by Andy Maslen
“I’m still not buying it. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on, sir?”
Don sighed and reached into a drawer for a thick pale-green folder, stuffed with papers.
“OK, I guess if you weren’t as bright as you are, we wouldn’t want your help in the first place. I should have known you’d work things out on your own.”
“So tell me. What’s going on?”
“How’s your Russian? You were a very capable linguist as I remember.”
“Moy russkiy khoroshiy, drug. Nemnogo rzhaviy, no menya ponimayut.”
“Impressive. Although you could have just called me a superannuated old fart for all I know. Translation please.”
“I said, ‘My Russian is good, my friend. Maybe a bit rusty, but enough to get by.’”
“Excellent fellow. It may come in handy where you’re going. While you were staying at Audley Grange, you talked to Tom Ainsley, right?”
Gabriel nodded. “He was blinded by some experimental drug. He asked me to do some digging. I’d already decided to before you gave me your card.”
“We know something’s up at Dreyer Pharma. I’ve had a couple of chaps . . .”
There was a firm knock at the door and Don paused. “Come!”
The secretary appeared bearing a tray loaded with a chrome-and-glass, two-pint cafetière, cups, saucers, milk jug and sugar bowl, plus a white plate stacked with chocolate biscuits.
“Where would you like it?” she said.
“Here, let me take it, Sue. Thank you. You’re a star.”
Coffees poured, Don resumed his briefing.
“As I was saying, I had a couple of my chaps have a poke around their systems through the back door, but it’s all locked down pretty tight.”
Gabriel frowned, and took a swig of the coffee, which was excellent. Hot, strong and with a nutty edge that made him think of Christmas.
“Could we just back up a little, please? Who are these ‘chaps’ and what, exactly, are you doing these days? I would like to have a vague idea of what I’m getting myself into here. I mean, what is this ‘department’ you talked about on the phone? MI5? Special Branch? Department of Black Helicopters and Memory Wiping?”
Don leaned back in his chair, cradling his coffee.
“I run a little outfit devoted to counterterrorism involving particularly sensitive considerations.”
“You want to watch it, Don,” Gabriel said with a grin, “You’re picking up a nasty case of civil-servantitis!”
The older man licked the tip of his right index finger and drew a vertical mark in the air.
“Got me! Sorry. You spend enough time around the men from the ministry, and you find dead children turn into collateral damage and bombed hospitals become munitions targeting error-tolerance.”
“Don’t worry, I used to have a job in advertising. If ever there was an industry devoted to paid bullshitting, it’s that one. So these ‘particularly sensitive considerations’. Would they, perchance, extend to blind, hallucinating fighter pilots?”
“In one. That’s why my colleagues and I were asked to lend a hand. As you may know, the Farnborough Airshow will be upon us shortly. We believe a person or persons unknown, but a Chechen national, wants to sabotage the Typhoon display. Naturally, that’s not going to be allowed to happen. But we’d like to follow the strands of the web back to their point of origin rather than just shut the whole thing down. Which we could do, by the way.”
“So you think the spider’s at Dreyer?” Gabriel said, leaning forward across the desk. “And you want me to help you catch it?”
It was Don’s turn to pause while he sipped his coffee.
“I know your skill-set, and now you’re a private contractor, it’s perfect for my needs.”
“You’ve been doing your background checks, then.”
“It wasn’t hard. A few calls to some friends here and across the pond, and I had it all on my desk in a couple of hours. You did some nice work with our friends at the Department of Defense, didn’t you? That coup business.”
Gabriel inclined his head, thinking back to a black female agent named Lauren Klimczak-Stevens with a penchant for brightly coloured trouser suits. “But why couldn’t you send me an email, like normal people do?”
“Oh, I intended to. But thanks to your . . . episode . . . at the National Portrait Gallery I had a perfect way to get you into Audley Grange without arousing suspicion. We don’t know who knows what, so the more you’re under the radar the better.”
Gabriel’s mind was whirring away, putting pieces of the puzzle together.
