Pablo Ortega burst into the room, followed by a team of heavies. He introduced himself with his usual impeccable Latin courtesy.
“Well, gentlemen, I hope you find your accommodations adequate?”
The three Irishmen nodded their approval.
“And the young ladies served you well I hope?”
The Irishmen enthusiastically agreed they were first class.
“And now gentlemen, it’s time to show your appreciation.” Ortega looked at each of his guests in turn. “Where is Declan O’Brien?”
The three Irishmen looked at one another and shrugged, then back to Pablo.
“Sorry. We don’t know.”
“Come, gentlemen, surely you must know? He was with you in San Vicente was he not?”
“Yes, sir,” said McGuire. “But he left ahead of us. Tirofijo sent him out by jeep. We didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. He may have gone back to the States. We’re not sure. Honest. We’d tell you if we could.”
Ortega stood up and surveyed the trio. “Este!” He pointed at Kelly, the youngest of the group. Two of the heavies grabbed Kelly by the arms and tied his wrists behind his back with leather thongs, then his ankles. It was done in seconds. McGuire and O’Rourke rushed forward to protect him. Each received a sharp baton blow to the head. Then they too were tied and pushed back onto the sofa where two of the gorillas held knives to their throats. At a signal from Ortega a rod was thrust between Kelly’s tethered arms. Two of the heavies stood on either side of the Irishman and lifted the baton so Kelly dangled in the air, his feet clear of the ground. He was petrified, but made no sound. His body tilted forward at an angle, his shoulders level with Ortega’s head.
“Where is Declan O’Brien?” It sounded like a casual enquiry.
“I don’t know.”
Kelly’s voice was half an octave higher than usual. His face was pale. He felt an urgent need to pee.
“Cuchillo!” Ortega held out his right hand, eyes fixed on Kelly. One of the heavies placed a stiletto in Ortega’s outstretched palm. Ortega flicked open the blade and made a small incision at the base of Kelly’s throat. A small amount of blood tricked down the Irishman’s chest.
“Donde está Declan O’Brien?” Ortega repeated the question.
Kelly was too terrified to answer. With an expert flick of his wrist Ortega slit the Irishman’s throat from the base right up under the chin. There was surprisingly little blood. Kelly emptied his bowels.
“We don’t fuckin’ know,” McGuire yelled from the sofa.
Ortega didn’t turn but motioned to the heavies who held Kelly aloft.
“La cabeza!”
Each of them grabbed Kelly by the hair and held his head rigidly in place.
“Where is Declan O’Brien?”
There was no reply. McGuire and O’Rourke were too horrified to speak. Ortega inserted the blade in the open wound and expertly detached Kelly’s tongue from its roots. Then he wrapped his fist around the severed organ and wrenched it out through the gap. Kelly passed out.
“Toalla!”
One of the heavies produced a cloth for Ortega to wipe his hands. Then at a signal from Pablo they hoisted Kelly above their heads, strapped the baton to the curtain rail and left him dangling there for the others to contemplate. He looked ridiculous. Bright bubbles issued from the bloody wound and made a merry gurgling sound. Blood, shit and urine mingled on the floor.
McGuire and O’Rourke sat weeping on the sofa, too terrified to move. “We don’t fuckin’ know,” they murmured. “Honest. We don’t fuckin’ know.”
Ortega glanced at the seated pair. “No saben.” He shook his head. “Talvez no saben.”
He knew he was wasting his time. The best he could do was alert his people in the States, distribute O’Brien’s mug shot and description, offer a reward of two or three million dollars.
***
22
It was 4 a.m. London time when Merlyn Stanbridge got news of the heist. There was no indication of who had pulled it off. No one claimed responsibility. She was pretty sure the FARC was not involved. Bogotá was too far north of the safe-haven, beyond helicopter range, and an operation like this was way out of the IRA’s league. That left the Americans. The CIA had the equipment, the manpower and the motivation. But if Washington were involved Merlyn Stanbridge would have been informed by now. She just didn’t see who it could be. She called Bill Bradshaw at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
“Ortega?” Merlyn Stanbridge was stunned. “Why Ortega?”
“Has to be,” Bradshaw’s tone was casual.
“What’s in it for him?”
“It’s a power play. He wants back into the action. Can’t say I blame him. It is his country after all.”
“Can you get them back?”
“We plan to, but as yet we don’t know how. We can’t just blast our way into Ortega’s stronghold and pull the bastards out. The compound is far too well protected. Pablo has an army down there. But those three Irish bastards represent a serious threat to the United States. We need to know what the fuck is going on between them and the narco-terrorists. Problem is, we don’t have any channels open to Ortega. Be easier to speak to the Pope. How about you guys?”
“I’ve never had any dealings with Ortega. Never reached that high. Sorry, Bill, I don’t see any way we can help. But if something comes along I’ll be sure to let you know. Just don’t hold your breath.”
“We sure would appreciate it. Right now we have our hands full with Saddam.”
“Are you going ahead with the pre-emptive strike?”
Merlyn Stanbridge was stretching things a little but the line was certainly secure.
