Who Dares Wins

by Chris Ryan

  At the foot of the steps leading from the aircraft, an MOD policeman stood counting them all off. He wore a white, open-necked shirt, black body armour and a protective helmet. In his fist there was a Heckler and Koch MP7. He didn’t look like he was there to welcome the lads back from holiday.

  There were four more of them, all tooled up, all standing in such a formation as to encourage the men straight on to the buses. ‘What’s with the plate hangers?’ one of the guys asked the policeman at the bottom of the stairs as he passed. ‘Worried we’re going to run riot?’

  The policeman remained expressionless. ‘Just move on to the bus,’ he ordered.

  A silence among the men as they were herded by these armed police on to their transports, and not a happy one. As they took their seats, a discontented murmur arose. Sam and Mac sat together. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They knew something was wrong. They watched through the window as Craven’s body was loaded into the ambulance, then driven out of sight at a funereal speed, the vehicle’s flashing light like some kind of beacon. But it wasn’t the only flashing light they’d be seeing. Once the doors of the buses were closed up, two black police vehicles arrived. Their windows were blacked out, but they, too, had the emergency lights blinking on top. The convoy pulled away, one MOD vehicle at the front, the other at the back.

  ‘Where are we going?’ one wag shouted from behind. ‘ Hereford or Wormwood bloody Scrubbs?’

  A smatter of laughter. Sam didn’t join in; he glanced at Mac, who returned his look with a raised eyebrow. ‘I think our little secret might be out,’ he murmured quietly, so as not to be heard.

  Sam looked out of the window. More British Army soldiers congregated glumly outside the main terminal building. The sight of the two white buses being escorted off the airfield supplied a welcome diversion for them: they stared as the squadron passed.

  They were on the main road before Sam turned to Mac. ‘Thanks for your help back at Bagram,’ he said quietly. ‘That guy – I don’t know, he just got to me.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ Mac replied lightly. ‘I know what you Redmans are like when you see the red mist. Bunch of fucking lunatics. Thought you were going to do a J. on him.’

  It was an inappropriate joke, but Sam smiled anyway. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘We should probably try to chill a bit.’ He looked around to check nobody else was listening. ‘Look, mate, I don’t know what all this police stuff is about, but when we get back to base, deny everything, okay. This is my problem. I don’t want you taking the rap for it.’

  Mac shrugged. ‘Whatever you say,’ he replied.

  ‘I mean it, Mac.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mac replied. ‘I can tell. Look, Sam, I don’t know what’s going on. You don’t want to tell me, fine. But any time you need some extra muscle, you know where to come, right?’

  Sam surveyed his friend. ‘Yeah,’ he replied brusquely. ‘Thanks.’

  The gates to RAF Credenhill were already open when they arrived – clearly someone had radioed ahead to let them know they were on their way. When they came to a halt in the main courtyard the conversational buzz in Sam’s bus – which had fallen to a silence towards the end of the boring drive – started up again. Something was going on here. There were more police vehicles for a start, and quite a number of MOD officers all carrying their MP7s. One of them approached the back of the bus and opened it.

  ‘All right, you lot, out you get, but no moving from the courtyard.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ It was Davenport and he sounded like he’d had enough.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Come on, down you get.’

  They de-bussed and started hanging around in groups. A few of the guys lit cigarettes. A lot of them grumbled. They were knackered. They just wanted to get back home and didn’t appreciate being treated like a bunch of jailbirds.

  Sam stayed to one side. He didn’t chat with the others. He didn’t smoke with them. Something was coming that involved him. He knew that. He supposed he should be apprehensive, but he wasn’t. When you’d faced what he had, it took more than a few MOD coppers to put the wind up you, no matter what sort of hardware they were wielding. But he didn’t expect what happened next. None of them did. It was the talk of Credenhill for months to come.

