‘Does it include Paulton?’
‘What about him?’
‘I need whatever you’ve got; family, friends, contacts, where he went to school.’
‘Why would you need that?’
‘Because it’s how I find people.’
Cullum chewed it over then nodded, playing the generous benefactor. ‘It’s all there. Heavily edited, of course, but there’s plenty to be getting on with.’ He slid the stick across to Harry. ‘I can imagine what you’ll do when you find him.’
‘Really. And what’s that?’
‘Well, some would like him to fall under a bus, but that’s not my decision. There’s a note for interested parties should you need it, and a form to sign. You can print it off.’
‘A form?’ Harry wondered if he was about to be offered his old job back. That would be a shocker. He wasn’t sure he could take that.
‘We’re assigning you a nominal position of WO-Two.’ Cullum smiled thinly, and took a card out of his pocket. It showed Harry’s MI5 file photo. ‘I know you were a captain in a previous life and it’s a bit of a step down, but an officer would be all wrong for what you’ll be doing. It’s a cover in case a situation arises.’
‘Situation?’
‘You know what I mean.’ He folded his chubby hands on the table, the lecture over and enjoying the brief power it gave him.
Harry pocketed the data stick and card and stood up. ‘Forget it.’
‘What?’
‘I won’t be signing anything, now or later.’
Cullum scrambled to his feet. He was shorter than he’d looked. ‘There isn’t room for compromise, Tate,’ he muttered. ‘This isn’t some kind of lone warrior mission, you know. We need that form signed.’
Harry’s phone rang. He checked the screen. Ballatyne.
‘Harry.’ The MI6 man’s voice was flat. ‘We’ve got a problem. Are you alone?’
‘I’m with Cullum. We’ve just finished,’ he added heavily. Cullum looked annoyed. He must have guessed it was Ballatyne. He turned and walked out without a word, scooping up the travel brochure as he went.
‘Good. Lose him and get down to Victoria Embankment Gardens. Urgent.’
‘He’s gone. What’s up?’
‘Pike and his escorts never made it to Colchester.’
EIGHT
Harry took the underground to Embankment, changing trains twice on the way as a precaution. If Pike had been killed or taken, someone must have been watching him. It followed that Harry might now be on someone’s watch list. He emerged into bright sunshine. Behind and to his left across the river was the London Eye, revolving slowly under a blue-grey sky. In front of him was a paved pedestrian area leading up towards Charing Cross station. Victoria Embankment Gardens opened to his right, with the usual cluster of office workers on a smoke break, managing to look somehow miserable in their enjoyment.
He checked the immediate area but saw no sign of Ballatyne, so he turned right and walked into the gardens. Bordered on one side by tall buildings and on the other by the river and the rush of traffic along the Victoria Embankment, the gardens presented an oasis of sorts, overlooked by a number of large trees with lush foliage. The area was roughly triangular in shape, narrowing at one end, with wooden benches dotted at regular intervals around the central lawn, facing outwards. It was a good place for a meeting, Harry noted; busy enough for a person to merge with the office workers and tourists, central enough for anyone to be there with good reason, and with space for a discreet conversation without being overheard. He’d used places like it over the years, although not always so pleasant.
Ballatyne was sitting on one of the benches down the river side of the triangle, next to a young woman in a blouson jacket and jeans. He was nursing a disposable mug and reading a newspaper. His minder was standing a few yards away, chewing on an apple. The minder spotted Harry and gave a brief nod, then walked over and threw his apple into a waste bin. It seemed to be the signal for the young woman to get up and walk away, leaving the seat next to Ballatyne vacant.
Harry walked along the path and sat down.
‘Smooth,’ he said. ‘Do you all practise that on the terrace at Vauxhall Cross?’
‘Well, we have to spend the allocation on something,’ said Ballatyne, not bothering to check that anyone was near. The background noise of a train passing over Hungerford Bridge and the roar of traffic along the Embankment would ensure privacy. ‘Pike and his escorts were in an RTA on the A12 north of Brentwood. Pike and Wallace are dead and Collins is in intensive care, condition critical.’
