Angelica looked up and turned towards the sea below them. “Is that Marrakech?”
“No, that’s Morocco. Marrakech is in Morocco but an hour away by plane.”
“Why don’t you go?” She looked back down at her phone.
“I’m seriously thinking of flying out there this afternoon now the three of you are safe. If I go, you will listen to Wazz, won’t you?”
Angelica raised her head, took a drink of water and stared at Mike. “Why does everyone treat me like a child?”
Mike was about to reply when her phone vibrated on the table. She picked it up. “Leonard.”
“Wait while I turn the brightness down,” he said.
“Wait while I turn the screen off.”
“Hey, I bought this new tie especially.”
“Did you keep the receipt?”
“I’m gonna retie it. I got dressed real early this morning.”
“Are you in the office already?”
Angelica stood up, grabbed her water bottle and walked back inside, mumbling something about being in prison.
“Yes, I was called in. When POTUS is about to fly across the pond, everyone gets twitchy. Have you been to Marrakech yet?” Leonard asked.
“I’m going today. I’m just about to book a flight.”
“Great. The last thing I need is our friend Ramon Ramirez muddying the waters while POTUS is in town.”
“I’m more interested in finding him safe and well.”
“That too. By the way, I have some intel for you, but don’t let it stop you being ‘Morocco-bound’; you know, like Webster’s dictionary?”
“I know the song, Leonard. What’s the intel?” She put the last piece of croissant in her mouth and brushed a flake off of the table.
“Five Eyes has just been briefed on the poisoning and stuff in France. The Brits are chasing their collective ass all over the place. It seems that one of their spooks in the Paris embassy, Brendan Dowell, is in the frame for the poisoning of their minister and the shooting of a lackey who was helping out down there. Apparently, this Dowell has disappeared somewhere in the UK. You’ll be interested because he was travelling on a Moroccan passport in the name of Habib Bennani. He flew back from Basel to London after shooting Walter Flushing.” Leonard waited for his bombshell to drop. He began to undo the knot in his tie.
“Surely he’s not Moroccan?”
“Nah, this smells like the Russkies to me. The passport is just smoke and mirrors. The Russkies are best buddies with the Algerians so they really want to wind up the Moroccans, you know, while the G20 is on.”
“The Russians really don’t want this PEGASUS pipeline, do they?”
“Probably not; they want Europe freezing and dependent on their gas or paying big bucks for it.”
Mike was still catching up on some of the implications. “So this Brendan Dowell killed Walter Flushing?”
“He tried to. The Brits are keeping it quiet, but this Walter guy is in intensive care under armed guard.”
“Thanks for the intel, Leonard; I appreciate it.”
“Now book that flight to Marrakech and find out what you can. Ring me quick. I need to redo this tie again. The back bit is twice the length of the front.” With that, he rang off.
Mike jumped up and made her way back to her room. Coincidences; we don’t do coincidences. Unlike Leonard, Mike wasn’t fixated on Russia. It was Morocco that was uppermost in her mind. A ‘Brit’ using a Moroccan passport shoots Walter and a ‘Brit’ who telephones Charles is using a Moroccan email address. Both these ‘Brits’ appeared not to want PEGASUS to go ahead. Were they the same man? The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that was the case.
Mike would find it hard to describe how elated and how pumped-up she felt once she had something tangible to which she could apply her skills. She fired up her laptop and attached all of her peripheral equipment that would aid her in her searches. Firstly, she booked a Vueling flight from Málaga to Marrakech, leaving in four hours, which gave her a couple of hours to find Brendan or Habib Bennani, depending on whom he was exactly. Secondly, she booked a room at the Riad des Tailleurs, the riad where Randy might be. She did this in her own name. Randy would have used the surname Ramirez, which meant that they wouldn’t make the connection.
With a big intake of breath, she began her search for Brendan Dowell.
It took her fifteen minutes to find his flight to Heathrow from Basel in the name of Habib Bennani. She saved the details in case she needed to track him from the arrivals lounge at Heathrow to his safe house. This was something she didn’t want to do and something she expected that the police and secret services were already doing with their extensive manpower. She hacked into an account that provided her with the address he gave when booking the ticket. Unsurprisingly, it was false, but it’s essential to eliminate the obvious first.
She accessed Charles’s second phone, the one with the notifications from the security system at his estate, Beswick Manor. She watched the various sequences as the two white vans arrived, the building was entered, and the two hostages were bundled into the vehicles. She made a note of the registration numbers, but she didn’t expect these to lead anywhere. Most importantly, she made a note of the exact time that they drove out.
On Charles’s other phone, Mike looked at the exact time that Brendan, if it was him, had telephoned. Next, she started to play the percentage game. Of course, Brendan could have used any means of transport – in which case, the hostages might be anywhere in most of West London or South East England – but he was unlikely to do that. What were the average times, rates, speeds, etc. for the two vans, assuming that he would want five minutes with the kidnapped mother and daughter in the house in case he needed to prove they were in his control and, perhaps, to be photographed?
It was twenty-six minutes from the kidnap before he called Charles. Allowing one minute for them to clear the estate and five minutes at his end to get them into their room, that meant the vans had travelled for approximately twenty minutes. They wouldn’t have broken any speed limits or drawn attention to themselves – this was a golden rule. Being aware of the general area, she knew they were unlikely to exceed an average of thirty miles per hour, probably less. That meant they were within a circle with a ten-mile radius. However, as was quite evident, they had turned left out of the gates of the Manor, and this theoretically reduced the circle by half. Again, this might mean nothing in reality, but they were unlikely to turn back in some act of deception with the attendant risk of being in the vicinity of the Manor for even longer.
Using a piece of town-planning software that she had modified, her computer calculated the area accessible by the local road network at that speed and in that time frame. Her screen revealed a kidney-shaped area, mostly composed of parts of east Buckinghamshire and a small part of south Hertfordshire. She unconsciously held her breath when she hit the button that would reveal the number of households.
Her screened showed 42,133. Her heart sank, but she tried to encourage herself, as she had searched much, much bigger areas over the years. Come on, she told herself, there are 19 million households in the UK; it could have been much worse. You can do this.
She began by removing all properties with only one bedroom, all properties with outstanding council tax bills, all properties with children of school age and so on, until she had applied over forty factors that weren’t likely to be applicable to a safe house that might be used by Brendan. Three-quarters of an hour later, she was down to 127 properties.
Mike had an hour before she needed to leave for the airport. It was at this point that Inez tapped her door and brought in pizza with two bottles of ice-cold beer. Inez left with a broad smile on her face.
With a slice of margherita pizza in one hand, Mike began to click through the list of properties, selecting the view via satellite from above. Now she was flying by the seat of her pants. It was more about feeling rather than fact. Was the property overlooked? Did it have a long, shared drive? Was it next to a garage or business that would have CCTV outside? She quickly put each property into one of two virtual piles: likely and unlikely. Nearing her hundredth property, she had a breakthrough. A large brick cottage with outbuildings that wasn’t overlooked and was away from the road caught her eye – or rather, a white van caught her eye. It was impossible to see any registration plate from this view vertically above, but it was of the same type as those used in the kidnap and there was room for another in the garage alongside. She forced herself to continue checking and finished up with twelve possibilities – of which, the one with the white van was leaping out at her.
