Free The Lucifer Network by Geoffrey Archer Page A

his seat.
    â€˜On the top floor they think in headlines, Sam. Negative stories that could hit the newspapers. If it leaked out about your father, and the press started asking what his son does for a living . . .’
    â€˜Why should it leak out?’
    â€˜Our American cousins. Anything to distract attention from the scandal within their own Navy.’ He tapped his fingers together. ‘Any of your family know how you earn your crust?’
    â€˜My sister has some idea,’ Sam croaked. ‘Nothing specific.’
    â€˜Well stick some tape across her mouth and take her phone away . . .’
    â€˜You’re getting hysterical, Duncan.’
    â€˜No I’m not. This could go horribly wrong. And it could happen fast. I want you to sniff around. Go back to the time when you were ten or eleven and see what you can find there. With a bit of luck wecan strangle the whole thing at birth. Your mother, she’s still alive?’
    â€˜Died five years ago. There’s nothing left of that time, Duncan,’ Sam sighed, ‘except what’s in my head.’
    â€˜Nevertheless, go and look. See your sister and shut her up. Make some excuse to contact your parents’ old friends. Give me a ring in a couple of days to let me know how you’re getting on.’
    â€˜And Harry Jackman’s so-called red mercury?’
    â€˜It’s going nowhere. The man lived a fantasy life half the time. If anything does come up, Denise can sort it.’ He reached for the door release. ‘I’m going home now. It’s been a long day.’
    â€˜Back to the barbecue?’
    â€˜Oh sure. Ashes to ashes.’ Waddell fumbled for the handle, conscious of a bad choice of words. ‘Don’t take it hard about your father. Life’s full of surprises and they can’t all be nice ones.’ He got out. ‘Ring me,’ he said before clicking the door shut.
    Sam heard Waddell’s car start up. The headlamps dazzled again and then swung away. For several minutes he stayed where he was, sinking lower into the seat.
    It wasn’t true. It simply couldn’t be. His father was no traitor. And if the firm was hoping to avoid trouble, they were looking the wrong bloody way. Harry Jackman was the man to watch out for, the one who’d bring sleepless nights to the top floor of Vauxhall Cross.

5
London
Saturday, 08.10 hrs
    ON THE OTHER side of the capital from where Sam Packer had his flat, stood a cluster of 1960s apartment blocks whose occupants were on far more modest incomes than those with a view over the river at Kew.
    On the twelfth floor of one of them, a tower that had never lived up to its name of Windsor Court, a computer screen flickered in the corner of the small, plain living room. The man hunched in front of it checking his e-mail had short hair and a face dominated by a broad, putty-soft nose. He shot a nervous glance at the time icon, needing to be out of the flat before his girlfriend returned from her hospital night shift. Fifteen minutes to go. The last of his four anonymous mailboxes reported empty. There was no message from ‘Peter’ calling off the job. Half of him had been hoping for one.
    Rob Petrie logged off, shut down the PC and stood up. He had a broad chest and narrow hips, which gave him a top-heavy look. Normally a neat dresser obsessed with looking clean and spruce, today he wore old jeans and a T-shirt bought at a charity shop to help him pass unnoticed in a crowd. He was tense. Very tense. A tension that bordered on fear.
    He knew he had to eat something if his brain was to keep alert. At the breakfast bar in the tiny kitchen he filled a bowl with cornflakes, but halfway through eating he gave up. Butterflies. He checked his watch. 8.15. Sandra would appear at half-past on the dot, her blue uniform crumpled and stained, smelling of the geriatrics she spent her nights watching over. He’d told her it would be kinder to gas the old