The bar in the Venus de Milo was humming, full of tourists staying at the hotel and locals from the offices nearby, willing to pay over the odds for a cocktail in order to enjoy the air-conditioning. A long mahogany bar hugged one side of the low room on the hotel’s ground floor. Berger spotted a tall frosted glass of beer sitting on the bar top in front of two empty stools. He sat down on one of them, and as the barman approached pointed to the full glass. The barman drew another beer from the tap and, as he put it down in front of Berger, a tall, heavy-set man sat down next to him.
‘I’m Stimkin,’ the big man said, taking a long pull from his waiting glass of beer. He didn’t shake hands. ‘You checked out fine, Mitch, but this is your first contact in five years. So what’s the big emergency?’
Inwardly Berger sighed. He’d seen enough of the world not to stereotype people, but he’d seen an awful lot of versions of Hal Stimkin before, especially in the Agency. He would be a former jock, probably a former football player, possibly ex-military; he’d have joined the Agency on the heavy rather than the cerebral side, but shown enough polish to rise in the ranks and become a Head of Station. He’d be a self-proclaimed ‘straight shooter’, which really just meant he not only lacked sophistication but was proud of the deficit. All in all he was about as far as you could get from the Ivy League WASP who, both in the old days and in the popular imagination, staffed the higher ranks of the CIA.
Berger gave a terse account of recent events to Stimkin, ending in the death of the planted MI6 agent.
‘Why didn’t you flag Six’s involvement to us?’
Berger shrugged. ‘To be honest, it didn’t seem relevant. They were just helping sort out a criminal situation. Nothing of interest to Langley.’
‘Let Langley be the judge of that, pal. Six must have thought it was more than that or they wouldn’t have bothered.’
‘My boss is ex-Six. They were doing him a favour.’
‘Oh, really?’ asked Stimkin, gesturing to the barman for two more beers. ‘That would imply they’re a lot nicer than we are. And they’re not.’ The second implication was clear: Stimkin thought there was more to this than met the eye. Perhaps he wasn’t so stupid after all.
Their beers came and they waited for the barman to move away. Stimkin said, ‘So, what do you want from us?’
‘Help,’ said Berger bluntly. ‘I need my back watched.’
‘And in return?’
‘You know everything that happens.’
Stimkin grimaced. ‘A bunch of hoods are ripping off your ships. Do we care who they are?’
‘Not if it’s that simple. I’m not sure it is.’
Stimkin nodded. ‘You could be right, bud.’ The big man would have seen Berger’s Agency CV, or at least a précis of it. He’d know Berger wouldn’t have spent twenty years doing the things he had done for the Agency if he were some sort of crank. ‘OK, so let’s keep in touch. I’ll brief Langley.’
‘And I get back-up?’
‘Let’s see. For now, sit tight.’
Stimkin looked at the bill the barman had placed next to their beers. ‘I don’t believe the Brits are just going to give up because one of their people got iced. They’ll be back as soon as the Greek cops get out of the way. I want to know when they are, understood?’
Berger had had enough. He’d left the Agency after all, he hadn’t been pushed out. And now Stimkin was acting as if he were some sort of underling or, even worse, a dubious source. He decided to beat Stimkin to the punch, and got down off his stool before the big man did. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it, Hal.’ And he didn’t mean the bill; he figured Langley owed him that at least.
Chapter 29
This was weird. Peggy sighed and looked again at the CV in front of her. It was the third day she’d spent checking the credentials of the UCSO staff in London and Athens. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for – just anything that might mean someone was not who they appeared to be, and had joined the charity with an ulterior motive. It was as vague as that, but she hoped she’d recognise it when she saw it. So far all she had found were the sort of discrepancies that you might find in any organisation of fifty-five employees that wasn’t too careful about its recruitment processes.
And it looked as though UCSO was just such a one. Maybe charities didn’t bother too much, she thought. Maybe they were glad to get anyone to work for the modest salaries they paid.
A young woman called Wainwright had claimed an Honours degree in Anthropology from Cambridge, though a few simple enquiries produced the information that she had never completed a university course and had no formal qualifications at all. Cathy Etherington, a fund-raising assistant, claimed to have spent two years working for the Red Cross, but a phone call found no record of her employment there, and a check with a previous employer uncovered the fact that she had been fired for chronic absenteeism. Finally, the business analyst Sandy Warlock’s proud claim to have been a finalist in the Olympic trials in judo turned out to be complete phooey.
Though all this had revealed that UCSO was pretty careless, it had not set Peggy’s antennae vibrating. But what she was looking at now certainly did. It was the CV of Mitchell Berger, Head of the Athens office, that had made her sit up. It wasn’t that she had any reason to doubt the accuracy of the impressive list of previous posts he’d held – and it was impressive: as he’d said in his covering letter when he applied for the job in Athens, ‘My background is a mix of military, diplomatic, journalism and NGO, and it has taken me to many parts of the world . . .’ It was something about the location of those posts and the dates that had sparked her interest.
