Westwind

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Thank God!’ he snapped. ‘I’m a scientist, you know, not a bloody gaoler.’

  Villiers ignored the outburst. ‘This is Major Dreyfuss,’ he said. ‘And Major Dreyfuss, this’ – pointing his gun hand at the man – ‘is Henry Fagin, head of this … establishment.’

  ‘A bloody pawn more like,’ Fagin muttered, loud enough to be heard. He was still bent over his machines, moving from one to the next like a commander inspecting his troops.

  ‘What is this place?’ Dreyfuss said, looking around him. One hand still rested on Jilly’s shoulder, kneading the skin gently, calming her.

  The reply came from Fagin. ‘It’s a listening post. Off-limits to Zephyr personnel. They don’t even know it’s here. Officially, it’s an offshoot of Menwith Hill.’

  ‘Menwith Hill?’

  ‘Yes. That’s an NSA operation, American personnel. The job is SIGINT, signals intelligence, picking up all sorts of information while it’s in transit.’ He gave a sly glance in Dreyfuss’ direction. ‘Nothing’s safe any more, not if it’s being transmitted. It still gets from A to B, of course.’

  ‘But on the way it’s listened to?’

  Fagin slapped one of the machines proudly. ‘And copied. You name it: telephone conversations, rocket telemetry. Here, take a listen.’ He flipped a switch and a stream of noise started issuing from the speakers set into the walls. ‘Know what that is?’ he asked, his face opening into a smirk. ‘Computers talking to one another. Satellite computers.’ He pointed earthwards. ‘The ground asks Zephyr for close-ups of RAF Buchan.’ His finger jerked skywards. ‘Zephyr transmits this request to the other satellite, which then sends it live shots of a base in Wales, made to look like Buchan.’ He pointed downwards again. ‘Zephyr then sends these pictures to the ground. It’s quite easy if you think about it.’

  ‘You’re forgetting, Fagin,’ interrupted Villiers, ‘Major Dreyfuss doesn’t need to think about it. He was there when the satellite was launched.’

  ‘And when the crew were murdered,’ said Dreyfuss coldly. Villiers just shrugged.

  ‘A US branch decision. What could we do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you did do, though,’ said Dreyfuss, remembering Hepton’s story. ‘You killed a man called Paul Vincent, you tried to murder Martin Hepton, you murdered Cam Devereux, and God knows, that may only be the tip of the dagger.’

  Villiers shrugged again but seemed, if anything, pleased by Dreyfuss’ catalogue. He glanced at one of four clocks on the wall, each one set for a different time zone.

  ‘Harry should have disposed of Mr Hepton by now.’

  On hearing this, Jilly screamed behind her gag, her face purple with effort. Villiers was delighted by this effect and lifted his head to laugh. But a choking sound from Fagin cut him off.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Fagin was studying one of the computer screens. He pressed a few buttons, then studied the screen again. ‘There’s a fifteen-minute access alarm on the interface,’ he explained quietly. ‘And it’s just gone off.’ He turned to Villiers, his eyes twinkling with humour. ‘Somebody’s trying to out-sting our own little sting.’

  ‘Can you stop it?’ Villiers sounded wary.

  ‘Oh yes. Every time the intruder makes a move, I’ll just order the computer to make another. A bit like chess. Strange, though. He’s in, but he’s not doing anything.’

  As Villiers peered at the computer screen, Dreyfuss knew he had to make his own move. But Villiers wasn’t his target: Fagin was. Fagin could wreck everything. He had to take him out. He threw himself forward and grabbed the scientist, pulling him to himself as a shield, then backed away. Villiers was already aiming his gun, undecided whether to risk the shot.

  Fagin saw his hesitation. ‘For God’s sake,’ he pleaded.

  Villiers stared at him, then at Dreyfuss. Finally he brought his gun arm down, but then angled it away from Dreyfuss and his prisoner and began raising it again. Directly at Jilly’s head.

  ‘I think,’ he said stonily, ‘this is what’s called an impasse. Except that you, Major, can do nothing with your hostage except hide behind him. While I, on the other hand, won’t hesitate to shoot mine.’

