Target and Destroy: Ex MI5 agent Tom Marcus returns with a pulse-pounding new thriller

1

Logan glanced at the clock on the top-of-the-range brushed-steel cooker and decided it was time for the evening performance. He got up from his stool at the black marble kitchen island, put his phone in his pocket and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the river. He stood there for a full minute, paying no attention at all to the stunning view.

‘Here I am,’ he said under his breath, ‘if anyone’s interested.’

Was there someone actually out there, checking to see if this luxurious penthouse flat was occupied? Logan’s heart rate quickened fractionally as he imagined being in the cross hairs of a sniper’s rifle. It was a peculiar feeling, trying to make himself as conspicuous as possible, when for all of his professional life he’d worked hard to be invisible, to go unnoticed: first as a surveillance officer for MI5, and then for Blindeye, the clandestine team of ex-intelligence operatives secretly tasked with doing the dirty jobs the official security services couldn’t.

Still feeling uncomfortable at being so exposed, Logan decided that was enough staring out of the window for one evening. Now it was time to move through the rest of the penthouse, opening and closing blinds, turning lights on and off, putting the integrated sound system through its paces or selecting a movie to play on the giant TV, all to make it clear to the watchers – if there were any – that someone was home. It was a shame that operating the cooker was beyond his competence, all that high-tech wizardry going to waste, but Logan wasn’t going to risk pressing the wrong button and sending it all into meltdown for the sake of a fried-egg sandwich.

The clothes were another thing he didn’t feel comfortable in. If anyone was having a proper look, not just content with clocking a silhouette, he had to look the part, which meant regular visits to the cavernous walk-in closet in the master bedroom, taking off his usual T-shirt, jeans and trainers and dressing up in something more suitable for a hedge-fund billionaire – or whatever the real owner of the penthouse was. It wasn’t lost on Logan that some days that meant putting on another pair of jeans, another T-shirt and another pair of trainers, the only difference being that the new ensemble had cost several grand more than the one he’d just taken off. But maybe there was someone out there on the other end of a high-powered telescope who could spot the difference. As he knew from experience, it was all in the detail. And that was just as true whether you were trying to blend in with the wallpaper or make an exhibition of yourself.

All in all, though, despite the nightly game of charades, it wasn’t a bad gig. The sleek minimalism of the place – no annoying clutter and every surface black, grey or some sort of muted off-white – made it feel more like a private hospital ward than someone’s home, so Logan really never felt like an intruder – more like a nightwatchman in a cutting-edge tech company. Which was good. Logan wasn’t ready to be somewhere that felt like a home yet – his own or anyone else’s. It was more than a year since Sarah and Joseph had died, and the house they’d shared on the edge of the estate with the hills sloping up behind was the only place he ever wanted to think of as home. He’d never really had one as a kid himself, growing up mostly on the streets, and when Sarah and Joseph were taken from him, the idea of home went with them. Playing the part of someone who had a life and a place they called their own was as much as he could manage.

He went back to his stool at the kitchen island and picked up the scrap of paper lying next to his coffee cup, reading the numbers and letters of the licence plate over to himself again, even though he’d long ago memorized them. For the hundredth time, he thought about making the call, and for the hundredth time the same thing stopped him.

If he opened this door, there’d be no shutting it again, no matter what lay on the other side.

Instinctively he looked round, hoping to see Sarah perched on the stool next to him, brushing a strand of blonde hair from her face with a warm smile. Now, more than ever, he needed her to tell him what to do. But the stool remained unoccupied, as he half-knew it would be. The truth was, she hadn’t appeared to him since he’d moved into the penthouse. Could it be something to do with the place itself? Was there something about it – too cold, too clinical? Did she just not like the decor? Was she afraid Joseph would get his muddy feet and sticky fingers all over the pristine surfaces?

He shook his head.

Don’t be so fucking stupid. She’s dead. She’s not worried about the fucking furniture.

So why hadn’t she appeared to him? For a moment he felt panic start to grip him. Had something happened to her? But what more could happen to dead people? Nothing worse than dying, surely.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said aloud, his voice echoing off the bare walls.

Well, if Sarah wasn’t going to come to the penthouse, he’d just have to go to her, to the one place he knew her spirit was always present.

The place where they’d buried her.

He looked at his watch. Not yet ten. He was supposed to stay in the apartment until eleven at least, showing his face at the windows, moving around, using all the facilities: the entertainment system, the gym, the sauna and jacuzzi, turn and turn about, making one-sided phone calls and having video conferences with non-existent people until it was time for bed. Sometimes he’d even put the TV on and sit in the big leather armchair with his eyes closed and noise-cancelling earbuds in for an hour.

