Free Firewall by Andy McNab

and meatballs and listening to the radio accounts of last night's gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
    I looked for signs to the train station. The morning rush hour, if there was one, would start in an hour or two.
    Pulling into the parking lot, I cut Val free of the emergency brake. He knew to stay still and wait for me to tell him when to move. He was so close to freedom, why jeopardize things now?
    I got out and stood away from the car, my pistol in the pocket of my down jacket. He crawled out and we both stood in a line of frozen-over cars, in the dark, as he sorted himself out, tucking in his clothes and running his hands through his hair. Still looking ridiculous in Carpenter's snow pants and ski jacket, he clapped his gloved hands together to get some circulation going, eventually extending one of them to me. The only shaking I did was with my head; he understood why and nodded. "Nick, thank you. You will receive your reward for releasing me. P. P. Smith. Remember the rest?"
    Of course I did. My eyes were fixed on his. I considered telling him that if he was lying to me, I'd find him and kill him, but it would have been a bit like telling Genghis Khan to watch himself.
    He smiled. He'd read my mind again. "Don't worry, you will see that I am a man of my word." He turned and walked toward the station.
    I watched him crunch along in the snow, breath trailing behind him.
    After about a dozen or so paces he stopped and turned. "Nick, a request. Please do not bring a cell phone or pager with you to Kensington, or any other electronic device. It's not the way we conduct business. Again, I thank you. I promise that you won't regret any of this."
    I made sure that he was out of the way, then got back into the car.
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    7
    Norfolk ENGLAND Friday, December 10,1999 The bedside clock burst into wake-up mode dead on seven, sounding more like a burglar alarm. As I rolled over it took me three attempts before I managed to hit the off button with my hand still inside the sleeping bag.
    The instant I poked my head out I could tell the boiler had stopped working again. My house was a bit warmer than a Finnish snow hole, but not much. It was yet another thing I needed to straighten out, along with some bedding and a bed frame to go with the mattress I was lying on.
    I slept in a pair of Ronhill running bottoms and sweatshirt. This wasn't the first time the boiler had broken down. I wrapped the unzipped bag around me and pushed my feet into my sneakers with the heels squashed down.
    I headed downstairs, the bag dragging along the floor. I'd spent most of my life being wet, cold, and hungry for a living, so I hated doing it on my own time. This was the first place I'd ever owned, and in winter the mornings felt much the same to me as waking up in the brush in South Armagh. It wasn't supposed to work like that.
    The place was in the same state as I'd left it before I went away just over two weeks ago, to RV with Sergei at the lake house, except that the tarp had blown off the hole in the roof, and the "For Sale" sign had been flattened by the wind. If it had stayed there any longer it would have taken root anyway. There wasn't enough time to sort any of that out today. I had three vitally important meetings in London in a few hours' time, and they wouldn't wait for the boiler man.
    The trip back to the U.K. had taken three days. I'd decided to find my own way rather than take Val's advice to get out of Finland via Estonia. It wasn't as if we were sharing toothbrushes or anything, so I wasn't in the mood to trust everything he had to say. I drove to Kristians and in southern Norway, and from there I took the ferry to Newcastle. It was full of Norwegian students. While they got loaded I watched Sky News on the snowy screens. There was footage of the Intercontinental, with police apparently doing a search for forensic evidence, then came pictures of the dead, among them Sergei. A Finnish government spokeswoman gave a news conference, declaring that