Assassins Retribution Read online

  Assassins Retribution

  The English Spy Mystery series

  Rachel Amphlett

  Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Amphlett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Untitled

  From the Author

  One

  Prague, Czech Republic

  * * *

  ‘Why are we back here?’

  Nathan shivered, shoved his hands into the pockets of his three-quarter-length wool coat, and turned to Eva.

  She kept her eyes on the building across the river from where they stood, and tried to ignore the freezing wind that lifted off the water and assaulted her face.

  ‘Because this is where it all began,’ she said. ‘Douglas’s murder. Me, going into hiding. Everything.’

  She squinted as a taxi boat shot past, the bright morning sunshine reflecting off its windows, then blinked to clear the temporary blindness.

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous? Look at what happened at the gallery when we were here. Surely there are people waiting for you to return?’

  She saw his hand reach to his shoulder as he spoke, and lowered her gaze. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here. Hot drinks.’

  Decker approached, his large hands clasped around three takeout cups from a café further up the street.

  Eva took one of them gratefully, savouring the sweet taste of the hot chocolate as she continued her observation of the house that had once housed the head of the British government’s science and innovation delegation in Prague, Douglas Bolton.

  She hadn’t heard of him when she was working for the Section – she simply hadn’t been involved in politics, even if she had been used by the politicians, or at least the people that really ruled the British government.

  Her life before Prague had been one of solitude, her path only crossing with Decker’s six months before the debacle that had been the engineer’s defection, and she hadn’t known about his being Douglas’s brother until the diplomat himself had ventured the information one night.

  They had lain in bed, curled up together after their first passionate encounter, Douglas smoothing her hair away from her face and telling her that he knew who she was, what she was, and how his family was connected to her.

  She’d sat bolt upright, clutching the sheets around her, horrified that the Caretaker had spoken about her so openly, and wondering who else he had brokered the information with.

  Douglas had managed to calm her, smoothing his hands over her shoulders, coaxing her back to his pillow before telling her that Decker had only mentioned her because he’d seen her entering the embassy with his brother, and had an enormous amount of respect for the diminutive assassin.

  And now, it seemed that Douglas had played them all, committing treason and selling secrets to the highest bidder.

  She swallowed, pushing the thought to the back of her mind, and forced herself to focus.

  ‘So, like I said, why come back?’ said Nathan.

  ‘I’m trying to view it from a killer’s perspective. The engineer’s assassination, I can understand.’

  Nathan choked on his drink, and beat his fist against his chest.

  She shrugged. ‘Sorry. It’s what I do. What I used to do.’

  ‘I still haven’t got used to the idea yet. Go on, though.’

  ‘If I were Maxim, I’d definitely want the engineer silenced. And, as diabolical as you’ll think it, I’d also have killed his wife, erring on the side of caution in case the engineer spoke about his work to her.’

  ‘We also need to consider the possibility she was involved,’ said Decker. ‘Especially if we work on the assumption that the engineer was testing the antidote on their kids.’

  ‘Good point.’

  Nathan shivered. ‘Some family they were. What a hellish legacy to leave your kids.’

  Eva turned her back on the river to face them. ‘But I still don’t understand why Douglas was killed. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It does if he was sacrificed,’ said Decker. He held up his hand to stop her interrupting. ‘What if someone in the Section was doing a deal, and it went wrong?’

  ‘What sort of deal?’

  ‘To sell the engineer and his secrets to the highest bidder. Or back to his paymasters.’

  ‘The Russians?’

  Decker shrugged. ‘The Cold War only ended on paper, Crowe. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.’

  ‘Who else would have wanted the antidote?’ said Eva.

  ‘Anyone and everyone,’ said Decker. ‘Especially here in Europe. The British, the Germans – the Americans would have a vested interest in anything that happens over here, too, especially if it’d threaten their own security. We even have to consider the Israelis – they’re just as paranoid as the rest of them.’

  Eva shook her head. ‘Something doesn’t fit. Why didn’t the Section go after Maxim if they thought he was a threat?’

  ‘Who’s to say they didn’t?’ said Nathan. ‘We know he was eventually caught and imprisoned by the Russians. What if the British provided them with the information to do so?’

  Decker whistled through his teeth. ‘That would explain why he’s got a vendetta against the Brits. He holds them responsible.’

  Nathan drained the rest of his hot chocolate and smacked his lips. ‘What do you think his plans are?’

