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She drove at moderate speed along the autobahn, heading west towards Bonn. After Purkiss had watched the clip a second time, he’d closed the laptop and said: ‘Get us out of here.’
‘Where, in particular?’ she’d said. Purkiss understood that the dynamic between them had shifted. Until now, she’d been in charge. But she seemed to have tacitly accepted that he was to take the lead now.
‘What’s the nearest major airport?’ he said, half to himself. ‘Excluding Frankfurt.’
‘Cologne and Bonn. About ninety miles from here.’
Purkiss nodded.
They rode in silence to begin with, Purkiss running over Vale’s clip in his head. Deacon left it a few minutes before she said: ‘Do you need medical attention?’
‘No. I’m fine.’
He couldn’t risk going to a hospital, and the delays it would entail. The cramps in his belly were intermittent now, and his head was clearer. He glanced across at her.
‘Thanks, by the way. For earlier.’
She shrugged, unsmiling. ‘My job.’
Ninety miles to the airport gave Purkiss an hour to collect his thoughts, ask the questions he needed, formulate a strategy. It was difficult to know where to begin.
‘What do you know about all this?’ he said.
‘No more than you do. Less, probably.’
‘Vale said your handler is Gareth Myles.’
‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘And he’s Service.’
‘Yes. He’s mentioned Quentin Vale a few times in the past. Says he has an unusual relationship with the mainstream Service. That he’s an outsider of sorts. Which presumably makes you one, as well.’
‘Never presume,’ said Purkiss.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Myles sent me a text message yesterday afternoon, instructing me to collect a passport and a flash drive with that video, and then find you in Rome. He gave no indication why you were in danger, or who exactly it is that’s trying to kill you, other than to suggest that it’s the same people who brought down Vale on the airliner.’
‘You’re in contact with him?’
‘He contacts me. I have no way of getting in touch with him in between. If I reply with a text message it doesn’t get delivered.’
‘Seems like an odd way to work,’ said Purkiss.
She shrugged again. ‘It’s for security reasons, I suppose. It protects Myles.’
But leaves you out in the cold, Purkiss thought.
He said: ‘What do I call you?’
‘Rebecca’s fine.’
‘I’m John.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You’ve got funds on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I’m without any for the time being.’ The pickpocket at the airport wouldn’t have found anything of interest in the wallet. His purpose in stealing it hadn’t been the usual, financial one, and the only form of identification in the pockets – Purkiss’s driving licence – listed a fake home address. They already knew who he was, clearly.
‘No problem.’ She peeled onto an offshoot of the autobahn towards Bonn and Cologne. ‘Where are we going?’
Instead of answering, Purkiss began to summarise out loud. ‘Vale learns he’s in danger, and records that clip. He sends me to Rome to get me out the way. A few days later he boards the flight to Turkey. Possibly intending to find this Saul Gideon in the Aegean. The opposition destroy the plane and kill him.’
He paused. Looked across at Rebecca.
She said nothing.
Purkiss said, ‘Just to clear up any misunderstanding: I know your role is to protect me. But I’d prefer it if you weren’t just a bodyguard. I need your input on this. Your ideas.’
‘Fair enough.’ Something close to a smile played about her lips.
‘So. What’s wrong with that picture I’ve just described?’
‘The way they killed Vale,’ she said immediately. ‘It’s too elaborate. Too excessive. Bringing down an entire flight, disguising it as an ideologically motivated terrorist attack, just to get one person.’
‘Right,’ said Purkiss. ‘Which suggests two possibilities. Either, it wasn’t just Vale they were after. There might have been other targets on the flight. Or, the opposition wanted to conceal the fact that they were targeting Vale.’
‘Why?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps they wanted to avoid warning off other, future targets.’
‘Like yourself.’
‘Maybe.’
He tried to recapture his train of thought. ‘So they’ve destroyed the plane, and taken out Vale. Next, they turn their attention to me. They either follow me to Frankfurt – unlikely, because why would they wait until I got there before making a move on me? – or they assume, correctly, that I’ll head for the airport to try to find out what happened, and they wait for me there. Just as you did.’
Rebecca said, ‘Do you have any idea who the opposition are? Why they might want you and Vale dead?’
‘No.’ Purkiss thought back over the missions he’d conducted at Vale’s behest. There were so many potential grudges outstanding. So many possibilities.
‘So what’s our next move?’ said Rebecca.
‘We have two options. Either, we try to draw them out. Take one of them into custody and interrogate him. But that’s too risky. I’d have to expose myself somehow, and next time they’d likely do the job properly.’ Purkiss paused. ‘No. We have to do what Vale asked. Find this Saul Gideon.’
‘If they knew enough about Vale to anticipate his travel plans, they might be expecting you to do just that,’ said Rebecca.
‘It’s a possibility,’ Purkiss acknowledged. ‘But it’s the only other way.’
‘We fly to Athens, then,’ Rebecca said. ‘The Cyclades are adjacent.’
‘Not yet.’ Purkiss had been thinking about it ever since they’d set off in the car, and he’d made his decision. ‘First. We’re going back to London.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Why?’
‘To collect some extra manpower.’