Fatal Ally

by Tim Sebastian

  He stared in turn at the blackened faces of the Jordanian soldiers, but no one spoke. Manson could feel their anger, their loathing.

  ‘I’m finished here. I need to get back to the airport.’

  The colonel took the wheel of the Land Rover and drove in silence to the runway. Only when Manson had got out, with no goodbyes or thank yous, and was striding towards his plane, did he wind down the window.

  ‘Get out of my country,’ he shouted. ‘Every time you people come here, you destroy us a little more. Always have. Don’t come back to Jordan. You’ll never be welcome here. I’ll make sure of it.’

  She told herself she wouldn’t forget the sight: a lone figure, silhouetted against the dawn sky, with a body across its back. Like a hunchback emerging from the darkness of an alien world.

  The realization that all the betrayal and the killing had come down to this – and there was now a decision of her own to be made.

  She was close to the hedge but she moved slowly forward where she thought he would see her, knowing the risk, the gun held tight in her jacket pocket in case it didn’t go well.

  ‘I’m Margo Lane from British Intelligence.’ Her voice sounded soft and weak, even to her. ‘I know who you are and I’ve come to help with the American officer. We’ve no quarrel with you.’

  In that instant she saw him turn that practised turn, with the gun rigid in his hand – the executioner’s swivel, fast, easy, a movement so liquid, so precise and faultless – but he didn’t fire.

  For a few seconds, they stood immovable, staring at each other …

  Carefully, Ahmed put away the pistol, lifted Mai down from his back and laid her on the ground. As Margo approached, Sam emerged from the other side of the hedge and the three of them stood looking down at the body.

  ‘We can take her now,’ she told Ahmed. ‘And we need to do it fast.’

  He stood up. ‘You’re too late. She’s dead. She was badly tortured. Died about twenty minutes ago before we crossed the border.’

  ‘You knew that as you came over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you still went ahead and did it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Those were my orders.’

  She drove with Ahmed through the ramshackle town, past the deserted sports ground, out towards the cemetery he had come upon just a few hours before. Sam’s car stayed close behind. As they stopped she could see a shepherd herding sheep through the grey-lit fields, up into open country. Across the graveyard snow began falling, blown in from the east, from Syria.

  They lowered Mai’s body as gently as they could, took turns to shovel the piles of earth, left by the graveside.

  When it was done, Ahmed pulled Margo to one side … ‘You weren’t here to help her, were you?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No doctor, no medical team, no CIA special treatment.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You were going to end it here. Right? That’s the truth, isn’t it?’ His hand tightened on her arm. ‘Only she saved you the trouble.’

  Margo said nothing.

  Ahmed bent down and started pulling a few stones around the makeshift grave. ‘I make it look decent, OK? Because I think she deserved it.’

  Margo pulled up her collar against the wind.

  ‘Did she leave any message?’

  ‘You mean for the Americans? No. Why should she? She knew where she was going.’

  He finished arranging the stones and stood up, his voice barely audible. ‘I will tell you this … in case we ever meet again. If she’d been alive, I would not have let you take her.’

  Margo returned his stare. ‘And I would not have let you leave.’

  She watched till his car was out of sight. ‘We’ll wait a few minutes,’ she told Sam. ‘If there are any patrols out there, I’d rather they dealt with him instead of us.’

  ‘Was he right?’ Sam stared down at the grave. ‘Would you have killed her?’

  She didn’t look at him; didn’t even register the question.

  She had expected a sense of relief; no doomsday choice to be made between duty and conscience. No guilt or shame to carry forward. But there was nothing to celebrate about a woman, tortured out of life, buried in a grave no one would ever visit.

  In a while, she thought, the living – whoever was left – would wake up and pass by and the town would limp into another day. And the only visitors would be the dead or the dying from across the border and the grief they brought with them.

  ‘We better get going,’ she said.

  Ahmed sent his message from the car. He had done all he could. Moscow would make of it what it wanted.

  But there was also the issue of the contact. When things had calmed down in a week or a month, he would visit the man’s widow and leave her some money. It wasn’t often that he felt bad about violent endings. Normally, the people he dealt with seemed uniformly determined to live down to his worst expectations. But not this time.

  In truth, he hadn’t rated the Syrian. Worse, he’d judged him a poser, a petty crook – never had the slightest expectation that he’d sacrifice himself in a fight if the need arose. Why would he?

  And then, out of nowhere, the man had produced a flash of quite exceptional courage.

  Made you think.

  Ahmed wondered if he’d have done the same.

  He took a deep breath and kept his eyes firmly on the icy road to Amman.

  Once out of Israeli airspace and over the Mediterranean, the pilot asked Manson if he wanted to send any messages.

  He didn’t.

  For the first time in his career, he had no idea what to say. His part of the operation had ended in failure. Even now there would be angry protests from the Jordanians, sleepless, spluttering ambassadors pulled from their beds in all sorts of capitals and large helpings of injured pride at the Foreign Office.