As Peggy sat thinking about all this, her chin resting in her hands, her eyes drifted over her colleagues in the open-plan office where she worked. She thought how surprising it was that so many people seemed to lie about their past, about their qualifications. It would never have occurred to her to do that. In the Service, of course, you wouldn’t get away with it for five minutes: the vetting process would soon find you out.
She looked at Denise from the library who was standing talking to an agent runner who’d just walked into the room. There was no chance at all that Denise didn’t have the degree in library science or whatever professional qualification she claimed to have, or that the agent runner, who was now rather obviously flirting with her, had an undeclared wife somewhere.
On the other hand, there were spies working within the intelligence services. People who led a double life for years without being discovered. The most famous British ones, the Cambridge spies, were recruited before there was any kind of vetting. They just recruited each other. But there had been others much more recently, in Britain as well as in America.
She looked down again at the CV on her desk. She’d better talk to Liz about Mr Berger.
Liz was on the phone but she waved Peggy into her office and, while she waited, she stood by the window, looking down. The sun was out, and the Thames looked blue and sparkling and much cleaner than it really was – though she’d read that fish were now coming up the river as far as Westminster. Perhaps MPs, she thought, smiling to herself, would soon be fishing from the terrace of the House of Commons.
Liz put the phone down. ‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked. ‘Don’t say there’s some good news for a change.’
‘I wondered what you’d make of this.’ Peggy put the sheet of paper on the desk and sat down opposite her.
‘Mitchell Berger,’ Liz said aloud in surprise. ‘Don’t tell me he didn’t go to college either?’
‘No, everything checks out so far. He was in the military, he did some contract work for the State Department, and he’s worked for a bunch of NGOs. He was even a journalist – I found a couple of articles by him in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘It’s where he was – and when. I’ve highlighted the dates and places on his CV.’
Liz looked carefully at the document. ‘El S
alvador and Nicaragua in the seventies; Lebanon . . . that was when the Marines got blown up there, wasn’t it? Haiti. What was going on there then?
‘A coup.’
Liz nodded. ‘Then the Dominican Republic. That must have been a few months before Reagan sent troops in. Then Kosovo in the nineties, and Afghanistan after nine-eleven. And now Athens?’ She looked up at Peggy with a hint of a smile. ‘Bit of a soft option after all that. He must have got tired of hot spots. But I see what you mean.’
‘It’s as if he’s always wanted to be where the action is. A cynic might say he had a death wish.’
‘Or else that he was paid to go there.’ Liz raised her eyes from the CV and looked at Peggy. ‘I know what you’re thinking. This is either the résumé of a retired CIA officer or someone who’s gone to almost inconceivable lengths to pretend he’s one. I know which option my money’s on.’
‘Do you think Blakey knows?’
‘He didn’t say anything to me, but you’d think he’d have spotted it when he appointed the chap. Blakey is ex-Six, after all.’
‘What I was wondering is whether he appointed him because of it. Does that mean there’s something going on in UCSO that we don’t know about? And do you think Geoffrey Fane knows?’
Liz sighed deeply. ‘He didn’t mention it. Which, with Fane, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know.’
‘Do you want me to do anything?’
Liz put her head in her hands. ‘No. I’ll have to go and talk to Geoffrey. And I was hoping not to have to see him for a while . . . fat chance of that now!’
Chapter 30
It was eleven o’clock and Technical Ted and his colleague, Sammy de Silva, were strolling down the street where Boatman’s uncle had his hardware shop. Ted, the Service’s electronic wizard, had abandoned his favourite working clothes (biker boots and leather jacket), had removed his gold earring, and had tied back his long black dyed hair in a pony tail. He was dressed now, as was Sammy, in unremarkable shirt and jeans. Carrying their leather bags in their hands, they might have been tradesmen of any kind.
They stopped outside a café and seemed to be discussing whether they should go in. It was a café run by a Muslim family, which during the day was frequented by all and sundry from the flats, shops and offices along the street. In the evening, though, when the offices were closed, rather like Tahira’s shop its customers were mainly Asian youths.
Ted and Sammy went in and sat down at a table by the window, putting their bags on the floor beside them. They ordered coffee, which they drank slowly. By the time they paid the bill and left the café, any conversation that took place at that particular table could have been heard in the Odeon cinema some distance away, which now served as MI5’s Birmingham office. But until it got to 6 p.m. no one was listening.
The familiar voice shattered the silence like an explosion. In the back of the van, freshly resprayed and with new number plates, Dave Armstrong almost jumped out of his plastic chair.
‘So how are you, brother?’ Boatman’s words boomed over the speaker in the van. Dave watched Sammy turn down the volume on the amplifier control. Next to Dave, perched on the edge of another plastic chair, sat Kanaan Shah, looking excited.
‘I’m well,’ said another voice. This must be Malik, Boatman’s friend from the mosque. Boatman had arranged to meet him at the café after work. Under direction from Shah, Boatman had arrived at the café early, when it was still quiet, and had sat down at the table in the window. He probably thought it had been chosen because it was visible from the street. He didn’t know that their conversation was being overheard.
