The Alex King Series A BATEMAN (summer reading list txt) 📖

high-profile on the grapevine since his visits to France and Italy. Those weren’t exactly subtle affairs.”

“So, you’ve no clue?”

“No. But an SAS officer on secondment to five, a man King knows well, by all accounts, was working with us to help find Helena,” Ramsay paused. “Find Helena, find King. That was his angle. But I fear he has played us; been in contact with King throughout.”

“Rashid?”

“Yes.”

“Alex has no other friends in Hereford. He hates the place. I have met Rashid. He’s a solid character. Where is he?”

Ramsay hesitated. “Well, that’s just it,” he said. “We arrived in Tbilisi and while I was hiring the car, he upped and went.”

“Just like that?”

“The technician I have working with me, well, they both got fairly well acquainted…”

“And that’s why he left?”

“No. Marnie was with him when he got a call. He listened, didn’t speak much and left her standing there.”

“You think it was Alex?”

“I do,” he said.

“And he left through the airport, out onto the concourse?”

“Yes.”

“Then if it was Alex, that would mean he was in Georgia,” she said hopefully. “Which means Helena is still in Georgia and Alex is closing in on her.”

“Precisely.”

Caroline nodded. “We need to contact Rashid, see if he is with Alex. He’ll need to know I’m safe and well.”

“And are you?”

Caroline shrugged. “I’ve been through a lot, but I’ve seen a lot worse. Others did not have it as easy as I did,” she paused. “I was eventually held at a farm…”

“We’ve been there,” Ramsay said. “Near Skhimili. It was evident it had been in recent use, but it was deserted.”

“Oh, no…” Caroline said quietly. She looked at Ramsay, her expression sorrowful. “There were girls there, young women… they were being held, ready to go out to the sex trade. Pop-up brothels, the internet, sex-slaves to the wealthy and immoral. They also had women set aside for a baby farming venture.”

“Jesus…” Ramsay trailed off.

Caroline sighed. “The dark web, or deep web, or whatever the hell it’s called. A place where babies can be bought and sold. To the highest bidder, naturally.”

Ramsay shook his head and said, “I don’t get it. I just don’t understand how a British billionaire’s wife can get so low, so quickly.”

“She always was,” Caroline said. “She worked in the sex trade herself, was part of the Russian mafia. She married well, that’s all. She was the same person all the time. She cheated, keeping her long-time lover, Viktor Bukov, planned and schemed her husband’s death all along. Together, they came up with Anarchy to Recreate Society. A terrorist organisation praying on the rich and powerful. Modern-day Robin Hoods. But that was all a cover, a way of making Sir Ian Snell’s death look like part of a bigger picture. In doing so, she gladly sacrificed three other men, and people like the Jameson family, who simply died because they owned and lived at a house that was perfect for Bukov to take his shot from to kill Snell while he was down in Cornwall.”

“And both King and yourself thwarted their plans, uncovered them.”

“She’s a spiteful and vengeful bitch,” Caroline said bitterly.

“And clever too. Or at least smart.”

“But not as smart as Alex. He was onto them from the moment he investigated the murder scene. He knew that they had taken more than one shot from such a great distance. He knew that from the position Snell had been sitting in, and the granite wall behind him, meant he would have been drugged. Snell simply would have known he was being shot at. He would have moved at least.”

“Well, if Alex is onto her, we need to find out where he is so that we can be of assistance,” Ramsay said thoughtfully. “It just doesn’t feel right. The woman managed to be involved with the Russian mafia all this time, overthrew them using you as bait and a British agent to do her dirty work, and cleaned away her operation and evaded capture in a matter of hours, but she allows King to get near her? I don’t see it. With the best will in the world, the woman is out for vengeance, and I just can’t see her letting King get near her after all that has happened.”

“You think Alex is walking into a trap?”

Ramsay nodded. “I’m convinced of it.”

61

 

The mountain road led to a former communications outpost, chosen for the uninterrupted signal it would both receive or generate, high atop the tallest mountain in the range. It would have dated back to the original cold war, and King imagined bored and weary, undisciplined Soviet troops milling around, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, waiting for word from Moscow, or counting down until their tour led them to something a little more favourable than a deserted mountain ridge. The posting would have been a punishment, or perhaps a last-chance shot across the bow for junior soldiers. A trained radio operator, and a handful of conscripts to cook, clean, guard and maintain the series of huts and bunks. Inspections would depend on the senior ranking soldier, and their own balance between social acceptance and fear of a snap inspection. The person in charge of this place would either be ostracised by his men or hauled over the coals when an officer turned up with high-ranking KGB officials for a report.

The buildings were now largely torn down. Graffiti and what King recognised as Russian profanity was tagged in garish colours on the remaining walls, and the roofing, windows and doors had all been stripped and stolen, most likely making up somebody’s house soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Rashid had left his car further down the mountain, parked off the road in a mountain track and tucked the keys under the front wheel arch. He had