Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) by Alan McDermott

releasing the
file.”
    “Nothing beyond the name,” Ellis
told him. 
    “Okay, then who gave you the
name?”  He asked, hoping to confirm that it had come from the CIA.
    “One of my operatives got it
from an undisclosed source.”
    “Which
operative?”   Farrar pressed.
    “That’s not important,
James.  Please just let me know when you’ve spoken to the Home Secretary.”
    The phone went dead in his hand
and Farrar swore half a dozen times before typing his password into the box.
    Whatever was in this file, he
had to find it quickly.
     
    *
* *
     
    Ellis still had her hand on the
receiver when the key-logger began spitting out new characters.  She
copied and pasted them into the password dialog before hitting the Enter
key.  A moment later a picture appeared, underneath which was the name Sam
Grant.
    “James Farrar, you’re a lying
shit!”
    They read through the brief
biography and found nothing out of the ordinary.  In fact, it appeared
decidedly sterile.  Born in London during the early seventies, worked for
a few small companies after leaving school, single, no driving licence, lived in rented accommodation until his sudden move
to Manila a year earlier.
    “It looks like a legend,” Ellis
commented.
    “And a poor one at that,” Harvey
confirmed.  “I’ll have someone check these firms, but I’ll bet they’re no
longer trading, if they ever existed in the first place.”
    Legends are cover stories
created when an intelligence operative is required to go under cover.  It
creates a believable personal background should anyone do any checks into the
operative’s history.
    Ellis nodded and scrolled down
through the entries.  If the bio was brief, the last entry was even more
succinct:  Deceased.
    The entry was dated Thursday the
19 th of April 2012, a day before the attack on Camp Bautista. 
Harvey wondered how that could be: According to Wallis, the three prisoners had
escaped during the attack, and he told Ellis as much.
    “Then to paraphrase Mark Twain,”
Ellis said, “it looks like reports of his death have been grossly exaggerated.”
    Harvey studied the picture,
which also appeared to be contrived.  It was like a collage of facial
elements, with a large flat nose that didn’t seem to naturally fit with the
size of the face.  Despite this, there was something familiar…
    The image disappeared as Ellis
clicked the History link to see who had been responsible for each of the
entries.  The last recorded user, the person who had declared Grant dead,
was none other than James Farrar.
    “So Farrar thinks Grant is dead,
but when the CIA requests his details, a team from the UK is sent to pick up
him and his friends.  We know that team wasn’t one of ours, so I’m
guessing Farrar is behind that, too.”
    “It certainly looks like it,”
Harvey agreed, “which is why he doesn’t want you looking for Baines and
Smart.  He already knows where they are and has someone waiting for them
when they arrive in Durban.”
    Ellis nodded, having come to the
same conclusion.  “I want you to go out there,” she said.  “Find them
and bring them home.”
    Harvey told her that he was
happy to oblige, but was also aware that there could be some serious
fallout.  “I don’t think the Home Secretary is going to be too happy if we
interfere with one of his operations,” he warned her.
    “I know,” Ellis said, “but when
I joined the service I vowed to protect Britain from all threats, foreign and
domestic.  We don’t know why Farrar is looking for these people, but
whatever it is they’re supposed to have done, they are still entitled to a fair
trial.  It isn’t up to the Home Secretary to decide who lives and dies.”
    “Not even in the interest of
national security?”  Harvey asked.
    “If it was national security,
we’d have heard about it,” Ellis said indignantly. 
    Harvey suspected the real reason
she was taking this course of action was that she had been left out of the