  And to prove it, he turned his head away from Dreyfuss towards Jilly, taking aim and beginning to squeeze the trigger.

  ‘No!’ Dreyfuss pushed Fagin aside and started forward again. But he was too far away from Villiers, far too far away. The gun moved in an easy sweep until it was pointed directly at him. The explosion in such a confined space was deafening, but the impact in Dreyfuss’ chest was silent. He felt himself propelled backwards with great force, until, with a new and sickening sound of shattering glass, he slammed into and through one of the dividing walls.

  Shards sparkled in his hair as he lay on the floor, a red stain spreading rapidly across his shirt. Villiers examined him through the sizeable hole in the glass wall, seemingly content, then turned back into the room. Fagin looked ghostly white, smoothing strands of hair back across his gleaming pate. And Jilly Watson … well, she was staring at Dreyfuss’ still body with wide, tear-brimming eyes and horror carved into her cheekbones. Seeing this, Villiers smiled at her with a face that seemed to be transfigured before her very eyes, becoming quite mad and more dangerous, even, than ever.

  But now Villiers’ attention was drawn to Fagin. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ he roared. ‘Get to work! Let’s see who stops Martin Hepton first: you with your computer, or Harry with her gun.’

  There was chaos in the control room. Some of the men had risen from their consoles to stare wide-eyed at Harry, and more especially, at the gun she was pointing in Hepton’s face. A few onlookers, caught between one desk and another, had frozen where they stood, while others had slipped out of the room. Harry didn’t appear to see any of this. She had eyes only for Hepton. He was still seated at his computer but had taken his hands off the keyboard and placed them either side of it. His left hand rested on the desktop, his right hand on Nick Christopher’s heavy dictionary.

  ‘I can’t believe,’ Harry was saying, ‘you thought you could just walk in here.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Hepton. ‘You did, after all.’

  She didn’t seem particularly angry or vengeful or confident or nervous. She seemed … relaxed. A job was a job, and this was just another one. Hepton took pleasure in the scars across her face, the result of his boiling water.

  ‘Now look,’ Nick Christopher said from somewhere behind Hepton’s shoulder. ‘You can’t just come in here waving a bloody gun—’

  ‘Don’t waste your breath, Nick,’ said Hepton. His fingers had closed around the book under his right hand.

  ‘That’s right,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t waste your breath.’

  Hepton swallowed hard. He had one last card. ‘I was sorry to learn about your mother,’ he said.

  Harry’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. ‘What?’

  ‘Your mother,’ Hepton repeated casually. ‘I was sorry to learn that she committed suicide. Something to do with your father, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘He was in the army, wasn’t he? I find that odd, you see.’ He paused.

  ‘You find what odd?’

  ‘That you should end up working for the military, working for everything your father stood for. Yet he was so brutal to your mother, to Harriet.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘That was why you left home, wasn’t it? Did the old drunkard like to give you a beating too, eh?’

  It was enough. Harry’s teeth were bared in absolute, mindless hate. She swung back the pistol and whipped it across Hepton’s face. As it connected, he brought up his left hand and gripped Harry’s pistol hand, her left hand, angling the gun away from him, while his right hand, now clutching the dictionary, swiped at her head, connecting heavily. The gun went off, its deadly charge hammering home into a computer screen, which sparked once before starting to smoke.

  Hepton rose from his chair and placed one foot on
the seat, using it as a springboard to launch himself over the desk, the computer, the monitor screen, landing heavily on Harry. His left hand still clutched her gun arm, while his right flexed and sent a clenched fist hard into her face. The contact was satisfying. She gasped, writhing beneath his weight. He could feel blood trickling down his cheek from where the pistol barrel had hit him. Then Harry’s knee connected with his groin, and he felt searing pain. He retched, but held fast to her arm, and punched her again, in the mouth this time. But she was wrenching free of him, kicking out, and scrabbling with her free hand towards his face, his hair, his eyes …

  Her nails were like tools as they raked down his already bloodied cheek, digging into flesh. He cried out and pulled away from her hand. She used the moment to kick again with her full weight, sending him flying into a desk. People were pouring from the room, not about to lend a hand. Even Nick Christopher seemed rooted to the spot, his eyes on the pistol. The pistol she was raising again, aiming. Blood dripped from Hepton’s face onto the stone floor. His skin felt on fire. He prepared himself for a final assault, while four feet away Harry stood, blood flowing from nose and mouth, her trigger finger squeezing …

  ‘Bastard,’ she screeched. ‘No more!’