But surely even reclusive billionaires went out sometimes. How much TV could they watch before going even crazier than they started out? And who the fuck was going to know anyway? Well, his employers were probably able to monitor the penthouse’s electrical output, or had a direct connection to the computer that worked all the gizmos, so they could see exactly what he was doing.

But this was an emergency. He needed to go and see his dead wife. An hour there, less than an hour back at this time of night, and he’d put on an extra late show for the watchers when he got back, so no one could complain.

Can’t say fairer than that, he thought.

Five minutes later, back in his normal clothes with a windbreaker and a dark baseball cap, he was standing by the front door punching the various security codes into the keypad. He waited for the confirmation beep that told him he hadn’t forgotten anything, opened the door and then shut it behind him with the pneumatic hiss of a giant freezer, feeling like one of the pyramid builders, sealing up the pharaoh’s resting place behind him with a deadly curse upon would-be tomb robbers. Then he was padding down the empty corridor towards the lift that led directly down to the basement car park.

It was 11.05 when Logan drove slowly past the gates of the cemetery, his headlight beams picking out the heavy chain with its oversized padlock. He drove on for another fifty yards, then turned right down a badly lit lane hugging the cemetery wall, until he saw the twisted oak he’d noticed on his last visit. There weren’t many houses here, where the cemetery wall blocked your sunlight and the view from the first-floor bedroom would be rows of depressing tombstones, but he knew there was a cluster of three houses a little further down the lane, hunkering down behind tall, thick hedges. He parked the car near enough to look like it belonged there, before walking back to the tree and standing for a moment to listen.

A little wind rustling the branches, the distant cry of an owl, a twig breaking on the other side of the wall as a fox or a badger nosed its way round. Nothing to suggest he wasn’t alone. He turned the torch on his phone on for a few seconds to see where the hand and footholds were, then switched it off and put it back in his pocket. No problem. Three feet up, one of the bricks was broken and he wedged his right foot in the gap then braced himself against the trunk of the tree with his left foot and heaved himself up until his hand closed round a branch. Pulling himself upwards he swung a leg over the wall, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass decorating the top, then the other leg, then let go, landing softly on a leaf-covered bank on the other side.

He brushed himself off, making sure he hadn’t snagged any of the glass and looked around, listening again for any sounds that didn’t belong in a cemetery at night. Given how easy it was to scale the wall, he wouldn’t have been surprised to bump into a few teenagers after the thrill of a quickie on top of a tombstone or just looking for somewhere to share a bottle of vodka and a smoke without getting hassled, but everything seemed to be quiet. He made a quick sweep with the phone torch to get his bearings. There was a neat row of marble gravestones in front of him, with a path a few yards to his right, winding between the plots. That, he knew, would take him to the main path that led from the entrance through the middle of the cemetery and from there he’d have his bearings. He turned off the torch and started walking.

Fifteen minutes later, after picking up the main path and then taking a branch off to the right when he came to a statue of a weeping angel leaning over a sarcophagus, he approached the section of newer graves where Sarah and Joseph had been laid to rest. He was ashamed to say that he’d been in no fit state to choose what kind of headstone he wanted for them. In the depths of his alcohol-numbed grief after the crazed knife attack that took them, it had seemed the most stupid, pointless question in the world. But Alex, bless her, had done the right thing, as usual, and the mottled-grey marble with the beloved names and the heart-breaking dates was just right. Here was someone, it seemed to say, who was much loved but didn’t want any fuss, which was Sarah down to a tee.

He knelt down and brushed the dirt from the stone. The little spray of flowers he’d left on his last visit now looked more like a bunch of dried herbs. He would have liked to bring a fresh one, but he hadn’t had time. He’d never been very good with flowers when she was alive, so he knew she’d understand now.

The important thing was to talk to her, to ask her what he should do.

He waited, listening to the muffled night sounds. Normally he didn’t have to wait long. Sarah knew when he needed her; sometimes even when he didn’t know it himself. She’d stopped him from topping himself when there seemed no point in going on, telling him he had a job to do, that he had lives to save, that they’d all be together as a family again one day, he just had to be patient. When he’d had blood on his hands, she’d shed tears with him, so he didn’t feel so alone. So he didn’t get swallowed up by the blackness.

So where was she now?

He shivered, but he knew it wasn’t the cold. It was the feeling of being alone. Just being at the graveside, even when he couldn’t see her, he’d always felt her presence somewhere nearby, as if she was playing grandmother’s footsteps. But not now.

