2016 - Takedown

by Stephen Leather

  Harper shrugged but sat down and didn’t say anything. He had known the colonel for the best part of five years, and had got drunk with him several times, but the relationship was more one of symbiosis than friendship. Harper made regular contributions towards the colonel’s retirement fund and in return the colonel didn’t pay much attention to what Harper did or didn’t do in the Land of Smiles.

  The officer took the backpack and placed it on the table, then left and closed the door behind him.

  Somchai smiled as he flicked idly through Harper’s passport. ‘Apparently a farang broke into a house in Jontiem and attacked two Russians. Attacked them so badly that they are both in hospital. One of them has lost his spleen and the other will be lucky if he ever eats solid food again. Both are black and blue. They were given a serious beating. Very serious.’

  ‘Pattaya can be a dangerous place, if you’re not careful,’ said Harper.

  ‘The attacker seems also to have forced beer bottles up their backsides, doing a considerable amount of damage in the process.’

  Harper had to fight to stop himself grinning.

  The colonel also seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face. ‘The description they give matches you, my friend. Especially the bit about the attacker being cruel, sadistic and probably psychopathic.’

  Harper raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I’d say that description would fit most of the expat population of Pattaya, wouldn’t you?’

  Somchai chuckled. ‘A fair point, my friend.’

  ‘So what’s led you to stop me boarding my plane?’ He looked at his watch. ‘A plane that is due to leave in just over an hour and a half.’

  ‘A young lady called Pear,’ said Somchai. ‘Who coincidentally happens to be in the same hospital as the two Russians. In the same condition too, more or less.’

  Harper folded his arms but said nothing.

  ‘It seems you played the good Samaritan and paid the young lady’s hospital bill.’

  ‘Let’s get to the point, Somchai. Because I really need to be getting on that plane.’

  Somchai smiled and leaned forward. ‘The Russians don’t know your name yet, Lek. In fact, at the moment they seem to think you’re a Welshman called Gerry. But they’re not stupid. Do you have any idea who they are?’

  ‘They beat the shit out of young girls, I know that much.’

  ‘Valentin Rostov and Grigory Lukin are very well protected, Lek.’

  ‘I thought I was protected, Somchai.’

  ‘You are, Lek. Which is why you and I are having this conversation and you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere. You and I are friends. But these Russians, they pay a lot of money for protection. And they pay people much, much higher up the food chain than me. Money flows uphill, Lek, and shit flows down. That’s the way of the world. At the moment I have been told to look for the man who put the Russians in hospital. I’m still looking. But if someone else puts a name to the face …’ He shrugged.

  ‘You won’t be able to protect me?’

  ‘The best thing might be for you to get on that plane and not come back, Lek.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  The colonel chuckled. ‘Of course not, my friend. It’s just a warning. And you should be grateful for that.’

  Harper nodded. ‘Message received and understood. And thank you.’

  ‘No problem. You have a safe trip.’ He slid Harper’s passport across the table. ‘And, please, be careful. I don’t have many farang friends and I’d hate to lose one.’

  CHAPTER 11

  The plane touched down in Paris on a cool spring evening and Harper caught the city train to Châtelet–Les Halles and set off to walk to the hotel. He had checked the draft folder and Button wanted to meet him there at ten so he was in no hurry and strolled casually, enjoying the contrast of the cool air after the fierce heat and humidity of Thailand. He crossed the rue Saint-Honoré and cut down a narrow street leading to the rue de Rivoli. It was now almost eight o’clock and the streets were crowded with hordes of rubber-necking foreigners out for an evening stroll while being pestered by a retinue of tour guides, souvenir sellers, ticket touts, street hawkers, pickpockets and others who, in one way or another, earned their living from the tourist trade. As he moved through the streets, he was aware of the constant background chatter, a babel of different languages.

  Relaxed though he was, Harper never completely switched off. Without being conscious that he was doing it, his eyes were constantly checking the streets, the buildings and the street furniture for potential danger-points or for cover if attacked, and assessing the body language of the people coming towards him. It had saved his life on more than one occasion, and had become such an ingrained habit during his time in the army and his subsequent off-the-books career that it was now as much a part of his routine as a shower and a shave in the morning.

  Harper’s normal practice whenever he was in England was to stay in cheap, anonymous hotels and pay cash for his room. Even in countries where the law required all foreign visitors to deposit their passports with the desk clerk when they checked into a hotel, there were always places operating on the fringes. They were the sort of hotels in the seedier quarters of big cities that catered to those who, for whatever reason, preferred to keep the law at arm’s length and hired rooms by the night or even by the hour, depending on the particular requirements of their clientele. In such hotels, no ID was required before checking in, cash was the only acceptable form of payment and a blind eye was routinely turned to any laws that might affect business. But Harper was sure he wasn’t on the radar of the French police so he had decided he could treat himself to a decent room for his meeting, especially as Charlotte Button would be picking up the tab. The hotel he had chosen, Le Meurice, was one of Paris’s dozen or so elite, ultra-luxurious ‘Palace Hotels’. It was a tourist’s wet dream, on the rue de Rivoli between the place de la Concorde and the Louvre, with views over the Tuileries Gardens, but Harper’s mind was on his mission, Alert for any signs of surveillance or pursuit, he barely took in his surroundings. He was convinced that no one was following him, but as he stepped past the liveried doorman into the hotel’s lobby, he drew back against the wall next to the doors, waiting and observing those entering behind him, to make absolutely sure he was secure before going to the desk and checking in.

