And now what would happen? Would Hitchens accompany Crozier? Would they just call off the visit? Cole thought not. His own analysis of the man was that Crozier was not the sort to be perturbed by the presence of a fellow mourner; indeed, he would probably sympathize.
And so, as he knelt opposite the frozen lake in the cold, wet snow that had started to soak through the material of his trouser legs, he hoped that his reading of the man had been right.
Crozier slowly crunched his way down the small hill towards his wife’s gravestone. He had finally appeased Hitchens by letting him wait next to the car instead of in it; he would at least be able to respond more quickly should anything happen.
Not that Crozier expected it to. He was safe here. His wife was looking over him, as he had conversely failed to look over her. And he would once again ask for her forgiveness, and find comfort in her answers. And then he would ask her what to do at the meeting that morning. And she would know.
Cole heard the single set of footsteps approaching from his left, moving towards the grave on the far side of him. The grave of Mary Elizabeth Crozier.
Good. Hitchens had stayed with the car. Cole had already decided on his plan of action should Hitchens have decided to accompany Crozier, but was grateful he didn’t have to go through with it. It wouldn’t have been as neat or as clean as he would have liked the operation to be, but sometimes you just had to improvise.
He once again thanked providence that this wasn’t one of those times.
Crozier was near the grave now, and had already started to pray. Please, Mary. Please forgive me. I love you. Please forgive me.
He had all but forgotten the existence of the other man, even as he stepped behind him to get to his wife’s grave.
Judging the moment perfectly, Cole made the sign of the cross and stood up, bumping directly back into the body of William Crozier.
From his vantage point by the car, Hitchens reacted to the sudden move. As the second man turned to face Crozier, a look of surprise on his face, Hitchens already had his gun out of the speed holster on his belt and was racing towards the scene.
Crozier himself was just as surprised, and felt the man touch his arm, then the side of his face, as if checking to make sure he was unhurt.
‘Whoa! Sorry buddy, I didn’t see you there!’ said the man apologetically in a mild Virginian accent. ‘Are you hurt?’
Crozier had regained his composure, and dusted himself down. ‘Not at all, don’t worry about it.’
‘Okay, thanks, I - ’ The man’s words caught in his throat, and Crozier could see a look of abject fear in his eyes.
‘Put your hands in the air! Now!’ Hitchens screamed at Cole, Sig Sauer pistol aimed towards his head. Acting with perfect believability, Cole’s hands went straight up in the air, voice panting and breathless with fear.
‘I . . . I – ’ He gulped down breaths of air, saw Crozier spin round to confront him.
Hitchens saw the face of his boss turn accusingly towards him. ‘Sam, what the Hell do you think you’re doing?’ Crozier hissed at him. ‘Get back in the car, now!’
Crozier seemed fine. Maybe it had just been an accident. Hitchens tentatively started to lower his gun. Crozier’s eyes widened at him. ‘Now!’ he spat, and Hitchens realized he had no choice.
Holstering his weapon, the bodyguard nodded his head and climbed back up the hill towards the car.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Crozier offered. ‘He’s rather protective.’
‘You can say that again!’ said Cole, backing away slowly, fear still showing in his eyes. ‘Er, look, sorry again about knocking into you. Real sorry.’
‘Forget about it,’ Crozier said, then turned to his wife’s grave, kneeling. The man was forgotten. He didn’t have time to get into a conversation with him. Besides, the guy looked scared enough to pee his pants, Crozier figured. After that display by Hitchens, he’ll just be happy to get out of there.
Crozier was right. Cole was happy to leave. Still with the worried look on his face, he edged away slowly, eyes darting from Crozier to Hitchens; the reactions of any normal citizen who had just been threatened at gun point.
After retreating a safe distance backwards, Cole turned and walked away as quickly as he could off in the opposite direction, back towards the car that was carefully hidden on the road outside the cemetery.
He smiled to himself as he went. The mission had been successfully accomplished.
29
Crozier entered the grand foyer of the CIA Headquarters at Langley just forty minutes later. He had a renewed bounce to his step. A renewed confidence in himself. He finally knew what he was going to say to Dorrell. He was going to tell the truth. Every last bit of it. Mary would give him the strength.
It was when he had passed through the first security gate that he first felt it; a sharp pain in his head, a powerful thumping, pounding away at the inside of his skull. At the same time, he felt a loosening of his bowels. He decided immediately to ignore it. Probably just a lack of food and sleep and too much whisky the night before. It would pass.
The feelings returned, even stronger, when he placed his hand over the palm-print identifier that opened the twin steel doors of the executive elevator. As the metal box fired rapidly up the smooth shaft towards the sixth floor and Dorrell’s office, he began to feel faint. Terribly faint. His chest started to constrict around his lungs, and he felt his breath become caught in his throat.
As soon as they had arrived, the symptoms faded, and the elevator door opened and he made his way down the long corridor towards the next set of security checks before the top-level offices.
Jacob Maitlin, the senior security official on duty that morning, smiled widely as Crozier approached. ‘Hey Bill, how you doing?’ he asked pleasantly.
