Red Station

by Adrian Magson

  As they had circled for another try, the reason for the go-around became clear: a green armoured personnel carrier was sitting squarely in the middle of the single runway. A volley of swearing had echoed from the flight deck, followed by a burst of radio chatter. Then silence. Nobody in the cabin spoke, the atmosphere changed instantly from dulled relief at journey’s end to one loaded with tension at the implications of what might be happening on the ground.

  Whatever the outcome of the radio exchange, the aircraft circled and lined up again. With minimum fuss, it sank on to its landing path and touched down with a heavy thump, causing several overhead lockers to open and cascade a variety of hand-luggage on to the heads below.

  As they flashed past the APC, which had pulled back on to the grass, Harry recognised it as a Cobra, an image dredged up from a distant weapons-recognition class. Perhaps the local tourist board had decided that meeting incoming aircraft with light armoured vehicles was the latest way to impress visitors.

  After the air-conditioned cabin, the atmosphere outside the plane was muggy, and the walk across the oily tarmac to the terminal was like stepping through a steam room. Beyond the single-storey structure, the distant line of the Caucasus Mountains rose to the north, their jagged peaks hazy against a dirty sky. Elsewhere, the view was of shabby hangars and smaller, unnamed buildings set back from the runway, surrounded by scrubby grass. The tang of aviation fuel hanging in the air mixed disturbingly with the acrid fog of cheap cigarettes.

  The combined aroma made Harry feel nauseous. It wasn’t just the landing though; he’d been cheated of sleep by a fat journalist from Ohio named Carl Higgins, who had insisted on talking non-stop about his family.

  Passport control consisted of a pair of plywood booths with edgy-looking uniformed men inside and soldiers in camouflage outside. To add to the lack of welcome, none of the video screens around the walls appeared to be working and there was no air-conditioning to combat the oppressive humidity. Throughout, the overhead lights were a dull yellow, adding to an atmosphere of heavy gloom.

  After nearly an hour, during which his passport was scoured twice at length from front to back, Harry arrived at the baggage reclaim hall, another shed tacked on to the arrivals hall. He crossed to the window overlooking the landing area, where a team of baggage handlers was abusing luggage off his flight. His own bag was in there somewhere, but he’d long ago given up taking anything of value on foreign trips. Experience had shown that it was better to move lean and light, unencumbered by unnecessary weight.

  Another APC lumbered into view on the far side of the airport. The rear hatch swung open and several armed men in camouflage uniform dropped out and scurried away into a row of bushes. Practice or reaction? The sight made him uneasy.

  He caught sight of his reflection in the glass. Solid and squalid, his father would have said, in need of some exercise, rest and healthy food. He wondered what it was about him that made Jean smile. He knew he looked pasty, with red-shot eyes under a brush-cut of dark hair peppered with hints of grey. Where he was going, the exercise might be guaranteed, but the rest and healthy food might have to wait.

  One of the baggage handlers pulled a black holdall out of the aircraft and drop-kicked it into a wire cage, then held up his arms to acknowledge applause from his co-workers. When he saw Harry watching, he made a short, one-handed gesture. It might have been obscene, might not. Harry responded with a genial tilt of his whisky miniature and went back to waiting for the carousel to start up. At least his bag would be easy to spot, as it now had a large dusty boot-print embedded in one side.

  He yawned and felt his jaw click, and tried not to think about the unseemly haste with which he’d been bundled out of the madness of London. It must have broken civil service records for speed and efficiency, especially in Human Resources and Travel. He hadn’t even been asked to surrender his weapon, but told they would send it on in a secure bag.

  They were clearing the decks before the press got to him. It was the MI5 way. Move the man, move everything associated with him. Sanitize and deny. Avoid awkward questions and embarrassing answers.

  It may have been dressed up as a new posting, but he was beginning to regret his decision already. He had followed orders, the same as always.

  He felt hungry. Remembering the sandwich they’d given him at Northolt, he took out the other half and bit into it with dull enthusiasm. It prompted a reminder of his escorts from London. They may have disappeared from sight, but he didn’t believe he was being allowed to move without being observed.