Minutes passed. With each one the place felt emptier.

He picked up the little bunch of dead flowers and squeezed it in his fist, letting the fragments drift away, then stood up slowly. He knew she wasn’t going to come now, however long he waited.

And that, he suddenly realized, was her answer to his question.

He stood still, with his hands at his sides, looking into the darkness stretching out ahead of him.

Right, decision made, then, he thought. He took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found the name he was looking for.

The call was answered after two rings.

‘Hello?’

‘Ryan, mate, it’s Logan. Sorry to be calling so late.’

‘That’s all right. Is something up? Are we back in business?’

Logan was pleased Ryan didn’t use the word ‘Blindeye’. ‘Not as far as I know. This is personal. I need a favour.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘Top man.’ Logan hesitated. ‘Are we . . .?’

‘Snug as a bug in a rug,’ Ryan assured him.

Good, the phone’s secure. Logan took a deep breath. No turning back now. ‘OK, I’ve got a licence plate I need you to run for me.’

It was dawn when Logan returned to the penthouse. Ryan had come back with the address while he was still driving, and he’d pulled into a lay-by to write it down, part of him wanting to drive straight there, and part of him wanting to tear the piece of paper into little pieces, chuck it out the window and forget he’d ever seen it. In the end he just sat there, as if staring dumbly at it would make it give up its secrets. As if he didn’t have to go there and see for himself.

When he eventually pulled out onto the motorway again, he wasn’t sure where he was going, back to the penthouse to get some rest and plan the thing properly (at the end of the day, he was a professional, and this was just another job) or just say fuck it and go directly to the address without any real idea what he was going to do when he got there. The first option was the smart one, of course. But was it also a cop-out?

In the end he just pointed the nose south and let the car take him wherever it wanted to go, and eventually found himself back in the penthouse’s underground garage, the engine clicking softly as it cooled, like a whale relieved to be back with the rest of its pod after straying into unfamiliar waters.

He’d take his time, then. Think through the possibilities. Decide on a cover, if he needed one. A weapon? Would they be armed? Whoever ‘they’ were. Or would that just make things more dangerous? Perhaps there was an innocent explanation for everything.

‘Don’t be a twat, Logan,’ he muttered to himself as the lift doors closed.

Once he’d successfully reassured the security system that papa was home, made a pot of strong coffee and laid out a single sheet of paper and a row of three sharpened pencils on the black marble worktop, he’d figured out a way to proceed without going round in circles and driving himself nuts. Imagine you’re back in the Service. Just think of it as an op. Something you’ve been tasked to do. You don’t have to understand the whys and wherefores, just do your job.

Bollocks, of course, but worth a try. He picked up a pencil and began to make a list.

Forty minutes later, his concentration started to go. He tried blinking away the fatigue and pressing on, but soon the words he’d already written stopped making sense and he decided there was no point. He thought about making more coffee, then about trying to get some sleep, and in the end settled on going for a run. If in doubt, pound the pavement until your lungs are busting and everything hurts and a good dose of pain wipes the slate clean. Switch the brain off, then on again, and just hope it powers back up.

He was tying the laces of his worn and still muddy running shoes (not what your average billionaire would be seen dead wearing, but fuck it, maybe he’s an eccentric) when his phone buzzed. He was going to ignore it but a quick glance showed it was Ryan’s number.

Shit. What now?

Reluctantly he took the call. ‘What’s up, mate? You got some more info for me?’

‘No, sorry, that was all she wrote. This is about . . . business.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yeah. Looks like we’re needed back at the office. There’s a meeting at ten.’

Logan let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. ‘Right. I’ll see you there.’

He ended the call and put the phone down. For a moment he couldn’t think. He closed his eyes as a wave of emotion flooded through him.

He realized, with a stab of shame, that it was relief.

2

Logan got to the Clearwater Security building at 9.45. Although technically he, Alex, Ryan and Alan were all employees of the company, with the salaries, tax bills and national insurance contributions to prove it, the fact was that Clearwater Security had no clients and did no work. Since they supposedly dealt with top-end corporate entities who demanded the highest levels of discretion, it wasn’t entirely surprising their balance sheet had plenty of numbers on it but no names. But the real reason was that Clearwater Security was an empty shell and the work they did in its sleek, well-appointed office was so far off the books that if the police, Special Branch or MI5 had had the faintest sniff of it, in a flash they would all have been enjoying a mug of slop in a cell rather than Mrs Allenby’s best Darjeeling served in delicate bone-china cups.

