Wazz was digesting all of this while watching as Diego – in one of the views on Wazz’s screen – was standing under a palm tree, talking to a delivery van driver just outside the gates.
He eventually replied, “Where do I start? Let’s leave you working for the CIA until we have an hour together with nothing better to talk about. Top of my list at the moment is where the threat to Charles and his family is coming from. From what I’ve read online, Johnny Musselwhite was poisoned by Russian agents. If these are the people after Charles, then this is above my pay grade.”
“Mine too, probably. Wazz, do you have a couple of mates who can come here and help? And I don’t mean any deadbeat you eat with in a tapas bar down by the sea.”
There was a level of genuine hurt in Wazz’s eyes, but he reflected for a moment before speaking. “Actually, I know a half-dozen people around here whom I would trust with my life, including Diego. What you’ve said is really insulting. None of us would eat in a tapas bar by the beach. We eat in Italian restaurants up on the main drag.” His smile broadened.
“Can you get four of them to come over … discreetly?” she requested. “No screaming from the rooftops.”
“Will Charles pay?”
“Yes, he earns enough to cover it in the time it takes me to stand up. I’m going to see him next before Maria and Angelica arrive. In the unlikely event that Charles puts up any resistance, I’ll get the money from Maria, and that will cost Charles a hundred times more.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He no longer could smell the contents of the bucket or his dried sweat as he had grown so accustomed to them. The limited exercise routine that he had devised was both to keep him physically fit and to stop himself from going mad. His programme had to be based on whatever he could manage using the floor, wall, chain and iron ring – all such activities were limited by the length of the chain. Every couple of hours, or what he guessed to be a couple of hours, he would do a series of pull-ups, chin-ups, handstands and yoga positions. By sunset each day, he knew how wrong he had been with his estimation of two hourly intervals. Some days he did his routine six times and other days eight.
The frequent visits by the rat had become a welcome distraction and a form of entertainment. He now purposely held back some bones to see how close the rat would venture. He had also tried over several days to fashion a small piece of goat bone into a very crude key by rubbing it on the stone floor, but this was never going to work. It might be more useful as a stiletto blade, but that, too, was fanciful thinking. What was the point of trying to stab one of his captors while still chained to a wall? This would just bring on retribution from the other one or from both.
He had speculated long and hard about why he was being held and for so long – there was precious little else to do. They were keeping him alive for a reason. He must have some value to them, but for what? He killed another fly and threw it into the bucket six feet away. This was his favourite sport after tempting and teasing the rat. Why was one day more important than the next? What were they waiting for?
He had come to the conclusion that the only thing it was likely to be was the G20 meeting in Marrakech. Having lost track of the days, he wasn’t sure when this was.
One other thing was bothering him. Why had they not tried to find out what he had been up to and why? Did they already know and so didn’t need to ask? Or did they think he was genuinely an American gas exploration geologist based in Spain, who was interested in meeting people from the Western Sahara. Was he simply a convenient American to kidnap, and then what?
These thoughts led him to think about his bosses. Surely the CIA was looking for him? It had been weeks now. The thought made him despondent; therefore, he killed another fly and took aim at the bucket.
Brendan had watched, with quiet satisfaction, the white vans leave the gates of the Yelland estate and drive off up the road.
At last, his project was back on track. Killing someone in their hotel room and stealing their laptop was not the most difficult task to be given, especially as he had a large team at his disposal and had been hiding in plain sight at the British Embassy in Paris. Johnny’s laptop, however, hadn’t contained the expected data, and the French police had been less than efficient (or, perhaps, too efficient?). The need for Brendan to blow his cover by getting overtly involved was a high cost, but Walter Flushing had needed to be removed and his laptop or devices recovered. The memory card had revealed nothing; it was empty. Brendan knew, however, that Charles Yelland was at the heart of the whole dilemma. He needed to be encouraged into falling in line and as quickly as possible.
Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan, and sometimes, everything falls into your lap. The fact that Charles’s wife and daughter had flown back from Mexico was an unexpected blessing; they had been outside any plan. Things have a habit of providing opportunities to the winners. Brendan now had the means to apply pressure on Charles Yelland in a controlled way.
He was in the safe house, a cottage a few miles north-west of the M25 in Hertfordshire. When Maria and her daughter Angelica were delivered to him, he would be able to force Charles to do what he wanted. He walked up to a window in the lounge and peered out, all he could hear was the honking of geese flying overhead on their way to or from one of the local reservoirs. The cottage was hidden by hedgerows and large trees on two sides and surrounded on the other two by old brick-built sheds and outhouses; it wasn’t overlooked.
He settled down to enjoy the rest of the film on TV – they would only be another twenty minutes.
The film’s plot became ever more obvious, and Brendan didn’t mind whether he saw the ending or not. In fact, the credits were speeding across the screen as he heard the engine of a van outside. He turned the TV off and walked to the kitchen door.
His colleagues, dressed in black, drew back the sliding door and pulled out the two handcuffed captives, each wearing a hood over her head with tape beneath it across her mouth. The two women were manhandled into the cottage and carried upstairs to one of the bedrooms.
Charles took the call beneath the white dome of the echoing atrium. This meant that several people could hear his side of the conversation.
“Charles Yelland,” he said, and then he sat himself down on a carved wooden bench that had come from some castle near Santiago de Compostela.
“Mr Yelland, we have your wife and daughter. Listen to me carefully and nothing will happen to them. Do you understand?” Brendan was speaking very clearly from a secure phone.
Charles, for his part, was experiencing a form of déjà vu. “What? Who are you?” Charles had not twigged that this was Inspector Maslen, whom he had spoken to a few days earlier.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. In fifteen minutes, I’m going to phone back, and when I do, I’ll give you an email address. You’ll be waiting and ready to send me the file covering the details of the PEGASUS contract that you have set up with Johnny Musselwhite. Do you understand?”
“What’s so special about PEGASUS?”
“Don’t you worry about that. May I suggest that you worry about your wife and daughter?” Brendan’s voice was at its coldest. “We know what you’ve been proposing under cover of the gas pipeline. You’ll send me everything, and I mean everything, related to PEGASUS and all parties concerned. Again, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll then announce to the world that the PEGASUS project is dead and buried. You and everyone party to the project will forget all about it. If you try to resurrect it, your family will die like Johnny Musselwhite. I repeat, do you understand?”
“You aren’t giving me any option.”
“Well done, Charles, so you do understand. Now find the contract on your system, and remember that, if you conveniently leave anything out, your family will die. In fifteen minutes, I’ll give you an email address, and you’ll send me the contract that you have with Johnny and the other parties. Simple?”
The line went dead.
Upstairs, Mike was trying to digest what she had heard. She came down the stairs to find Charles staring at his phone as if he had discovered that he was holding a fly whisk.
“Charles,” she said on stepping from the bottom step.
“Did that just happen?” He was still staring at the phone.
“Did what just happen? I only heard your half of the conversation.”
“I’ve just been blackmailed again,” he said.
