BLOOD DRAGON by Freddie Peters (books to get back into reading .TXT) 📕

Cora straightened up … her fingers clicked over the mouse, checking folders and their contents. There was no contentious data stored in what she was opening. She methodically tried all the folders that looked promising. Those could not be opened.

In the distance, Nikki’s silhouette was moving along the corridor, reflected in the glass partitioning of the offices that lined the L-shaped passageway.

Cora attempted to open Ollie’s calendar. That too had been locked. She promptly logged off and diverted her gaze towards the garden outside.

Nikki knocked at the open door and walked in hesitantly. Cora’s face must have looked distraught as she stopped in the middle of the room.

Cora nodded her in. Nikki placed the tea in front of her. She laid it on a small paper napkin with a stirrer, a couple of sugars and a small tub of milk. “I was not quite sure how you take it.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Her fingers still shaking after her failed incursion into Ollie’s computer, she managed to prepare the tea slowly, pouring in the sugar and the milk in a controlled manner.

“I forgot to ask. There was a gentleman Ollie mentioned a few times when he spoke about his Hong Kong colleagues … Randy Zhang. Do you think I could perhaps contact him? It would be lovely to speak to someone that Ollie knew so well.”

“Mr Zhang no longer works for the company.” The answer came out like a shot. Nikki’s cheeks turned deep red, the flush spreading to her forehead and neck.

“Oh.” Cora opened wide watery eyes. “Never mind … it would have been nice.”

Nikki looked around as though someone was about to materialise in the room. She hesitated, then bent forward towards Cora.

“I’m not sure what happened, but he was asked to leave very suddenly.”

Cora’s didn’t take her eyes off Nikki’s face.

“But he came from the Biotechnology Research Institute in Hong Kong … maybe they have an address for him.”

Cora nodded her thanks and finished her tea. She had the information she was looking for.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Pole lashed out at Harris without any preamble. “Who the fuck do you use to clean your data, Harris, and don’t bloody well tell me to calm down.”

Even Harris could not argue with this. Letting the calls of Pole’s burner phone register next to Nancy’s apartment was poor practice, unforgiveable.

“If you want more information about the Ollie Wilson case, you make the burner phone issue disappear.”

“Consider it done.” Harris already had a plan in mind, or so he suggested.

“What are you proposing?” Pole had left the Scotland Yard building, crossed Parliament Street and ended up next to the Churchill War Rooms. There were plenty of tourists there and his burner phone would mix with other similar devices.

“That doesn’t need to concern you. I have an idea.”

“It does concern me very much. I’m not giving you one more bit of intel until I understand how you are going to get me out of this mess.”

Harris remained silent for a while and Pole wondered whether he was still on the line.

“Fine … this is what’s going to happen. You recall that it was a woman who tried to gun down the SFO prosecutor?”

“How can I forget … I ran after the little cow across Kennington and couldn’t catch her.”

“Then you will also recall that she is no longer of this world after an unfortunate encounter with the bullets of Ferguson’s squad, so I intend to associate her with the burner phone you used.”

Pole weighed up the idea … plausible. She might have done a reconnaissance of her next target’s residence, or hovered around Scotland Yard to track down either Nancy or the SFO prosecutor.

“That’s a credible idea … how are you going to create the link?”

“I’m sorry, but from there on you will need to trust me, and yes, I know what you’re going to say.” Harris interrupted Pole before he could vent his still simmering anger. “We could have done better and we didn’t. I’ll deal with it personally, in any case. For what it’s worth, I too do not want you to get caught.”

“How touching.” Pole’s jaw clenched again and he felt the desire to hit something, anything. He started walking again along Horse Guard’s Road.

“It’s pure self-interest. You are an excellent source and I trust your judgement.”

The genuine compliment silenced Pole for a short moment. Harris was infuriating for most of the time, his assurance and cockiness sometimes unbearable, but he was also capable of being straight.

“If you have something to tell me, now is the time. I’m having lunch with the US contact we spoke about … And it would be good to convince him he should concentrate on somewhere other than London at the moment.”

“Why?”

“Because he is getting a little too interested in Ms Wu.”

Pole almost regretted the kind thought he had just had about Harris. “I have just received some documents which I need to go through thoroughly with my team. But in a nutshell, they were sent by Ollie Wilson to one of his colleagues at Viro-Tech in Hong Kong, a certain Randy Zhang.”

Pole gave a list of the documents that had been returned to Ollie. Harris did not comment until Pole mentioned Jared Turner’s diary extract.

“Regular meetings in China? Whereabouts?”

“The National Institute of Biological Science in Beijing.”

“The name is familiar … I’ll look into that too.” There was no point in telling Harris to let him do his job. He might as well avail himself of the MI6 and GCHQ research capability.

“Anything else about Ms Wu’s search?”

“She’s been given details of her father’s whereabouts after Tiananmen Square. She now knows he was alive after the June massacre.”

“Are you controlling the flow of information that goes to her?” Pole shot back.

“I’m not the person she used. Yvonne Butler has been her contact, but I still can find out what is going on.”

“What else