  ‘Harry!’

  She froze at the sound of the voice. Her gun still trained on Hepton, her eyes peered towards the far door, where another gun was trained on her.

  ‘Parfit!’ she spat, arcing the pistol towards the door. But too late: Parfit’s bullet hit home with a wet sound like an overripe peach hitting a wall. An inky pink spray covered Hepton as Harry fell back, her head crashing against a computer screen, cracking it, then her body sliding floorwards in a clumsy, ungainly mess. And there she lay, the gun still in her hand, but like nothing so much as a toy now, a rag doll with too little stuffing. Inelegant, and not at all tidy.

  There were shouts, panic, pandemonium. Parfit didn’t care, didn’t bother identifying himself. He walked over to Hepton.

  ‘Have you finished?’ he asked. His eyes strayed momentarily to the corpse.

  ‘What?’ Hepton was still in shock, still reeling from a great feeling of being alive.

  ‘Whatever it is that you’re doing here.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was jolted back to the present. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not quite.’

  ‘Then get on with it.’ Parfit looked around. ‘Where’s Dreyfuss?’

  ‘He’s gone off to look for Jilly.’

  ‘Right.’ Parfit handed him a clean handkerchief. ‘Here, mop some of that blood off your face.’ As he stalked off, Nick Christopher slumped weeping into a swivel chair, covering sticky red face with sticky red hands. Hepton looked towards Parfit’s retreating figure.

  ‘What took you so long?’ he called with a grin, before walking back around the row of consoles to his own screen, where, numbly but fixedly, he began to go to work. ‘Nick,’ he said, ‘I need your help.’

  Nick Christopher rubbed at his eyes. His voice was hollow. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Hepton pointed to the computer console next to his own. ‘Get that thing up and running. Do you remember that TV satellite we hacked into a couple of months back, so we could get the porn channel?’

  ‘Yes.’ Christopher looked uncomprehending.

  ‘Good, get me back into it, will you?’

  Fagin stared at the screen. Villiers was growing ever more agitated beside him.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he snarled.

  ‘Nothing’s happening,’ said Fagin. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Then Harry must have found him!’ Villiers said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Fagin answered. ‘Look.’

  He was pointing towards the screen. Numerical sequences were appearing, rows and rows of numbers.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fagin simply. ‘Perhaps he’s trying to confuse us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ Fagin explained, ‘maybe he’s using these to throw us off the scent of what he’s really doing.’

  ‘You mean you don’t know? I thought you were supposed to be an expert?’

  ‘In some things, yes. But when it comes to hacking, I think Martin Hepton might just have the edge.’ Fagin’s smile had a hint of pride about it. Villiers grabbed him and shook him.

  ‘So shut it down,’ he yelled. ‘Close the whole thing down.’

  Fagin did not resist. Instead he waited until Villiers had stopped shaking him. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘All we can do is wait for him to make his move – his real move.’ Then he sat down in front of the screen, a grandmaster awaiting his opponent’s opening gambit.

  The room was empty now, with the exception of two live bodies and one very cold one. Hepton was in a chair on castors. Once Nick had tapped into the television satellite, he used this chair to wheel himself quickly between the two computer terminals – his own, locked into the Argos satellite and, consequently, into Zephyr; and the TV satellite. He worked fast and expertly, so that even Nick Christopher had trouble deciding what he was doing. Hepton was happy to explain.

  ‘I’m going to marry these two bastards,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take over the TV satellite and lock it into Zephyr, then disconnect Zephyr from Argos. Resulting in …’

  Nick Christopher saw it all now, and broke into a wide, devilish grin. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Do you know—’

  ‘Of course I know. I know what it’ll do. What’s more,’ smiling too, he turned to glance at his friend, ‘I really think I can do it.’