  There were stairs leading up to the main headquarters building. A number of figures appeared at the top: two more MOD policemen – they were swarming round this place like flies around shit; two men in suits, one old, one young, who Sam didn’t recognise; and Mark Porteus. The CO wore camouflage gear, as always; and the hard features of his scarred face were as proud and uncompromising as always. But everyone fell silent as they saw him, because his arms were in front of him, firmly handcuffed. One of the MOD policemen prodded him with his gun. No one did that to Mark Porteus. Not ever. But Porteus didn’t react. He stepped slowly forward, down the stairs. As he walked, his face scanned the crowd, as though he were looking for something or someone in particular. His eyes were narrowed, his forehead creased into a deadly serious expression.

  When his eyes fell upon Sam, he stopped.

  The look was piercing. It burned through the crowd of soldiers and picked Sam out like a searchlight. It was a look full of meaning. Not anger. Not blame. But meaning nevertheless.

  And in that moment, Sam felt all sorts of things slot into place. Clare’s article. The phone number. The hooded figure at his door.

  Porteus.

  It had been him all along. As the CO, he would have been in possession of information from the security services that nobody else would have had. He would have been in a position to deploy Sam’s squadron. And most importantly of all, Porteus knew Jacob. He would have recognised his picture. This was why, when Sam had returned from Helmand Province, the boss had kept his distance; this was why he had stayed away, out of sight. He’d been trying to warn Sam, without it being seen that this was what he was doing.

  Now Porteus looked at Sam, his proud face held high. Sam nodded, gently, almost imperceptibly. If you hadn’t known what that silent exchange meant, you’d most likely not have seen it happen.

  As the rest of the squadron looked on in astonishment, Porteus was once more jabbed in the back by an MP7. If it annoyed him, he didn’t let it show. He just allowed himself to be escorted to one of the police vans. Two MOD policemen joined him in the back, the doors were shut and locked and the van was driven away.

  The conversation started buzzing again. Still Sam stayed separate from the others. He watched as the younger of the two men on the steps approached Mac. A word in your ear, the man’s expression seemed to say; once he had Mac’s attention, he spoke, though Sam couldn’t hear from that distance what he was saying. He’d find out soon enough, he guessed. But before he did, he became uncomfortably aware of somebody watching him. Looking back up the steps, he saw the older man. His grey hair was neatly combed back, his eyebrows were bushy and his face had the deeply lined dignity that only certain old men manage to achieve. He wore a suit and tie and he was looking at Sam with an almost mournful expression.

  Sam absorbed that stare, refusing to be intimidated by it. The two men remained locked in a kind of silent conflict until Mac approached.

  ‘Sam,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘They want to debrief us. The troop, all seven of us that were there.’

  Sam didn’t even blink.

  ‘Now, Sam. Kremlin.’

  He nodded vaguely, dragged his eyes from the old man who seemed in no way uncomfortable about what had just passed between them, and followed his friend.

  Sam walked as if in a dream. Behind him, the sound of the others talking. ‘Wouldn’t have cuffed him if they didn’t think he was going to try to leg it,’ Tyler was saying.

  Davenport didn’t agree. ‘That, or they wanted to make an example of him. Why pack him into the police van in front of us when it could have been done on the QT?’ His voice was full of disdain. ‘Chickenshit cuntlickers. Porteus is all right. Have a right scene on
their hands if they do the dirty on him.’

  A couple of others grunted their agreement.

  The two men in suits were waiting for them in the briefing room, as was Jack Whitely. The Ops Officer looked harassed – Sam couldn’t tell if their arrival made him more or less nervous. It didn’t matter either way. A quiet word from the younger of the two suited men and he left the room, a little red-faced perhaps, but slightly relieved to be away from the tension.

  The suits sat in silence. Once they were all in, the old man cleared his throat. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘My name is Gabriel Bland.’ He nodded towards the younger man. ‘This is Toby Brookes.’

  Brookes sniffed.

  ‘You’ll be debriefed later in the usual way,’ Bland announced. ‘I just have one question for you.’ He looked at each of them in term. ‘You will have noticed,’ he added, almost apologetically, ‘your commanding officer being, ah, escorted from the premises.’ His tone might have been apologetic, but the implication wasn’t: mess around with me and you’ll get the same treatment. There was silence in the room as Brookes handed each of them an A4 photograph.

