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  ‘Who’re you working for?’ asked Mike.

  ‘A small risk assessment consultancy in the UK. But it’s Chevroil-Exxo who’s paying them. What about you?’

  ‘I’m freelancing for Texana-Amocon.’

  Andy smiled. They all seemed to be hyphenated now, the oil companies. It was a sign of the times; struggling companies merging their dwindling reserves, all of them desperately consolidating their assets for the end-game.

  ‘They want to know how long it’s going to be before we can get something out of this damned country,’ the American added. ‘I mean, what the hell do you tell them?’

  Andy half-smiled and cast a glance at the darkened shell of the building in front of them.

  ‘Not for years.’

  Mike nodded. ‘It’s sure looking that way. So,’ he turned to look at Andy, ‘we haven’t done full names yet. I’m Mike Kenrick.’

  They’d spoken only briefly this morning as the convoy of vehicles had taken several hours picking their way north-east along the road out of Al-Hadithah. They had talked about the crappy hotel they were both staying in, a dark maze of cold empty rooms, tall ceilings sprouting loose electrical cables, and sporadic power and running water.

  ‘Dr Sutherland, call me Andy though,’ he replied offering the American a hand.

  ‘So Andy, where you from anyway?’

  ‘Originally a Kiwi. But I guess home is England now. I’ve been living there on and off for nineteen years,’ replied Andy. ‘It doesn’t much feel like a home right now,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘Yeah . . . problems.’

  The American seemed to understand that Andy wasn’t in the mood to elaborate. ‘Shit, this kind of job does that,’ he added gruffly after a moment’s reflection. ‘Time away from home can bust up even the strongest of marriages.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Austin, Texas.’

  Andy fleetingly recalled seeing this bloke strutting around the hotel the day before yesterday wearing his ‘Nobody Fucks with Texas’ T-shirt and some white Y-fronts.

  Nice.

  There were two other civilian contractors currently poking through the remains of the building and photographing it with digital camcorders. Andy had seen them around the compound, but not spoken to them yet. One was Dutch or French, the other Ukrainian, or so he’d been told. They had kept themselves to themselves, as had Andy.

  In fact, the only person he’d really spoken to since coming out earlier this week was Farid, their new translator. The four-man field party had been assigned a translator along with the two Toyota Land Cruisers and the two drivers. They didn’t get to choose them or vet them, they just inherited them.

  ‘You been out here before?’ asked Mike.

  ‘Yeah, a couple of times, but down south - Majnun, Halfaya. Different story down there.’

  The American nodded. ‘But that’s changing as well.’

  They heard a disturbance coming from one of the Iraqi police trucks. Andy turned to look. One of the policemen was talking on his cell phone, and then turning to the others, relaying something to them. The others initially looked sceptical, but then within a moment, there were half-a-dozen raised voices, all speaking at the same time. The policeman on the phone quickly raised his hand to hush them, and they quietened down.

  Andy turned to Farid and beckoned him over.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ asked Mike.

  ‘I find out,’ the translator replied and went directly over to the policemen to inquire. Andy watched the older man as he spoke calmly to them, and in turn listened to the policeman holding the mobile phone. And then Farid said something, gesturing towards the driver’s cabin. One of the policemen rapped his knuckles loudly on the roof and shouted something to the man dozing inside. He lurched in his seat and craned his neck out the driver-side, presumably to ask who the fuck had woken him up.

  The guy holding the mobile phone repeated what he’d heard, Farid contributed something, and the driver’s expression changed. He pulled back inside, reached to the dashboard and flipped on the radio. There was music which he quickly spun away from, through a wall of crackles and bad signals, finally landing on a clear station and the sound of an authoritative voice; a newsreader.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ muttered Andy.

  The policemen were all silent now, as was Farid. All of them listening intently to the radio. Then out of the blue the American’s Immarsat satellite phone bleeped. Mike jumped a little and looked at Andy, one of his dark eyebrows arched in surprise as he opened up the little hip-case it came in. He walked a few steps away to answer it privately.

  Andy instinctively checked to see if his mobile phone was on - it was, but no one was calling him.

  Andy, growing impatient, caught Farid’s eye and spread out his palms, what’s going on?

  The translator nodded and held up a finger, asking him to wait a moment longer, as he craned his neck to listen to the news crackling out of the radio.

  He turned back to Mike, who was frowning as he listened to what he was being told over his phone.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, what is it?’ asked Andy, exasperated that he seemed to be the only person left in the dark.

  A moment later, Farid stepped away from the police truck and wandered over to Andy, his face a puzzle . . . as if he was trying to work out exactly what he’d just heard.

  ‘Farid?’

  Mike snapped the case on his Sat phone shut just as the Iraqi translator came to a halt before them. The American and the Arab looked at each other for a moment.

  Andy cracked. ‘Is somebody going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?’

  CHAPTER 5

  8.45 a.m. GMT

  He took off from JFK at just after ten at night. Not a popular time to take a flight so there were plenty of seats in business class. He had checked in effortlessly using his Mr Ash identity. The passport paperwork was good, impeccable. It always was.

