We keep a low profile. We don't post anything online. But we're in the phone book. Even if we'd been unlisted, we're on the electoral roll.
Mike scanned the trees for movement and solid outlines. Rob probably wasn't trying to hide, but he'd still minimize himself as a target without even thinking. Eventually Rob's olive green jacket resolved out of the vertical lines of the trees.
"Hey buddy."
Rob wandered up him. "I thought it'd be a good idea to get a security regime going."
"We can't buy in extra help. We're not supposed to know we've got a problem."
"Never mind. We're hairy-arsed enough to do this ourselves."
"That's the question. Do
what
ourselves?"
"It's worse than Afghan ROE, isn't it? Just got to sit and wait for them to start it."
Mike could feel the cold in his teeth. He tucked his chin into his collar. "One – we live permanently under counter-stalker measures. Two – we wait for them to make a mistake and call the cops. Three – we
make
them make a mistake."
Rob nodded. "Forget one and two. I'm all for three. Personally, in a saner world, I'd press option four."
"Would that be your council estate rules of engagement?"
"Yeah. Go after the fuckers and teach them some manners. But I'll settle for option three for the time being."
"Agreed. Anything that enables me to call the police. Then they've got to explain why they're after us or back off. Either kicks them into touch."
"We'll still have to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives."
"We do that anyway."
They sat on a wooden gate, all that was left of an old fence that had probably marked a field boundary in the past. It was wonderfully peaceful, a frost-glazed Christmas card of a landscape. Crows rasped in the distance. The early morning sun added gilded highlights. It was incongruously pretty for what was going through Mike's mind right then.
"Oh arr," Rob said, exaggerating his accent. "This makes Oi feel prahper rural, this do."
"You taking bets?"
"A tenner says she locks on to us within a week. She's got Ian's name and she can't fit it into Kinnery's cover story." Rob didn't have to say who
she
was any longer. "And that means they know they've got a working prototype, not just a mule."
"I won't let these bastards intimidate me."
"I'll sort it. It's my fault."
"Here we go again. You want me to hold your coat while you beat yourself up?"
"I brought this trouble to your door, mate. Let me redeem myself."
"Let's get the blame straight here. Kinnery broke every law in the book. Ian's the victim. We're the guys who rescued him. The
good
guys. Got it?"
"Doesn't alter the fact that I pushed him too fast."
"Rob, it was just bad luck."
"Well, we can't piss our pants every time the doorbell rings. So we take the battle to them. The hard bit is doing that without confirming they're on the right track."
"Whatever they do, it won't be legal They can't ask a judge to sign a warrant for a DNA sample."
Rob nodded, squinting into the sun. "And Ian's welded to their property whether he wants it or not. Okay, back to plan A for abduction."
Mike was war-gaming some ugly scenarios involving the kind of guys that Esselby tried not to hire. "I don't even know if they need him alive."
"Even if they do, abductions don't always go as planned, Zombie. Remember?"
"Rings a painful bell, yes."
"So how would
we
do it?"
"Keep the place under surveillance for a few weeks. Identify the best time and place for a snatch and what we'd need to do it cleanly."
"Don't tell me you didn't plot lines of sight when you bought the house."
"Of course I did."
"My hero." Rob slid down from the gate. "I scoped out some observation points this morning. You've got a bloody good arc from the workshop roof, and a good view of the road from the top of the assault course, but not as much cover. So that's two OPs, and we can redirect the cams and sensors accordingly."
"Dru won't have the skills to find an OP in a rural location and lay up for an extended period," Mike said. "Especially in this weather. She hasn't got a uniformed background, according to Kinnery. She's just a desk jockey."
Rob beckoned him to walk on. "No, she'll ask around in Westerham. Intercept a postman and ask innocent questions. Reporter tactics."
"Then what? If it's an abduction, she won't be the one doing it."
"What's your dad thinking?"
"I promised him I'd ask for help if I needed it."
"But you won't."
"I can handle this myself."
"
We
can handle it ourselves." Rob skidded down a steep slope to reach a shallow gully between the trees. "You should have fenced the whole estate and put in point vibration sensors. It'd be worth all the false alarms. I know you don't like to advertise that you're worth raiding, but you can take this ordinary bloke shit too far, you know."
"What are we going to do about Tom?"
Rob went quiet for a while. "You want me to call off the trip?"
"God, no. But he'll notice something's going on, so we need a cover story."
"What? Stalker? Paparazzi?"
"Maybe."
"Look, if it all goes tits up, I can take Ian back to the UK to lie low for a while. I'll introduce him to pubs. Proper football. Women. My old oppos. He'll enjoy it."
"And what happens to your yacht contract? And that physiotherapist of yours?"
"Needs must, Zombie."
"You can't keep putting your life on hold."
"First things first."
"You'll still be saying that when you're sixty."
"Things need doing. I'll do them."
Rob strode ahead, occasionally stopping to take a pair of binoculars from inside his jacket and scope through. He obviously didn't want to discuss it. He checked behind him and pointed through the trees to the road.
"She could park off the road there. She'd have line of sight to the front door." He handed the binoculars to Mike. "But we could block it with a van or something. Come on, let's check it out in a car and get all this onto a map."
Rob went bounding off through the trees towards the house as if he was orienteering. Mike jogged after him. "Ian's going to want to be involved."
"He'll have to sit this out," Rob said. "Let's impress that on him."
