State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3) by Andy McNab Page A

having her photograph taken. What also caught his attention was the caption: ‘Xenia Dalton, proprietor of Newsday ’.
    A search produced very few entries – surprising, given her position. Her Wikipedia entry was sparse: she was born in Sebastopol, but there was no reference to a maiden name. Dalton was her late husband, whom she had met and married over there shortly before he’d brought her, his much younger bride, to the UK. Maybe Dalton was where she’d got the money to buy a newspaper, but it seemed unlikely: he turned out to have been an English language teacher from Margate, who had died after being mugged near their home.
    He went and found Phoebe, who was pulling on her coat. ‘Seen her before?’
    She shook her head without really taking in the page.
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Of course I’m sure. I’d remember – she’s stunning. Do you want me to do some digging?’ Her tone was less than enthusiastic.
    ‘No, go and get some rest.’
    The office was almost deserted. Rolt had given everyone the day off. There was nothing to be gained from hanging around.
    Tom hunched his shoulders against a fresh flurry of snow as he made his way to Trafalgar Square. It was deserted, except for a few Chinese tourists photographing each other in front of the lions. He took out his phone.
    ‘Ah, Buckingham, good of you to call.’ Woolf sounded disturbingly upbeat.
    ‘What are you so happy about?’
    ‘Oh, you know, another day, another adventure. I’m just sitting on the late Fez Randall’s sofa about to go through his hard drive. Care to join me?’
    ‘Phoebe’s imploding. She can’t take much more of him. It’s doing her head in. She’ll become a liability.’
    The silence at the other end of the line said it all. Tom pressed on: ‘We agreed there would be an exit strategy in place for her if Rolt made home secretary.’
    ‘Yes, of course. Just got to tie up a few ends first.’
    Tom was being fobbed off. He didn’t like it. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’
    ‘Twenty-four hours is a long time in our world, Tom. You let me worry about Phoebe.’
    Over the months that Woolf had been his handler, Tom had developed a grudging respect for him, but he knew it would be naïve ever to let it develop into anything remotely like trust.
    ‘The police want to talk to you about the shooting.’
    ‘Well, tell them to fuck off.’
    ‘They’re getting ready to welcome the new home secretary. It would be a bit remiss of them if they were seen to be ignoring an attempt on his life.’
    ‘When the fuck did you give a shit about protocol? And the last thing he wants is the Met crawling all over it. Make it go away. What’s more important is whether or not Randall acted alone.’
    ‘Indeed. That’s why I’m here, going through his stuff.’
    ‘There’s something else.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Rolt had a visitor this morning.’ Tom described what little he could of the man he had seen, including the flattened cigarette butt and the Tartar sword in its fancy box.
    ‘Intriguing. What does it say to you?’
    ‘He gives Rolt expensive presents but chucks his fag ends on the floor, then demands a goodbye hug. The guy has something on him.’
    ‘I like it.’
    You could always count on Woolf’s enthusiasm for a mystery.
    ‘Look, I’ve got the DG on the other line. Why don’t you join me at Randall’s? I could do with your eyes on this place. Come on, you’re bound to spot something we’ve overlooked.’

14
    15.30 local time
North-west Syria
    They had been on the bike for more than two hours. The aching pain from the ride over rutted and cratered roads had been numbed by the cold wind that battered Jamal’s face, and his ungloved hands, wrapped round Hakim’s waist, felt raw.
    For the first part of the run they had kept to the main highways where they had encountered streams of refugees heading the same way, a few in heavily laden minibuses but most on bicycles or foot, who looked enviously at them as they shot past. As