Logan didn’t give much of a fuck about fancy tea, and had to wrack his brains to remember if he was supposed to put the milk in before or after it had been poured, but Mrs Allenby was still his boss, even though the firm she nominally ran didn’t exist, and he wasn’t going to get on her bad side if he could help it. Which was why he’d turned up for the meeting in good time, and was now sipping politely while they waited for her to get them up to speed.

Mrs Allenby, dressed in a brown tweed skirt and jacket, her cream silk blouse adorned with a small amber brooch, looked more like a headmistress of a posh girls’ school about to hand out end-of-term prizes than the leader of a renegade team of ex-intelligence officers tasked with neutralizing terror threats, but Logan had learned the hard way not to underestimate her. Her last job before her retirement, as PA to the Director General of MI5, had clearly involved more than just taking dictation and looking after his appointments diary, but none of them had yet managed to put the rest of the pieces of her career together.

Pushing her horn-rimmed spectacles down on her nose, she rested her steely gaze on him for a moment, and instinctively he tried to make his mind a blank. The rational part of his brain told him she couldn’t read his thoughts, but there was no point taking unnecessary risks, was there? If he didn’t know her story, there were things it was better she didn’t know about him, too.

After a few moments, apparently satisfied with what she’d seen, she readjusted her glasses and looked down at the notepad in front of her.

‘Well, here we are again.’ She nodded briefly at Ryan, with his baggy black golf shirt, tinted glasses and slicked-back ponytail, seemingly ready for an all-night session in a Vegas casino; then Alan, looking pasty and overweight, as if he hadn’t stirred out of doors since the last op, which Logan thought was entirely possible; and finally Alex, chameleon-like as ever, today presenting as a funky yoga instructor in sweatpants and flip-flops with a yin-yang T-shirt.

What was it Wellington had said while inspecting his troops before Waterloo? I don’t know what the enemy will make of them, but they scare the shit out of me. That was the gist, anyway.

Mrs Allenby paused. Maybe she’d had the same thought. But last time they’d done all right – more than all right: innocent lives saved; bad guys . . . well, better not to think about what had happened to them. Some nights they formed a grisly queue waiting to take their place in Logan’s nightmares, pale, bloodless corpses, pointing to their exit wounds and muttering unintelligible curses.

‘Mr Logan, are you with us?’

He gave himself a little shake. ‘Yeah, sure.’

‘All right, then. First let me tell you all the good news. As far as I am aware there is no imminent threat requiring the deployment of Blindeye’s . . . special talents.’

Meaning the fact that we operate outside of the law, Logan thought to himself.

‘But there is something of a loose end still remaining from our previous operation against Paul Martindale and his so-called Tenth Crusade.’

She paused and Logan hoped to God she wasn’t going to say, ‘Namely, where is he?’

Instead, to his relief, she said: ‘DCI John Tenniel. Rather a considerable loose end, in fact. And you know how I can’t abide those. But it’s far more than just a question of neatness.’

She paused, frowning, as if she didn’t want to have to say what came next.

‘It’s within the bounds of possibility that the man now heading up the UK’s National Crime Agency is himself a criminal. At the moment, this is pure conjecture. Possibly even a fantasy. We have no hard evidence and not even a plausible theory that would explain the circumstantial evidence we do have. We’ve joined some of the dots. Now we need to join the rest. The question is: how?’

She looked around the table, as if waiting for someone to put their hand up and say, ‘Please, Miss, I know!’

Which was fair enough, Logan thought. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t all been asking themselves exactly the same question while they’d been away from Blindeye waiting for the dust to settle.

‘Let’s review what we know,’ Ryan said. ‘Or at least what we think we know.’

Christ, Logan thought, shifting in his seat, please don’t start with all that unknown unknowns bollocks.

‘Tenniel’s on the up. He’s got a reputation as a thief-taker. But he’s ambitious, wants the top job, heading up the NCA. And bringing down a high-profile gangster like Terry Mason is his big test. Plenty of people have tried and they’ve all come up empty-handed. Either Mason’s got in with the Freemasons, or he’s very, very smart. Too smart to get tripped up by a garden variety surveillance operation. So Tenniel knows he’s got to up his game, bring something new to the party. He goes on a joint police-intelligence surveillance course, trying to expand his skillset, and that’s when he has his light-bulb moment. What if he could get some of these spooks along with their hush-hush high-tech gizmos to work for him? He targets three of them that come top of the class, and—’

‘But how?’ Alex interjected. ‘Why would they risk their careers? It couldn’t have been money. We worked with them. We knew them,’ she added with a catch in her voice. ‘Craig and Claire, anyway. They joined Blindeye because they didn’t care about all that shit. They just wanted to make a difference.’

