Manhunter by Chris Ryan (the false prince series .TXT) 📗

big meeting in Monte Carlo and told my handler. Said they might want to look into it. Stop it from going ahead.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. I didn’t hear back from Six. Lang went about his business as normal. A couple of weeks before the meeting, I decided to lift the sneaky prick myself. Give him a taste of this.’ He waved the cattle prod in the air, like a magic wand. ‘Find out what he was planning.’

‘You were going to torture David Lang?’

‘That was the plan. Then my handler got in touch with me out of the blue. Demanded an emergency meeting. Not like him at all. He said he had big news. When I got to the meeting, the guy was very twitchy. He looked panicked.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Casey.

‘He told me to leave Lang alone. I asked him why. My handler said Six was going to deal with him. I told him I had ways of making Lang talk, but he claimed Six had a better plan. When I asked him for details, he just smiled and said that his brother was going to have a nasty accident. His exact words.’

‘That’s why they used Novichok to kill Freddie Lang,’ Casey interjected. ‘To make it look like Moscow was behind the attack?’

‘Exactly.’ Gregory pointed a finger at her. ‘You’re a sharp one. ’

‘Why would Six want to poison him?’ said Bowman. ‘Why not just arrest David, if they knew he was up to something dodgy?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? They needed a way of turning the screw on Lang. Pressure him into calling off the deal with the Russians. Subjecting him to a hard interrogation wouldn’t get them anywhere. So they decided to kill his brother and pin it on the Russians. Make it look like Moscow was planning a double-cross.’

Bowman shook his head in disbelief. ‘But . . . that means Six carried out a chemical weapons attack. On their own soil. People were poisoned, for fuck’s sake. Hospitalised.’

Gregory shrugged. ‘Best way of getting David Lang to spill his guts.’

‘Who else knew about this?’ Webb demanded.

‘Only a handful of people. The higher-ups at MI6, myself. The guys tasked with the wet work. And your boss, of course.’

‘John knew?’ Bowman said. The bayonet sank deeper into his guts.

‘He runs the Cell. He’s plugged into everything that goes on inside Vauxhall,’ Gregory replied. ‘He knows all their dark secrets. John would have known about it from the start.’

‘He wouldn’t lie to us.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Gregory parted his lips into a cruel smile. ‘I hear David Lang took a nasty fall from his apartment yesterday. That was John’s doing, I imagine. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d planned to kill Lang all along.’

‘No.’

But even as he shook his head, a voice of doubt crept up on Bowman. He remembered the briefing back at the Shed. Mallet’s last-minute decision to go with the team. We need boots on the ground, he had said. But maybe he had a more sinister reason for tagging along with the team to Monte Carlo. Maybe Mallet had orders of his own from the Voice. Make sure Lang doesn’t come back alive.

‘You should be careful, Josh,’ Gregory went on. ‘John’s a great soldier, but he’s slippery. None of the guys in the Regiment ever trusted him . . . and neither should you.’

Bowman stayed quiet for a beat. He was beginning to see the dark side of the Cell. The extreme lengths they would go to in order to defend British interests at home and abroad. Poisonings, executions. Covertly funding the torture of foreign nationals. Bowman thought he had joined the Cell to fight mobsters. But he was beginning to realise that the truth was far more complicated than that.

Gregory offered him the cattle prod.

‘Here,’ he said. He grinned manically. ‘Give it a try. A bump to the bollocks is always good fun, I find.’

Bowman looked at his old boss and shivered. He thought: Mike actually enjoys this shit. He’s getting a kick out of torturing people.

‘Hit him, man. Make him scream. Go on.’

Bowman said nothing. He just stared at Gregory. The man was unrecognisable from the charismatic officer Bowman had once fought alongside in B Squadron. The years of working for Ken Seguma, doing his bidding, had warped his mind. He might have been a first-class officer in the past, Bowman thought. But he’s just a deranged psychopath now.

‘You’ve lost your fucking mind,’ he said.

‘Don’t give me that nonsense.’ Gregory pointed to the chained rebel leader. ‘The general and his men killed your mate. Christ, they almost wiped us all out. Don’t you want to get your revenge?’

Bowman looked down at General Kakuba and felt a pang of nausea. The leader of the KUF whimpered hysterically through his gag and looked up at Bowman with wide pleading eyes. His face was swollen with bruising, his lips were bleeding heavily. At some point during the torture session, the man had voided his bowels. The air reeked of shit, piss and sweat.

He grabbed the electric prod.

Gregory beamed with delight. ‘That’s better! Now crack on with it,’ he said, rubbing his hands expectantly. ‘Let’s get started. Don’t hold back.’

Bowman held up the prod. The general gave out a muffled scream. His eyes were so wide they looked as if they might pop out of their sockets.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Gregory said.

Then Bowman hit his old boss with the shock end.

Gregory let out a grunt as the current shot through his system. His body jerked wildly and his legs buckled before he dropped to the concrete flood with a thud. Bowman bent down before he could recover and bumped him again. Gregory groaned through his tightly clenched jaw as another wave of pain ripped through his body. The voltage wasn’t powerful enough to kill or knock someone out, but it would still hurt like fuck. He hit Gregory repeatedly, delivering shocks to his legs, his stomach.

He gave Gregory a final bump to the groin. Then he tossed the prod aside and