Free Lone Wolf by David Archer Page A

up in your face?”
    “Oh, not at all,” Catherine said. “I truly am with MI6. It's a special arrangement between E & E and the SIS. Only a very few MI6 top staff have any idea of my real identity and affiliation, but letting me maintain an identity with SIS means they can occasionally put in a request to our boss for the type of services we offer. They're quite happy with the arrangement, and as far as the rest of the British government knows, I simply work in the liaison office that coordinates with Yank agencies.”
    Decker grinned. “Sounds like a terrific cover. So, what can you tell us about Pendergrast?”
    “Jeremy Pendergrast is forty-seven years old, a former CIA employee who now dabbles in information marketing. He's known to provide certain other services, as well, such as negotiating secret deals between governments and facilitating certain types of clandestine operations. Here in the UK, he's fairly well known for having a lot of dirt on a lot of people. Occasionally, some of our less desirable citizens go to him when they feel that the government is getting too close to the things that they do. He knows the strings to pull to make excess scrutiny disappear, or even get rid of pending criminal charges. Unfortunately, he has dirt on far too many people for anyone to be willing to take action to shut him down.”
    “Do they want him shut down?” Noah asked. “I'm planning to take him on a little vacation, to discuss a pretty important situation with him. I need to know what his involvement in it was, but it isn't necessarily important to me that he ever gets to come home.”
    “I don't think we're done with him just yet. Believe it or not, a sod like him can come in handy from time to time. If possible, I suspect we'd like to have him back when you're done with him, and more or less in one piece.” She paused and smiled. “All right, perhaps two pieces.”
    “I'll do my best.”

FIVE
     
    W hen they finished their snacks, Catherine went with Noah and Decker to give them a tour of the neighborhood. The entire area was predominantly populated by apartment buildings, although a few small businesses dotted the area here and there. It wasn't hard to develop a staging plan for the abduction, as long as Pendergrast didn't throw a monkey wrench into the works by slipping off unobserved.
    While they were touring the neighborhood, Neil called. “Hey, Boss man, I think I found what you're looking for in a safe house. Almost due west about fifty miles is a little village called Twyford, isn't that cute, and there's a farm house a half-dozen miles outside of it that is about as isolated as you can possibly get. According to the listing, the nearest neighbors would be in the village itself. It's available on a month-to-month rental, but it's pricey. Comes to about three thousand American dollars for a month, plus a thousand dollars worth of security deposit. Belongs to some rich guy in London, who rents it out to people who like to hunt. It's available right now. Do you want to look at it, or should I just snatch it up?”
    “Sounds like it'll work,” Noah said. “Go ahead and get it, and send me directions.”
    “You got it!” A moment later, Noah's phone beeped as it received the directions by text message.
    “Neil found us a place to do our magic,” Noah said to Decker. “Catherine, can we drop you back off at your car?”
    “That would be dear,” she said. “I left it at the chippy, so leave me off there.”
    Decker drove back to the chip shop and let Catherine out, and then headed for the M4 highway. Noah had punched Twyford into his GPS in order to simplify things, and they were on the way moments later.
    Neil called again while they were traveling, to let Noah know that he had made the arrangements to rent the place under the name of Alexander Colson, so Noah could stop at the estate agent's office in Twyford to pick up the keys. Noah punched in the agent's address to his GPS, so when they got