Chapter Twenty-Eight

The drive back to the airfield seemed to go on forever, and the sun was setting by the time they pulled up beside the plane, one of those fantastically dramatic African sunsets that paints the sky in scarlet and burnt orange.

Luke couldn’t get the image of the charred ring of greasy ash out of his mind. How many had died there? Two hundred? More? It was hard to believe so much human life could be reduced to so little. Luke had seen some bad things in his time in the Legion, but he’d never managed to acquire the cavalier attitude to human life and death that so many of his fellow men quickly developed.

He felt filthy, the dust sticking to his sweat-soaked skin, and he wanted to stand under an icy cold shower and wash away the sensation of death that clung to him like a miasma of evil.

Callum climbed out of the vehicle behind him. “We’ll find them,” he said.

“Yeah.” It was true. The trucks had to come from somewhere. Whatever had been used to kill those people had to be brought into the country. He turned to Jacob. “I want you to get back to Diva. See if the doctor’s finished with the autopsy report, and I want samples, blood, sweat, everything sent to the UK tonight. Get rid of the body, pay off the doctor, and then I suggest you get out of here. We’re going to start digging, and once we do, you can bet they’ll come searching for where the original leak came from. They’ll be coming after you.”

“I’ll be on a plane out of the country tonight.”

“Make sure you are,” he said and slapped him on the shoulder. “You did well. This may be the break we’ve been looking for.”

He climbed the steps into the plane and poked his head through the cockpit door. “We ready to go?”

“Yeah, just waiting for you to get on board.”

“Good. Take us home.”

He unfastened his weapons belt, and tossed it on the seat behind him then sat down next to Callum, rested his head back against the seat, and closed his eyes. Images of Jenna filled his mind. Where was she? Had they harmed her? An intense sense of urgency filled him. They had to find her, but in the ten years investigating the Conclave, they’d never gotten close. He would never discover where they had taken Jenna unless he could find someone with enough to lose that Luke could convince them that talking was worth the risk. And he had to do it fast.

Beside him, Callum opened his laptop and powered up.

“We need satellite photographs of the area,” Luke said. “There were a number of trucks. We need to see them, identify them. They had to come from somewhere.”

“I’ll get someone working on it.”

“We also need a list of international companies working over here. Cross-reference them against Conclave profiles. See if we can’t narrow it down. I want to know who their contact is in Ivory Coast before we land, and I want to know everything about them.”

Callum typed into the laptop, but it would be a while before the information started coming in. Luke stretched out on the row of seats at the front of the plane. Again, behind his closed lids he saw an image of Jenna, her beautiful face twisted in pain. The thought of her suffering filled him with anguish.

He sat up and pulled out his cell phone, punched in the number of Scotland Yard.

“Could I talk to Detective Inspector Mitchell? It’s about the murder of David Griffith.”

A moment later, the call was transferred. “Mitchell, here.”

“Luke Grafton.”

There was a moment’s silence. “I hope you’re calling to tell me you’re coming in.”

“Is there any news of Jenna?” He knew the answer before Mitchell spoke.

“No. It’s as if she’s vanished in a puff of fucking smoke.”

Luke didn’t bother saying anything else, just ended the call and laid his head back. Finally, he drifted off into a restless sleep.

“Luke?”

As Callum spoke his name, he woke abruptly.

“The satellite information has come in. I think we may have found something, a convoy of trucks setting off from Diva, fitting the time schedule.”

“Any clue who they belong to?”

“They were aid trucks, supposedly taking building materials inland, but they were provided by one of the companies we’ve been investigating, a big international drug company, Flexley International. Stefan told me to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“He said Flexley is owned and run by a Gordon Haughton. Haughton used to own a research company a couple of decades back—Bentley Research.”

“The company Merrick and Jenna’s father worked for.” Sitting back in his seat, he grinned. “It’s him. It’s got to be. Get me everything there is on Haughton.”