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Introducing Max Ward, a modern spy in a dangerous world.Know your enemy…Spared certain expulsion by a faceless puppet-master, MI6 spook Max Ward is happy riding an analyst’s desk at the British Embassy in The Hague and seeing his married lover whenever their schedules allow. Then, out of nowhere, the favour is called in. The same puppeteer finally breaks cover. He’s been watching Max since before he was recruited and now he wants him to face down an enemy Max knows only too well. An enemy both of them have good reason to pursue, and even better reason to leave well alone.Max’s carefully-ordered world is turned upside down as a mission with no escape routes forces him to confront everything he’s forgotten and everyone he’s betrayed. A mission that will finally force him to make a deal with the devil himself.Max Ward is a modern spy in a dangerous world. A world where counter intelligence, drug cartels and global terrorism intersect. A world where the beauty of an Old Master painting hides a deadly game of deal, double cross and revenge.
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CHARLIE BROOKS
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Charlie Brooks’ education came to a grinding halt when he left Eton to become a stable lad. He has since worked as a racehorse trainer and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and GQ magazine. He lives on a farm in the Cotswolds with his wife and daughter. His autobiography, Crossing the Line, and his first novel, Citizen, were widely acclaimed.
To Rebekah – the best wife in the world – who inspires me with her sense of decency, her clarity of thought and her integrity.
Table of Contents
Moscow
Max Ward knew something was up. Things often weren’t as they seemed at the British Embassy on Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya, but that particular afternoon Max’s antennae were twitching more than usual.
For a moment his attention switched from his immediate superior, Colin Corbett, to Pallesson, who was crossing the main atrium. Max watched through the heavy glass partition as Pallesson, the department’s golden boy, gave some unfortunate underling a sharp dressing-down, then continued on his way with a quick glance at his watch. Max was now so far beneath Pallesson’s sphere of operation that he didn’t even warrant a greeting when they passed one another in the corridor. Their relationship had been poisoned long ago. It was unfortunate that they were now posted in the same city, but Max hadn’t let Pallesson faze him in the past and he refused to let the bastard do so now.
Max pulled his focus back to Colin Corbett, the source of his current unease. Corbett was an efficient section chief and a pretty good communicator. A team player and as straightforward as they came, but something was radiating off him now that was arousing Max’s instincts.
Considering he was the wrong side of forty, Corbett was in good shape. Mainly due to his obsession with tennis. Which was why no one ever questioned his exit from the office in his tennis gear every other afternoon. But something was different about him this Thursday and it had Max puzzled.
Max feigned interest in his terminal as he watched Corbett shuffle his papers. He had on his usual dark-blue tracksuit and the usual dark-blue bag lay on the floor with three racket handles sticking out of it. Corbett got up to go to the water machine. It was then that the first tangible evidence supporting Max’s unease struck him. Corbett was wearing hiking boots, not tennis shoes.
When Corbett finally left the office, it was a full half-hour later than normal. Max decided to follow him. This was a man of regular habits behaving out of character. Of course, Max had nothing to go on. It was just a hunch. Besides, it would make a refreshing change from yet another afternoon spent trawling through endless chatter, looking for patterns that 12.5 million euros’ worth of software couldn’t see.
In a nondescript office car-pool Skoda, Max pulled out on to the Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya, which ran alongside the Moskva River. In the thick traffic, it was relatively easy for Max to follow him without being spotted. As they approached Park Pobedy it was at an absolute standstill. Corbett’s car was a couple of hundred metres ahead of his, but neither of them were going anywhere.
Max believed Corbett to be a good man and an honest one. But something was most definitely up.
Max allowed his mind to drift back to the day’s seemingly intractable problem. Seven offshore accounts. Numerous holding and shell companies. Millions flowing through and then suddenly disappearing around the same time every year. Always the second two weeks of March.
Then it hit him. Time zones. Specifically, that small window every year when London and New York are only four hours apart. A disconnect that invariably led to missed conference calls with Langley and red faces at Vauxhall. An anomaly that allowed the final issuing bank to hide its annual transfer outside its creaking accounting software. In his line of work it was so often about what happened in the gaps.
The traffic was moving again. Corbett continued out of the city, heading west by southwest, taking first Mozhayskoye Shosse, then Minskoye Shosse.
Corbett checked his tracking device. He was ten kilometres behind his target, which was about right, total gridlock notwithstanding.
After 120 kilometres the tracker finally left the major artery and turned off on to a smaller road. Corbett followed ten minutes later, unaware that Max was shadowing him. Five kilometres further on, Corbett’s target quit the main road and went into the forest down a dirt track. After a couple of kilometres the track split into two. His target had come to a halt a further 500 metres along the left-hand fork. He went off to the right, drove for a couple of hundred metres, then pulled over into the trees.