  Ash.

  A good enough name for this particular errand. It was fun anyway, assuming a stolen identity, trying to imagine what the real Mr G. J. Ash was like, to get a feel for the person who had lived in this particular skin for the last thirty-seven years. Not that it mattered greatly.

  For the duration of this task, he was Mr Ash, no one else was, not even the real Mr G. J. Ash, whose identity had been temporarily cloned for the job. Ash was the name he imprinted on himself in his mind. Until this job was done, Ash was the only name he’d answer to.

  There was a sense of urgency to this job. Time was going to work against him this time round. Things were going to start happening very soon, if they hadn’t already. When law and order began to unravel, and it would do so rapidly, it would get theoretically very difficult for him to find his given target. So he was going to have to work as quickly as possible.

  Ash looked out of the window at the grey Atlantic below.

  Leona Sutherland. Eighteen. Occupation: student. Current residence: University of East Anglia campus.

  He had no problem with this target. She was a girl, just a child still. But far more important than that, she was a security risk. A very big risk, certainly right now, with what was going on.

  Quickly in and quickly out.

  He’d make sure she died quickly and painlessly, he could at least do that; after all it wasn’t her fault she was a security risk. Leona Sutherland had made a simple mistake, adding a ‘PS’ to an email, that’s all - half-a-dozen words tagged on to a chatty email to her father . . . words it seemed, she hadn’t set out to write but had popped into her head at the last moment.

  Unfortunately, those few words were going to be her death sentence.

  Ash sighed.

  How careless people are with what they say, blurting out things - intentionally, unintentionally - that are best left unsaid. He often thought most of the pain and death and misery in the world was caused by people unable to keep inside them what should rightly stay there.
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  This wasn’t going to be his finest hour though, killing an innocent child, but it was necessary. It was a lesser evil for a greater good.

  He was clearing up a few loose ends which to be honest, he should have been allowed to do years ago. Those foolish old men had let the little girl walk out of that hotel room alive.

  That’s why they needed people like him; to tidy up after them.

  CHAPTER 6

  12.35 p.m. GMT Manchester

  Jenny stepped out of the swing-doors on to Deansgate and took a deep, deep breath.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ she whispered to herself, clutching her hand into a fist and discreetly punching the air when she was sure no one was looking.

  The interview had been so much easier than she expected it would be. She had made them laugh a couple of times, everyone’s body language seemed to be relaxed and open. Jenny felt she had been on to a winning ticket from the moment she walked into the interview room. It was just one of those things, they all clicked.

  The give-away, or so she felt, was towards the end when one of the lads asked her how much notice she would need to serve out with her current employer.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she muttered to herself again, as she walked down Deansgate towards a café bar she’d spotted on the way to the interview.

  Of course they couldn’t say to her ‘you’ve got it’. There were several more applicants they had to see that afternoon. It would be improper, unprofessional even, to do that. But in every other way - how they had said goodbye, the way they shook hands, nodded and made eye-contact screamed to her we’ll be in touch.

  She grinned in a way she hadn’t for a long time. It felt like one giant leap away from the mess in London. There was much to do of course, and the very first thing on the list would be sorting Jake out. Her poor little boy was going to be bewildered by all of this, but once they got settled in Manchester, Jenny was going to spoil him rotten for a bit. Make a real fuss of him. And most importantly, get him into various activity groups and clubs. She knew he liked those little Games Workshop characters. He spent ages painting them and then playing with them. Well, they had one of those shops up here, and they did Saturday and Sunday clubs which she’d take him along to, positive that he’d make a few friends there in no time at all.

  Jenny arrived outside the café bar, pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  She ordered a hot chocolate with a small mountain of cream - the type Andy referred to as shaving foam - and a Danish pastry and went and picked a seat in the window. The combined plate and mug count was probably close to a thousand calories, but stuff it, she’d played a blinder back there, and put one in the back of the net, so to speak.

  She deserved a ‘well done’ present from herself.

  She sat down at a window seat, her mind still running through the mental tick-list of things she needed to do. In the background a TV behind the counter babbled away to itself.

  ‘. . . spreading chaos over there. News has just come in that senior members of the Saudi royal family have been flown out from the King Khalid International airport in Riyadh. Although no official confirmation has been given on this, it’s clear that unrest has spread to the capital and there was a perceived threat to them . . .’

  She’d have to give them a month’s notice down in London. But then Jenny knew they owed her a couple of weeks’ leave, so she could work out two of those weeks, and take the last two off. Andy would have to take charge of selling the house though. Mind you, there’s not a lot he’d have to do, just make sure he was around to let in the estate agent.

  ‘. . . it’s clear now that the rapid escalation of events in Saudi Arabia was triggered this morning by the bombing of the Sunni holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. Although nobody has come forward claiming responsibility for the bomb, Shi’a Muslims and mosques across the country have been targeted by the majority Sunnis and Wahhabis in what appears to be the beginning of a very bloody and dangerous civil war in the country . . .’