  To test the theory, he kept his head down, blanking out the activity around him and recapping who he had seen so far. He discounted the obvious ones – hard-nosed, copper or army types – because they were usually innocent. His money was on a young bloke with a buzz-cut lounging around near the main doors, pretending to be waiting for an incoming passenger.

  Thirty minutes later, as Harry carried his bag towards the main exit, the man with the buzz-cut was using a mobile phone on the far side of the arrivals area.

  ‘He’s just leaving,’ he said quietly. ‘Heading for the cab rank.’

  ‘Has he talked with anyone?’ The voice on the other end was calm but clipped, establishment English. No background noise. A quiet office close by the Thames.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Did he see you?’

  ‘No way. He was busy sucking on a miniature of whisky. He hadn’t got a clue.’

  ‘If you believe that,’ the voice said with cold contempt, ‘you’re an idiot. The only way Harry Tate would have missed spotting a tail was if he was unconscious and blindfolded.’

  SEVEN

  There were more military personnel outside the terminal building. All armed, looking alert or bored depending on rank, and most looked as if they had been dressed and assembled in a rush.

  There were no takers for cabs at the rank, and only a single vehicle waiting; a dusty Mercedes with a crumpled wing. The driver was a young man with spiky hair, oval spectacles and a faded Def Leppard T-shirt. He lifted his chin as Harry caught his eye, and popped the boot. Harry handed him a slip of paper with the office address, and the man pursed his lips and nodded. He seemed about to say something when a large shadow loomed over them.

  ‘Hey, Tate – you got the only ride left! Care to split the fare?’ It was Higgins, the American journalist. He was sweating profusely and clutching a large overnight case and a plastic duty-free bag. His suit looked as if it had been used to bed down a donkey.

  ‘Sure. Climb in.’ Harry could have done without the company, but refusing the suggestion would have made him stand out.

  ‘Jesus, what a shit-heap!’ was Higgins’ opening comment as they left the small airport and headed out along a narrow perimeter road. He banged on the back of the driver’s seat. ‘Hey – does this thing have air-con? Stinks like a dead beaver in here.’

  The driver tapped a button on the centre console, and a fan stirred lazily but with little effect.

  As they turned on to the main road, Harry looked back. There were no other vehicles in sight. If his watcher from the airport was still there, he must have borrowed Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

  During the journey, which changed from a scattering of commercial units and residential blocks around the airport, to occasional farms and clusters of low houses in open, gently-climbing countryside, Higgins complained at length about the trip, the flight, the landing and the lack of facilities. The only thing he appeared not to have an opinion on was the over-abundant display of military personnel and vehicles in the area. Stationed at crossroads and junctions, they were watchful but unthreatening.

  As they cruised into the drab outskirts of a medium sized town, Higgins took up a running commentary about the country and the people, little of it complimentary. Harry wondered if the driver spoke English. He occasionally found the man’s eyes flicking up to the mirror and meeting his with a quizzical expression, although he remained silent.

  The town, set
in the cooler air among low foothills, was unsophisticated and raw, and reminded Harry of a western frontier town from a Sergio Leone film. A maze of narrow streets intersected by several empty, tree-lined boulevards, it boasted a bare handful of four-storey buildings which would have been considered for demolition anywhere else. Some of the streets were bordered by large, rubbish-strewn gutters on either side, with planks laid across the gap for pedestrians, who seemed to use the street like a walkway and paid little attention to surrounding traffic. Overhead, electric wires sagged between the buildings, barely high enough to avoid the radio aerials of the large trucks pounding through and dousing everything in heavy exhaust fumes. The people looked grey, shuffling along with little signs of conversation, moving between the shops which ranged from garish to utilitarian and shabby.

  Two hours after leaving the airport, the driver turned on to one of the boulevards and stopped outside a hotel boasting an awning and a cluster of tables with parasols on the pavement outside.