Harry felt his gut drop at the news. ‘What happened?’
‘It was a hit. Witnesses said another car — a Mercedes estate — came off the intersection with the M25 and drew alongside. There were some bangs and Pike’s car swerved and flipped. The witness said they were travelling fast. The Merc was gone by the time anyone could take the number. Did you get anything from him?’
‘No. He wouldn’t talk. But I know he came into the country on Eurostar via Brussels. Someone else must have known it, too.’ He ran back over the past eighteen hours. Pike’s trail must have been picked up and followed at some stage. He thought back to the two men he’d seen in the car at the hospital. That had been a grey estate, too, but he couldn’t recall the make. The men had stood out only because of their look. It didn’t mean they were responsible for killing Pike, but it was a possibility. He told Ballatyne about them. No, he hadn’t noticed the registration.
Ballatyne nodded. ‘I’ll get the Plods to see if the local cameras picked them up. What time was this?’
Harry told him. ‘I’ll follow the Eurostar lead, backtrack his journey in. If he came in from Thailand, he could have flown in to Amsterdam, then by train on through Brussels to London.’ He had a sudden thought. ‘That photo of Paulton in Brussels; how recent was it?’
Ballatyne gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I can see your thinking. But whatever Pike was doing in Brussels, it wasn’t meeting Paulton. That photo was four months old, before Pike went on the trot. We do have a lead, though. A flag just came up on Pike’s Visa card. He used it twice to draw cash from a machine near The Hague. Approximately four hundred pounds in two lots.’
Harry thought about the money in Pike’s wallet. That would be about right, given ticket money to London and some kind of deposit on his room rental in Clapham. Yet laying such an obvious trail was inconsistent with a man deciding to bunk off to foreign parts and pick up a new life in exchange for selling sensitive military information.
‘He wasn’t running anywhere,’ he said finally, as the realization hit him. ‘He was coming home.’ He thought about the bayonet and its keen edge, and the expression in Pike’s eyes when he saw Harry standing in his way. It had been a reactive process: Harry was there to stop him, ergo he was the enemy and to be taken out. ‘Pike was damaged goods. He needed psychiatric help, not a return to combat.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’
The young woman in the blouson returned and sat on a section of low wall a few yards away, while the minder in the suit wandered off to watch the traffic on the Embankment. The young woman turned and lifted a mobile phone to squint at the screen.
‘Tell her to knock it off,’ said Harry mildly. ‘You’ve got my picture on file.’
Ballatyne looked irritated and glared at the young woman until she got the message and moved away. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t part of their orders. Bloody mobile phones, given them all carte blanche to record everything they see.’ He sighed. ‘Many more downloads of worthless crap and the system will crash altogether.’ He leaned over and dumped his cup into a waste bin alongside the bench. ‘There’s a rum thing about Pike, though, Harry: he can’t have been all that damaged. We came across an offshore bank account in his brother’s name. Popped up out of nowhere. Four days ago he received a deposit of fifty grand from sources unknown via an account in Grand Cayman.’ He squinted at the sky. ‘The Pikes of this world don’t get
money from offshore centres — certainly not that much — not unless it smells of drugs or terrorism. Or espionage.’
‘I didn’t know he had a brother.’ There had been no mention of close family in the notes. Pike was alone in the world, a free agent.
‘He doesn’t. He did once, but little Davy fell out of a tree when he was five. Died of a brain haemorrhage.’
Harry let it go. It sounded as if Ballatyne had Pike’s past activities all sewn up and the evidence to prove it. There was nothing more he could do except find out where the man had been. ‘Do you have the location of the cash machine Pike used in The Hague?’
‘I thought you might ask that.’ He took a brown A5 envelope from his pocket and passed it across. ‘It’s in there. A place with an unpronounceable name on the coast.’ It seemed a curiously furtive action and Harry wondered how often Ballatyne got out of his office.
