by A P Bateman
Gradually, the wire loosened, allowing precious air to enter his lungs. Then, in an instant the man rolled back onto his heels and stepped aside, offering a hand and eventually a cold, detached smile. Stewart caught hold of the hand warily and accepted the lift to his feet. He stood facing the man, then broke into a humble grin. “Nearly got you that time, Alex.”
“No you didn’t,” Alex King smirked and handed him the cheese wire. “Not even close.”
7
Charles Bryant let the cool air play over his damp shoulders, then looked up into the vents of the air conditioning unit. He glanced at Junus Kutu and smiled. “I don’t think I will ever get used to the heat.”
Kutu smirked. “Of course you won’t, not if you keep coming to places like this! You have to shrug off modern technology if you want to accustom yourself to my country’s climate.”
Bryant shook his head. “No, this will do me just fine.” He glanced around the foyer of The Emperor and smiled at his new surroundings. He much preferred the comforts of an expensive hotel such as this; as far as he was concerned, Kutu could keep his country’s culture and customs, along with its fondness of open-air eating and the attendant dysentery.
The cool air was starting to take effect. He felt the clammy perspiration cool on his skin, and his breathing became easier, less strained than it had been in the stifling closeness of the polluted streets, a world away behind the glass doors of this new-found sanctuary. Bryant turned back to his companion and nodded towards the mirrored entrance to the lounge. “My round, what are you drinking?”
8
Stewart studied the ledges of the cliff face, noting the complex patterns of shading, the contours and the way the grasses of the cliff top seemed almost animated. The sea raged against the base of the cliff, pounding great spumes of white water high up the slope, just short of where the gulls took refuge deep in its precipitous ledges.
He turned his concentration away from the oil painting and glanced briefly at his agent. “Is this one of yours?”
King nodded, taking a slow, deliberate sip of coffee from the oversized mug, as he weighed up his visitor.
Stewart looked back at the painting, transfixed by its realism. “Where is it?”
“Part of St. Agnes Head. A stretch of rugged headland near Chapel Porth,” King paused, knowing that Stewart was not familiar with the Cornish coastline. “Just over eight miles away, west of here. What they call the north coast. Or surfer’s coast.” He waved a hand at the creek in front of them which had started to fill with a rising high tide. “This feeds into the Carrick Roads a large waterway which flows out to the south coast. Or sailor’s coast.”
Stewart nodded, though he was none the wiser. He turned his attention to another oil painting, a more sedate study of a picturesque cottage beside a gentle stream, feeding a water wheel. “And this?”
King nodded, somewhat embarrassed at having a critic for the first time. “Yeah, that one’s mine as well. Quite a recent one, actually, I did it early this spring,” he paused, reminiscently. “It’s the last one I painted. It’s a cottage near Fowey. I was driving past it once with Jane and she fell in love with it. I went back before the summer and painted it…” King trailed off quietly.
There was an awkward silence which Stewart didn’t break, but he did raise an eyebrow, genuinely impressed at his agent’s talent. He turned around and walked back to his chair, where his coffee mug rested nearby on the small, half-moon table. He sat down heavily and continued glancing round the room, scrutinizing every fixture and feature. The cottage was decorated and furnished in keeping with the structure’s design. The walls were plainly whitewashed and the prominent oak beams were stained dark. The furniture looked antiquated rather than antique and had seen much service. Stewart looked across the room and stared at King. He nibbled at his lip tentatively, raised an expectant eyebrow. “You know why I’m here, Alex, don’t you,” he stated matter-of-factly. “You have obviously read the papers. The Iraq situation looks as if it’s going to take another turn. ISIS has threatened to activate terrorists in Britain in retaliation for both Colonel Al-Muqtadir’s and Betesh’s deaths.”
“I know,” King paused. “I read the papers.”
Stewart nodded. “In that case, you will know how Iraq discovered that it was a Western-funded and organised operation.”
“A piece of equipment left at the scene,” King replied sardonically. “My NATO GPS, to be precise. I know, I messed up. I shouldn’t have attended to my wounded team-mate, I shouldn’t have left my pack behind.”
“You shouldn’t have let a boy take your bloody shot!” Stewart said, tight lipped. He was irked by Alex King's blasé attitude. “What the bloody Hell were you thinking? Those Kurds were there to assist you, not do your work…”
King rose to his feet and stared down at Stewart, towering over him. “I was thinking of a boy and his family!” he snapped, shaking his head sorrowfully. “It isn’t always so simple in the field, it’s a Hell of a lot easier to make judgment from behind a desk in the safety of a comfortable office. For Christ’s sake, Peter, you know that – you wrote the bloody book!”
Stewart nodded, somewhat intimidated by King’s aggressive posture. He knew the man well, he had trained him and above all he knew what the man was capable of. He remained calm, casually motioning King back to his chair. “Sit down, Alex. Tell me from the beginning, we have to sort this out.” He relaxed a little, as the man returned to his seat. “If you decided that your team-mate should take the shot, then I believe that you were justified in making the decision. But I need to know why you did it. The shit has truly hit the fan on this, everybody’s story has got to tally.”