Ian was sitting at the kitchen table with Livvie, arms folded, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. He never wanted to be any trouble. He certainly didn't want to be cosseted like a child. Mike decided to sell it to him by treating him like a military VIP, someone who was capable of taking care of himself but who was too strategically important to risk.
"Okay, we need to put a few precautions in place," Mike said. "Ian, you're not to go outside without one of us. We'll put GPS trackers on all the cars, and I want you to carry a personal tracker at all times. I also want you to learn to operate the radios in case we can't use the phones for some reason. I don't want you out of voice or visual contact at any time. Understood? Rob and I need to do a recon and then pick up some stuff from Porton, so it's lockdown until we get back."
Ian shut his eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry about all this."
"Don't worry, we
love
it." Rob made a pot of tea, still bundled up in his jacket. "We haven't had any real work to do for ages. Just remember you're what we call the principal, the bloke we're looking after, and we're the close protection team, the bodyguards, so you need to do
exactly
what we tell you if the shit hits the fan. If you get bored with it, take notes. Because you'll have to do this for some other lucky bugger one day."
Ian took a notebook out of his back pocket and started writing. He really was taking notes. "I'll be in the gym, then. I assume daily runs outside are off."
"Temporarily," Mike said. "But this is going to end sooner rather than later. I promise."
Nazani had finally come to Westerham. Mike had lost his buffer zone between the front line and home, the portal between the real and the unreal in Rob's cosmology. He refused to let it destroy his sense of sanctuary, but that had been tainted forever simply by thinking what might happen. This was how many of the guys he'd known at school now lived. The world outside their gates was a permanent threat.
Rob drove as far around the estate as public roads could reach, occasionally stopping to walk up tracks to check ease of access. Gradually, Mike built a picture of where Dru would need to position herself or a camera to keep an eye on their movements. If she wanted to watch the entrance, then she didn't have any cover at all; she'd have to park on the road and invite attention. If she drove up the dead-end track on the eastern boundary, then she could conceal a car, but Mike could place a camera and motion sensor to watch the turning.
Her best bet was to leave the car well out of sight and lay up in the woods. She'd need some advanced skills to do that. And she'd still have to run the gauntlet of the security sensors to get close enough to the house to get eyes on Ian.
Rob parked the Mercedes on the grass verge with the engine running and made notes on the plan folded on his knees. "If she shows up, she'd better plan how she's going to take a piss. It's the little details that bugger you up on hard routine."
"Did you know ladies can buy plastic gizmos so they can do a tinkle standing up? It changes the whole battlespace."
"Zombie, don't go there. Please. I don't want my last fragile illusions about women to be shattered. It's a fading memory as it is."
"Just trying to lighten the mood. I've turned this into the siege of Leningrad in less than twelve hours."
"Better that than thinking everything's fine while a Panzer division rolls into your front garden."
"We're thinking too military. I'm starting to favour your con
-man idea. She'll pose as someone to get information so she can PID Ian."
"There's something hilarious about positively identifying a shape-shifter."
"Well, there's no pizza boy to tell her about the folks on Forest Road who always tip big. And even if she turns out to be a badass, any hands-on stuff has to be done by someone like us."
Rob sketched a few more lines on the map. "Might as well plan for everything. I bet she's still carrying that burner phone. You know. The number she gave Joe."
"Maybe."
"It'd be fun to ring that at the right moment."
"Are you enjoying this?"
"No, but I'm good at it. And that makes me feel better." Rob checked over his shoulder before pulling out onto the road again. "Okay, Porton here we come."
Mike bought trackers and SIMs for all the cars, plus a wrist GPS and some extra units in case things panned out as they feared and he got the chance to tag a surveillance vehicle. The magnetic variety had a two-month battery life, ample if the worst happened. When they got home, he made it his first priority to find Ian and make sure his personal tracker was set up properly.
"He's been in the store room all morning updating the inventory," Livvie said. "Don't worry, I checked. He's just staying busy."
Ian, like Rob, always needed to find chores to do. The store room housed steel racks of food, fuel, bottled water, generators, and other survival essentials in case the house was cut off by bad weather and they needed to ride things out for a couple of weeks. Mike walked through the garage and opened the store doors.
"Ian?" Mike couldn't see him for a moment, but the tiled floor was immaculately clean and the items on the shelves were sorted and lined up as neatly as a supermarket display. "I got you a GPS tracker watch. That way you won't forget it."
Mike peered around the first row of shelves. Ian was sitting on a set of steps, looking at the palm of his hand as if he was lost in thought. A gas lighter and a small mirror sat on the shelf next to him.
"Ian? Are you okay?"
He looked slightly embarrassed and put his hands together. Mike wondered what he'd interrupted.
Now there's a fatherhood lesson. Knock and wait. Got it.
"I don't know if you'll understand," Ian said.
Mike wheeled a portable generator into the aisle and sat down on it. "Try me. I used to be eighteen, believe it or not."
Ian looked down awkwardly at his hands. Mike expected him to open up about some crisis of confidence or offer more apologies, but he simply unclasped his hands and turned the left one palm up to show Mike. Perhaps this was some new camouflage trick that hadn't quite gone to plan.
But the thought lasted less than a heartbeat. Ian's left palm was blistered and burned. Mike's gut flipped over.
"What the hell happened?" He leaned forward to inspect the burn, but Ian pulled his hand away. "You had an accident? We need to put a dressing on that."