“Hallucinations. That sounds like LSD. Could Gulliver have been contaminated somehow?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. We do know they’ve been using amphetamines for the cognitive enhancer aspect – Benzedrine, which flyboys have been popping since Korea. And if you pop too much, it can lead to euphoria and then paranoia.”
“But the hallucinations and the blindness have you stumped. Which is where I come in?”
“Yes. I want to know what’s going on so we can keep Gulliver on the table without killing anyone else. Well, anyone we like, obviously. So I want you to make an approach to their CEO.”
Gabriel had already decided that he was going to take the job, whatever it was. His fledgling security consulting business would remain just that unless he started getting work, and if Don Webster was the client, he’d pretty much go anywhere and do anything he asked. But there was friendship, and there was business. And this was business.
“May I raise an ugly subject, Don?” he said, reaching for a biscuit.
“You mean money? Nothing ugly about money, Gabriel. A man’s got to eat. You don’t think I’m sitting behind this desk out of the goodness of my heart, do you? I’ll see you’re well paid for your expertise and your time. Two grand a day plus expenses sound good to you?”
Gabriel failed to restrain a smile. He’d been about to ask for half that amount.
“More than fine. But I’m happy to take it,” he added quickly, before Don could pull the offer off the table and replace it with something smaller.
“Good,” Don said. “I’d love to be able to pay you more, but that’s my ceiling set by the bean counters in Whitehall. There are IT guys mending laptops who get as much, so please don’t feel guilty.”
“So I approach the CEO of Dreyer Pharma. Then what?”
“Just introduce yourself and your services as a corporate troubleshooter. I have a strong hunch he needs you, so we’ll just fly a kite in front of him. If he grabs the string, fine. If not, well, we can start laying the old NatSec argument on him.”
Gabriel finished his coffee. “Assuming he takes the bait, then what?”
“I think that’s rather down to you. We know something’s going on down there, so he’s bound to be at the heart of it. Take him out for dinner, get him drunk, whatever you think will get him to open up. Once we have some decent intelligence, we can plan our next steps.”
“Just to recap then,” Gabriel said, and began counting points off on his fingers, “you know something’s going on at Dreyer Pharma, and their experimental drug. It’s Chechen terrorists. I need to prise the reason from the CEO, then the men in black rush in and kill everyone. That about it?”
“More or less. Although the PM is rather keener on our having at least a few warm bodies to parade in front of the media before we try them and fling them into the Tower for the rest of their lives.”
“Great. Count me in. I’ll start on it as soon as I’m home.”
Don smiled. “Excellent. Now, why don’t we go for a quick tour round, then can I offer you an early lunch in the Officers’ Mess?”
*
Over huge plates of freshly fried fish and chips, complete with mushy peas and mugs of tea, the two men talked of other days, other missions. As he inhaled the sharp tang of vinegar vaporising off the hot chips, Gabriel felt more relaxed than he had done for months. Running his own business, and winin
g and dining prospective clients wasn’t nearly as much fun as blowing stuff up. Or even just going a few rounds in the ring with “Sarge”, the ex-Paras guy who ran the gym he visited when time commitments permitted.
After demolishing his plate of food, Don put his knife and fork down, and looked Gabriel squarely in the eye. Gabriel knew instantly what was coming, and downed tools as well. He leaned back in his chair and prepared himself for the question.
“What really happened at the National Portrait Gallery?” Don asked. “The truth this time, please. You were never one for feeling a bit peaky in the heat. Wouldn’t have really suited the job description, would it?”
Gabriel sat a moment, considering what to say in response to his old boss’s enquiry. In some ways, saying it out loud would be to shuck off a huge burden he’d been carrying around ever since he’d left the Regiment. But was he ready for what would inevitably follow from that? Or could he stick to his story, tell lies to one of the best men he’d ever known, let alone served under, keep the demons squashed inside that bottle and push down hard on the cork?
