Free The Hijack by Duncan Falconer

secretive type, don’t you know?’
    Stratton finished his drink and put the glass down. ‘Nice talking to you,’ he said as he turned to leave.
    ‘Yes, why don’t you run along,’ the boyfriend said with an attitude.
    Stratton stopped and looked back at the man whose tone he found offensive. The other man was also staring at Stratton in support of his friend, like a pair of elegant wolves.
    ‘You’re not here to hang around the kitchen chatting up ladies,’ the friend added.
    Both men saw a flicker of danger behind Stratton’s grey eyes, but they were too well bred to heed any warning from a mere ranker.
    ‘I’m Captain Brigstock, Life Guards, and this is Captain Boyston. I know you’re not an officer so why don’t you consider it an order. Off you go,’ he said, and topped it off with a chin-jutting, superior smirk.
    The girl put her arm through her captain’s, switching allegiance like the fickle wind. ‘Ooh, you do excite me when you get bossy, Charlie.’
    Stratton sighed, turned about and continued to the door. They were not worth the effort.
    ‘I don’t know why we have to have these mindless thugs as security,’ Brigstock said to his friends but intentionally loud enough for Stratton to hear.
    Stratton paused in the doorway without looking back. The officers were beginning to test his self control. He raised his eyes to the skies as if looking for divine help and stepped outside. As he walked away laughter came from the kitchen.
    He folded them from his mind and paused on the green to survey the area wondering how much longer this party was going to go on for.
    ‘Stratton? I say. Is that you?’ a man called out.
    Stratton saw a stout, grey-haired gentleman in his sixties the other side of the green heading towards him with his hands in his jacket pockets, a classic affectation of the upper class that the man wore comfortably.
    The woman and her two young officers walked out of the kitchen. ‘Isn’t that your uncle?’ Boyston asked Brigstock.
    ‘Yes,’ Brigstock said, suddenly fluffing up and putting on a broad smile as he waved. ‘Hello, Uncle.’
    The old man noticed him as he approached and looked immediately disjointed on recognising his nephew. ‘Oh, Brigstock. How you doing, lad?’ he said blandly.
    ‘Fine, sir,’ Brigstock beamed while Boyston, also smiling broadly, took a large step forward to stand beside his friend. The old man was obviously very important and it wasn’t what you knew but who you, or your closest friends, were related to. ‘This is my friend—’
    ‘Excuse me a moment, would you?’ the old man interrupted easily. ‘On my way to see an old friend.’ He breezed past them and headed for Stratton.
    ‘I thought it was you,’ he said to Stratton as he stopped in front of him.
    ‘Hello, Ambassador,’ Stratton said, genuinely pleased to see the man, and they shook hands warmly. He was the former British ambassador to Algiers. Three years before, Stratton turned up at the embassy on his own to propose an evacuation plan for the staff during an uprising in the country by Islamic fundamentalists that threatened their safety. An SAS contingent had arrived the day before and was pushing a proposal to cut down all the trees in the embassy grounds so that helicopters could land and evacuate everyone to the airport where a military transport aircraft would take them out of the country. But since the embassy was near the sea, Stratton had been sent from the SBS headquarters with an alternative plan. His idea was to take a short drive to the beach under heavy guard where fast attack boats could ferry the staff to a waiting Royal Navy frigate.
    The ambassador’s wife happened to love the trees in the garden and was horrified at the thought of seeing them cut down but had conceded them as an unavoidable price one had to pay for the safety of the embassy staff. When she heard Stratton’s proposal she nudged the ambassador and whispered in his ear that she would divorce