Dark Asset

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ said Angela.

  I nodded. ‘I got hit just as you were landing in the Cessna. The medics at the hospital said it probably came from a nine-millimetre pistol and must have fragmented off after hitting something harder. I remembered the AK being torn out of my hands a split second before being hit, but none of it made sense at the time, there was so much going on.’

  ‘A ricochet,’ said Doug, pragmatic as ever. ‘It was your lucky day. If it had hit you square on, you’d be dead meat.’

  Angela scowled at his bluntness, then looked puzzled. ‘What are you saying, Marc?’

  ‘The people I thought must have shot me were the men in the second SUV. But they were still a way off down the far end of the airstrip when I got hit. I think they’d gone round that way to stop the plane taking off. But they were armed with 5.56 millimetre assault rifles, so a nine mil round – and that distance – didn’t make sense.’

  ‘Masse,’ said Doug. ‘He had a Beretta – I saw it when he climbed on board.’

  ‘Yes. It took a while but I finally figured it out in the hospital.’

  ‘But why let you get so close only to try and kill you at the airstrip?’

  ‘Because I was doing what I’d been hired to do: watching his back and getting him there safely. But in the end I was going to be a liability he could do without. I hadn’t seen the hard drive or anything on it, but I think he knew I was onto him. He probably figured on striking a bargain with Petrus or Lunnberg once he got back. Either would have done as long as it got him out of the country.’

  I saw Angela and Doug look past my shoulder and felt a brush of movement behind me. Then the cold barrel of a pistol was pushed into the back of my neck.

  ‘Do not move – any of you,’ Masse said quickly as Doug and Angela began to rise. ‘Show me your hands or I will shoot him now.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘What are you doing, André?’ I was trying to sound calm but I didn’t feel it. If I hadn’t thought Masse was a nut job before, I did now. He’d moved beyond rational thought into the twilight zone. Trying to kill me back at the airstrip had been the actions of a crazy man; if he’d thought about it, he could have kept his cool and got off the plane back in Djibouti and disappeared without me being any the wiser. I hadn’t tackled him about any of my suspicions, so all he had to do was make the best deal he could and be gone.

  ‘I want protection,’ he said. He was so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. He smelled of coffee and alcohol and stale sweat and his voice was stiff with tension. I realised he was kneeling down to use me as a convenient shield in case anything kicked off. It made it tough getting at him without endangering anyone else.

  ‘From who?’

  ‘Lunnberg … Petrus. Any of them. I need you to tell them what I went through for this mission.’

  ‘Would that include stabbing McBride in Mogadishu and trashing his face so I thought it was you? Leaving the fake hard drive and arranging for the Somali troops to pitch up just after I’d got there?’

  ‘How do you know—?’

  ‘Come on. You were the only person who knew I’d be there. All it took was a phone call to your contact in their intelligence section. And dumping Colin Doney so Lunnberg’s men thought he was in it with you? That was low.’

  ‘C’est pas vrai!’ he hissed, close enough for me to feel his spit on my skin. ‘It’s a lie. They came to the bar, yes – but I did not know he was going to be there.’

  ‘Maybe not. Yet you still left him to it and ran. Did you ever wonder what they did to him?’ He didn’t reply so I said, ‘They took him out into the country beyond Ali Adde and wired him on the ground between two trees so he couldn’t move. Then they built a fire.’

  Angela and Doug were transfixed, staring between Masse and me. Angela’s face had gone pale.

  ‘It must have taken a while. When the sticks from the fire were good and red, they placed them on his stomach and chest and waited for him to spill.’ I waited but Masse said nothing. ‘Of course, he couldn’t tell them because he didn’t know anything.’

  Masse’s breathing began getting faster and I felt the pressure of the gun barrel increase on my neck. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to accomplish, but if he gave me a fraction of a chance to move sideways, I might be able to get hold of his gun. The problem was, if I didn’t get it right, Angela and Doug were in his line of fire.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Masse snapped. ‘What I did I did for France! Can you say you ever did anything for your country, Portman? Is that even your real name?’

  ‘Actually, it is. So you killed Ahmed for France?’ I looked at the two others and explained, ‘A bandit who stumbled on me coming away from Mogadishu. André here stabbed him in the neck while he was tied up and defenceless.’

  ‘He was a threat!’

  ‘What about all the calls to Lunnberg? Was that for France, too? You’ve been working with him all along … and against him. Actually, you’ve been playing Petrus, too – and me most of all. The hard drive is your ticket back to France – you’ve made no secret of that. But it has to be you who delivers it, not Petrus and certainly not Lunnberg.’

  ‘Because he would bury it!’ Masse croaked. I noticed he didn’t say which one of them, but it didn’t really matter at this stage; both men were in the same position and wanted everything gone. ‘He would hide everything that is wrong about this affair and leave me to take the blame for the failure!’ He sucked in a deep breath and I could feel the rage coming off him like a blast of heat. ‘All I have ever done is my job, to serve my country. But they … Petrus and Lunnberg, they serve only themselves. Petrus would leave me here to rot and destroy my reputation back in Paris. All he cares about is his own career. I would have nothing to go back to – no pension, no job … nothing.’

  ‘But you never had one, did you? You’re a paid outsider, like me. Only you’ve kidded yourself that you’re part of the team. It was quite convincing.’

  I couldn’t see his face but his silence said everything. I’d have almost felt sorry for him if he wasn’t grinding his gun barrel into the back of my head.

  ‘Maybe we can help you with that.’ Angela broke the silence, speaking calmly, not moving. Even so, I felt Masse’s gun twitch. ‘None of this needs to come out.’ Angela was looking at Masse without blinking. ‘You can take the hard drive and do with it whatever you want.’

