Free Shadow Creatures by Andrew Lane Page A

mission close to the Chinese border, but he’d managed to take a week’s leave afterwards, and
spent it enjoying Hong Kong’s nightlife. It was the island, just a little way off the mainland, that was officially Hong Kong, of course, but the former British dependency expanded to the
area of Kowloon on the mainland and back into the New Territories.
    After waiting long enough for Tzuke to clear the area, Rhino walked the couple of miles to the station. The sun beat down on him, bringing out a light sweat, but there was a cooling breeze
coming in from the sea, and Rhino comforted himself with the thought that he had been in places a lot hotter than this while wearing body armour and a helmet at the same time.
    From Poole station he caught a train to London. He had a netbook with him, so he was able to catch up on work – responding to emails and bringing his accounts up to date. The netbook was
fully encrypted, of course, and virus-protected too. It had to be. It would be embarrassing at the very least if his contacts list, his mission reports and the contents of some of his emails were
obtained by someone like Tzuke, or the people for whom he worked.
    As the thought crossed his mind, he glanced around casually, as if trying to work out where the train was on its journey. Nobody in the carriage was paying him any interest. Three of the other
passengers had got on at Poole with him, and so theoretically could have been following him in the same way that his people were following Tzuke, but he wasn’t detecting any interest from
them. He would just have to keep an eye on them when he got out at Waterloo station and, of course, make sure that if he got up to go to the toilet that he took his netbook with him.
    The journey took just over two hours. By the time he looked up from his screen again he was approaching London Waterloo station. Calum’s warehouse apartment was a reasonable walk or a
short taxi ride away. He decided to go on foot – the route would take him along the Thames, past a number of historic sites, and Tower Bridge. He always enjoyed walking around London.
    As he walked off the train and on to the concourse at Waterloo station, he kept an eye on the three people who had got on with him at Poole. He made sure that he was last off the carriage,
following them rather than the other way round. None of them looked back to see where he was, and as soon as they got through the ticket barrier they headed off in the direction of the Underground.
Either nobody was following him or, he thought with a prickle of unease, whoever
was
following him was exceptionally good. Unlikely, but possible.
    As he headed for the exit, his invisible mental antennae pricked up. Something had caught the attention of his subconscious mind – something important. Was it a watcher – a follower?
Instead of glancing around to see what or who it was, Rhino let his mind and gaze wander. He knew how his subconscious operated. It would either bring the anomalous element to his attention, or it
wouldn’t find it again.
    His gaze drifted to the coffee shop on the far side of the station, and his conscious mind suddenly realized that his subconscious had identified two people there. They were sitting at a table
talking, heads close together. The reason his conscious mind had ignored the information was that he’d never seen them together before, and he hadn’t known that they knew one another.
In fact, there were very good reasons why they
shouldn’t
know one another.
    One of them was named Craig Roxton. He was tall and thin, with a face that was all angles and planes. His hair was blond and fine, and in high winds it would whip back off his face into a short
comet’s tail. Rhino knew that because he knew Craig Roxton. The man had once been in Special Forces, fighting alongside Rhino in some of the most unpleasant places in the world. They had both
left the British army at more or less the same time, and for more or less the