  Higgins looked at the driver and shifted his bulk forward to pound on the back of his seat. ‘Hey, Spikey – how did you know where I was staying?’ He turned to Harry without waiting for a reply. ‘Did I say where I was staying?’

  Harry shrugged. The driver merely smiled in the mirror.

  Higgins swore at the lack of reaction and nudged Harry with a beefy elbow. ‘See this dump? It’s called the Palace. My bathroom at home is bigger than this. Say, where are you staying, Tate? You here, too?’ It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that the hotel might have guests other than himself.

  ‘No,’ said Harry with quiet relief. ‘My firm made other arrangements.’

  ‘Your firm? Oh, you in oil or something? You never said.’

  ‘You never asked.’ Harry wanted the man out of the car.

  Higgins appeared not to hear him. ‘I know a lot of guys in the oil business. Mostly engineers. They work on the pipeline going from Baku on the Caspian all the way through to the Med. Anyway, I gotta go. See you around, Tate. Maybe we’ll have a drink sometime. Watch out for bed-bugs – they’re built like fuckin’ raccoons.’

  He levered himself out of the car and tramped heavily into the hotel, his jacket tails flapping like a tent. He had made no offer to share the fare. Harry let him go. The peace and quiet was worth it. He made a mental note to avoid the Palace Hotel and signalled the driver to move on.

  Three minutes later, the Mercedes stopped outside a plain-fronted, three-storey building rendered in a sickly cream coating speckled with dust. There were few vehicles or pedestrians about, but two soldiers were standing on the nearest corner.

  As Harry pulled out some notes, the driver turned and draped one arm over the back of his seat.

  ‘And they have the fucking cheek to wonder why everyone hates them.’ His voice was heavy with disgust, his accent was from somewhere south of Birmingham. He smiled at Harry and held out a hand. ‘Rik Ferris. Comms, IT support, research and general jobsworth. The boss said to come get you in case you got kidnapped.’

  The spiked hair and pop T-shirt seemed almost homely. Harry smiled and took the offered hand. ‘Nice of you. Is kidnapping a likelihood?’

  ‘It happens, yeah. Usually oil engineers; the local bandits know they’ve got plenty of cash and their companies need their expertise.’

  ‘They wouldn’t get much for me, then. But thanks for the warning.’

  ‘No problem. Welcome to the lower rectum of British Intelligence, Central Europe. If you’ve any taste, you’ll hate the place. I’ll get your case.’ He jumped out and went to the boot.

  Harry followed him across the pavement into the building, his skin reacting instantly to the cooler climate after the airport. As the door closed behind them, Rik held a finger to his lips and flapped his hand over one ear.

  The message was clear: the walls have ears.

  On the second floor, he fed a code number into a worn keypad and threw open a heavy wooden door, ushering Harry ahead of him. They were in a large open office with high windows overlooking the street on one side and a jungle of a garden on the other. A through-breeze stirred sheets of A4 paper pinned to bulletin boards around the walls, while the hum of electronic machinery filled the background. Papers and cardboard folders were stacked in trays, with spare boxes of stationery and brochures piled under desks and in between cupboards and side tables, and a tangle of cables criss-crossed the scuffed wooden floor. It could have been any commercial office anywhere in the world.

  The door closed behind them with a click of security deadbolts, and Rik came and stood beside him.

  ‘You can say anything you like in here; sing the Red Flag, tell dirty stories about Putin, but don’t be rude about our lords and masters, because they’re probably listening, the cheap, chuckle-starved sons of gits.’ He grinned and pointed to a woman in her thirties sitting at a PC near the back window. She had long dark hair scraped back into a ponytail, brown eyes and what might have been a broken nose. She was devoid of make-up. It made her look drawn. ‘Clare Jardine, Harry Tate; Harry Tate . . . well, you know the rest.’

  Harry nodded. She returned it without expression, then went back to her work.

  A door opened on the far side of the room and a heavyset man entered. He had greying, stubby hair, neatly brushed, and wore well-pressed dark blue trousers and a blue shirt with black shoes. Almost a uniform, thought Tate. The man gave Harry a wary look.

