Fit For Purpose by Julian Parrott (novels for students .TXT) 📕

entered the twenty-first century with a renewed efficiency and greater degree of egalitarianism. There were still plenty of the public school, Oxbridge graduates and Guards officers but there was a growing cadre of men and women who had been educated in state schools, at red brick universities, and having served in less prestigious regiments. The new breed of professionals had been exposed to the bitter results of intelligence failures and had become harder men and women, more willing to get their hands dirty. Tom respected them but he didn’t necessarily like them. They tended to be overzealous in their commitment to the mission at hand, collateral damage be damned.

The phone rang, pulling Tom away from his reverie to the bedside phone.

“Hello,” he said.

“Major Thomas Price?” the voice said. “I’m Smith from err, from Thames House. I’m downstairs in the lobby. They sent me to pick you up.”

“Okay,” Tom said quietly. “Give me ten minutes.”

Tom hung up. He was suspicious. He found and called a number for MI5. A recorded voice asked him to leave a message. Tom quickly finished dressing. He chose his blue cords, country sports jacket, a fitted white cotton shirt, and a blue knit silk tie. He slipped on a pair of brown leather Chelsea boots. He carried his heavy winter overcoat over his arm.

The lift descended quickly and opened out on to an overly ornate and pretentious lobby. Tom quickly scanned the lobby area. He spied at least two hotel patrons who were definitely not patrons. Shit, he thought, this is not a polite invitation. Tom spotted a man, waiting nervously near the large revolving door. He was older and heavier than the two other men, the more experienced leader. The man smiled nonchalantly and waved Tom over. As Tom walked through the lobby, he noticed the two men taking up a covering position. For the first time since Afghanistan, Tom wished he was armed.

“Morning Major Price,” the man said holding out his hand. “I’m Smith. I’m from the Thames House.”

“Smith, why the cavalry?” Tom asked nodding towards the muscle.

“Standard procedure, Major Price. I’m afraid we need to bring you in for questioning. You’ll be a good chap, now won’t you?”

The question was rhetorical and there was a slight menace to the phrasing. Smith pushed the revolving door and Tom got into the space, pushed hard and found himself in the street. He thought about running but the three men who were quickly at his side disabused him of the notion. A black Range Rover pulled up at the curb with a screech of breaks. The rear door opened as if it was operated by remote.

“Can, I at least see some ID?” Tom asked.

“Please, Major Price, just get in,” Smith ordered rather than asked.

Tom found himself seated between two large men. He was so close that he could smell the men’s deodorant. Tom regretted that he hadn’t run for it, remembering the first few minutes of a capture are the best time to affect an escape. Fuck, he thought, as he sat between two MI5 men, if, indeed they were MI5 he thought. Could they be SVR, FSB or GRU? Gagnon, who was an intelligence officer, had run into trouble with some Russians and had opened his door to a potential assassin and Tom, the amateur, had allowed himself to get into the back of a Range Rover with unknown men. Smith sat in the front passenger seat, he turned to face Tom.

“Smith, this doesn’t feel like SOP. What’s up?” Tom asked.

“Well, Major Price. That’s what we’d like to find out. Not only did someone try to kill Jacques Gagnon last night, we think that Gagnon probably killed or badly wounded a Russian operative.”

“Shit,” Tom said.

“And, we’d like to know just what you know and what the bloody hell you’ve been up to in London,” continued Smith.

***

The FSB man who had followed Tom from Gagnon’s hotel then to the police station and finally to Tom’s hotel knew a forced pick up when he saw one. He turned quickly and jogged around the hotel to a service road marked for ‘Hotel Deliveries Only’. He took out his phone and called his embassy.

“I think the British just snatched Price,” he said.

“Did Price go willingly?” Kamenev asked.

“No, it looked like he was forced but no rough stuff. It looked like an arrest.”

“Police car?”

“No, black Range Rover. Security services maybe,” the watcher said. “They had enough heavies along in the lobby to stop him running.”

***

Tom sat in the middle of the back seat between the two gym-built MI5 men. They obviously weren’t covert operatives. Tom could feel his shirt sticking to his back as he sweated. He was in shock; Jacques Gagnon killed someone? He had a knife wound on his chest so he had obviously been in a fight, but what the hell happened? Then, he thought of Nia. If the Russians got to Gagnon they could get to Nia. The SVR, FSB and GRU were, contrary to Hollywood’s general impression, skilled and professional practitioners of the dark arts of espionage and intelligence. If they found Gagnon, there was a good chance that they knew of Tom and it didn’t take a genius to link Tom to Zalkind/ Kamenev at the BFI which meant a link to Nia.

“Smith,” Tom began. “I need to call someone, a civilian. Someone who may be in danger.”

“No. Impossible,” replied Smith. “There’s no call for you whatsoever.”

Tom’s fear for Nia became all-encompassing, all he could think of was his need to get out of this car and fast.

Tom brought his left hand up to his face as if to scratch his nose, but then lashed his arm out jamming the tip of his elbow into the face of the first heavy, breaking bone and cartilage before any of the men could react. He then