“Depends on who you talk to,” Bradshaw chuckled. “The Pentagon says yes. The State Department says no. Same ole samo.”
“Did you find any WMDs?”
“No. We’re still looking but I’m not hopeful. I’m pretty sure Saddam got rid of them last time, like he says. We sure as hell can’t find any. How about you guys?”
“We’re under a lot of pressure but our intelligence is patchy. I think we may have to fake it.”
“You too?”
“Bill? What do you mean, me too? You’re kidding, right?”
“Sure. Of course I’m kidding. By the way, I never thanked you for that stuff on the Yellowcake deal. Appreciate it. You may have saved my butt.”
“My pleasure, Bill. But I thought you milked it for more than it was worth. Did you really have to let the President include it in his speech?”
“He couldn’t resist it. But the Prime Minister wasn’t exactly coy about it either. And by the way, did he really have to use that forty-five minute crap?”
“It’s very thin I know, Bill, but we’re only talking about battlefield munitions, not strategic weapons.”
“I read the transcripts. It didn’t sound to me like your Prime Minister appreciates the difference.”
“That’s because he didn’t ask.”
“Jesus Christ, Merlyn, he’s a politician, don’t wait for him to ask, explain it to him. You can’t let him take a country to war without understanding what his infantry is up against. But you must have known it was all a load of garbage at the time. At least the yellowcake transaction is supported by hardcopy documentation.”
“It’s the pressure we’re under, Bill. There are people in the PM’s office who don’t just want to tell us what to say, they want to tell us how to say it. So we have to grab whatever comes our way. What about you? You have any doubts about the Yellowcake deal? You do know where the intelligence came from in the first place?”
“The Italians? That bothers me a lot too Merlyn, but you checked it out thoroughly when you got it, right?”
“As much as we were able. But we’re under a tremendous strain here to produce the goods and there’s very little hard intelligence around. We don’t have reliable human resources on the ground, the way we used to in the Cold War, and we don’t have the technical resources
you do. So we just have to use whatever dross comes to hand. You know how many actual spies we have on the ground in Baghdad? Five, and two of them are unreliable.”
***
23
The Secretary of Defence was in his office when news of the Bogotá breakout flashed across his TV screen. It astonished him. He’d never even heard of the Irishmen, had no idea the IRA was active in Colombia. That faggot Bradshaw had kept him out of the loop. Herzfeld briefly pondered any possible connection between the narco-terrorists and his more pressing problems in the lead-up to the war, some angle, some way they might be used. He saw none. But Karl Herzfeld was bordering on frantic. Just a couple of weeks after the President’s dramatic revelations in his State of the Union address, the story of Iraq’s attempted acquisition of uranium oxide from Niger was beginning rapidly to fall apart.
The TV in Herzfeld’s office was tuned permanently to CNN. Live on television the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency was telling a bewildered meeting of the UN Security Council the documents surrounding the attempted purchase of Yellowcake from Niger were all fakes.
"The IAEA has concluded,” the official was saying, “with the concurrence of independent experts, that these documents are not authentic. In fact, these documents are so poor I cannot imagine they were ever scrutinised by any serious intelligence agency. Furthermore it saddens me, given the low quality of the documentation, that this story was not suppressed. And in view of the level this so called intelligence reached, I would have expected a much more stringent verification of the so-called facts."
Herzfeld picked up the phone and summoned Colonel Preston to his office.
“What the fuck is going on, Arthur?” He pointed to the TV screen.
“The IAEA headquarters in Vienna got hold of all the supporting documentation. It took them less than a couple of hours to work out the original paperwork was forged. Whoever cobbled this together did a very sloppy job. That letter signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Niger? He’d been out of office for several years. And those documents that supposedly came from the President of Niger’s office? The signature on that was a blatant fake. Looks like somebody got hold of some old letterhead and did a crude cut and paste job. But the worst thing is, the quantity of Yellowcake involved was simply out of sight. Niger's uranium production comes from just two mines. Their entire output is pre-sold under contract to generating companies in France, Spain and Japan. Five hundred tons couldn’t just have been siphoned off without anybody noticing it was missing. So the deal was never remotely possible. Fact is, the President’s so-called revelations were a total load of garbage. The CIA just got the whole thing wrong.”
“I guess we knew that, Arthur.” A grimace broke across Herzfeld’s face.
“Yes, sir, I guess we did.”
“That’s what you get for relying on the Brits.”
Herzfeld dialled Bill Bradshaw at CIA Headquarters. But the Director of Central Intelligence was not taking any calls; they were being diverted to his home in Fairfax County.
“Arthur, do you have Bill Bradshaw’s home address? I think you should go pay him a visit.”
***
Colonel Preston collected his two-tone Caddy from the underground executive parking lot, checked the unlisted Schofield .45 he kept in the glove compartment and drove through Arlington, past the National Cemetery and out on Highway 50 to the tree-lined suburb of Oakton. He parked off Old Lee Highway and walked the last few hundred yards through the driving blizzard to the fake colonial mansion on Saint Andrews Drive. A beat-up Secret Service Chevy was parked across the street with its engine running, the windscreen wipers fighting a losing battle with the snow. There’d be two more suits inside the house. Preston paused at the foot of the drive, smiled at the sign that read, “beware of the dog” and made his way round to the rear of the house that backed onto the golf course of the Army and Navy Country Club. But immediately he stepped through the open doorway of the triple garage he knew he was too late.
