by Chris Ryan
Gardner kept on drinking.
By the time he cracked open his eleventh 500ml can of imported Czech piss it was gone ten o’clock and he was the last fucker left in the park. He tipped more lager down his throat. Then he wondered again about Danny the PA. No, hiring a bloke as a secretary wasn’t like the Jock bastard at all.
Gardner downed his twelfth beer and was surprised when he reached down to the black plastic bag only to discover it was empty. The bag fluttered along with the breeze. Urban tumbleweed. The world had stopped being a grid of straight lines and distinct edges. Now things were blurred and vague and dreamy. Gardner checked his pockets for loose change. Seventy-three pence. Not enough even for one fucking can. He stood up, rearranged his balls and headed for Temple station. Caught sight of the clock in the station and realised he was too late to make the last train back to Hereford. But then, in the glow of the street lights, he spotted Bald striding confidently down Arundel Street from the direction of the Strand.
Gardner put his plans on ice.
six
2212 hours.
Bald wasn’t alone.
There was a woman on his arm, all high cheekbones and thin lips fish-hooked at either corner into a sly smile. Gardner guessed Eastern European. Her eyes were wide, round as marbles and lime green. She was wearing a short black skirt that showed off her catwalk legs and a white blouse that gave Gardner a sneak preview of her tits as the couple drew nearer. Large and probably fake, but who cared? She was the kind of package Gardner would peel off his eyelids to spend the night with. She reminded him of the painful fact that it’d been a year since he’d last had his end away.
She had her arm entwined around Bald’s. They were so absorbed in each other they were oblivious of Gardner. When they were just metres away, he retreated into the shadows of an anonymous office building at the bottom of Arundel Street. Bald and the woman carried on towards the Victoria Embankment.
A small voice in the back of Gardner’s head told him to follow.
Gardner counted to ten then stepped out onto Arundel Street. Bald and the woman were now approaching the Embankment, where traffic screamed by, red and white car lights zipping along like neon dragonflies. Gardner watched the couple stop on the corner. The woman stood on the tiptoes of her six-inch heels and whispered something into Bald’s ear. For a second Gardner thought he’d been rumbled. But then Bald traced a hand from the woman’s cheek all the way down to the subtle curve of her arse. With his other hand he hailed a black cab. Then Bald reached into his wallet and handed the woman a blue keycard of the kind you get in fancy hotels. The cab pulled over. Bald held open the rear door and Mrs Eastern Europe 2011 gave him a final kiss before climbing inside, and the cab catapulted off into the night traffic.
Alone now, Bald set off westwards along the Embankment, towards Waterloo Bridge. Gardner followed. He kept a safe distance of forty metres between himself and Bald. At his nine o’clock the Thames slithered like a lake of jellied eels.
The traffic thinned out the further along the Embankment Gardner went. After four hundred metres Bald passed Waterloo Bridge and Gardner wondered where his old mucker was going. Another three hundred metres and they were beyond Villiers Street. Now Bald scaled the steps leading up to the Embankment Bridge two at a time. He had a long stride and Gardner had to push himself to keep up. He couldn’t afford to slip any further behind. By the time he reached the footbridge he was sweating hard. The London Eye hung on the southern canvas of the Thames, skeletal and still. The walkway was deserted. Support pylons straddled the bridge at fifty-metre intervals, drawing up lengths of steel cable high above the walkway. He could hear the sludgy lapping of the river fifteen metres below.
Just you and John, that voice in Gardner’s head said.
Time to get revenge.
Gardner broke into a run. Twenty metres became ten and suddenly Gardner was drawing up behind Bald and fighting the urge to smack him in the back of his head.
‘Hey,’ Gardner said. ‘I want a fucking word with you.’
Bald stopped dead in his tracks. He did not turn around. As if he had known all this time that Gardner had been tailing him. Instead he dropped his head and his shoulders and said wearily, ‘What is it, Joe?’
‘That interview was a load of bollocks. You were never gonna give me the gig, and fuck you for making me come all the way up here for nothing.’