9
The waitress poured half of the tonic into the frosted glass on top of the ice and gin - so cold the ice popped and cracked - then placed the bottle carefully on the table beside Bryant’s glass. She smiled sweetly at both of them, then placed the chit in the centre of the table, unsure who would be paying.
Bryant watched the attractive young girl walk back to the bar, admiring the sway of her hips. He turned back to Kutu and grinned wolfishly. “Now, if she is available later, that would be a different story! I might see how far a big tip will take it.” Junus Kutu shook his head pitifully, making no effort to hide his disgust. “What’s the matter?” Bryant asked, somewhat irked at his companion’s sudden change in attitude.
“You still haven’t worked it out, have you?” he stated flatly. “You come to my country and make a fortune from its assets and its poverty-stricken people and you have not had the decency to learn anything about it. You do not know the customs, and you certainly know nothing of our protocols.”
Bryant glared at the tiny Indonesian. “What the Hell do you mean?”
Kutu leaned forward, resting his chest against the rim of the glass table. “You see one prostitute working the bars or the street corners and you presume that all the women are for sale! That girl has a job the majority would kill for. She is working in a quality establishment, free from trouble and she is earning a very good wage compared to her friends or family. She has no need to sell herself, body or soul Do you think that the women out there want to sell their bodies? Do you think they want to be dribbled over, sweated on, to be degradingly used by people who have money? Of course not! But they have no other option. They risk disease every time they commit to a transaction. Why? Because nobody has ever explained to them about condoms or safe sex. In short, because nobody cares.”
Bryant stared down at the table, knowing full well that his companion was right. He had used the prostitutes in Jakarta many times, although at first merely in pursuit of a novelty. It was only later, after his wife had returned to England to look after her aged mother that he had begun to rely upon them. He remembered how the first young girl had laughed as he had pulled the condom out of the packet, how she had watched him intently, as he had fumbled with its application in the dimly lit room. He had not considered the possibility that the girl
might not be accustomed to using them.
He looked apologetically at Kutu. “I’m sorry, I never really thought about it.”
Kutu shrugged. “Westerners seldom do.” He picked up his bottle of Bintang and drank a large mouthful, before setting the bottle back down on the glass table. “Perhaps this will be your chance to make it up?”
Bryant frowned, realising that Kutu was most probably referring to their earlier conversation regarding the Indonesian General. “What do you mean, Junus?”
The little Indonesian smiled wryly, as he stared harshly into Bryant’s eyes. “Assassination my friend! The only way we can get our country back on track…” he paused, glancing briefly around the quiet bar then turned his attention back to his companion. “Assassination…”
10
“It was the most macabre scene that I have ever witnessed,” King glanced at Stewart and shook his head. “And after my years of service with the firm, that is certainly saying something.”
The Scotsman said nothing, he sat back in his chair and waited for his agent to continue in his own time.
King sipped the remains of his coffee from the oversized mug, then gently returned the vessel to the miniature pine coffee table in front of him. He turned away and looked blankly out of the nearby window, though Stewart knew that he was not admiring the view. “I slipped over the Turkish border with relative ease, then met my contact near the town of Zakho, just north of Amadiyah. He warned me of the worsening situation between ISIS and the Kurdish rebels and advised me to return home. He went on to tell me of the recent atrocities committed by the ISIS fighters and of the many families which had been murdered in the past few weeks. To be honest, I thought he was exaggerating much of what he told me, just to show his appreciation of me being there.”
“And he wasn’t?” Stewart interjected. He looked at King and shook his head despondently. “Come on, Alex, you’ve played the game and you’ve seen the sights; South American drug wars, African dictatorships, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Do you want me to give you the entire list, just in case you’ve forgotten one?”
King held up his hand in objection. “No, I haven't forgotten, I see them vividly, every single night,” he paused, staring intently at his controller. “ISIS are on a whole other level. We will not beat them. Not without fighting them like they fight everyone else. And we will never do that. So we’re fucked Boss. Simple as that,” King sighed, shaking his head. “When we arrived in the village of Kalsagir we were met with the smell of burning flesh and the sight of children hanging by their feet from the street lamps and shop fronts. They had no heads. The bastards had forced the parents to watch their children die. Every woman under forty had been raped. Repeatedly. And every male, regardless of age, had been beheaded. Most of them tortured terribly first. We’re not talking swiftly either. Heads were piled up, in some instances half a foot or so of spine still attached. Hacked off with farm tools, or pulled off slowly with ropes…”
Stewart shook his head in dismay, although almost thirty years at the operational end of MI6 had desensitised him to almost all emotion.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have seen the sights, as you say,” King paused, picked up his coffee cup, then returned it to the table after realising that he had already drunk it dry. “Soon after I arrived, the team of rebels that I was to work with drove into the village in a battered truck.”
Stewart nodded, he was familiar with the set-up and knew of the Kurdish rebel network of CIA funded freedom fighters, code-named; ‘New Dawn’.
“The three men seconded to assist in my mission were brothers. Akhim, the boy who was later fatally wounded in our retreat, was in his mid-teens. His siblings, Shameel and Akmed were older, in their thirties.