Crozier smiled. ‘I’m doing good thanks Jake.’ He handed over his card, which was examined by the officer.
Jake nodded, then gestured for Crozier to lean forward to the machine that would scan his retina. The machine bleeped once and then the light on top turned green. Satisfied, Jake handed Crozier back his pass.
As Crozier was about to step through the security gate, he was swamped by the same feelings; pain in his head, heaviness in his stomach. He staggered to one side slightly.
Jake’s hand went out to steady him. ‘Hey there Bill, go steady!’ He looked at Crozier’s eyes, saw the redness from the blood vessels that had started to burst. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ Jake, like most of the staff there, knew about Crozier’s alcohol habit, and put the man’s state this morning down to nothing more than a heavy night.
Crozier nodded weakly, and walked through past the metal barrier. Jake reached out for Crozier’s arm and bent his head close to whisper in his ear. ‘Bill, you look awful, man. Take my advice and go a bit easy, okay?’
As Jake wondered if he’d gone too far – did a security officer have any business preaching to one of the Deputy Directors? – he figured that his twenty-eight year tenure at the CIA gave him the privilege of being able to talk straight when necessary.
But Jake needn’t have worried. Because Crozier just looked faintly at him, nodded his head weakly, and collapsed dead on the floor.
30
Cole pushed through the dirty chrome and glass doors into the Greyhound Bus Depot in Baltimore and was immediately accosted by the stench of stale urine, sweat, alcohol and desperation. He looked around the large, dull foyer and saw the groups of winos gathered in little clusters; the young, wide-eyed teens just arriving to the big city from their little rural backwaters; others, only slightly older, restlessly awaiting their transport back to the simplicities of country life, the big bad city having chewed them up and spat them back out; women with their small children running away from their abusive husbands; drug dealers meeting up for deals; students setting out for college. The depot was a true melting pot, a thousand people from all walks of life wanting to take the Greyhound across America for a thousand different reasons.
He had left the Chrysler with the Baltimore branch of the rental agency, after first erasing the memory of the vehicle’s satnav device; a laborious task, but an absolute necessity. He had then walked the two miles to the bus depot, his collar turned up against the December chill all the way.
He never returned home by the same route after a mission, nor did he ever use the same identity. New passports were easy enough to come by, and why take a chance? His plan this time was to take the Greyhound to New York, then fly from La Guardia over to Hawaii before connecting back to Grand Cayman. He figured he would be home by late evening the day after. Not bad at all. He only hoped that his actions would provide Gregory and the British government with enough time to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
He thought briefly of Crozier. He would certainly be dead by now, Cole surmised. Killing a man was never an easy thing, but Cole was not unduly perturbed by his own actions. It was a simple case of numbers. If Crozier had lived, millions of others may have died – and still might, Cole recognized uneasily. It was unfortunate that Cole had to be the implement of such a policy, but it was a policy that he could see the intrinsic value of, and he had killed many times in order to protect the lives and interests of his fellow countrymen.
The first time Cole had killed, he had been only eighteen years old; a lifetime ago. A member of 45 Commando Royal Marines, he’d been on a routine patrol in the Helmand province of Afghanistan soon after his arrival there, when his four-man section was ambushed by a group of approximately twenty – Cole never found out exactly how many it had been – well-armed militiamen. Barely out of training, Cole’s baptism of fire was as short as it was brutal.
Corporal Miller, the section commander, was an experienced man and was able to keep his men focussed as he screamed out fire orders at them. They blasted their way out of the ambush, killing eight of the militiamen before the others fled the scene. Cole, as the Light Support Weapon gunner, had taken three himself. A Mention in Dispatches had followed, as did a promotion to Lance Corporal. His officers had congratulated him, and his team-mates had almost drowned him with beer.
The instructors at the Commando Training Centre back in Lympstone had always explained to the ‘Nods’ that the first kill would be the hardest. Before their deployment to Afghanistan, psychologists had had long chats with all the men, going through strategies on how to cope with the guilt and attendant stress and anxiety that came with taking a human life.
Cole had never really experienced such feelings, however; he had just been glad to live through the experience. When the armed militia had opened up on them, the loud chatter of the AK-47s deafening in the close proximity of the mountain pass, Cole had momentarily frozen, scared into immobility. It had taken the kindly words of Corporal Miller – ‘Crosby, snap the fuck out of it and get on that fucking LSW!’ – to move him to action. And when Cole had moved, he had moved well.
The guilt he felt afterwards was not for the taking of a human life – not even three – but for freezing, for nearly letting his mates down. And he had vowed then and there that he would never let anyone down again through his inaction – not his country, not his friends, and not himself.
And that was how Cole had operated from that moment on – always doing everything that was asked of him if it was for the ‘greater good’, even if that meant killing a man in cold blood.
As Cole thought about Crozier, he muttered a quick prayer. A remnant of his Catholic upbringing, a prayer for the dead was always offered by Cole when someone died at his hand. When he was given to contemplate theological matters, he failed to see the irony; for he was sure that on his day of judgement, the Good Lord would see all of the lives that had been saved by his actions, and therefore forgive him for those that he had taken.