  Sam didn’t need to look at it. He knew it would be Jacob. Bland appeared to notice his lack of regard for the document and raised an eyebrow. And so Sam glanced at the picture.

  It was different to the one he had seen before in this very briefing room. Older, taken when Jacob was still in the Regiment. Sam avoided looking at Mac; no one else in the room said anything.

  Bland cleared his throat theatrically. ‘I should like to know,’ he said, ‘if this individual was one of your targets during your recent expedition.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  Still nothing.

  Bland continued to look from one man to the next, a suspicious schoolmaster weeding out the naughty child. But the response remained the same. Nothing but silence.

  And then Mac spoke. ‘I know this person,’ he said. His voice was filled with mock suspicion. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions,’ Bland replied peevishly.

  ‘Then you’d better ask me,’ Sam announced. ‘I photographed the dead. And I’m sure you’ve done your homework and know who this is.’

  Sam’s challenge hung in the air. Bland surveyed him calmly. ‘Very well,’ he purred finally. ‘The rest of you may leave. Return the pictures to Toby, please. Sergeant Redman – it is Sergeant Redman, isn’t it? – I wonder if I might ask you to stay here.’

  Sam shrugged. The rest of them stood up and quietly left, though there wasn’t one of them that didn’t look over their shoulders as they did so, obviously wondering what the hell this was all about. They didn’t hang around to find out, though, and within a minute Sam was alone with the two spooks.

  For a while none of them spoke. Sam remained seated. Bland and Toby were standing; Bland turned and faced the front wall, looking at nothing in particular, while Toby went and stood by the door, out of Sam’s sight.

  ‘I am just a humble civil servant,’ Bland stated finally, still not looking at Sam, ‘but I suppose I don’t need to tell you that it is the matter of a moment’s work for me to have you court-martialled. A short testimony from Detective Inspector Nicola Ledbury and…’ He turned round and smiled humourlessly. ‘And the fragrant Clare Corbett, and I rather think your illustrious career will be brought short by a stint at Her Majesty’s pleasure. A longish sting, if you get my meaning.’

  All of a sudden, Sam’s mind was a rush. Nicola, Clare – how the hell had this guy caught up with them? Sam hadn’t told anyone. He’d been careful.

  ‘Surprised, Sam?’ Bland asked. ‘Surely not.’ He paused for thought. ‘I don’t want you to think that you’re in any way unappreciated, you and your, ah, friends. You have a, ah…’ He smiled again. ‘A good right fist. But you didn’t honestly imagine…’ Now he allowed a bit of sharpness in his voice. ‘You didn’t honestly imagine that you were going to outthink the Secret Intelligence Service?’

  A pause.

  ‘You didn’t imagine,’ Bland persisted, ‘that you would outmanoeuvre MI6, did you, Sam?’

  Sam felt the blood rising to his face as Bland sat down next to him. The MI6 man carried with him the faint whiff of aftershave; Sam was immediately aware that he must stink.

  ‘If you’re such a bunch of fucking geniuses,’ Sam retorted, ‘then you don’t need to speak to me.’

  ‘Oh, please, Sam. Let’s, ah, let’s not be unpleasant with each other.’ He stood up again. You’re nervous, Sam thought to himself. You’re trying not to show it, but you are. ‘Miss Corbett told us everything, Sam: that she had foolishly told you the contents of her ill-informed article; about your brother being in the training camp. She was really quite, ah, talkative. So please do me the courtesy of not pretending that you travelled to Kazakhstan without the express intention of compromising the mission. Do me that courtesy, Sam.’

  Sam jutted his chin out.

  ‘Was he there, Sam? Did you see him?’

  Sam refused to answer and a shadow of frustration passed over Bland’s face. ‘I would find it quite unpalatable,’ he said ominously quietly, ‘to have to force this out of you, Sam. But your file tells me that your field investigation techniques are quite specialised. So you know the sort of things we might do to, ah, loosen your tongue.’