Now Bald turned around. He kept his hands casually tucked into his jean pockets. A rage Gardner had never known before surged in his bowels. He could feel it at the back of his throat. There was six metres between them. Then Bald took a few strides closer to Gardner.
‘You’re drunk, Joe. Go home.’
But Gardner stood his ground. ‘I’m as sober as I’ve ever been.’ He was surprised at how badly he was slurring his words.
‘Your mouth smells like a rat pissed in it.’
‘We were mates,’ Gardner said, shaking his head in the vain hope of clearing it. ‘You don’t treat a dog that way.’
Bald stepped up to Gardner’s face. Gardner could make out each individual scar on Bald’s face, the two men were so close.
‘Mates?’ Bald said disbelievingly. ‘We stopped being mates the day you left me for dead. Now be a good boy and fuck off back to Hereford.’
Gardner responded with a fist, launching a right-hand uppercut at Bald. But Bald reacted quickly. He thrust his left hand up and deflected the punch. Then he reached out with his right hand, trying to grab Gardner’s vulnerable prosthetic hand.
Gardner’s blood was up. Bald had his back against the railings and his fists level with his chest, expecting another punch. But Gardner knew the key to winning any fight was surprise. He launched his head forward, poised to give Bald a Glasgow Kiss.
But Bald was surprisingly agile. He quickly stepped to one side and left Gardner nutting thin air. And now Gardner was thrown off balance, momentum pushing him forward. Bald’s giant hands clamped around his neck and lifted him off his feet. Gardner was being dragged up and over the railings. Suddenly the ground below him disappeared. The world was spinning wildly out of control. He felt his heart pumping wildly, the wind rushing around him. Now his world was the Thames void. He tumbled into the slick blackness.
seven
2241 hours.
Bald peered over the frosty railings at the waters below. The night was surprisingly cold, after a mild day. The tip of each wave glimmered cold and white as a knife point. A pool of white foam marked the spot where Gardner’s body had broken the surface. For a brief moment Bald considered calling the emergency services. Then he reminded himself how Gardner had once left him for dead. No, he thought. Gardner drowning in the Thames just about evened things out.
‘Fuck you, you cunt,’ Bald said to the evaporating foam.
He moved on.
With the chunky blocks of the Southbank Centre silhouetted to his left, he descended from the bridge into Belvedere Road. He walked quickly south towards Waterloo Station, passing a gaggle of students jabbering away in some foreign language. By the time he scaled the Portland stone steps of the station’s Victory Arch, Joe Gardner was ancient fucking history and Bald was looking forward to nabbing a quick pint at the station boozer, then heading across to the Waterloo Novotel, where a Russian blonde called Lena would be waiting for him naked in bed. Christ, he was looking forward to smashing that arse.
‘Leaving so soon?’
The voice came from his four o’clock. Bald froze on the top step and slowly turned to face the guy. He was leaning against the high wall next to a bronze plaque that commemorated ‘The 626 men of the Southern Railway who gave their lives in the 1939–1945 War’. The man was sucking on a cigarette.
‘Cave,’ Bald said. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
The man tut-tutted, took another drag and flicked the butt down the steps. ‘Bad habit,’ he said. ‘Cut myself down to five a day but that’s as far as I can go. Too much stress. Nice to see you too, John. Though I’d prefer it i
f you just called me Danny. Cave sounds so fucking formal.’
How about I call you cunt instead? thought Bald.
Danny Cave inspected his manicured fingernails. In another life he would’ve been an estate agent peddling studios in Camden. ‘That was a nice touch at the interview – calling me your secretary,’ he said. ‘I think our friend Joe even believed you.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Bald wiped sweat from his bristled scalp. ‘I could hardly tell the lad some tosser from the Firm was sitting in on his interview. He would’ve clammed up faster than an arsehole in a prison riot.’
‘Good job I can take a joke better than my predecessor.’ Cave brushed imaginary lint from his jacket and went on. ‘The thing is this, John. I didn’t just come here to shoot the breeze with you.’