  It sounded a desperate pitch as arguments go, but something in her voice and face must have been persuasive enough to have hit home, penetrating the tortured mess that was Masse’s brain. Maybe he so desperately wanted to fasten onto some kind of get-out, he saw this as his only real chance. Hell, I know I was convinced.

  ‘How?’ The pressure of the gun decreased a tiny fraction as he shifted his attention onto her. ‘Why should I believe you? I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘My name’s Angela. I work for the man who got Marten to airlift you out of Somalia.’

  He nodded. ‘So?’

  ‘So he’s a senior officer in MI6 and has a lot of influence.’ She had produced a cell phone while we’d been talking, and held it up. ‘I’m sure he could even get you a deal on that hard drive. Cash … papers – whatever you want. Wouldn’t that be safer than trusting anybody else? I mean, it sounds as if Petrus has cut you loose anyway, doesn’t it?’

  There was a long pause while he mulled it over. ‘How? How will you do it?’

  ‘One phone call. That’s all it will take. I can have you out of here this afternoon, guaranteed, on a military flight so nobody can get to you … not Lunnberg, not Petrus – nobody. But you’ll have to make a statement about Lunnberg. A full statement.’

  This time the pause was shorter. Angela’s words had been the magic he was looking for. ‘Do it,’ he said.

  She pressed a button and waited. Then she spoke briefly, reciting an ID code number and her surname and asking to speak to Vale. She spoke for fifteen seconds, giving the briefes
t summary of what was involved, then nodded and smiled. ‘Four p.m. take-off? Protection guaranteed? That’s a deal. We can keep him safe until then.’

  Next to her, Doug Tober wore a look of innocence, but I could tell he was coiled like a spring and ready to go.

  ‘He wants to speak to you, André,’ Angela said, and held out the phone. ‘His name is Tom Vale. Whatever you do, don’t bullshit him.’

  I don’t think Masse could believe his luck. He took a while to react, then beckoned her forward out of her seat. ‘Bring it to me. Quickly.’ His free arm was close to my face but he kept the gun screwed tight into my neck. ‘No tricks.’

  Angela stood up and moved forward, holding the phone out. As he reached out to take it, she stumbled against the table and dropped her hand a fraction, forcing him to make an instinctive grab for the phone. As he did so the tip of the gun barrel slid away from my neck.

  ‘Move!’ Angela snapped, and stepped forward, jabbing the phone into the side of Masse’s neck. I heard a fizzing sound but by then I was already rolling sideways out of my chair and seeing Doug doing the same.

  We were lucky; using a stun device on a crazed gunman with his finger on the trigger is pretty risky. A million-plus volts going through the body can do weird stuff to the muscles. But in the end it’s a gamble and no more dangerous than assuming the man won’t eventually shoot you anyway. In this case Masse bent double at the waist with shock and dropped the gun. Doug stepped around the table and put his foot on it, while Angela dropped the fake phone and got Masse in a wristlock and held on tight.

  As I stood up I saw movement at the far end of the terrace. Lunnberg had seen what had happened and was up and out of his seat, walking away like his feet were on fire. His companion was staring after him, no doubt wondering what the hell was going on.

  ‘Leave him,’ I said, as Doug began to move. We had Masse to testify against him, which I figured would put a nasty crimp in his pants soon enough.

  ‘What do we do with this one?’ said Angela. She gently slapped Masse’s face to make sure he hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest.

  It was a good question. The answer came back to a simple fact: Masse had played a complex game for his own ends, and in doing so had cost lives. Some might have deserved their fate, others had been caught up in the net of his scheming by chance. Such events are like throwing a stone in a pond, causing ripples that spread ever wider, eventually touching the unconnected and innocent. Like Colin Doney. He’d been guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of getting to know the wrong person.

  I wrestled my phone out of my pocket and dialled Petrus’s number.

  ‘Yes?’

  I didn’t give him a chance to play dumb. ‘Masse’s down here on the terrace. He’s had an electric shock. I know you don’t want to acknowledge him, Petrus, but when he wakes up, he’s likely to start shouting your name from the rooftops and telling anybody who’ll listen what you’ve been doing here. I don’t think you want that.’

  He didn’t pretend not to know me or to argue the point, but said he’d be right down. He was probably picturing the screaming headlines if a stray reporter happened on the story … and what might happen to his own career. What he chose to do with Masse was up to him, but I figured he’d have him on the first plane out of here to somewhere quiet where he couldn’t do any harm. Before that happened, I bent down and went through Masse’s pockets until I found the hard drive.

  ‘You might want to pass this to Tom Vale,’ I said, and handed it to Angela.

  She looked surprised. ‘Don’t you want to deal with it?’

  ‘No point. Masse was right: Petrus will bury it and I don’t know who else to give it to. I’m sure Vale will find it useful.’

  ‘Won’t Washington have something say about that?’

  ‘I doubt it. Nobody wants to admit it exists. But after all the trouble it’s caused, it has to be good for something. Great work with the stun gun, by the way. Sneaky but neat. Thank you both.’ I felt the horizon dip and sway, and noticed Doug giving me a quizzical look.

  ‘Portman, are you OK? You look like shit.’

  Amen to that. I felt as if I’d gone several rounds with a cage fighter. The excitement had obviously been too much for me. I was about to wave it off when I remembered that our roles had been temporarily reversed and I was the one in need of looking after.

  ‘Say, could one of you hotshots do me a favour and get me out of here? I think I need to fall down.’