  ‘Keith Fitzgerald, our security hound and resident heavy,’ said Rik.

  Ex-army, Harry decided as they shook hands. Strong grip. Probably came out with three stripes and a pension, kids and wife gone, no family, a host of war stories and looking for a job to call home. And this was it.

  ‘Keith,’ he murmured. He dropped his bag on a chair and said to no-one in particular, ‘I was expecting to see Stuart Mace.’

  ‘He said he’d meet you for coffee,’ Jardine said without looking round. Her voice was cool, matter-of-fact, the accent neutral. She pointed over her shoulder. ‘Back out, turn left, right at the top and fifty yards along. The Odeon.’

  Fitzgerald coughed. ‘We’ll need to go through your induction,’ he said. ‘Security procedures and protocols, who’s who, routes in and out, basic travel details, that kind of thing.’ He waited, eyes carefully assessing.

  ‘After coffee do you?’ There was no sense in trying to avoid it, and the security man was only doing his job.

  Fitzgerald nodded, positions agreed, and Harry turned and left them to it. They would probably dissect him the moment he was gone, anyway, the way people do in these situations. He wondered how much they knew.

  Outside, the earlier mugginess had cooled, and he walked down the street trying to relax and shake off a growing feeling of despondency. He passed three men in combat uniforms, and saw the ugly snout of an APC parked at the intersection. Another soldier was standing nearby. The men were unshaven and heavily-built, their uniforms crumpled and greasy. His former RSM would have gone ballistic.

  As he approached the end of the street, he heard footsteps and realized the three men in combats had turned and followed him. Then the man by the APC stepped out and blocked his way, one hand on the holster at his side. The other three stopped behind him, blocking the way back.

  Across the street, two women with shopping bags turned the corner, took one look at the situation and scuttled back the way they had come.

  ‘Pass,’ said the soldier, and tapped his breast pocket.

  EIGHT

  ‘George?’ It was Marcella Rudmann, in a neat grey business suit and glossy shoes. Her hair was coiffed and shiny under the lights of the main hallway of the Ministry of Defence, and she was carrying a smart document case and a mobile, traditional armaments for a meeting. She seemed surprised to see Paulton.

  Stuff her, he thought rebelliously. She doesn’t know everything.

  ‘Good morning.’ He almost called her Marcella but decided against it. Familiarity paid off only with those innocent or pompous enough to be fooled by it.<
br />
  ‘How did the . . . posting business go?’ She was referring to Harry Tate.

  ‘Very well, actually. He should already be in place by now. Why?’ Paulton didn’t like the idea of being checked on; watching people was his job, not hers.

  ‘Oh, no reason. The Deputy Prime Minister was asking if the press were likely to get hold of Tate’s name. There are questions being asked which come uncomfortably close to the truth.’

  ‘Questions? By whom?’

  ‘Shaun Whelan – who else?’

  Paulton puffed out some air. He wasn’t surprised. Whelan was a poisonous little hack who’d been booted out of RTE, the Irish broadcasting network, for disclosing private information about government officials in Dublin. He now worked as a freelance, nosing around the corridors of Whitehall like a bitch on heat. Thankfully, few took him too seriously, but his clumsy probing had a habit of causing unwelcome ripples.

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Rudmann’s voice was insistent, her eyes digging into his. ‘You know his reputation.’

  ‘He’ll keep.’ Paulton wondered how much power this woman really had. The fact that she was being so blatant in her interest over the shooting was becoming a worry. Maybe she had discovered a way of consolidating her career by riding on the back of a potential scandal.

  ‘I hope you’re right. I told the DPM you had the situation in hand.’

  Paulton felt a further pinprick of annoyance. It was the lack of subtlety as much as the superior attitude; that they felt no hesitation about letting him know they didn’t entirely trust him to do what was required. Had the boot been on the other foot, he knew they’d have been outraged at the suggestion that they couldn’t cope. But he couldn’t help feeling a touch of alarm. Had someone been pointing a finger? Was that it?