  In the days to come Whitehall would resound with the noise of it all, and a whole bunch of important people would tell each other in angry phone calls from unlisted numbers to ‘go fuck themselves’. And some might even do that. But after a few months when the prime minister would have promised a full investigation, with no intention of delivering it, a good and faithful servant of the Crown would pick a dark, rainy night and chuck whatever paperwork there was into the Thames.

  He hoped.

  Perhaps, he told himself, Margo Lane had after all ‘finished’ the entire, wretched business and would, if fate had willed it, be on her way home in the morning.

  He didn’t know – but as the plane headed north over Europe, he conceded grudgingly that she was one of only a handful of officers who could have pulled it off.

  At around four thirty a.m. the prime minister left the study and took the stairs to the flat.

  Sears would call when there was news.

  Obviously, things had not been simple.

  He sighed. When were they?

  After a few minutes he lay down on the sofa, closed his eyes and heard the mobile ring in his pocket.

  He didn’t answer immediately, didn’t want to hear bad news, knew that nothing good was ever communicated in the middle of the night.

  ‘I’m coming up.’ It was Sears.

  The prime minister opened the front door of the flat and beckoned the man to come in, but Sears shook his head.

  ‘I’m not staying. Just wanted to tell you it’s done, finished. That’s all I know. I’ll find out more in a few hours. The agent’s on her way home. You can get some sleep.’

  He closed the door, but didn’t go back to the bedroom. He felt no sense of satisfaction. The woman he had sent to Jordan had survived the night – God only knew what she had been through – but someone else would have died.

  Perhaps Sears had been right. There might have been another way. He could have talked to the president, warned him that Britain wouldn’t tolerate … Only, even as the thought surfaced, he knew it wouldn’t have worked.

  How many times had he gone to Washington, talked himself silly and flown home with a
bagful of platitudes? A slap on the back. A ‘great to see you, fellah’. And they’d ignored everything he’d said.

  Couldn’t happen again.

  Nobody would ever thank him for it.

  But this time there hadn’t been a choice.

  Harry let the phone ring three times before he answered.

  In the distance, on a bad connection, he heard Yanayev’s dismal voice, like a priest intoning at a funeral.

  So mundane, he thought. So matter-of-fact. A simple one-line ending to such a complex production. And then – curtain down. Audience gone home. Bad reviews all round.

  The blazing clarity of failure.

  Strange how he felt outside of it all. The sense of watching it happen to someone else; of sitting in the empty theatre with the lights extinguished.

  He got up, tripped on the table leg, half fell against the sink. The pain brought him back to reality and the tears that he could no longer hold inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, my friend. She didn’t make it.’

  The words of the Russian ambassador. They weren’t much of an epitaph.

  As soon as he reached the Residence, Yanayev called Lydia to get her coat. They walked in silence for a moment across the grand white garden, their boots crunching on the hard snow. It was peaceful, he thought, in a way that Moscow never had been. Peaceful because people left you alone. Because you were free to think.

  He didn’t look at her. ‘They’ve recalled me,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew they would. Nobody returns my messages. I’m history. They all know it by now.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’ She took his hand. ‘None of this was your fault.’

  ‘This isn’t the issue. I was the one who took them the plan. If it had worked it would have been a spectacular coup. We’d have had a lever on one of the most powerful figures in the American government – think of it! Their imagination went wild.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Now they are inconsolable. Their promised toy isn’t coming for Christmas after all. So someone will have to pay for the disappointment.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘The someone is me. I know how their mind works.’

  ‘We’ll get through it. We always have. I’ll be there at your side …’

  ‘No.’ He pulled his hand away. ‘That’s out of the question. I’ve no idea what they’ll do and I don’t want you in Moscow when I find out.’

  ‘Please, Vitaly.’

  ‘I said no.’ He stopped and turned to face her. ‘You leave for Paris in the morning. There’s no discussion. From there you buy a plane ticket in cash and go somewhere safe. Best is Jerusalem. I’ll contact you there. American Colony Hotel. They’ll keep letters if you’re nice to Reception. Don’t try to reach me … please, my dear, I need you to be strong.’

  He walked on, taking her arm again. ‘Who knows if anyone is watching. We must act normal for now. First thing tomorrow, you’ll go out for a walk, take nothing with you and get a taxi to the airport. Buy what you need in Paris. Just be careful.’

  He squeezed her arm, felt her weight and her warmth against him. ‘We’re Russians,’ he whispered. ‘Life is shorter for us than for others. You know that.’ He put his arms around her. ‘We’ve always known that.’

  They had monitored Harry’s call from the mobile command centre, overheated, overcrowded, parked next to a supermarket. They were nervous, all of them, throwing anxious glances at each other, checking and re-checking that the microphones in the house were live and working. Because this went way too high to screw up.

  Parked beside them, a man in a blue Chevrolet read the transcript twice and put it in his pocket.

  He phoned a Washington DC number, recited the single line he’d seen and was told to stay where he was.

  They’d get back to him.

  Reclining the seat, he switched the radio back on and let the gentle jazz fill the car.

  Didn’t matter if they used him or not. He’d be well paid any which way. Cash, of course. Went without saying. When the government really wanted you, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave a trail of forms and figures.

  And they really wanted him. Especially tonight.