  ‘It has to have something to do with whatever was going on at that testing laboratory in Poland,’ said Eva, pacing the pavement. ‘Otherwise, why would he go so far as to stage an infectious outbreak? I think he faked that, then worked on arranging his escape from prison. He’s probably been redeveloping the virus since then.’

  ‘You’d need money to do that,’ said Decker.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Nathan. ‘We had a whole department in London dedicated to tracing the equipment being bought and sold online that could weaponise a virus for under a hundred dollars. You’d need a very small laboratory to develop that.’

  Eva frowned. ‘If it’s so cheap and easy to do, why would he need to return to the old laboratory facility?’

  ‘Volume,’ said Decker. ‘If he and whoever is helping him have managed to produce this, then my guess is that they’re doing it on a phenomenal scale. From what Nathan’s told us about this guy, he’s not the sort to do things by halves.’

  ‘And distribution,’ said Nathan. ‘I have a feeling that Maxim Kowalski has something planned that will involve the manufacture and distribution of a weaponised smallpox virus on a scale no-one in this world has ever seen.’

  Decker pulled up his collar and tossed his empty takeout cup into a nearby bin. ‘All right. Enough sightseeing. We’ve got work to do.’

  Two

  London

  * * *

  Miles kept his head down as he hurried along the subterranean corridor.

  He didn’t want to
be stopped. He didn’t want to engage in conversation. He wanted to get to his office, close the door, and try to get his head around the fact that his Section chief could be the mole that had endangered Eva in Berlin, and likely arranged the armed ambush that had led to Nathan Crowe being shot in Prague.

  He had had his suspicions, but the CCTV images of Crowe at the French supermarket confirmed them – the man held his shoulder differently. Miles had spent enough time in some of the most dangerous places in South America to recognise when someone was recovering from a gunshot wound.

  It seemed that Knox was prepared to sacrifice anyone that got in his way.

  In the meantime, Miles knew he’d have to look like he was carrying on as normal, while all the time trying to fathom how he could keep Petersen up to date about the situation without exposing their arrangement.

  The old spymaster had been adamant that no-one else be involved.

  ‘Too risky,’ he had said at their last covert meeting. ‘You can’t trust anyone, Miles. Use them, yes, but don’t trust them.’

  Miles could see the sense in the man’s words.

  As it was, he’d managed to keep his two analysts away from his clandestine project, tasking them instead with keeping a lookout for when Eva next made an appearance.

  Her return to Prague had been unexpected, though.

  And worrying.

  His two analysts had confirmed that the twins had completely disappeared, and that the grainy images taken from the building next door to Douglas Bolton’s old home only depicted the three adults.

  An involuntary shiver crossed his neck.

  He’d never worked with the Caretaker, but his reputation had been formidable – not least because he’d defied Section orders and survived to tell the tale. The man had simply dropped off the grid – until the shooting in Berlin had sent Eva on the run.

  What did he know that would see him risk his life for Eva?

  His hand shook as he punched in the code for the door to his office.

  Shutting it behind him, he rested against it for a moment, his eyes closed.

  He’d forgotten what the adrenalin rush had been like.

  In South America, he’d been a shadowy operator, brokering deals across borders that supported the Section’s nefarious activities while all the time convincing himself it was for a greater good. He didn’t ask questions, obeyed his orders, and had, in his younger days, enjoyed the power that came with the position, however tenuous the persona he adopted had been.

  His top lip curled upwards.

  He’d grown soft in the years since leaving the field and acquiring a desk – and a wife. He boxed regularly to keep the paunch off his gut, and had started to add interval training to his morning routine after catching sight of himself in the mirror in the bedroom one night and wondering what had happened to the hardened agent he’d once been.

  Now, however, the thrill of the chase was accompanied by a gnawing paranoia that crawled through his mind.

  Was he doing the right thing?

  What if he was wrong?

  He opened his eyes and shook his head to clear the thought, then paced across the room to his desk and dropped the manila folder from his hand.

  The latest intelligence had been worrying.

  Any normal person would run from danger, but it seemed Eva Delacourt was hell bent on digging away at the past and whatever it held with no regard for her own safety.

  He simply couldn’t understand why.

  One of the photographs slipped from the folder as it skidded across the desk, and Miles tugged it free, spinning it around on the smooth surface so it faced him.

  Crowe’s features sported a new beard, trimmed and neat. He held his takeout cup in his left hand, still favouring the arm where the bullet had damaged his shoulder.

  What interested Miles was that the man’s stance had completely changed, and not simply from the injury.