Don didn’t seem in any hurry for an answer. He just sat, sipping tea and waiting, regarding Gabriel like a headmaster with a favoured prefect who’d committed a minor indiscretion. Behind them, Gabriel heard the waiters clinking plates and cutlery together as they cleared the table from a group of half a dozen officers who’d been laughing loudly about one of their number’s failings as a cricket player. Now, the mess was empty, apart from him and Don. He drew a breath and felt his throat thicken up. Please, don’t start crying now. Get it out there, but save the waterworks for later.
“Do you remember my last mission in Mozambique? The search and destroy against Abel N’Tolo?”
“Went bad, didn’t it?” Don said, putting his emptied mug down on the table and leaning forward, steepling his fingers under his chin.
“Depends who you talk to. We got the plans that put a stop to N’Tolo’s evil little band of murderers and rapists, but we lost Smudge. I lost Smudge. I sent him back for the plans, and he took a round in the head. We couldn’t even retrieve his body – they were about to take us all out. The last thing I saw was Smudge, pinned to a tree by machetes through his hands.”
“You blamed yourself. That’s why you came to me with your resignation so soon afterwards.”
“Of course I blamed myself. I do blame myself, still. I sent him back in. I got him killed.”
“Look, I’m not going to patronise you and tell you what you already know about the burdens of command. Though from what I heard, Smudge was already halfway back before you even gave the order. But we both know what’s going on here, don’t we? Flashbacks? Panic Attacks? Insomnia? Hitting the old bottle a little too much? Anger problems?”
This was it. This was the moment. Tell the truth. Or back out and repeat the lie again. Just felt a little off colour. Must have been something I ate. No. Time to come clean. Who else would understand better than Don Webster – the man who’d given Gabriel his own orders? He drew in a shuddering breath, then let it out again in a hiss, clasping his hands together between his knees.
“I’ve . . . I’ve been having a few problems. Seeing Smudge. In cars. Lifts. On a plane once. That business in the States? I saw more corpses in a week than I did in my last year in the Regiment. Then in the gallery, one of the photos was of the boss of the Hells Angels I had to deal with. It just, I don’t know, it triggered something. I turned away and there was Smudge, sitting in one of those hard chairs in a rent-a-cop uniform with his jaw gone and his head split open. After that I just fancied running screaming into the street to get mown down by a van driver on the wrong side of the road.”
Don pursed his lips, looked at Gabriel, grey eyes unblinking under a lined brow. “You and I both know this is PTSD, don’t we? I assume you’re not in denial about it?”
Gabriel looked down at his interlaced fingers, almost bloodless from the pressure.
“No. No I’m not. But when job centre staff who get shouted at are signed off from work with it, you know, it kind of cheapens the currency.”
“Never mind what other people are doing. This is about you. Now, nothing you’ve said makes me doubt in any way your competence to work with me and my team on this mission of ours, but I do want you to call this person.”
Don reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. Extended his hand across the table and gave it to Gabriel.
Gabriel took it and read the details on the front, below the white and blue NHS logo.
“Fariyah Crace, PhD, FRCPsych. Consultant Psychiatrist. What, ‘Did you wet the bed? Tell me all about your mother’, that kind of thing?”
Don smiled.
“She’s not like that at all. But she’s helped a lot of guys get through some bad stuff. You’d like her. Think about it. For me, OK?”
Gabriel tucked the card into his wallet.
“OK, fine. I’ll think about the good Doctor Crace.”
“Good. Tell her secretary I sent you. It’ll help. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have a report to write and believe me, I’d rather spend an hour talking to Fariyah about my childhood than pounding away on a keyboard. But with great power comes great paperwork, as they say.”
The two men got up and walked back to the office block. The sun was out and it warmed Gabriel’s skin. He felt good. Better than he had done for a while. He turned to face Don. They shook hands.
“Good to have you on my team again,” Don said.
