Cold East. Alex Shaw

Jones stood and shrugged at Vlad.

      ‘Call the militia quickly. Tell them the SBU are on their way.’

      Vlad looked at Snow in confusion. ‘SBU?’

      ‘Yes.’ Snow reached into his pocket, withdrew a $100 bill, and handed it to Vlad. ‘This is for your trouble; any friend of Michael Jones is a friend of mine.’

      Michael stared down at Victor. ‘Don’t mess with the SAS.’

      Snow grabbed Jones by the sleeve. ‘Time to go.’

      Outside, darkness had fallen and they took the path round to the front of the hotel. ‘Who’s Oleg?’

      ‘There’s always an Oleg.’

      Michael pointed down the street. ‘Sviatoshyn metro station is ten minutes that way.’

      ‘OK, we’ll go back to the centre and drink in a place full of foreigners.’ Snow tapped Jones on the back. ‘Don’t worry – I’m on expenses.’

      ‘Oh, that’s great. But can you hang on a minute? I need another slash.’

      ‘Fine.’ Jones walked down the side of the hotel, opened his flies, and urinated into an evergreen shrub. Snow had ceased to be embarrassed by his friend’s antics years before, so took the opportunity to call Blazhevich.

      ‘Aidan? What’s up?’

      ‘I’ve had a bit of a problem with a guy in a bar – a giant to be exact. Can you send someone to collect him? I don’t think the local militia would be up to the job.’

      He heard the Ukrainian sigh. ‘Where is the giant?’

      ‘He’s in a hotel on Horenska Street, not far from Sviatoshyn metro.’

      ‘Was this giant called Victor?’

      ‘Yes. Why?’

      ‘Kyiv really is a small village. He’s known to the SBU, and you were lucky.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Victor Krilov is a former professional boxer, a good one.’

      ‘Nice.’

      ‘Aidan, stay out of trouble. I’ll see you and Mr Iqbal tomorrow, at the debrief.’

      *

       FBI Field Office, New York

      Vince Casey looked up from the computer at FBI Deputy Director Gianni before placing his thick index finger on the laptop screen, the display changing colour under the pressure of his digit. ‘This guy’s a “pro”, no doubt in my mind.’

      Gianni stared at the frozen image of the member of the public who had taken down four gunmen.

      ‘Look again at how he moves.’ Casey clicked and rewound the surveillance tape.

      Both men watched as the figure travelled with an economy of movement, without any hesitation or lack of purpose.

      ‘So who is he?’ Gianni asked.

      ‘That’s why your Bureau and my Agency are interested.’

      Gianni sat back and folded his arms. The speed of the man was impressive, as was the way he had terminated the X-rays. ‘Vince, what’s your professional opinion?’

      ‘I don’t think it’s any different to yours.’

      ‘Humour me. Spell it out.’

      ‘Definitely SF or SF-trained.’

      Gianni valued the opinion of the CIA black-ops veteran. In the corridor outside the office they heard footsteps. Both men remained silent from force of habit until the footfall faded away. Gianni leaned forward, dragged his laptop nearer, and tapped the keyboard. He glanced across at his long-time friend from the Agency. ‘The fingerprints come up as belonging to a banker from Boston.’

      ‘Let me have a look at that?’

      ‘Sure.’ Gianni pushed the laptop back towards Casey. ‘Just scroll down. All we have is there.’

      ‘Thanks.’ Casey read the report, although he already knew the basics. James East. Born in Boston, put up for adoption by his mother, no record of a father. Placed in a state orphanage, never adopted. There was a grainy photograph taken from a high-school yearbook, which showed East as a bespectacled, blond-haired teen. How was East’s eyesight now, Casey wondered – he’d better check. He read on. After graduating from high school East travelled to the opposite side of the country to study at UCLA. Upon completion of his degree, he volunteered to teach English for charities in Romania and then Bulgaria before returning to the US several years later.

      ‘Again, Vince, what’s your professional opinion?’ Gianni asked, deadpan.

      ‘Again, the same as yours.’

      ‘Too convenient?’

      ‘Exactly,’ Casey stated wryly. ‘No family, no ties, out of the US, and then no real job until three years ago when he comes back?’

      ‘And, as you see, no record of any criminal activity, or military service.’

      ‘So he’s not one of ours,’ Casey confirmed. His initial thoughts had been that East was a ‘NOC’, an agent with ‘No Official Cover’, a black operative. But his CIA database had thus far come up blank as regards any facial recognition match. In his experience even the blackest of NOCs left some record. He’d continue to search.

      ‘So what do we have?’ Gianni leant back in his chair and rolled his shoulders.

      ‘Someone else’s asset?’

      ‘Perhaps, but we’ve got the local office in Boston digging deeper into his background; if there’s anything fishy, we’ll find it.’

      The hard lessons learnt from the 9/11 terror attacks had now been fully implemented; the varying arms of the US intelligence and law enforcement services worked together, transparently and harmoniously. At least that was the official line, but Gianni and Casey did find the activity of their organisations more and more linked. The Bureau’s remit was ‘domestic security’ and the Agency’s the interests of the US abroad; however, each organisation was keen to keep tabs on suspects, wherever they might be.

      Gianni continued. ‘We got a court order to open his safety deposit box. There was nothing in it apart from a few thousand dollars in cash. I’ve asked the NSA to look for any recent calls made on the iPhone he was carrying.’

      Casey got to his feet and helped himself to a cup of coffee from the pot in the corner of the room. ‘Whoever Mr East is, he’s got some explaining to do.’

      ‘Oh, he’ll talk. Hero or not, he’s facing four counts of voluntary manslaughter at the very least.’

      ‘And how many innocent shoppers did the bad guys get?’

      Gianni held up his palms. ‘I know… if it hadn’t been for Mr East we’d have had a full-scale massacre on our hands. The fact still remains, however, that he killed four men. Justice cannot be blind.’

      Casey pretended to agree. ‘How did we miss them?’

      ‘Hey, if we knew that we’d have stopped them ourselves.’

      ‘Why couldn’t just one of them have lived? At least until we bled him a bit.’

      It angered and annoyed Casey that the shooters had appeared from nowhere. The leads from the increased chatter following Bin Laden’s kill/capture even now had them all chasing their tails. And, added to this, new threats from Islamic State to take their fight to the West had, in short, created so much chatter that it had become a shield. ‘The bigger question is, how many more have we missed?’

      ‘You know as well as I do how much traffic the NSA is looking at, the volume Echelon is sifting. My question is, why attack a store in Morristown, New Jersey? Why not hit the