  Delayed by fog, the BA plane stood for an hour on the runway at Amman airport, with Margo Lane asleep in row fifteen.

  Before leaving, she had sent an encrypted snap from the embassy, thrust the gun, wrapped in newspaper into the hands of the First Secretary, still in his bright blue pyjamas, smiled at his ‘goodness me!’ and taken a taxi out of the city.

  Catch a quick glimpse of her that morning and she could have been a tourist, roughing it through the Middle East in jeans and sweaters, a guidebook and a map, sticking out of her bag. But look more closely and there was nothing casual or relaxed about her. Margo Lane didn’t saunter and didn’t idle. You would always know that she had a place to go and a time to be there.

  And somewhere to leave in haste.

  Even as she shut her eyes, she had the story straight in her mind, the version she would give to Manson, the questions she would answer, and the one she would leave on the shelf.

  They didn’t own her. Never would.

  Harry didn’t know if she could still hear him. She lay motionless in the quiet white room, next to the daffodils that would outlive her.

  And her silence condemned him.

  Like an old man on a darkened path, his words tripped and stumbled, slowed, then picked up speed again, a litany of regrets and confessions; he wished, he wanted; he begged; if only he had done and not done all the things that could no longer be corrected.

  Somewhere in the middle of his monologue she died, but for several minutes he seemed not to notice.

  And when he did, it was with the knowledge that whatever she had taken away with her through that uniquely one-way door, the serious baggage was still in the room. He could see that now.

  What she had done was to remove for all time the power she alone possessed – to forgive him. She had made sure to take that with her.

  Only the silent, bitter accusations had been left behind.

  London dripped, locked in a cold front that would push on eventually towards Germany but not soon enough.

  This time there was no one to meet her at the airport. It’s how you always knew that an operation had ended. They’ve moved on to someone else, somewhere else; other nails to be bitten; other lies to be constructed and spread. So go join the queue and get the bus home.

  Nobody looked at her on the journey. Nobody, she thought, looks at anyone in London. We just don’t want to know anymore.

  Certainly not about a woman who just a few hours earlier had carried a silenced gun along the Syrian border in readiness to kill for her country.

  Made no sense at all.

  And if she tried explaining it to the faces opposite her on the Number 13 bus, would they call the police – or a doctor?

  Was she mad or dangerous? Or both?

  The president opened the door to the Rose Garden and felt the cold rush in. But it wasn’t important.

  Much more important was to hold the conversation with his visitor outside the Oval Office and to ensure that no one else would hear it.

  The two men stepped into the darkness. The president had known his guest since his days as a US attorney in New York. Southern district. Full of crooks in suits, who mostly got away with whatever they wanted. Nothing had changed.

  As on previous occasions, the visitor’s name would not appear on any official list and there would be no record of his arrival or departure.

  After all, as the president was so fond of telling his closest advisers, open government had its limits.

  He wasn’t surprised by what Harry Jones had done. Not even disappointed. You couldn’t work in the US capital and seriously expect anyone to live up to the crass and self-congratulatory rhetoric that echoed daily across Washington.

  As long as politicians were born with backs, he reflected, there would be people in this city to stab them.

  Loyalty, much trumpeted, was
a favour to be offered and then withdrawn. It always carried an end date – you just never knew in advance when it was.

  So Harry Jones was no worse than most of his colleagues – none of them, in time-honoured tradition, would dream of lying until they opened their mouth. And that was the only certainty you ever got.

  The visitor leaned towards the president and spoke quietly in his ear. There wasn’t much to tell. Endings don’t take a lot of time in Washington.

  The president opened his mouth wide, sucked in the cold air and folded his arms across his chest.

  He thought he should feel something – anger at Harry, sorrow for his wife – but he felt no emotion of any kind, no sense of occasion.

  ‘Finish it,’ he said quietly. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Harry Jones?’

  The man wasn’t dressed for winter. Just a shirt and jacket. And gloves.

  Always gloves.

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘I know who you are. You’d better come in.’

  Harry turned and led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’d offer you coffee but you’re probably in a hurry to be on your way.’

  ‘No, coffee would be good – thanks.’

  He was just as Harry had expected. The perfectly forgettable face, devoid of landmark or blemish. The quick, practised smile; eyes that were Arctic blue, wide open but so very disinterested.

  Harry put the coffee on the table and pulled up a chair. ‘I’m gonna make this easy for you but I’d like to know what you have in mind.’

  How odd his voice sounded to him. So normal, so mundane.

  ‘I put something in the coffee and you’ll fall asleep quite quickly.’ The voice was measured, almost gentle. ‘And then a quick injection. Very peaceful.’

  ‘I see.’

  The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there something you need to finish? I …’ He stopped suddenly. A car had drawn up outside the neighbour’s house, doors opened and slammed. A young woman called out happily, ‘Bye, guys’. And then the silence returned.

  Normal life had come home and gone to bed.

  Harry loosened his top button. ‘No, nothing to finish. I’m pretty much set.’

  The man took a tiny vial from his pocket and poured a couple of drops into Harry’s cup. ‘It’s tasteless. You won’t notice.’