Satisfied that his duty was done, Cole decided to give no more thought to William James Crozier.
But there was one more thing to do before he could start his journey home; he had to report on the success of his mission. Trudging through the cold brown filth that had been trodden into the foyer from the snow-slicked streets outside and now slid its way across the drab tiled floor, Cole headed towards the bank of payphones clustered over by the entrance.
Keeping his gloves on in order to ensure no prints were left on the phone, Cole inserted some coins into the machine and then dialled a number in London. Although the mission was classified beyond any normal security level, he felt comfortable calling the telephone number Hansard had given him; only Hansard would understand the message that Cole was going to leave.
The phone was picked up after just two rings. What sounded like an elderly woman answered from the other end, a frail voice that could have been anyone’s grandmother. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi Edna, it’s Tom, how are you?’
‘Oh Tom!’ The voice seemed to gather strength upon hearing his name. ‘I’m very well thank you dear, how are you? How was your holiday?’
Cole knew the woman would understand that ‘holiday’ was code for ‘mission’, but also knew that she would have no idea what it had entailed; she would just report back through the proper channels that ‘Agent X’ had made positive contact.
‘It was good thanks, saw everything I wanted to see. Hopefully be back home soon.’
‘That’s great Tom, glad to hear it.’ There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Cole’s senses instantly came alert; there was going to be something else, wasn’t there? ‘You know, it would be really nice to see you before you went back, do you think you could pop by to say hello before you go? You could tell us all about your trip.’
Hansard wanted to debrief him back in London? Why? It was completely against procedure. But what could he say? ‘Of course, I’d love to. I should be there by evening.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely Tom, we’ll look forward to seeing you. Bye now.’
‘Yeah. Bye.’ Cole replaced the receiver, but stood motionless for a full minute. What did it mean? Did Hansard have another job for him? Cole hadn’t been back to England in almost nine years, before Pakistan. Why did Hansard want him there now? It didn’t make sense, and Cole distrusted anything that didn’t make sense; especially when it concerned his job.
But if Hansard had asked for him, there would be a good reason. And so, misgivings or not, Cole walked up to one of the Plexiglas safety cells and asked the bored attendant for a one-way ticket to Dulles International. The British Airways flight, Cole knew, left for London Heathrow at midday.
31
Gregory seated himself in the antique Louis XIV chair positioned daintily in front of the ornate desk in the living area of his suite at the Grand Moskva Hotel in Moscow, and fired up his laptop computer. He was in Moscow on a mission of mercy; his presence was entirely focussed on talking some sense into Danko, to get him to cease and desist completely his over-the-top threats and challenges to the People’s Republic of China. The first meeting had gone as expected, Danko erupting into a torrent of anti-Chinese sentiment. In the second, Gregory had made some headway, appealing to Danko’s essentially rational nature. He hoped the third would result in Danko coming back on track, so all ERA leaders would be singing from the same hymn sheet.
The laptop, incongruous against the ancient wood beneath it, came through with the live image of Geoffrey Huntington, a secure transmission through the Euronet satellite. After the normal formalities, Gregory got straight to the point. ‘Any luck with the IDs?’ Any additional info that he could use to sway Danko could be crucial at this juncture, he knew.
‘Sorry Adam but no, not yet. We’ve got the Americans helping us though, something should turn up soon.’
‘Good, good,’ Gregory replied, unconvincing even to himself. ‘Anything else I should know?’
/> ‘Well,’ Huntington began, ‘talking of the Americans, they’ve had some unfortunate news of their own.’
‘Oh?’ Gregory responded, his interest piqued.
‘Yes, seems their Deputy Director, Operations, of the CIA died of a heart attack this morning. Dropped dead right on the floor in front of the Director’s office.’
‘Oh.’ Was that it? wondered Gregory. Idle intel-weenie gossip, in his opinion. Suppose I better show some interest, he decided. ‘Wasn’t that Bill Crozier? I’ve met him, haven’t I?’
Huntington nodded. ‘He’s been over here before, Noel’s worked with him quite a lot, I think he introduced you.’
Gregory tried to think back, had a hazy memory of a short man with a thick beard. Not that it really mattered anyway. ‘Okay, thank you for that. I’ll send my condolences. Keep me informed if anything breaks, won’t you?’
‘Will do, Adam. Cheerio.’
‘Yes, speak to you later Geoff.’ A knock came at the door as soon as the connection was broken. ‘Yes?’ called Gregory through the door.
From the other side, his bodyguard shouted back. ‘Mr Hansard is here to see you, sir.’
‘Good, send him in,’ responded the Prime Minister.
The door opened instants later and Hansard strolled in, observing the hotel suite’s outlandish décor with a degree of distaste as the door was closed behind him. ‘Good afternoon, Adam,’ Hansard offered in greeting, ‘how are things panning out?’
‘Indifferently at the moment,’ Gregory replied. ‘I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got a reception tonight, I want you to come with me. Have a word with your counterparts, try and get the message across. Surely they’ll understand the situation and try and talk some sense into Danko?’ Gregory’s voice was hopeful.
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