  He appeared hardened, surer of himself, and Miles wondered what damage the man was capable of if Knox hadn’t arranged to take over Crowe’s security access to the database the moment the operation in France had failed to capture them at the internet café.

  Instead, they’d withdrawn the hit team and regrouped, watching and waiting to see what Eva would do next.

  Miles replaced the photograph and moved around the desk, sinking into a leather chair behind it and logging into his computer.

  His instructions had been clear, but didn’t make it any easier.

  He opened the encrypted email software, and began to type.

  Three

  Prague

  * * *

  Decker had argued against returning to the Czech capital when Eva had first suggested it some days ago, but she had insisted – the flat above the bookshop provided the only safe haven she’d ever had.

  In the end, they had left Nathan in a café half a mile away and had conducted a recce of the streets around the bookshop over the course of a few hours. Satisfied that their whereabouts remained unknown, Decker had acquiesced.

  It had taken another two days to source the equipment they needed.

  Now, the living area was unrecognisable. With the money Eva had squirrelled away, which they hadn’t used while on the run, Nathan had been able to procure the hard drives, screens, and cabling that now littered the dining table and rug beneath her feet.

  When she had questioned the sense in accessing the internet once more, he had shaken his head.

  ‘It’s not like the internet café,’ he said, sweeping his hand over the equipment. ‘The way I’ve set this up, no-one will find us. What you see here is a fully functioning dark web ops room.’

  Even Decker had been impressed.

  Upon returning from the observation of the house near the river, they had settled into their research, to try and ascertain what Maxim’s plans were for his bioweapon.

  Eva leaned forward as the front page of the Section’s database appeared on the screen nearest to her and the results of Nathan’s search began to load. They had resolved to start at the beginning – locating the laboratory facility that had supposedly closed down after the devastating accident, and then work backwards and trying to find a link that would prove their suspicions about Maxim’s plans.

  Nathan had located a series of satellite images in the database from three years ago, evidence that the Section had attempted to correlate the engineer’s story before agreeing to his defection. In the images, different aerial views of the densely-wooded area provided little information – any buildings were simply too well camouflaged by the tree canopies around them.

  Decker had grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and, based on what they could see from the images they had, begun to draw up a plan of the testing facility.

  It was rudimentary, but at least provided them with an overview of the layout.

  It was also evident that the facility had been built far enough away from any populated areas so it could also be easily guarded, as there were no other buildings to be seen in the photographs for miles around it.

  ‘Okay,’ said Nathan. ‘These are old images. Let’s see if we can find something more recent.’

  His fingers flew over the keyboard, and then a second suite of satellite images began to load on the screen next to Decker.

  The assassin’s eyes narrowed. He reached out and tapped the screen.

  ‘Can you zoom in here? This road here – it’s only ten miles from the testing facility. What are these four trucks doing there?’

  Nathan hit a button and the image enlarged.

  Sure enough, four large heavy goods vehicles could be seen travelling along a single road. The lead vehicle had been setting a fast pace – the dust from the trucks’ wheels rose into the air behind them, partially obscuring the image at close range.

  ‘That’s too much of a coincidence,’ said Decker. ‘Those are heading for the testing facility, aren’t they?’

  ‘When was this?’ Eva cast her eyes over the satellite images, searching
for a date.

  Nathan stabbed his finger at the bottom of the screen. ‘Here. Three days ago.’

  ‘Are you able to zoom in close enough that we can get the licence plates of those trucks?’ said Eva.

  She waited while Nathan turned the angle of the images, and then leaned over as the back of the last truck in the convoy came into view.

  The dust from the truck’s wheels obliterated the last two digits on the licence plate; however she smiled when she saw the lettering stencilled onto the mud flaps.

  The logo of a heavy goods vehicle rental agency could just be made out.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Decker.

  Nathan was already typing in the name, and leaned back in his chair as the details downloaded.

  ‘They’re based in Prague,’ he said.

  ‘He’s getting ready to mobilise,’ said Decker, and folded his arms over his chest as he frowned at the screen. ‘When those trucks reappear, they’re going to be loaded and heading for their final destination.’

  Eva swallowed. ‘If those trucks were rented here, there’s every chance that’s where Maxim plans to release the weaponised smallpox.’

  Nathan reduced the image on the screen and opened an internet browser before typing a rapid search string as he tried to extract more information from the images.

  Decker huffed while the slow connection began to load, then strode over the threadbare rug towards the dining table, picked up a chair and set it down next to the coffee table.

  As the page began to load, Eva nibbled at a fingernail. Dropping her hand to her lap, she frowned.