The van was parked in a cul-de-sac less than five hundred yards from the café. In addition, one pair of A4 officers sat in a parked car a short distance from the café; another pair, an Asian couple, were in the café itself, sitting at a table near Boatman and Malik. Dave had an uneasy feeling about Malik, particularly since he’d heard that it was he and a pal who’d attacked Liz. He didn’t think it was likely that there would be any trouble that evening, but he had laid plans to create a diversion, just in case.
‘And how is my married friend?’
It took Dave a moment to realise that Malik was referring to Boatman himself.
Boatman said, ‘It’s going very well.’ He hesitated. ‘She is being very devout.’
‘Ha,’ said Malik with a throaty laugh. His voice was deep, with a Birmingham accent. ‘That’s not how a new wife’s meant to behave – with her mind always on Allah and never on you. She’s a very pretty girl, Salim. I hope you are making the most of it.’
Boatman didn’t respond. Knowing him, Dave thought he was probably uncomfortable with the sexual overtones of Malik’s banter. But Malik didn’t seem to notice as he shifted the conversation on to football. He was a keen Aston Villa fan and spent several minutes discussing their manager and whether he would survive another season, and bemoaning the unwillingness of the owner to invest on the same scale as the moguls of the Premier League. There was an Asian boy in the youth team, but Malik didn’t rate his chances of graduating to the first eleven. ‘Too slow,’ he said dismissively.
‘You’ll miss the football, won’t you?’ said Boatman.
‘Yeah,’ said Malik casually, and Dave could visualise his shrug.
Then Boatman asked, ‘Are you ready for your trip?’
Beside him, Dave saw Kanaan nod intently, happy the conversation was getting down to business. Too soon, thought Dave, worried that the sudden shift of subject was too clumsy. Boatman had no subtlety and that put him at risk.
A waiter must have arrived at the table, for Malik said, ‘Orange squash,’ and Boatman asked for apple juice. There was a pause, then Boatman asked, ‘How soon will it be then?’
Dave waited tensely for the reply; a date would help Pakistani liaison keep tabs on the group from the mosque when it arrived. But Malik only said vaguely, ‘It won’t be long now.’
Next to Dave, Kanaan sighed with disappointment. Then Boatman pressed on. ‘Will you go before the football starts?’
Dave gritted his teeth.
‘I’ll go when they tell me to.’ Malik’s voice had lost some of its nonchalance. Leave it now, thought Dave, frustrated that he couldn’t warn Boatman off.
‘Of course, but do you know where you’re going?’
Silence, an ominous sign. Finally Malik said, ‘Salim, you know where I am going, so why do you ask?’
Fortunately Boatman didn’t hesitate. ‘I suppose it’s because I’m jealous that you’re going now, and I’m not.’
‘You will have your own chance in time. Remember – this is not about either of us, OK? We are nothing. This is just our temporary life, after all. If you were never to see me again in this world, it wouldn’t matter. Never forget that. Nothing else matters – not your friends, not your family. Not even your new bride.’
‘You said you were briefed in London?’
‘I was. It was very strange. To have a Westerner teaching you how to conduct jihad – it’s like having a Jew telling you how to attack Israel.’
‘Was the Westerner a Muslim?’
‘Of course. Our faith is spreading around the world, you know. For you and me it is natural to think all white people are Infidels, but more and more of them are seeing the true path to Allah. They have the advantage of access to places and people you and I could not approach without people becoming suspicious.’
‘That won’t help you in Pakistan,’ said Boatman.
Go easy, thought Dave.
But Malik replied conversationally, ‘No, it won’t. But from what we have been told, we won’t be in Pakistan that long.’
‘Really? Will you be back here for the New Year?’
‘Who said I will be back?’ There was a long pause before Malik continued, ‘Our enemies are everywhere. They offer targets everywhere. Just look at what is going on.’
‘Where?’
Malik sighed impatiently. ‘Must I spell everything out for you, my friend? The broth
ers have dispersed across the world. The Middle East, North Africa – these are areas where we can regroup while the Americans and the British remain fixated on Afghanistan. Eventually we will be acting at will in places where the Infidels still think they’re safe.’
‘You’d think they would have learned that when the Twin Towers came down.’
‘They’ve learned nothing. The Towers will prove to be just the tip of the iceberg.’
‘So would you be sent to America?’
Malik laughed. ‘Not likely! I would stick out there like a sore thumb. There are plenty of more suitable volunteers – most of them white.’
‘Then where will you go to after Pakistan?’
Dave groaned. Boatman was starting to sound like an interrogator. And sure enough, Malik seemed to sense this too, for he said sharply, ‘Why are you asking me so many questions, Salim? You know it is forbidden to discuss orders from our leaders.’
‘I’m sorry; it’s just that we are friends, and I am concerned about you.’
There was the sound of a glass being put down sharply on a table top. ‘I’d like to think that’s why you are grilling me. I would hate to think there could be any other explanation. Anyway, I have to go.’
‘Will I see you before you depart? It would mean a lot to me.’
Malik said icily, ‘The cause is what matters, Salim. I have said that already. May we meet when Allah intends. Goodbye.’
The noise of a chair scraping back over the floor came through the amplifier, then there was silence. The technician looked at Dave, who nodded, and the man reached over and switched off the speaker.
Rip Tide Page 15