“They entered the village and were met with the news that their younger brother had been executed. Their eleven-year-old sister had been raped by six soldiers, and their father had been castrated and then beheaded,” King paused, a look of sorrow in his hard, grey-blue eyes. “The boy, Akhim, barely shed a tear. He did not grieve, nor did he show anger. He merely greeted me, took me to where they had stockpiled the Russian equipment and offered me food and a bed for the night. His only wish was to exact revenge on the person responsible for ordering the atrocities against his family. Everyone knew who had given the order - Colonel Al Muqtadir in collusion with ISIS. He ran the northern sector without mercy and had deep sympathies with ISIS. He used ISIS to finish what Saddam started with the Kurds.” King looked at Stewart, he seemed distant but slowly drew back in. “Akhim worked with me for the entire month. He showed me the best place to zero the rifle without detection and he surveyed the killing ground with me. Not once did he let the death of his family members interrupt my mission. I have never met such a dedicated, committed person in all my life. I decided to let him take the shot. Take revenge for his family.”
Stewart nodded, understanding King’s motives. Anyone would understand why King had acted in such a way. The problem that Stewart now faced, was how he was going to tell King that he would have to return to Iraq and eliminate the rest of his team.
11
Donald McCullum replaced the detailed photograph to his desk, then turned ponderously to the next enlarged print. “I’ll be damned,” he mused quietly to himself.
“Sorry?” Marcus Arnott looked up expectantly, taking his eyes from his copy of the file.
McCullum shook his head dismissively. “Oh, nothing, I was just thinking out loud,” he paused, shuffled the photographs and then held one up for Arnott’s attention. “Look at this, Folio Seven.”
Arnott rearranged his pile of photographs and looked at his copy, gingerly balancing the remainder of the file on his knee. He stared at the photograph and whistled, astonished. He glanced up at McCullum and frowned. “And King did all that, on his own?”
“Yes. All five of them,” he paused, studying the macabre scene. “Notice that all of the men were armed.”
“What about the woman?” Arnott asked, his eyes set on the ragged-looking bullet-hole just above the woman’s left eye. “Was she armed?”
McCullum smiled wryly. “Well, I don’t know. But by the time the police reached the scene, yes she was…”
Arnott nodded, turned his attention back to the photograph, studied the scene once more then looked back at McCullum. “He took out an entire Al Qaeda cell on his own?” He shook his head in bewilderment. “What was our line?”
“The government released a statement, detailing the operation and its objectives. MI5 and the SAS were working together alongside the Special Branch Anti-Terrorist Squad, gathering intelligence for the arrest of the cell by the Special Branch. Specialist armed officers were at the scene and reacted when the terrorist cell compromised them and started shooting.”
“And they bought it?”
McCullum smiled wryly. “Hook, line and sinker. In reality, King was sent in at a moment’s notice. The rest of the security forces never knew anything of his mission, nor even that had he been there.”
“But the kill was chalked up to them all the same,” Arnott stated flatly.
McCullum nodded. “Of course, things would be different now. This all happened some time ago. As head of Domestic Terrorism, you would be privy to such information now, as was your predecessor,” he paused, studying Arnott intently, ever aware that the man was far safer as an ally. “That is why I have taken steps to remove Alex King’s security blanket. With my position as Director General all but formally confirmed, I cannot afford any embarrassing incidents, now or later. As my future Deputy Director General, you can appreciate my predicament, can you not?”
Arnott nodded, managing not to appear over enthused at his future, unexpected promotion. “Of course I can, Donald. You can count upon my unwavering support, as always,” he paused, replacing the macabre photograph on the pile. “Does King have any more of these files?”
“Yes. I suspect that there is at least one more. So far, my agents have managed to locate two, both held
in separate locations. They are still in place for now, merely confirmed of existence. These are copies photographed by smartphone and emailed over. If and when, all of the files will be lifted simultaneously. All have been stored in solicitor’s offices, with instructions for the solicitor to publicise the material should King ever die in suspicious circumstances.” McCullum shook his head in bewilderment. “Of course, I understand King’s desire to cover himself, empathise with him in fact. It has not been unknown in his particular field for an employer to become tired of an employee, and want to dispense with his services. But that generally isn’t our style. King has obviously grown paranoid over the years. He must live with a lot going on inside his head, I’m sure it’s the same for many field agents,” he paused. “But there’s an obvious problem. We might be happy with King’s success rate. We might want King for as long as he can work for us. But what happens if he dies undertaking an assignment? It’s risky work and could certainly have nothing to do with us betraying him, but my arse would be well and truly shafted all the same. The details of all of King’s contracts, along with graphic photographs, would be all over the papers and on the television news. God knows what would be made of it on the internet. Investigative television shows all over the world would be wanting the full story. Why are the Secret Intelligence Service still ordering assassinations after the cold war? Who signed the orders? Who decides that financing assassinations is an acceptable or moral use of taxpayers’ money?” McCullum smiled sardonically. “Well, as rotten luck would have it Marcus, the buck stops here.”
