The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  He switched on Sky News, just to make sure the world hadn’t come to an end while he’d been chasing phantoms in Suffolk. A tedious piece about some spat in the House of Commons was followed by a report on Kosovo. He sat down to watch. The newscaster revealed new UN figures estimating that 300,000 Kosovars had been driven from their homes by the Serbs’ summer offensive and had taken refuge in the mountains. The video showed wide-eyed children and weeping grannies. He pitied them. There’d be no quick solution to their problems.

  The report turned its focus to one ethnic Albanian family that had decided to seek a better life outside their homeland. Sky would be following their progress, the reporter declared, as they searched for asylum in western Europe. Sam winced. Good TV, pulling at the heartstrings, but he hated the kind of journalism that flipped the minds of politicians, driving them to react with emotion rather than sense.

  The phone rang, startling him. He looked at his watch. It was well after midnight. He wasn’t used to calls this late, not since the days of Chrissie, when she would ring in the middle of the night to say she’d escaped from her husband again and wanted to share his bed for a couple of hours. He switched off the TV and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry about the late hour.’ Sam recognised the Ulster growl of his controller. ‘But I understand from our mutual friend that you’ve only just got back.’ The diligent Denise Corby had reported in already.

  ‘What’s up?’ He could tell from the background noise that Waddell was in his car.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘No. Right now. You know where.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ They had a rota of locations for short-notice meetings. ‘You sure it can’t wait?’ Stupid question.

  ‘Absolutely. See you there in five.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Sam crossed the wood-block floor to the window again, wondering. He guessed that some new mission must have come up. A flight back to Africa first thing in the morning, with Jackman’s red mercury being left to the Vauxhall Cross pen-pushers to follow up – if they bothered.

  Outside, the night sky was clear. A half-moon cast a silvery reflection on the water. The aircraft which at peak times filed past every ninety seconds on their way into Heathrow had stopped for a few hours to let those on the flight path sleep. Sam finished his whisky and patted his trouser pocket for his keys. He switched on the TV again, pushing the button for channel O, the security camera concealed outside his front door. It showed the landing to be empty.

  He took the lift to the underground garage, and unlocked his Mondeo estate. His inclination was for older, more characterful machines, but the 1984 Mercedes which he’d owned for many years had had to be sold, along with his share in a 31-foot Moody sloop and several other trappings of his former life. All in the interests of preventing the Odessa mafiya picking up his trail.

  At the garage exit gate he swiped a security card and the pole lifted. The Kew Gardens car park which was this week’s meeting place was a couple of minutes away, just the other side of the river. The traffic over Kew Bridge was light but fast moving. He stuck himself in the right-hand lane with his indicator going, praying that the nocturnal boy racers who touched sixty over the bridge would spot him in time before running into his boot. If the cops breathalysed him it would be he who got the blame.

  He turned onto Kew Green past the beautifully preserved Georgian houses, then hooked right into the lane running parallel to the river which ended in a large parking area for visitors to the Gardens. Packed during the day in the summer, there were just two cars there now. Lovers or dog-walkers, he decided. He drove to the far end, turned the headlamps towards the river and switched off.

  In less than a minute another car swept in, its lights blazing in the Mondeo’s mirrors as it pulled up behind. It was a warm night. When Waddell slid silently onto the passenger seat of the Mondeo, he was dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Sam stared in bemusement. He’d seldom seen his controller without a tie.

  ‘What’s this? Come here to cruise?’

  ‘Fuck off. I was at a barbecue at my sister’s place.’

  ‘Nice for you.’

  ‘Would have been if I hadn’t been hit by a call from Washington just as I was leaving the office.’

  ‘Red mercury?’

  ‘No way,’ he scoffed. ‘No. A different matter altogether.’

  Sam waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

  ‘You’re going to tell me?’

  Slowly Waddell turned sideways in the seat, his head backed against the window. ‘You’re not going to like this, Sam. It’s to do with your father.’

  ‘My father? But he died when I was eleven. Brain tumour.’

  ‘I know. Trevor Patrick Packer,’ Waddell intoned. ‘1931–1971. At the time of his death he was a chief petty officer in the Royal Navy submarine service. On HMS Retribution.’

  ‘A Polaris missile boat,’ Sam interjected, baffled as to what this was about.

  ‘The starboard crew, whatever that means.’

  ‘They had two crews on the bombers,’ Sam explained uneasily. ‘Took it in turns to man the boat. That way they could maximise the time the hardware was at sea. So what?’

  Waddell paused momentarily.

  ‘The Americans think your old man passed secrets to the Russians.’

  Sam gaped into the gloom, thinking he must have misheard.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  For a moment he suspected Waddell was laughing at him. That this was some sort of practical joke.

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘The Yanks are.’

  ‘Then they need their brains examined. Where’s this crap come from?’

  ‘From the Russians, Sam,’ Waddell told him. ‘Or rather from one particular ex-GRU officer who’s just been given an American passport. The quid pro quo was a file full of intelligence on what the Sovs knew about British and American naval operations in the seventies and eighties. I tell you, over in the States they’re having heart failure. Two retired US admirals were arrested yesterday.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Sam felt poleaxed. ‘But this is crap, Duncan. Utter crap. My old man was as proud as punch of the submarines he served on. He would never have betrayed his country, or his mates.’

