Desperate Measures: A Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

dedicated task force in Whitehall to analyze the threat and propose countermeasures. Which is how Stephen Graves and Gabriel Ash first met.
    Then there was the woman: Ash’s wife. If Ash was functioning again, holding her hostage might be all that was keeping the pirates safe. He was, at least he had been, that good. Graves had known it the first time they met. His grasp of the situation, the threat he represented to a major criminal enterprise on another continent, was greater by an order of magnitude than that of any other experts Graves had talked to. Taking Cathy Ash had crippled her husband for four years. Knowing she was still alive might keep him on the sidelines for as long again. Or it might not. Graves didn’t know.
    The doorbell rang. Graves flicked on the security screen. An elderly gray Volvo, and a man leaning close to the camera. Gabriel Ash. Not entirely unexpected, but still enough to send a jolt through Graves’s spare frame. He went to the door.
    “May we come in?”
    Graves looked toward the car, expecting to see the young policewoman. But the car was empty, and while Graves was still looking, Ash walked past him into the hall. So did the white lurcher.
    Graves found himself staring, and dragged his eyes away and upward. “Mr. Ash. Is there some news?”
    “What news could there be?” asked Ash. “I don’t know where my wife is. I don’t know how to contact the people holding her. You do.”
    “Not exactly,” protested Stephen Graves. “I did explain. The pirates contact me. I can’t contact them.”
    “They contact the computer in Cambridge?” Graves nodded. “Why not here, or at your office?”
    Graves thought it was obvious. “My wife might see what I was doing if I spoke to them from here. Someone in my office might if I used a computer at Bertrams.”
    “So you use a computer in an empty flat in Cambridge that belongs to a friend who’s abroad.”
    “Yes.”
    “How long has she been abroad?”
    Graves gave a hunted shrug. “A while. She asked me to keep an eye on the place until she got back.”
    “How long ago did the pirates make contact with you?”
    “About three—no, four—months ago.”
    “That’s when they showed you Cathy?”
    Graves bowed his head. “Yes.”
    “And said what?”
    They’d been over all this the day before. But Graves wasn’t surprised if Ash had been unable to take it in. “That in return for her life they wanted information about forthcoming shipments—ours, and any others I heard about.”
    “And you agreed?”
    “No, I didn’t!” The flash of temper subsided as quickly as it had flared. “I’m sorry. No, of course I didn’t agree. I said I was going to the police.”
    “What made you change your mind?”
    The manufacturer chewed on his lip. “Mrs. Ash did. Except that I didn’t know her name. All I knew was she was some poor terrified Englishwoman who’d somehow fallen into their hands, who was sitting shaking in front of the computer with an assault rifle stuck in her ear, begging me to help her. To do as they said, or they’d kill her in front of me. And she said…” He glanced at Ash and the words dried up.
    There was something implacable in Ash’s expression, a thread of steel in his voice. “What did she say?”
    “She said she had two little boys. That she didn’t know where they were, but the pirates had said they’d use them as hostages if they had to kill her. They’d put them in front of the computer and hurt them to get what they wanted.”
    There was a lengthy silence before Ash spoke again. “So you agreed.”
    Graves nodded, defeated. “I didn’t want to. I tried to think of an alternative. I couldn’t. They meant it—I knew they meant it, the woman knew they meant it. In the end, I suppose it was cowardice that made me agree. I couldn’t bear to think that I was her only chance and I was going to let her down. To watch her die, knowing I’d let her down.”
    “What about the aircrew? The men flying