‘We’re trying to track the route of the Mercedes that totalled Pike and the others, but I’m not holding out much hope. Some of the cameras have been turned off to save money. It’s probably been torched in a field somewhere by now.’ He paused, then said, ‘There’s another runner out there who’s causing a bit of a fuss at the moment. No need to concern you overly, but like Pike, she has potential value to the right people.’
Harry opened the envelope and slid out a sheet of paper and a five-by-seven photo of a young woman with black hair and a confident, steady gaze. She had even, white teeth and the kind of smooth, latte-coloured skin most women would kill for. There was Asian blood in there, Harry thought. Her mouth looked as though it might be about to break into a smile, and he wondered what had made such a high-flyer break for the hills.
‘Vanessa Tan,’ Ballatyne intoned quietly. ‘Age thirty, daughter of a Hong Kong Chinese father and English mother. Currently a lieutenant with the Royal Logistics Corps. Did impressively well at Cambridge, came away with two Firsts and decided on an army career. Came out top of her intake, shook off the competition and got herself seconded as a junior aide-de-camp to Deputy Commander, International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan. She speaks Pashto and Dari, which puts her in the upper point-five per cent of serving personnel in the region.’
‘Really?’ Harry grunted. ‘It’s a miracle she didn’t get assigned to a depot on Salisbury Plain counting bootlaces. When did she run?’
‘Two weeks ago. She failed to report for her flight back to Afghanistan after leave. That’s all we know. She’s reputed to have what some call an eidetic memory. It means she has the ability to recall hundreds, maybe thousands, of images, pictures, graphics, you name it, as well as sounds and objects. She’s a walking bloody digital recording unit, in other words.’
‘Ouch.’ Harry could only imagine what that meant in planning meetings; dozens of maps, schematics, video presentations and data, let alone the reams of stuff an ADC would be handling on a daily basis. And all there to be absorbed and retained, a veritable human databank. ‘Conversation, too?’
Ballatyne shrugged. ‘We don’t know for sure, but colleagues claimed instances when she had recalled pretty much word-for-word discussions which took place days before. That aside, she’s got a head full of battle plans and logistical information, as well as an unspecified amount of detail about forthcoming operations and key personnel in southern Afghanistan. Detail which can’t be changed or erased.’
‘And you want her back.’
‘I don’t. The army does. No arguments.’
Like Pike, then. Tan was someone who couldn’t be allowed to simply go adrift. She was cursed with knowing too much for her own good. He felt an instinct to avoid this one, without knowing why. Perhaps because it was a woman. ‘Haven’t you got a female recovery officer to handle this?’
‘If I had and she was experienced enough, she’d be on it already.’ Ballatyne flicked a glance at the next bench where two girls in shorts and boots were dumping heavy backpacks on the ground. One of them looked across and gave a vague smile. ‘Tan puts Pike right in the shade,’ Ballatyne added, ‘value-wise.’
Harry slid the photo and sheet of paper back in the envelope and put it away inside his jacket. ‘Why did she run?’
‘Does it matter? She’s got a head full of top-secret information which we don’t want anyone else to have.’
‘Somebody must have an idea what spooked her. It might help me find her.’ Somebody always knew, in his experience; friend, colleague, unit chaplain or family member. Look deep enough and there was always a hint. People on the edge dropped clues, gave off vibes, voiced concerns or worries, responded negatively to something they would customarily have treated as commonplace. Whatever had tipped Tan over the edge was unlikely to have been front-line battle trauma, however. As an aide to the regional deputy commander, she’d have been remote from any front-line action. Serving in Kabul didn’t automatically preclude stress or danger, but it wouldn’t have been the kind picked up from ducking bullets or going face first into a darkened alley, not knowing if the bump in the ground you were stepping on was goat shit or an IED — an improvised explosive device — about to erupt beneath your boots.
‘If there is someone she took into her confidence, we haven’t found them yet. She seems to have kept pretty much to herself, although that’s no surprise; as ADC to the Deputy Commander ISAF, she’d have been kept on the run more than most.’
Harry looked at him. The ‘yet’ implied they were still looking, which meant he wasn’t the only one on this. An indication, perhaps, of Tan’s perceived value. Yet Ballatyne seemed remarkably calm about her, as if she were just another member of the forces adrift out in the open.