  The duty manager, a chic stick-thin Parisienne in her mid-forties, escorted him through the hotel, giving no more than a hint of a raised eyebrow at the small pack that was his only luggage and which he kept firmly in his hand, resisting a bellboy’s attempts to carry it for him. He showed no interest in the Louis XVI furniture and the over-the-top nineteenth-century bling of the hotel’s fixtures and fittings as she led him through the lobby and took the private lift to his seventh-floor Belle Etoile suite. He was still paying no more than cursory attention as she showed him the terrace with a spectacular view that encompassed almost every Paris landmark, from Notre Dame, the Musée d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe, to the Opéra and Sacré Coeur. If she was surprised at his lack of interest in a view that had many guests gasping with delight, she was professional enough not to let it show and her expression remained impassive.

  When she had gone, Harper showered and changed into a clean shirt, then ordered a club sandwich from room service. He was just finishing it when his phone rang. It was the front desk, announcing that he had a visitor. Harper said they could send her up and he had the door open for her by the time she stepped out of the lift. As always, Charlotte Button was immaculately dressed in an understated but beautifully cut grey designer suit. She had pinned up her chestnut hair and the only jewellery she wore was the gold Cartier watch on her left wrist. ‘A suite in Le Meurice,’ she said, as she looked around the plush interior. ‘What happened to your policy of always flying below the radar?’

  ‘It’s Fashion Week so everywhere’s fully booked. And it was short notice.’ He grinned. ‘Come on, i
t’s Paris. If you want to meet here we should at least do it in some style.’

  ‘It’s France, Alex. And, as I’m sure you must know, the French secret service have a long history of targeting people of interest, usually their industrial competitors. The information they collect is analysed and shared with French industry. It saves them a fortune in research and development and is one of the reasons why the French economy remains competitive even though their executives are more obsessed with their mistresses than their businesses, and a lot of their shop-floor workers are bone idle.’

  ‘Borderline racist, Charlie,’ said Harper.

  ‘I love France, and the French, but their intelligence services tend to be a bit over the top. The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure was caught red-handed a few years ago bugging first-class seats on Air France flights and it’s well known in the trade that they target people of interest who are staying in French hotels. So next time maybe go downmarket a bit, same as you do in England.’

  ‘And I’m sure you know that the owners of Le Meurice are just about the only hoteliers in Paris who refuse to cooperate with the French secret service when they want to plant bugs in their guest-rooms.’ His smile broadened. ‘Which is another reason I chose it. Walls might well have ears, Charlie, but not in Le Meurice.’ He waved for her to sit down and waited for her to tell him why she had summoned him.

  ‘I need you to do a job for me in the UK,’ she said. ‘We think a former SAS trooper has gone rogue and is planning something particularly nasty.’

  ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘He was a Para and the end of his time in the Paras overlapped with the start of yours. But he went off to do Selection and joined the SAS while you were out in Afghanistan. Caleb McGovan. Does that ring a bell?’

  Harper shook his head.

  ‘McGovan went to Turkey on a charter flight and spent a few days on the Turquoise Coast. He disappeared for a while before reappearing back on the coast. This happened a couple of times and we think in the interim he was making trips into Syria to link up with Islamic State.’

  ‘You keep saying “we” but you don’t work for Five any more.’

  ‘It’s not come from the British end,’ said Button. ‘It’s the Americans who want it taken care of.’

  ‘Now I’m confused,’ said Harper. ‘A former British soldier is threatening an attack on British soil, but the Yanks want him taken out?’

  ‘So far as I’m led to believe, the Brits don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘So why don’t the Yanks tell them, special relationship and all?’

  ‘I gather they worry that the Brits won’t handle it … correctly.’

  ‘Correctly?’

  ‘They want McGovan dead. And they don’t see the Brits carrying out the execution of a British citizen on British soil. And they’re a little wary of doing it themselves. Or, at least, of being caught doing it. By using my company, they stay one step removed.’

  ‘So we’re doing their dirty work?’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it. The other is to consider that we’ll be preventing a terrorist attack on UK soil.’

  ‘That’s not really the job of private enterprise, is it, though? That’s why we have MI5, MI6 and all those other agencies that use initials. Why not just pass the intel on to them?’

  ‘Because they’d want to know where it came from. And because they almost certainly wouldn’t deal with it in the way that the Americans want it dealt with.’

  ‘Sounds to me as if there’s something you’re not telling me.’

