Читать книгу Last Light - Alex Scarrow - Страница 12

8.45 a.m. GMT

He took off from JFK at just after ten at night. Not a popular time to take a flight so there were plenty of seats in business class. He had checked in effortlessly using his Mr Ash identity. The passport paperwork was good, impeccable. It always was.

Ash.

A good enough name for this particular errand. It was fun anyway, assuming a stolen identity, trying to imagine what the real Mr G. J. Ash was like, to get a feel for the person who had lived in this particular skin for the last thirty-seven years. Not that it mattered greatly.

For the duration of this task, he was Mr Ash, no one else was, not even the real Mr G. J. Ash, whose identity had been temporarily cloned for the job. Ash was the name he imprinted on himself in his mind. Until this job was done, Ash was the only name he’d answer to.

There was a sense of urgency to this job. Time was going to work against him this time round. Things were going to start happening very soon, if they hadn’t already. When law and order began to unravel, and it would do so rapidly, it would get theoretically very difficult for him to find his given target. So he was going to have to work as quickly as possible.

Ash looked out of the window at the grey Atlantic below.

Leona Sutherland. Eighteen. Occupation: student. Current residence: University of East Anglia campus.

He had no problem with this target. She was a girl, just a child still. But far more important than that, she was a security risk. A very big risk, certainly right now, with what was going on.

Quickly in and quickly out.

He’d make sure she died quickly and painlessly, he could at least do that; after all it wasn’t her fault she was a security risk. Leona Sutherland had made a simple mistake, adding a ‘PS’ to an email, that’s all - half-a-dozen words tagged on to a chatty email to her father . . . words it seemed, she hadn’t set out to write but had popped into her head at the last moment.

Unfortunately, those few words were going to be her death sentence.

Ash sighed.

How careless people are with what they say, blurting out things - intentionally, unintentionally - that are best left unsaid. He often thought most of the pain and death and misery in the world was caused by people unable to keep inside them what should rightly stay there.

This wasn’t going to be his finest hour though, killing an innocent child, but it was necessary. It was a lesser evil for a greater good.

He was clearing up a few loose ends which to be honest, he should have been allowed to do years ago. Those foolish old men had let the little girl walk out of that hotel room alive.

That’s why they needed people like him; to tidy up after them.