked Shadow (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 12) by Andy Maslen

Author:Andy Maslen [Maslen, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tyton Press
Published: 2021-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

32

Gabriel and Tara were on the road out of Belgrade by 7.45 a.m. the next morning. The A-1 meandered northwest for seventy-five miles through a fertile agricultural plain. Vast fields of sunflowers and maize bordered the motorway, stretching to the horizon.

‘How are we going to do this?’ she asked, pushing her seat all the way back and then sticking her booted feet up on the dashboard.

‘Get to Ponting?’

‘Yes.’

‘We need to make a positive ID first. The picture isn’t bad, but it’s not enough. I don’t want to target the wrong guy.’

‘So how do we do that?’

‘After we find somewhere discreet to stay, we check out the residential area Osman told us about: Paragovo.’

‘And how do we do that without arousing suspicion? We can’t just loiter around the place pretending to be tourists, can we?’

‘Osman said it’s very upmarket, right? Lots of footballers, celebrities, that type. So, you’ll be a Chinese movie star and I’ll be your agent. Call it a variation on a theme. We’re looking for somewhere you can rent while you’re making a film.’

‘In Serbia?’

‘Why not? It’s a spy film set in the Cold War. We’ll say Serbia is standing in for Soviet Russia.’

She turned to him and grinned. ‘That’s actually not bad.’

‘Thank you! I thought of it all on my own.’

‘And then what? Full-frontal assault or stealth attack?’

‘Two of us versus ten or more loyal soldiers plus more on tap? I’d say option two.’

‘How?’

‘Not sure yet. Ideally, I’d like to draw him out, get him away from his men.’

‘That won’t be easy. Men like him like to surround themselves with protection at all times. Fang did.’

‘True. But we still got to him, didn’t we?’

‘We did. But if I hadn’t realised you were my brother, I would have killed you instead of Fang.’

Gabriel rolled his head on his shoulders. He pulled out to overtake a flatbed truck overloaded with bales of straw. Loose pieces were swirling in its slipstream as Gabriel floored the throttle to pass it.

‘Let’s find him first, then we’ll come up with a plan to extract him.’

‘And you still want to kill him, not take him back to the UK and hand him over to the police?’

‘Listen, Tara,’ Gabriel said, finding it surprisingly easy to use his sister’s given name. ‘If I thought we’d get justice – for you, for Michael, for Mum and Dad – then, sure, I’d say let’s make a citizen’s arrest or whatever they call it out here and find a way to get him out of Serbia and into the UK. But then what? We’d have to make a complaint first. The police would have to investigate it and they’d only arrest him if they found enough evidence to suspect him on the kidnapping. How’s that going to happen after so many years? And even if they did arrest him, the chances of the Crown Prosecution Service agreeing to try him are tiny. And— ’

Tara interrupted before he could go any further.

‘I get it, BB, I get it! Then he’d have to be tried.

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