Avenger by Andy McNab Page A

a drinks dispensing machine and another loaded with different sweets and chocolate bars. Opposite them was an ice machine. Perfect.
    She dumped her suitcase in the corridor and pushed through the doors. She went over to the drinks dispenser, looked at it for a few moments and then moved to the back of the machine and peered behind it. She sorted through the change she'd got from the bus ride, found some quarters and got a can of Fanta from the machine. Then she turned away, went back into the corridor and picked up her suitcase.
    Elena returned to her room, slid the key card into the slot and heard the lock click open. Wearily she pushed open the door, flicked on the lights, heaved her suitcase into the room and dumped it on her bed.
    Two seconds later Charles Pointer II got his first onscreen
    look at his new Angel.
     
    It was 1:30 a.m. in Oxford and Dr Ruth Jacobson was sitting on the bed in Elena's old bedroom.
    Hotel cleaning staff had already cleared the room of most of the things Elena had left behind; it was almost as though she had never been there. Only one item remained – her laptop.
    Dr Jacobson was staring at the machine, which sat on top of a small writing desk. She should probably leave it at reception for Elena to collect on her return from America.
    Dr Jacobson had spent the day at the hotel, finishing up, writing her final report for Marcie Deveraux. She decided there was nothing more for her to do, and tomorrow she would move on to another case: someone else's story, someone else's problems. But this process had to be gone through at the end of every assignment and sometimes she was far more satisfied with her work than others.
    She couldn't help feeling that she had failed in her work with Elena. The girl had held up well to begin with, but by the time she left for New York she had been showing signs of anxiety and stress. She had lost weight, and had looked drawn with fatigue. Dr Jacobson's chief concern, which had been mostly ignored by Deveraux, was that Elena's state of mind was likely to get worse when she was working alone, isolated from her friends and any professional support.
    The only light in the room came from the desktop lamp, which shed most of its light downwards, picking out and spotlighting the laptop computer like an item of scenery on an open stage.
    Dr Jacobson finished her notes; there was nothing more to be done. Time to go. She got up from the bed and walked over to the desk. She reached down and picked up the laptop; as she did so, she saw a white envelope, folded in the middle, slip from underneath the machine. She turned over the computer and saw that the battery had been removed; the envelope had been nestling inside the empty compartment.
    She put down the laptop, looked at the sealed envelope and unfolded it, so that the front was exposed. Written in black ink and capital letters was a single word:
    DAD

23
    Elena sat on the end of her hotel bed with the padded envelope in her hands. She was annoyed to see that her fingers were trembling as she twisted and snapped the tape securing the package. She pulled away the last of the tape, opened the top of the envelope and peered inside. Something small was enclosed in bubble wrap, and next to that was a thick wad of US banknotes. As she pulled them out of the envelope, she found a single sheet of paper taped to the bubble wrap, neatly folded twice so that it was almost exactly the same size as the package itself.
    She dropped the dollars onto the bed, unfolded the sheet of paper and read:
    Turn on the power.
    The paper joined the banknotes on the bed as Elena began to open the bubble wrap, already guessing what was inside. She almost smiled as the brand new BlackBerry device was revealed. As usual, Black Star had thought of everything.
    Without even removing her jacket, Elena sat down and powered up the BlackBerry. It opened straight onto a secure personal site in her name on a website she had often used in the past.
    In his