Before he’d left, Winter had passed to Ryker the profile, put together by MI5, MI6, and the JIA, on Anna Abayev, also known as the Red Cobra, plus some papers outlining the investigation so far into Kim Walker’s murder. Ryker perused the files as he sat in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport. He’d destroyed them and discarded the remnants by the time he boarded the plane that would take him to the mainland before he headed onward across the ocean to Barcelona and then Malaga.
The details Ryker had read were still flowing through his mind as he walked up the steps to enter the turboprop plane. The profile on the Red Cobra was sparse to say the least. Anna Abayev’s fingerprints had been on record from a double-murder that had taken place in Georgia in the mid-1990s. The young Anna – just sixteen at the time – had vanished from the scene and details of her movements and whereabouts in the following years were flimsy at best. In fact, Ryker reckoned he held more detailed knowledge of the Red Cobra’s methods and movements in his brain than the UK’s intelligence services had managed to gather on her in almost two decades. But then there weren’t many people who had come as close to her as Ryker.
He took his seat by the window and watched the other passengers clambering on board. Headspace and leg-space was limited in the cramped cabin and Ryker, with his height and bulk, willed the seat next to him to remain empty. The last passenger to board the plane however – a bearded and bespectacled man in his forties, Ryker guessed – bumped and squeezed into the seat next to Ryker, apologising as he did so.
Ryker murmured in acknowledgment before his busy mind took him back to the task at hand, and the conversation with Winter the previous day.
‘Who will I be working for?’ Ryker had asked.
‘You’ll be working for me,’ Winter said.
‘The JIA?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Who knows about this then? Me being involved, I mean.’
‘Only me and those who need to know.’ Winter paused.
Ryker remained tight-lipped, waiting for the Commander to add to his vague responses.
‘We’ve set up a full cover identity for you,’ Winter said eventually. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about. Birth records, university, electoral, taxes, it’s all there.’
Ryker raised an eyebrow as the words sunk in. Winter had gone to a lot of trouble already in setting up Ryker for the job. Which meant he’d always expected Ryker would agree to help. Ryker felt a little foolish about that.
‘What’s the story?’
‘You’re a freelance investigator. Appointed by the Home Office to assist the Metropolitan Police. You don’t have any legal jurisdiction in Spain, but then neither does the Met, and I’m not sending you out there to make an arrest. I need to know what’s happening. Who killed Kim Walker and why. And why that dead woman is linked to the Red Cobra’s profile.’
‘Name?’
‘James Ryker,’ Winter said with a wry smile.
Ryker glared at his ex-boss, bit his tongue.
‘It was easier that way. I’ve had to pull a lot of strings to get this far. Using an identity you’d already created made more sense.’
Ryker still said nothing, but he was angry. Winter had chosen to use Ryker’s now-real identity for an undercover operation. It felt like a kick in the teeth. As though Ryker’s new existence, his identity, was of no importance to Winter or the JIA. He still belonged to them.
‘James Ryker has been brought in because he has real-life experience of hunting the Red Cobra,’ Winter said. ‘So feel free to use details of your own experiences with her.’
‘I thought you said the Met doesn’t know about the Red Cobra? That they’re trying to figure out who Kim Walker really was?’
‘They don’t, yet. But it’s the easiest angle to get you – and keep you – in there. We’re not going to publicise it to the world, but we’ll make sure the right people know.’
‘The detective who’s out there, who is he?’
‘His name is Paul Green. Work with him as much or as little as you like. I’ve never met him, haven’t got a clue how good he is. I’ll leave that to you to figure out.’
‘And what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘What’s your involvement going to be?’
‘You’re my involvement. I thought this was something you’d be able to handle on your own.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
‘But don’t for a second think that means this isn’t a big deal. Because it is. We don’t know how far this problem stretches. Our system contains details of thousands of highly confidential operations; names of agents, informants. Someone has breached that system. If that information gets into the wrong hands, then the lives of hundreds of people at MI5, MI6, the JIA could be on the line.’
‘Mine included?’
‘No. You’re already dead, remember?’
Winter smiled again. Ryker didn’t. The play seemed simple enough. A big deal? Ryker had seen bigger. The computer system had been hacked once, but according to Winter all that had been accessed was a limited profile of a wanted assassin. Gaining access to details of agents, informants and operations was surely another matter altogether.
Was the JIA really worried that could happen? Maybe they were. Either way, Ryker got the impression Winter hadn’t yet declared his full hand. If the threat were as big and as real as Winter was suggesting then something else must have tipped off the JIA. Another hacking attempt. Knowledge of other profiles being accessed. Agents already compromised. It was possible. But there was another, more worrying, possibility that Ryker saw.
Why was the JIA so concerned about the Red Cobra all of a sudden? Particularly if they’d thought she was the dead woman right up until Ryker had set the record straight. She was a wanted criminal, not an agent. So what was it about her that the JIA wanted to keep under wraps? It wouldn’t be the first time in his life that Ryker had been used as a pawn to hide the dirty secrets of the governments he worked for.
Ryker was brought out of his thoughts when the man sitting next to him knocked a bundle of papers into his lap. The man apologised profusely as he frantically collected up his belongings.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Ryker said as he handed the last of the papers back to the man.
Ryker looked over and saw he had a laptop computer laid out on his fold-down tray. The papers he'd dropped were full of printed type. Ryker, having glanced for a couple of seconds, deduced their context. ‘You’re a writer.’
‘Yes,’ the man said, looking surprised. ‘How did you know?’
Ryker nodded at the papers.