***
On the other side of the Potomac President Santos was glued to CNN. He was apoplectic. He found it hard to follow what was being said…forged signatures? …textual errors so glaring?…fabricated letterhead?…the Foreign Minister no longer in office?…documents not authentic?…this story should have been suppressed?…what the fuck is going on?…is everybody crazy?
The anchor-man attempted to illicit a response from the CIA and the Department of Defence but no spokesmen were available to dispute the startling disclosures of the IAEA official. The whole machinery of government had run for cover.
CNN scoured the world for a reaction to the news. London reported two members of the UK cabinet had threatened to resign, citing their discontent at the unreasoning rush to war. In Paris and Berlin the forgeries were greeted with derision and outright condemnation of the incompetence of the American and British intelligence services. But CNN reported scant public interest on the streets of Washington or London where the headlong preparations for the impending conflict remained the lead story. In neither capital was there any sustained probing into how both Governments could have endorsed such transparent falsehoods. No one queried how such dross had penetrated the topmost layers of the American and British administrations. No one asked how it got into the President's State of the Union address delivered before Congress and the British government’s intelligence dossier presented to Parliament. But unanswered questions remained. Was any potential threat posed by Iraq more important than the integrity of either government? Were both Administrations lying to themselves and one another? Above all, had each deliberately deceived their own electorates?
The CNN report concluded with footage of men and material pouring into the Emirates of the Persian Gulf. An entire army was on the move. Special Operations forces had already taken up advanced positions well inside Iraq. The momentum towards war was becoming irresistible. Mid-day temperatures in Basra had soared above 1100.
President Santos picked up the secure satcom phone that linked direct to the PM’s desk at 10 Downing Street.
“Prime Minister? Please tell me you didn’t know this whole thing was a total load of garbage.”
The Prime Minister’s phrasing was staccato.
“Mike...believe me...we weren’t just relying on the Italians...we have our own intelligence on this... from an independent source.”
“What intelligence? What source?”
“Sorry, Mike,” The PM’s tone grew firm. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“Why the hell not?”
The PM paused. “It’s classified.”
“Then fuck you, Prime Minister.”
President Santos picked up another phone and dialled Bill Bradshaw at his Virginia home. I’ll fire the fucking bastard! The phone rang for ages before a maid answered. She went to look for her employer but couldn’t find him anywhere. The President insisted she try again. She searched the house from top to bottom then went to look for him in the garage. She found William Bradshaw hanging from the rafters. He hadn’t even left a note.
***
24
When Frank Willowby discovered Ben Ambrose had vanished, he panicked. Ambrose was probably at DEA headquarter right now relating his incredible story; the DEA’s top man in Europe was working for Pablo Ortega. So Willowby phoned a couple of his associates in Washington DC and had a perfectly normal conversation with each of them. They’d never even heard of Agent Ambrose. Next he called his secretary at the London Embassy to check for messages. Nothing. She mentioned a couple of unimportant items and asked when she should expect him back at the office.
“I’ll be there in a couple of days. I still have a couple of things to straighten out with Ambrose.”
He thought the mention of the name might trigger a response, but it didn’t. And yet Ben Ambrose was out there somewhere, armed with this astounding piece of intelligence.
Willowby checked out of the Palais Jamaî, paid Ambrose’s account
and his own, sped back to Tangier and boarded the first available London flight. By mid-afternoon he was back at his apartment off Cadogan Square. He called directory enquiry and got the number for the Echo. Minutes later he had Melanie Drake’s secretary on the line.
“Sorry to bother you. This is Interflora. We need to deliver some flowers to Miss Drake. Trouble is, we don’t have her home address. I’m afraid my young assistant...”
“Miss Drake is out of town for the weekend. She won’t be back till Monday.”
“That’s a great pity,” Willowby sounded disappointed. “Mr Bowman was very insistent we send them right away." It was a shot in the dark, but it worked.
“Alex Bowman? I see. That makes a difference. Just a second, I’ll get the address of the cottage.”
Late the following afternoon Frank Willowby walked into a flower shop in Guildford High Street.
“Hi,” he smiled at the pretty young assistant. “I need some flowers delivered to an address just outside Petworth.”
“No problem, sir. What flowers would you like?”
Willowby looked around at the confusing profusion of blooms.
“You choose. Something not too expensive.”
The assistant busied herself making up a bouquet.
“And when would you like these sent, sir?”
“Do you mind if I deliver them myself? It’s sort of a surprise. I’ve come all the way from the States...”
“I don’t know...delivery is included in the price.”
“Here.” Willowby produced two brand new £50 notes. “Does that solve the problem?” The assistant blushed. “And I’ll need to borrow your van. Won’t be for long. I’ll be back in less than an hour. Deal?”
“Deal.”
The assistant smiled, pocketing the fifties and handing Willowby the bouquet and the keys to the van.
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