Ballatyne seemed to read his mind. ‘She’s only unusual in that she’s a woman. The others are just as critical, if not more so; they have detailed equipment information which the brass don’t want let out. We need to find all of them, find out who they’ve been talking to and re-introduce them to the concept of duty.’ He waved a hand. ‘You know the stuff.’
Harry wasn’t sure he believed that, especially with someone like Tan. Anyone with her service background who cut and bolted would never be allowed near the brass again. She’d be watched, followed, monitored round the clock, even kept under lock and key if necessary while her knowledge degraded. Any concept of ‘duty’ had been rendered invalid the moment she’d jumped the fence.
Ballatyne, though, was on a roll. ‘There’s a far bigger problem than her simply deserting.’
‘Go on.’
‘We suspect she might have been targeted by the Protectory.’
NINE
‘That’s campfire stuff.’ Harry had heard the stories, like everyone else. The Protectory was the subject of military water-cooler gossip, up there with UFOs, Area 51 and Elvis sharing a condo in Florida with Michael Jackson. Rumoured to be a group of disaffected ex-soldiers, deserters or discharged, they had allegedly formed a loosely knit band of sympathizers after the first Gulf War to help others of their kind. Shadowy and elusive, their numbers and identities unknown, they were mostly dismissed as the creation of cranks and too much barrack-room chatter. Harry was surprised Ballatyne was giving the matter much credence. Unless he knew a lot more than gossip allowed.
Ballatyne didn’t even blink. ‘I wish it were. But if she’s with any kind of group, I’d rather she was cut adrift before she does any damage.’
‘So you believe the rumours?
‘Doesn’t matter what I believe. Others believe it, that’s my problem.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘About eight years ago a Major Colin Nicholls in the Intelligence Corps went AWOL after being wounded in a firefight in northern Iraq. He was working undercover ahead of conventional forces, and it was his third time down — an unlucky bugger to share a bunker with, if you ask me. He was sent back to the UK and treated; given the usual review and post-op psychobabble, but it didn’t stick; he bugged out before the shrinks could lock him on a programme.’
‘They missed the signs.’
‘Maybe. Don’t forget he wa
s Intelligence; hiding stuff is in their nature. Before Iraq he’d been playing secret squirrel in Northern Ireland, snooping on the Real IRA. Anyway, after his third strike in Iraq he dropped out of sight and nobody’s seen him since; no contact with family or friends, no footprint from bank accounts or plastic. It was like he’d dropped off the edge.’
‘As you said, it’s what they do.’
‘I suppose. Anyway, about twelve months ago a former colleague thought he spotted Nicholls in a restaurant in Sydney, talking to two men. The colleague took a photo on his mobile and sent it in. It’s not a confirmed sighting because the man turned away, but the other two were identified as long-term deserters. Their names had cropped up before in connection with others who’d done a bunk and gone underground. We think they were with Nicholls for a reason.’
‘The Protectory?’
‘Correct. The word is old — it means protecting waifs and strays. Someone’s twisted idea of a joke, if you ask me, considering some of the people they’ll be helping.’ He smiled without humour. ‘Still, it would fit the kind of man Nicholls was said to be: idealistic, apparently; good family; highly intelligent but emotionally a little naive.’
‘There’s no guarantee the Protectory will have helped Tan.’
‘I wouldn’t want to find out the hard way by having her knowledge sold on the open market, would you?’
‘She might have slid off the radar all by herself and gone to ground.’
‘Don’t bet on that, either.’ Ballatyne leaned closer as a pair of suited office workers crept by, eyeing the bench covetously as if looks alone would render it vacant. ‘If the Protectory is operating the way we think they are, it’s likely they need a regular flow of operating capital for expenses, accommodation, bribes and travel. It’s a costly business slipping people off the radar. One way of doing it would be by selling the information deserters have. And some of them are very bright bunnies indeed. Bloody scary, the details some of them carry in their heads.’
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