  And there’s all that furniture, the bric-à-brac of twenty years to get rid of. Jenny really didn’t want to cart all of that stuff up with her. They could probably shift a lot of it on eBay, or maybe try something like a garage sale. She drew the line though at taking herself down to a whole load of car-boot sales as a vendor; their stuff was worth more than the penny prices they could expect to get.

  ‘. . . on Wall Street this morning, share prices took a major tumble as oil prices rocketed to over $100 a barrel. There are some murmurings that the worsening Saudi situation will trigger what is known in some obscure corners of the oil and gas industry as an artificial Peak Oil scenario . . .’

  Jenny turned towards the TV.

  The phrase cut through her meandering this-and-that planning, like a hot knife through butter.

  ‘Peak Oil’.

  That was one of Andy’s pet phrases; a pair of words that had become conjoined together like Siamese twins in their household. It was a phrase that she had grown utterly sick of hearing over the last few years. And now on the TV, on daytime news, for the first time, she’d heard someone else use that term. The words sounded odd and a little disconcerting coming from someone other than Andy. But not just some fellow petro-geologist, or some other frothy-mouthed conspiracy-nut that Andy had struck up a relationship with courtesy of his website; no . . . a newsreader, on the BBC, on the lunchtime news had used the phrase.

  The barman behind the counter finished serving a customer, picked up the remote control and deftly flicked through a few channels before settling on one showing a football match; Manchester City versus someone or other.

  Jenny almost called out for him to turn it back. She looked around, half expecting several other customers to join her in calling out for the news to be put back on, but none of the little packs of students, nor any of the other customers hurrying in for a hasty lunch-break sandwich, had taken any notice of the news. Everyone seemed too busy to care.

  Just like her, too busy with the minutiae of life: earning a crust, paying the bills, getting the kids off to school . . . getting a new job.

  Her mind went back to the news. Someone else, other than Andy, had just muttered the phrase ‘Peak Oil’.

  All of a sudden, the sense of euphoria she’d felt walking out of that interview began to evaporate.

  CHAPTER 7

  3.37 p.m. local time Desert, Salah Ad Din Region, Iraq

  ‘Where the hell are they going?’ yelled Mike.

  The Iraqi police vehicle ahead of them had suddenly lurched to the right off the bumpy road heading south-west back to Al-Bayji.

  Andy watched the vehicle rattle away across the rough terrain and then on to a small tributary road. The other two police trucks followed suit, pulling out of their convoy and heading off after the lead truck, away from them.

  ‘Shit. What do we do? Do we follow them?’ asked Mike.

  Andy shrugged, ‘I don’t know, that’s taking us in the wrong direction.’ He watched the three vehicles recede amidst a plume of dust.

  ‘They have other business,’ Farid offered from the front seat. The old man pointed to the radio recessed into the dashboard, ‘Al-Tariq, the radio station, say Sunni-Shi’a unrest in Saudi has spreading over here. They have much explosions, a lot of fighting in Baghdad.’

  Mike looked at Andy, ‘That’s just great.’

  Farid frowned uncertainly, not getting the irony. ‘The police now go and fight for their side,’ he added.

  ‘Sunnis?’

  The old man nodded.

  Andy bit his lip and took a deep breath. They were dangerously exposed now. With no escort they were going to be a very tempting soft target. There was, of course, their driver, a young man called Amal, and in the other Land Cruiser there was another driver called Salim. Both drivers had on them AK47 assault rifles. How prepared they were to use them in a stand-up fight, he wasn’t so sure. The truth was he couldn’t expect Farid, Amal or Salim to lay down their lives to protect him or the other three wes
terners. Shit, if the roles were reversed and they came across an American patrol looking for some likely looking ragheads to play around with, it’s not like he, Mike and the other two contractors would level those same guns at the Americans to protect them.

  They just had to hope the road back into town was open, and everyone with a gun and a chip on his shoulder would be too busy laying into each other to worry about jacking them.

  He looked out of the window at the passing scrub and dusty ground, the occasional cluster of date palm trees, and wondered just what was going on this morning. Mike said his phone call had been from his head office in Austin, Texas, to tell him what they were hearing from Reuters; that all hell had broken loose in Saudi Arabia after some mosques had been blown up, with hundreds killed. That country was ripe for this; a tinderbox waiting to go up. Understandably, with the situation so volatile in Iraq, things were predictably going to flare up in sympathy, and the same was probably going to happen in other vulnerable Arabic nations: Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman.

  Andy could imagine the focus of world news right now was on events in Riyadh as they unfolded hour by hour, and he guessed that experts on Arabic culture and Islamic affairs were being rushed into television studios across the globe to pontificate on what was going on. But he wondered who was taking a look at the bigger picture.

  As of this morning, with the troubles rapidly destabilising Saudi Arabia, the world had just lost the regular supply of somewhere between a quarter and a third of its daily oil needs.

  He reached into a pocket and pulled out his mobile.

  ‘Who’re you calling?’ asked Mike.

  ‘I’m phoning home,’ Andy replied, flipping it open and hitting the quick-dial button. There was a long pause before he finally heard a flat tone. ‘Shit, can’t get a signal.’