Bald didn’t look surprised, because he wasn’t. The Firm didn’t do idle chit-chat. Everything they said, everything they did, it was calculated and was only ever a half- or quarter-truth.
‘I wanted to talk to you about the job,’ Cave said.
‘I haven’t found the right man yet.’
‘Oh, but I have.’
Cave glided up the steps until he was alongside Bald. He put a bony hand on Bald’s shoulder and nodded towards the street below as a Lexus GS rolled into view. Bald admired the chrome bodywork and heavily tinted windows. Clearly the MoD cutbacks hadn’t extended to the company car scheme. Fucking typical, Bald thought. It was all right for squaddies to get lumbered with shit equipment but God forbid if anyone deprived the pen-pushers of their executive cars and expense accounts.
A driver stepped out and held open the rear passenger door.
‘Need a ride?’ Cave asked Bald.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Nonsense, man. Get in. We can have ourselves a little chat along the way.’
Bald sighed. Ever since he’d signed on the dotted line with Talisman International, Bald had kept Cave at arm’s length. But now the Firm had come knocking and if Cave wanted to talk, well, he would just have to fucking listen.
Bald shrugged off Cave’s hand. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
They walked down the steps and Bald folded himself into the back of the Lexus. It was a tight fit. Bald had packed on almost three stone in the last six months. Not so long ago he’d had a lithe thirty-inch waist, but the four inches he’d put on betrayed a life of lavish lunches. He felt slow and cumbersome.
They eased out of the station and headed south down Waterloo Road, then east towards the Elephant and Castle. Further and further away from his shag. Two tower blocks jutted out in the iron-grey skyline like a pair of giant fingers giving the rest of the world a big ‘fuck you’.
‘So tell me something,’ Bald said. ‘How did a common prick like you end up in the Firm?’
Cave rubbed his meticulous stubble and said, ‘What a drunk Scottish tool like you doesn’t understand is that people like me are the new flavour of the month in Whitehall. Those old farts with their posh accents and their fucking principles, the Leo Lands of this world – their time has gone. The world is changing, John. And so is the Firm.’
‘Nah, I don’t think you change. Bringing someone like you in is just window-dressing. Everything else stays the same.’
‘Look, let’s skip the bullshit,’ Cave said. His voice was matey wideboy rather than public school. ‘I want you in on this job.’
Bald laughed. ‘I already am.’
‘No, I mean I want you to do it personally.’
The words shot up Bald’s spine. In the months since his rehab, during all the tortuous phys and stretching exercises as he painstakingly coached his legs back into action, never once had it crossed his mind to go back into operations. Bald’s vision of his future included beer and golf in the Algarve and the occasional jet-ski ride.
‘I’m retired.’
Cave raised a hand to protest. ‘Think about it, John. You’re the perfect man for the job. You’ve done your years in the Regiment. You’ve got experience operating as the grey man. Christ, it makes perfect sense.’
‘Forget it,’ Bald replied. ‘Those days are behind me.’
Cave slipped into silence for a while. As they glided along the Old Kent Road, Bald saw garish supermarkets squeezed between black-eyed postwar terraces, gum-spattered pavements populated by Arab women in black and white burkhas, drunks shuffling along, holding up their piss-stained trousers. He remembered why he hated London and had resisted moving there despite the job with Talisman. He’d grown up in Dundee – Scumdee to the locals – but every weekend he’d escaped to the Cairngorms, where he learned to run and ski and row and fish. And there, in the unforgiving Scottish Highlands, John Bald had honed the skills he would one day need to become a Blade.
London could go fuck itself.
‘Shall I let you in on a little secret? There’s one or two things about this job that you don’t know,’ Cave said while staring out of the window. ‘Stuff that’s on a strictly need-to-know basis.’
That got Bald halfway curious. He’d been drip-fed intelligence on the operation, but as with everything else the Firm did, they told you only what you needed to know, or rather what they wanted you to know. Bald had been obliged to share that int with Gardner, because although he’d brought Joe down from Hereford to take the piss out of him, Cave hadn’t known that. He assumed Gardner was another candidate for the job, not some sad prick Bald wanted to get revenge on.