  ‘What’s happening now?’ Villiers was frantic. What had happened to Harry? Why hadn’t she disposed of Hepton?

  Fagin rubbed his temples. He was too old for this, too old for Hepton’s tricks. ‘He’s doing something,’ he said. ‘But I don’t quite know what …’ His fingers worked slowly, methodically, on the keyboard, trying to cancel whatever Hepton was doing. Then it dawned on him. His voice became a whisper. ‘He’s using two terminals.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s using two terminals at the same time.’

  ‘So open a second terminal! Now!’ Villiers pushed Fagin against the console. Fagin reached to a second computer and started coding in. ‘Perhaps there’s still time,’ Villiers said.

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ agreed Fagin.

  Jilly, however, saw what they could not. One of the monitor screens had burst into life. And instead of the aerial views she had become used to, she was watching a nature programme. The scene looked very much like Africa. Parched earth, creatures gathering around a drying pool of water. Then a voice.

  ‘Quickly, the animals learn that old enmities must be put aside, for now at least. Water is necessary for their survival, so they gather around, forgetting that they are enemies, knowing only that life is their priority. Hunters and hunted sip side by side …’

  Villiers and Fagin turned slowly, disbelievingly, towards the TV monitor. For that was, unmistakably, where the sound was coming from. Stuck to the top of it was a large piece of Dymo tape, on which was printed ZEPHYR: LIVE PICTURES.

  Fagin began to laugh. ‘I see what he’s done now!’ he roared hysterically. ‘I see!’

  ‘What?’ screeched Villiers. ‘What?’

  ‘Look,’ said Fagin, pointing to the screen. The wildlife programme had vanished, to be replaced by sharply focused pictures of Buchan, the camera homing in on the building work, the underground silos, the tips of the missiles themselves. Villiers opened his mouth in horror.

  There was a deferential cough at the open door.

  ‘Good evening, Villiers,’ said Parfit, his gun extremely steady in his hand.

  39

  The screens began to jump around 8.15. Hepton’s intention was always to wreck the interface, not merely snip the connection. The estimated viewing figures of seven and a half million, however, came as a bonus. For in linking up the satellites, he had projected the shots of what was really happening in Buchan to a Europe-wide
audience. While two video tapes, one master, one backup, ran, capturing the moment for posterity, satellite receiver dishes across most of Europe started to pick up a new station. Early-evening quiz shows, old movies and wildlife programmes crackled and faded and were replaced by pictures of nobody quite knew what. Some pirate station, people assumed, and many of them settled back, waiting to see if there would be any pornography on display, as the tabloid newspapers had been warning and promising. But all they got until nightfall was pictures of a building site. At least, they mostly assumed it was a building site. Except that one repeated shot showed what looked to be a large and ugly missile, resting nose up in its near-finished silo …

  The plug had been well and truly pulled on COFFIN.

  Villiers and Fagin were easily subdued, and Jilly was released. But Dreyfuss was in a bad way. Parfit felt an uncomfortable moment of sentiment: one second the pleasure of terminating Harry; the next the grief of seeing the blood-soaked shirt and feeling the fading pulse. How many lives could a man have? Dreyfuss had used up a fair quota already, but Parfit was grimly determined that he deserved yet another. He staunched the wound as best he could and waited for the ambulance.

  Jilly buried her face in Hepton’s shoulder and let the tears come. They were tears of frustration rather than relief. Hepton, his work finished, didn’t know what his own tears were. But he let them fall all the same.

  40

  General Colin Mathieson-Briggs was sitting in his office when the men from Special Branch arrived. He knew why they had come, and had prepared himself for the moment, his tie knotted tightly so that his head remained erect.

  General Jack Holliday was not, however, to be found in his office. Like Mathieson-Briggs, he had been on site at Binbrook the day they had infiltrated Zephyr. He had timed the whole process. From initial interference to complete locking-on had taken just under four minutes. Not long enough for anyone to notice any mischief, surely? There had been risks, of course, but they were not so great as the risk of leaving Britain defenceless and dependent on unreliable European allies for future safety …