‘Maybe that was how he got to them,’ Ryan said. ‘He saw how dedicated they were. Maybe he laid it on with a trowel about how Mason was untouchable, that without their help he’d just carry on doing what he was doing, ruining lives. Maybe he had evidence, I don’t know, pictures of young girls . . .’

He stopped mid-sentence. Nobody particularly wanted to finish it for him.

Mrs Allenby picked up the story. ‘So, by whatever means, he secretly seconds them to his surveillance operation. Mason is convicted of multiple crimes on the basis of the evidence gathered. Tenniel gets his promotion.’

‘Champagne all round,’ Alex said, sourly.

‘Except that in the following months all three officers die. A road accident, a heart attack, falling under a tube train. In each case, no actual evidence of foul play, but—’

‘A hell of a coincidence,’ Alex said.

‘Too much of one,’ agreed Mrs Allenby. ‘So who killed them and why?’

‘The obvious answer’s the wife,’ Logan said with a shrug.

Alex gave him a look.

‘No, I mean it. We don’t know how involved she was, but Stephanie Mason was no shrinking violet, that’s for sure. So she decides to take revenge on the people responsible for bringing down her husband’s criminal empire. Why not?’

‘Because,’ Alex countered, ‘she couldn’t have known about the MI5 involvement – let alone the identities of the officers – unless someone tipped her off, and that someone could only have been Tenniel. Why would he do that?’

‘To cover his tracks,’ Logan said. ‘He was using her. He probably told her he was under orders to bring her husband down. But he’d rather make deals than put people in jail. She must have thought with Tenniel on her side she could keep the family firm going. And then he puts a bomb under Stephanie Mason’s car to close the loop.’ He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t like loose ends, either.’

Alex folded her arms. ‘The other hits were made to look like accidents. Why suddenly start blowing people up in broad daylight?’

‘Time,’ Logan said. ‘He had to move quickly before someone else got to her and put the thumb-screws on.’

Mrs Allenby scribbled something on her notepad. ‘Well, in any event, if Stephanie Mason did orchestrate the murders, then the link died with her.’

‘So we have to look at Tenniel,’ Alex said.

Alan, who up to this point had looked half-asleep, suddenly came alive, appearing distinctly alarmed. Logan knew he was thinking through the logistics of putting electronic surveillance on the head of the National Crime Agency.

Mrs Allenby looked at him. ‘Mr Woodburn?’

Alan chewed his lip. ‘His office would be . . . I don’t know . . .’

Logan knew Alan never liked to admit he couldn’t think of a technical workaround, however well protected or sensitive the target was. Over the years, while in A5, Logan would be the first to admit he’d ruthlessly exploited Alan’s pride in his technical ingenuity. But this was beyond even Alan’s capabilities. They were just setting him up to fail.

‘Fucking impossible? Suicide?’ Logan suggested, finishing Alan’s sentence for him.

Mrs Allenby gave Logan a sharp look, then turned back to Alan.

‘I don’t know the NCA’s protocols, obviously,’ Alan said, carefully. ‘I’d assume regular electronic counter-surveillance sweeps throughout the building. The windows will be blast-proof glass, meaning you can forget a laser, even assuming you could find a location to set it up. That leaves transport. He’ll have a driver, which means a different car every week, and they’ll be regularly checked too.’

‘What about his home?’

‘I’d have to look at the location. But you’d assume his phone’s routed through the system, and he’ll have the same level of surveillance. I mean, with a bit more detail, maybe I could . . .’

Mrs Allenby decided to put him out of his misery. She looked at Logan and Alex. ‘What about putting physical surveillance on him? Could the two of you manage that?’

Logan shrugged. ‘We could give it a go. Seeing just how good the Met’s drivers are at spotting a tail might be fun.’

Mrs Allenby narrowed her eyes. ‘I sense a but.’

‘What would be the point?’ Logan said. ‘I mean, if there’s one thing we know about him, it’s that he’s good at covering his tracks. He knows he can’t afford any slip-ups. Not in his position. So what’s he going to give us?’

Mrs Allenby didn’t look pleased, but Logan could tell she didn’t disagree. ‘Which leaves us . . .?’

Logan drummed his fingers on the table. ‘The one thing we do know is that the hits were professional. Not just professional: top of