‘Such as?’ said Bald.
Cave crossed his legs. ‘What if I told you that the employer was a contractor that works at the cutting edge of the defence industry.’
‘I’d say that’s very fucking interesting. But so what?’
They had passed New Cross and started down the Lewisham Way, on the A20. Bald said, ‘Where the fuck are you taking me?’
Cave stared rigidly ahead and pretended not to have heard. ‘The company is Lance-Elsing. They work under the radar, developing the kind of new technologies that will blow that drunken little brain of yours.’
‘I don’t care if they make fucking Jaffa cakes,’ Bald said. ‘I’m not doing it.’
Cave stared grimly at him.
‘You forget who you’re talking to, John Boy. You’ll do whatever I say. I say, clap your hands, you’ll fucking clap. I tell you to jump, you’ll go running off the nearest cliff.’ He looked away again. ‘And if you don’t do the job, millions of people will suffer.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cave faced him again.
‘If the sleeper succeeds in their mission, in three days’ time they’ll reduce the West to rubble.’
eight
2359 hours.
Cave took out his BlackBerry Torch and started tapping out emails and bossing subordinates on the phone. Bald saw London’s lights fading on the horizon as the driver pulled onto the M20. The land had become a basin of dense shadows, as if black snow had fallen from the sky and blanketed the fields and trees. Bald could feel his brain pounding inside his skull. They skated past Ashford International Airport, the Lexus clocking eighty, and Bald feared that things were about to get bad for him.
‘We’ve been in close contact with the CIA for the past three months,’ Cave said after ending a call. ‘Usually the Agency wouldn’t share their lunch with us let alone operational info. But in this case they’ve got no choice. They know the sleeper’s bosses are planning to attack Britain.’
Bald said, ‘Who’s the sleeper working for?’
‘Take a wild guess.’
‘The Taliban? Al-Qaeda?’
Cave pulled a face, as if he’d just drunk a glass of piss. ‘Get real, John. The Taliban are bogged down in Afghanistan. And as for Al-Qaeda, those jokers been irrelevant for longer than the White House would dare to admit. We’re talking about a sleeper cell being groomed for several years. Possibly since they were at university. That level of planning and foresight is alien to such groups.’
‘Then who?’
‘They call themselves Lashkar-e-Taiba. They
’re the sadistic bastards who masterminded the Mumbai terrorist attacks.’
A couple of miles south of Ashford the driver pulled off the M20 onto Bad Munstereifel Road. Cave continued, ‘Killing Bin Laden hasn’t changed a thing. Al-Qaeda were already a spent force. You will appreciate that we all knew that. We just couldn’t say it publicly. But the important thing about Bin Laden’s death was that he was holed up in Pakistan, right on the doorstep of the biggest military base in the bloody country. Pakistan is where the next generation of terror groups will come from, and Lashkar-e-Taiba think big. They’ve got funding and they’re not afraid to kill. And with Bin Laden out of the way, they sense this is their big moment.’
‘Bully for them,’ said Bald, and rubbed his temples.
Cave frowned. ‘You don’t sound very concerned about any of this?’
Bald closed his eyes. He could feel the pressure building. The invisible band around his head tightened. He looked down at the palms of his hands. Not this, not now, he thought. ‘Those dickheads at the Agency are big boys,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they can take care of the sleeper themselves.’
‘But that’s my point.’ Cave squirmed irritably in his seat. ‘They can’t. You know this, for fuck’s sake. You’ve been in charge of recruiting for the job.’
Bald said nothing.
‘I saw how you handled yourself in those interviews and of course you’re the dirtiest fighter we have, John Boy. So this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to go to America and kill the sleeper. We’ll fly you in and give you all the supplies you need. But—’
Cave left the sentence hanging in the air while he again attended to the Torch. The screen was flashing with an incoming call. Cave smiled wanly at Bald.