  Waddell didn’t comment. They both knew that when it came to spying, appearances and reality could be very different.

  ‘What does Five say about this?’ Sam demanded.

  ‘Too early. They’ve only just been briefed,’ Waddell told him. ‘What do you say, more’s the point?’

  ‘I’ve told you. It’s rubbish.’

  ‘Did you ever wonder about him?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I was a kid. What eleven-year-old suspects his father of spying?’

  ‘You don’t remember odd visitors at home? Men with funny accents coming round for tea and walking away with brown envelopes?’

  ‘Do me a favour, Duncan. This is a joke. Isn’t it?’

  ‘The funny accents, yes. But for the rest, it’s deadly serious. We need to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘You’re talking twenty-seven years ago,’ Sam protested. ‘Were there any suspicions at the time?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’

  ‘Och, all that does is suggest the buggers got away with it.’

  ‘Or that it never bloody happened.’

  ‘The Russians had your dad’s name on file, Sam. You think they plucked it out of thin air?’

  Sam turned to stare through the windscreen. The moon was to their left, its soft light picking out a shape moving along the towpath, a couple, clinging so closely together that they made a single outline.

  ‘So what’s being done about this nonsense?’ Sam blustered.

  ‘The Security Service are going to start trawling tomorrow. Tracking down people who worked alongside your father.’

  ‘Fucking madness,’ Sam hiss
ed.

  ‘Whatever . . . It needs clearing up.’ Waddell tapped a hand on the dashboard. ‘For the Service’s sake.’

  Sam sensed some threatening edge to Waddell’s voice. ‘What are you talking about, Duncan?’

  ‘You’re his son. And the firm employs you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It makes certain people in the firm’s upper layers a little uncomfortable, that’s all.’

  ‘Because some nutcase has accused my father of being a traitor? For Christ’s sake, that doesn’t make me one.’

  Waddell shifted in his seat.

  ‘On the top floor they think in headlines, Sam. Negative stories that could hit the newspapers. If it leaked out about your father, and the press started asking what his son does for a living . . .’

  ‘Why should it leak out?’

  ‘Our American cousins. Anything to distract attention from the scandal within their own Navy.’ He tapped his fingers together. ‘Any of your family know how you earn your crust?’

  ‘My sister has some idea,’ Sam croaked. ‘Nothing specific.’

  ‘Well stick some tape across her mouth and take her phone away . . .’

  ‘You’re getting hysterical, Duncan.’

  ‘No I’m not. This could go horribly wrong. And it could happen fast. I want you to sniff around. Go back to the time when you were ten or eleven and see what you can find there. With a bit of luck we can strangle the whole thing at birth. Your mother, she’s still alive?’

  ‘Died five years ago. There’s nothing left of that time, Duncan,’ Sam sighed, ‘except what’s in my head.’

  ‘Nevertheless, go and look. See your sister and shut her up. Make some excuse to contact your parents’ old friends. Give me a ring in a couple of days to let me know how you’re getting on.’

  ‘And Harry Jackman’s so-called red mercury?’

  ‘It’s going nowhere. The man lived a fantasy life half the time. If anything does come up, Denise can sort it.’ He reached for the door release. ‘I’m going home now. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Back to the barbecue?’

  ‘Oh sure. Ashes to ashes.’ Waddell fumbled for the handle, conscious of a bad choice of words. ‘Don’t take it hard about your father. Life’s full of surprises and they can’t all be nice ones.’ He got out. ‘Ring me,’ he said before clicking the door shut.

  Sam heard Waddell’s car start up. The headlamps dazzled again and then swung away. For several minutes he stayed where he was, sinking lower into the seat.

  It wasn’t true. It simply couldn’t be. His father was no traitor. And if the firm was hoping to avoid trouble, they were looking the wrong bloody way. Harry Jackman was the man to watch out for, the one who’d bring sleepless nights to the top floor of Vauxhall Cross.

  5

  London

  Saturday, 08.10 hrs

  ON THE OTHER side of the capital from where Sam Packer had his flat, stood a cluster of 1960s apartment blocks whose occupants were on far more modest incomes than those with a view over the river at Kew.

  On the twelfth floor of one of them, a tower that had never lived up to its name of Windsor Court, a computer screen flickered in the corner of the small, plain living room. The man hunched in front of it checking his e-mail had short hair and a face dominated by a broad, putty-soft nose. He shot a nervous glance at the time icon, needing to be out of the flat before his girlfriend returned from her hospital night shift. Fifteen minutes to go. The last of his four anonymous mailboxes reported empty. There was no message from ‘Peter’ calling off the job. Half of him had been hoping for one.

  Rob Petrie logged off, shut down the PC and stood up. He had a broad chest and narrow hips, which gave him a top-heavy look. Normally a neat dresser obsessed with looking clean and spruce, today he wore old jeans and a T-shirt bought at a charity shop to help him pass unnoticed in a crowd. He was tense. Very tense. A tension that bordered on fear.