  She smiled. ‘Alex, if you’d let me finish you’d have the full picture. While McGovan was in the region – in other words, between his outward flight to Dalaman and his return flight to Britain – an American senior instructor working with the Iraqi Army at a base near Mosul was killed by an IED. One Captain Geoff Buckthorn. We – i.e. the Americans – think he was deliberately targeted. The device, with another fail-safe IED attached to the fuel tank, was fitted to his vehicle while it was parked inside a secure compound that was itself within an outer compound at the Iraqi base. The barbed-wire perimeter fence of the outer compound was guarded by Iraqi troops. The fence surrounding the inner compound – it was steel mesh, capped with coils of razor wire – was guarded by Americans. Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to kill Captain Buckthorn. Possibly because his father is a Republican congressman.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Harper. ‘The plot thickens.’

  ‘Congressman Buckthorn made a big thing about his son being in the military. About his family not just talking the talk but walking the walk. Many of the rich American families are prepared to send ghetto kids to fight their battles, but young Buckthorn was prepared to put his life on the line and so on. The right-wing media lapped it up.’

  ‘And young Buckthorn paid the price. I get it. Now Congressman Buckthorn wants his revenge. But how sure are they that McGovan was behind it?’

  ‘It was a very professional job. Like I said, the compound was being guarded by the Americans.’

  ‘That proves nothing,’ Harper said. ‘The Yanks are even lazier than the Iraqi soldiers. They’d just be hanging around, shooting the breeze and praying for dawn so they could go to bed. They’d respond to a sniper or a mortar attack, of course, but they wouldn’t be out there patrolling the fence line and watching for intruders. You don’t need to go looking for rogue special forces to explain what happened there.’

  Button made a gesture of annoyance. ‘Prior to that attack, the Americans considered there was no group in the Iraqi opposition, or the Syrian for that matter, who had the capability to carry out that kind of attack. It was a complete surprise, Alex, not only to the Iraqis – and, let’s face it, plenty of things come as a surprise to them – but also to the Americans. Then they picked up some sigint, more background chatter between a couple of ISIS high-ups, that suggested there was something unusual about the incident. It’s not just that our target was almost certainly in country when it happened, but the way the attack was carried out bears all the hallmarks of a special-forces operation. The Americans compiled a thorough after-action report, and got Delta Force to replay the incident as a TEWT – a tactical exercise without troops.’

  ‘I know what a TEWT is, Charlie,’ said Harper. ‘I had to do enough of them in the bloody Paras.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that, after they’d analysed the results of the TEWT, they found enough similarities to be pretty certain that it wasn’t some goatherd wandering in off the desert who managed to penetrate the Iraqi base and planted those IEDs. Nor, as far as they could tell, was it some random jihadi, or even an ISIS fighter. It had special-forces input written all over it. And since ISIS doesn’t have special forces and since, for obvious reasons, the British and Americans don’t teach Iraqi troops the most advanced SF techniques, their conclusion can only be that the expertise was provided by a rogue British or American special-forces soldier. And the Americans are pointing the finger at McGovan. And McGovan is now back in the UK.’

  ‘And you – i.e. the Americans – want him taken out.’

  ‘If we can show that he’s been turned by IS, yes.’

  ‘And how much intel do you have on McGovan?’

  ‘He was abandoned at birth and brought up in care. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, joined the Paras and ended up in the SAS. He got married and had a couple of kids before getting dragged into Iraq and Afghanistan, where in the gaps between ops he taught himself to speak Arabic and Pashto. The consequences of too many trips and too much active service ended with his wife leaving him and taking the kids. It’s a familiar story in the forces, of course, but it completely gutted him. Seems as if he’s a loner now and not good company. I did hear that he’d been involved in clearing up the mess at Abu Ghraib and other less publicised atrocities done in the name of Christianity by our born-again GIs and their British acolytes.’ She leaned forward. ‘I know this is messy, but it’s no messier th
an jobs you’ve done before.’

  ‘He’s a Brit, and a former Para. It could be me, Charlie. In another world, it could be him sitting here and you two discussing taking me out.’

  ‘But you’re not a terrorist, Alex.’

  ‘I know exactly what I am,’ said Harper. ‘And I have no problems looking at myself in the mirror each morning. But, yes, this is very fucking messy and at the end of the day you’re asking me to kill a British soldier on British soil.’

  ‘A former British soldier who has gone rogue,’ said Button. ‘And who might well be planning a major terrorist atrocity in a British city. I need to know you’ll do this.’

  Harper shrugged. ‘I’ve never let you down before.’

  ‘On a more positive note, the Americans have made it clear that money’s no object.’ She looked around the palatial suite. ‘Which, considering how much this is costing, is probably for the best.’

  She was fiddling with her wedding ring as she spoke. Even though her husband had died some years earlier, Harper had never seen her without it. ‘Are you okay, Charlie?’ he asked.

  She forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You look tense.’

  ‘That goes with the territory.’

  ‘More tense than usual, then.’

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I’ve had a rough few days.’

  ‘Is that why we’re meeting here, in Paris?’

  She didn’t answer and looked away.

  ‘Maybe I can help,’ he said.

  She flashed him another tight smile. ‘That’s sweet of you, Alex. But I’m not sure you’d be able to do anything.’

  ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

  ‘Or doubled,’ she said. ‘It could go either way.’ She laughed uneasily. ‘Do you think there’s wine in the minibar?’

  ‘The prices they charge, there’d better be,’ he said. He went over to the fridge, bent down and opened it. ‘There’s champagne.’