The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (reading a book txt) 📗

Blue’ on the back of the pad, ringed the words, then wrote in block capitals ‘LOVE YOU’.

An idea flickered in his mind. He seized the turpentine bottle, unscrewed the top as he rolled on to his left side, which caused the pain from his leg to surge upwards. He didn’t yell out. Not now. Not after a life of fear and pain and self-control – he just waited. The man was twenty paces away: black beanie, an unexceptional, fleshy, mid-thirty-year-old face, gloves and dark brown lace-up military boots. He lowered the rifle. Why? To enjoy the moment, or make sure his rotten aim wouldn’t fail him again? Harland flung the bottle. It Catherine-wheeled through the air, spraying turps, and hit the man in the groin. He followed that with the burner, which fell short but did its job of lighting the turps on the ground around the man, and instantly his legs and midriff caught fire. Harland groaned an expletive and collapsed on to his back and looked at the sky. The heightened awareness that came from concentrating on nature, which always remained for an hour or so after stopping, was still with him, and the sky at that moment seemed impossibly beautiful. Four shots were loosed off chaotically, one of which entered his heart.

Chapter 2

GreenState

Paul Samson was familiar with her routine. Before leaving the sixties block on the fringes of Westminster, where GreenState’s campaign headquarters were housed, Zoe Freemantle would go over to the water cooler and fill her flask. She’d return to her desk, then work her phone and slip her laptop into her shoulder bag. After checking her phone a few times, she would get up without saying anything to those around her and head for the stairwell, which she used in preference to the lift. All this gave Samson a head start, and by the time she pushed through the double doors on to the street he was wearing his helmet and had started the bike. He was sure she hadn’t been trained in counter-surveillance, yet she was good. She would walk for about half a mile with her big stride and air of imperturbable self-possession until she suddenly stopped and got into the ride she’d hailed twenty minutes before. She never used the same rendezvous and always chose a spot where the driver could slip into what was for London relatively fast-moving traffic. She usually included a dry-cleaning move in the route and twice Samson had lost her because he couldn’t follow her on the bike, although without it there was little hope of keeping up with her. On this occasion, she walked along the Embankment and at the last moment jogged up the steps and into the main entrance of the Tate Gallery. Samson turned right and stopped on the street corner so he could watch the front and side entrances of the gallery simultaneously. Ten minutes later, he caught sight of her long suede coat ascending the steps at the far end of the side entrance. He followed her through Pimlico, past Victoria Station, to a small triangular park, which she crossed, and, on the far side, climbed into a silver Prius hybrid.

She retraced her route to Westminster. The car crawled through Parliament Square and headed east along the Embankment, towards the City of London. But just as it reached the intersection near Embankment station, he saw the rear door open and Zoe hop out and plunge into the crowds converging on the Underground station. It was a smart move. There was access to Charing Cross main-line station and two lines ran through the Underground station. He parked the bike and locked his helmet in the seat box, but it was already hopeless. There was no guarantee he would find her, or that she wouldn’t walk straight through the main-line station and exit towards Trafalgar Square. There was, as he had discovered when losing her twice before, little point following her on to the Tube. He would have to guess at her eventual destination, which a couple of times had been the Edgar Coach and Engineering Works, a large industrial building on an intersection known as the Junction, north of the City of London. She was probably headed there, so he would go there, too. And if she had given him the slip again, well, that was on her.

It was less than ninety seconds before he mounted his bike. He didn’t take particular note of a much more powerful bike that roared up with a pillion passenger and lingered under the rail bridge, but he would remember it later.

He arrived at the Junction twenty-five minutes later, stood the bike in a cobbled passageway called Cooper’s Court and entered the Lina Café and Bakery, diagonally across the intersection from the Edgar Building, which he had used on the two previous occasions. He certainly wondered what went on inside, but it wasn’t his task to investigate Zoe, or find out the reason she was at GreenState. He was employed to watch for any threat against her, report back and make sure she didn’t get hurt. He hardly saw himself as that kind of muscle and, in truth, the job was rather below him, but Macy Harp, head of the private-intelligence firm Hendricks Harp that he often worked for, said it required brains and a keen eye. Besides, he’d negotiated a very good rate with the individual who wanted to keep Zoe Freemantle alive. He stressed over and over that it was a question of life and death, although he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what the threat was.

Samson found her on social media under her cover name, Ingrid Cole. As far as he could see, Zoe Freemantle had no presence whatever. Ingrid, however, was on three big platforms, a dedicated environmentalist, animal lover and climate-change activist who frequently linked to her own website. This consisted mostly of photographs of her work, dating back several years – he admired the care she’d taken in pushing