  He knew he had to eat something if his brain was to keep alert. At the breakfast bar in the tiny kitchen he filled a bowl with cornflakes, but halfway through eating he gave up. Butterflies. He checked his watch. 8.15. Sandra would appear at half-past on the dot, her blue uniform crumpled and stained, smelling of the geriatrics she spent her nights watching over. He’d told her it would be kinder to gas the old crapbags. Five minutes and he needed to be out of here. She might be early, although she never was.

  He shoved the bowl under the tap and left it to drain, then banged open the door to the toilet – his second session of the morning. Nerves.

  At twenty-two minutes past he was out of the front door and onto the open landing. As he walked along it, he glanced down at the grass and concrete a hundred feet below where children would be playing before long. For most people in the block, Saturday morning meant a lie-in, so when he reached the end of the passageway the lift came quickly and was empty.

  Eighty households in Windsor Court, all nursing secrets behind their draughty aluminium-framed windows. Some with children, some just couples, few of them married. It wasn’t a place Petrie would have chosen to live, but the loss of his job in the City eighteen months ago had left him no choice. Sandra was the breadwinner now. £16,000 a year, she earned, a tenth of what he’d made before the Jews he’d worked for had booted him out. She claimed not to mind being the provider, saying they’d managed to stick together in the good times, so they could do it in the bad. But he had a problem with it. Failure to find another City job had wrecked his confidence – in all aspects of his life. Sandra was suggesting Viagra.

  Amongst the occupants of the block were a few Afro-Caribbean families and a handful of Asians, but most of the residents were white. He stepped from the lift and walked briskly across the open yard. Few people about, which was a relief. On the far side was a row of lockups where he kept his car, a twelve-year-old Escort. The garage door swung up on its weights. He checked that the Tesco bag was still on the back seat, together with the baseball cap and dark glasses. He’d prepared the gear last night after Sandra had gone to work.

  He started up and drove into the daylight, then got out and closed the door, telling himself that if he left the garage open some nigger would come and piss in it. He headed west, keeping carefully to the speed limits. The last thing he needed today was for a dutiful plod to feed his number into the Police National Computer. His path cut across London – Angel, Euston, Baker Street, then out past Hangar Lane onto the A4. At the Polish War Memorial by Northolt airport he turned left, cutting through into the heart of Southall.

  His skin began to prickle. Every face here was Asian. Men with turbans, women swirling in synthetic silks. He could smell the curry spices through the car’s ventilation system. Another country in everything but name, a part of England which the criminals in government had allowed to turn foreign. It angered him, seeing the state of the place, which did him good, giving him the bottle for what he had to do next.

  He drove the Escort into a parking area behind the High Street, tugged the baseball cap down on his head and jammed the dark glasses onto his face. On this day in history, his leader had told him in the e-mail he’d received a week ago, all across Europe, people would be standing up for their heritage. This was the day when the fight back started, the moment when the streets would begin to be reclaimed by those they belonged to.

  He got out, locked the doors, then, with the Tesco bag dangling from his right fist, he set off towards the street market.

  Brentford

  09.25 hrs

  It had been another bad night for Sam Packer. Instead of sleeping, his restless mind had relived the day twenty-seven years ago when his father died. It had been early July 1971. Looking forward to the summer holidays, he’d come home from school to find his dad on the living room floor, grey and gaunt, mouth agape, eyes glassy and still. Then the district nurse had appeared. Fat, professional fingers closing the lids on the face that looked so different from the chirpy grinner in the black-and-white wedding snap that was framed
in silver and anchored to the tiled mantelpiece in their Fareham living room. A uniformed sailor with his self-conscious bride.

  Sam had managed to switch off those memories eventually and had dozed a little in the early hours, a light sleep quickly broken by an early Jumbo at 4.35. He’d got up soon after seven, pummelled his brain under the power jets in the gold-tapped shower cubicle, dressed in pale cotton trousers and a polo shirt, then breakfasted on fruit and scrambled eggs at the smoked-glass table in the marble-floored living room. The glitz of the place – he hated it. It wasn’t his style.

  When his father died he’d felt abandoned, left to the mercies of a bitter mother and an elder sister who despised boys – a sister whose attitude to him had changed little over the years and whom he now had to visit. He’d rung her a few minutes ago to say he was going to be in the area and might drop in. Dead casual. No hint of why, on the basis that an enemy unprepared was easier to overcome.

  He packed an overnight bag, because he wasn’t sure where this delving into the past would lead him, and was on the point of setting off for Hampshire when the phone rang.

  ‘’Lo?’ he grunted.

  ‘Oh good. You’re back.’ A woman’s voice, strong and jolly, which he recognised immediately.

  ‘Steph! How are you doing?’

  Stephanie Watson. A detective chief inspector with Special Branch, a woman who’d become as close to him as any female could expect to get, short of getting physically intimate.

  ‘I’m doing well, thanks,’ she told him cheerily. ‘Ringing to ask if you fancied a game of tennis? Gerry’s away for a few days and I’m feeling frisky.’ Gerry was the new man she’d hitched up with a couple of months ago.