The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (read with me .TXT) 📕

landscaped so these are invisible. Gaspar owns a lot of land around the hill. A private road of two kilometres leads to the ridge. We acquired drone footage from a local man we hired last winter when the trees were bare. He was surveying the property for us from high up, operating at a thousand metres, which is way above the legal limit. That’s why they didn’t see the drone. We were fortunate. Watch this.’

Naji ran the footage. At first there was just a clear view of the houses in snow. From the left of the picture, three cars followed a pickup snaking up the metalled private road. The drone zoomed in as the cars peeled off and parked in different driveways. ‘We think these two cars are her bodyguards and this one contains Mila Daus. Watch.’ The rear door of a black Escalade opened and a woman wearing a scarf, dark ski jacket and black trousers got out. The man who’d jumped from the wheel of the pickup went to join her. He was in a cap and green jacket and was carrying a rifle case over his shoulder and a box with both hands. ‘This is John Gaspar,’ said Rudi. ‘He’s a gun freak. We think they’d been to a restaurant ten kilometres away and a gun range that he owns. It was a Saturday. The man we hired to take this film was using very good equipment so we were able to enlarge the images.’ He stopped and nodded to Naji. Two close-ups showed the woman Samson had seen in the photographs taken by Harland’s friend Frick. There was no doubt that they were looking at Mila Daus.

‘They live here with a small security detail,’ continued Rudi. ‘She’s at the Ridge two or three days of every week. Gaspar is there most of the time and doesn’t usually travel with his wife, but sometimes they go together to Clouds Ranch in Idaho, where he hunts. The security detail always travels with his wife, so he’s on his own when she’s away. They almost never travel long distances by road. Instead, they take a helicopter from their own airfield three kilometres away and fly to the local airport, where she has a plane. But we get the impression that Clouds Ranch is her domain. It’s where she does a lot of her business and hosts target guests.’

Macy and the Bird murmured their approval. This all sounded like more familiar intelligence work.

‘What do you know about the foot doctor?’ asked Samson.

‘John Gaspar is fifty-five, ten years younger than his wife. He has his own life. He still practises at two local clinics. He spends a lot of time at the gun range. He deals in rare weapons and he takes hunting trips to Africa – which is amazing, considering GreenState’s campaigns against big-game hunting. He collects vintage hunting rifles. We found this ad last week on a collectors’ website.’

A screenshot showed a double-barrelled rifle in a case with two-inch brass ammunition lined up in front of the case. The advertisement read: ‘The real deal. A 470 Nitro Express from 1909 in immaculate condition. All documentation is available, including the original sales invoice from William Evans Ltd of St James’s, London.’

In the text below, Gaspar admitted that he was loth to part with the gun but the recoil was proving too much for his injured shoulder. He attested to the reliability and killing power of the weapon by publishing pictures of himself with a variety of slaughtered animals. Gaspar, always wearing a ridiculous camouflage hat, was photographed standing on or beside a dead giraffe, two buffalo, a warthog, a hyena and an elephant. The elephant had been stopped in its tracks and had ploughed an enormous rut in the red earth of the savannah. Around the dead beast was a shooting party of three men in hunting garb, Gaspar at the front, toting the double-barrelled rifle. ‘Disgusting!’ exclaimed the Bird, which reminded Samson that the Bird had set up a wildlife sanctuary in Northern Australia.

But Samson’s attention was drawn to one of the men in the background and he rose to get a closer look. ‘Do you recognise this man?’ he asked Naji, pointing to the only member of the party not smiling, a stocky individual of about fifty with a shaven head and heavy brow carrying a gun that looked more suited to warfare than killing defenceless animals.

Naji enlarged the area of the photo. ‘Yes, he was at the hotel!’ he exclaimed

‘This, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Samson, ‘is Anatoly Stepurin, the man who’s responsible for Bobby’s death and the poisoning of Anastasia’s husband.’ He turned to Rudi. ‘Well done. You’ve got the vital evidence that proves the link between Stepurin and Gaspar. And the photograph is dated. They’ve known each other for four years. That covers the time of Anastasia’s kidnap. I cannot stress how important this is. Thank you. Thank you all.’

He stopped and thought for a few seconds before speaking again. ‘So Denis had all this, plus the information from his own inquiries. We’re sure he had nothing with him when he went to Congress, and if he had been going to speak about this, he would need a lot of evidence with him. But let me ask you – was he going to use it that day?’

‘Naji?’ Zoe said. ‘You met Mr Hisami twice, you helped him on the tech side?’

Naji didn’t look up from his screen. ‘I don’t think so. Everything is encrypted on a special laptop. This computer has never been used on the internet and only Mr Hisami knows access code.’

‘Oh, great,’ said Macy.

‘He has a device I adapted – an old calculator. I reprogrammed it.’

‘His Tandy calculator!’ said Anastasia ‘The one in his briefcase!’

Naji nodded. ‘You enter a twenty-digit number into calculator and it will give you the code.’

‘You have that number?’ asked Samson, remembering that Naji had adapted an online game to hide the information he had stolen from hacking ISIS computers.

‘No, Mr Hisami