*
On the way home, Gabriel thought about what Don had said, hardly noticing the road, the unspooling countryside or the other vehicles around him. Not the mission – that was all fairly clear-cut. But about his health problem. He knew PTSD was nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, sometimes it seemed the whole bloody world was bleating on about mental health. It was virtually fashionable. But he had so many skeletons in his closet, he sometimes felt if he were to open the door, even a crack, he’d be submerged in a tumbling cavalcade of bones, rattling and splintering till he screamed.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life plagued by zombies, then?” he asked out loud, pulling into the outside lane to surge past a procession of articulated lorries labouring up a long incline. “Maybe Smudge will be joined by Davis Meeks and the other Angels. Hey, they could set up a little zombie clubhouse in the sitting room. And who needs sleep anyway? You could just carry on snatching a few hours here and there, dodging nightmares. That would be fun for another forty or fifty years, yes?” No. No. It wouldn’t. Holding stress in is supposed to give you cancer. Best avoid that if at all possible. He was suddenly tired and opened his mouth in a yawn so wide he felt the hinges of his jaw pop. Coffee. And a phone call.
Chapter 20
Gabriel drove on for another few miles until he saw a sign for a service station. He signalled left and pulled across two lanes of traffic to get to the slip road, earning an angry honk from a sales rep in a BMW 3 Series, jacket dangling from a hook in the rear window. He pulled over and let the car coast round the bend into the car park.
Inside, the place was abuzz with families and management types milling around, buying sweets, queueing for the outlets offering sustenance in the food court, arguing, texting, and devouring what the manager of the place would no doubt refer to as a wide selection of freshly home-cooked foods and beverages. He ordered a cappuccino from a girl who looked barely old enough for a driving licence.
“OK, brilliant!” she said. “Anything to eat with that?”
“Yes, please. A blueberry muffin.”
“Fantastic!” she said, in a tone of breathless admiration for his choice.
“And could you stick an extra shot in the coffee, please?”
“No problem!” she chirped. “What name please?”
“Wolfe,” he said, deadpanning.
“Ooh, scary,” she said, widening her kohl-rimmed eyes. “Don’t bite me.” Then she called out his order to the baristas and moved on to serve the nex
t customer, a burly guy in a cheap suit, huffing and puffing with impatience.
Gabriel took the coffee and muffin outside and found an empty table in a landscaped garden that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the grounds of a stately home. Surrounded by softly undulating grassed mounds was a huge pond, half-choked with yellow and blue irises. Somehow the architect, or garden designer, had managed to deaden most of the vehicle noise from the six lanes of traffic thundering along barely two hundred yards away, and Gabriel found he could distinguish birds singing, crickets chirping and even the splishing of an ornamental fountain on one side of the pond.
He pulled out his wallet and extracted the card Don had given him. Then he retrieved his phone. Placed them next to each other on the table. All he had to do was touch the screen eleven times, and he could open a door that might lead away from all the ghosts. He sat with the tip of his right index finger poised over the slick glass screen, unable to push it down those last few millimetres, unwilling to withdraw it. He could feel a thin film of sweat forming on his forehead, which had nothing to do with the warm weather.
Come on, this is silly. It’s a phone call to a doctor, nothing more.
(the skeletons)
She’s not going to psychoanalyse you on the spot; that would be
(lying in piles)
silly. Plus, Don said you’d like her. So that would be
(with bullet holes in their skulls)
fun. Wouldn’t it?
He swallowed, trying to shift the lump that felt like a golf ball stuck halfway down his throat. Then, just as he decided to man up and make the call, a woman’s scream pierced the calm of the picnic area. All around him, people were looking up, scanning left and right like meerkats on guard against predators. He stood, trying to locate the source of the sound. Nothing looked out of place, and within seconds everyone but him had gone back to their devices, heads down again, looking for mentions, or updates, likes or new followers. He got up from his table and headed for the pond. The sound had come from there. He began a clockwise circuit, and had to detour where a thick grove of bamboo screened the view beyond. There was another scream, but it was cut short as soon as it had begun. And a man’s voice.