  The threat hung in the air. Sam took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘All right. I recognised Jacob at the briefing. I went out to stop the guys putting a bullet in him.’ He looked directly at Bland. Fiercely. ‘Maybe you’d do the same for your brother. But Jacob wasn’t there. No sign of him. We eliminated the targets and came home. End of fucking story.’

  Bland nodded and for a moment he appeared satisfied. He came and sat down again.

  ‘I’m afraid, Sam, I’m not entirely sure that I believe you.’

  ‘Well that’s your problem.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Bland murmured. ‘It is indeed my problem.’ He stared straight ahead. ‘You do realise, Sam, that Miss Corbett got quite the wrong end of the stick, don’t you?’ As he spoke he looked directly at Sam, who couldn’t help a flicker of interest registering on his face. Bland feigned surprise. ‘Oh,’ he muttered. ‘Oh, dear. Well, she is a most appealing young lady. I can, ah, I can quite understand how you might have fallen for her charms.’

  ‘She was fucking terrified of you,’ Sam replied hotly. ‘If it was you that put the frighteners on her and bumped off that contact of hers.’

  ‘Did I frighten her?’ Bland asked. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I might have done. It seems to be an occupational hazard. I would prefer not to. But then I don’t have the advantages of your youth and vigour, Sam. I’m afraid I have to be a little more robust to get what I want.’

  Sam ignored him. ‘I think Clare was telling the truth.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Bland replied. Sam blinked. ‘At least there’s no doubt that she believed she was telling the truth. But believing you are right and being right, these are two very different things, are they not?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Sam replied. His voice was surly, but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘I am telling you, Sam. Clare Corbett, alas, was misled. It’s not her fault, of course. But she was misled nevertheless by her…’ He struggled to find the phrase. ‘By her “red-light runner”.’

  ‘You telling me they don’t exist?’ Sam demanded hotly. ‘You telling me that we didn’t just eliminate a load of them in Kazakhstan?’

  Bland shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They exist. Very much so. Intelligence agencies are extremely adept at drawing profiles of people from, oh, an astonishing variety of sources, Sam. It would be an easy job for me to pull up all sorts of information about you, for example, that you wouldn’t even imagine we’d be interested in. Which supermarkets you shop at, your taste in films, your taste in just about everything. Should we be of a mind to, you understand. Clare’s red-light runners fitted a very precise profile. T
he sort of people that someone at least would have a use for.’

  ‘So why are you killing them?’ Bland’s wordiness, his roundabout way of talking, was beginning to get on Sam’s nerves.

  ‘Of course,’ Bland replied enigmatically, ‘you and I both know that we are called upon to do questionable things in the course of our duty.’ As if that explained everything. ‘I’ve learned a lot about your brother in the last few hours, Sam. A very great deal. He had a most distinguished service record, did he not?’

  Sam didn’t reply.

  ‘And then, what can we call it? A moment of madness? You were there, weren’t you? In Baghdad. You saw it all happen.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Sam seethed. ‘Jacob stepped in to…’ He stopped himself. What was the point? This guy was going to believe what he was going to believe.

  ‘A cover-up,’ Bland continued, as though Sam hadn’t even spoken. ‘Jacob Redman was, ah, cut a deal to avoid embarrassment to the MOD. Everything brushed under the carpet to avoid a scandal, but Jacob to be RTU’d. An embarrassment too far, Sam, wouldn’t you say? And so he left the army. Left the country. Cut off all ties. I would say, in circumstances such as this, that a man might become, ah…’ He searched for a word. ‘Bitter?’

  ‘If you’re trying to say something,’ Sam whispered, ‘why don’t you just say it?’

  ‘Treason, Sam,’ Bland announced with sudden force. ‘It’s not a terribly fashionable word, is it? Smacks a bit of the Gunpowder Plot, doesn’t it? But it’s very apt, Sam, for what’s going on at the moment. Very apt indeed. I believe Jacob to be guilty of treason, Sam. And if you don’t help me find him, then you will be guilty of it too.’