by Tom Marcus
By the time I get back to the bar, Alex and Craig are there, Craig holding up a twenty to try and get the attention of one of the smart young bar staff. As soon as he sees me he abandons his quest and pulls me into a powerful hug, while Alex neatly swipes the twenty-pound note with a grin and slides into a space at the bar. I’m taken aback by Craig’s show of emotion. He doesn’t have a military background, but he seems like a tough, no-nonsense kind of guy, and I wasn’t expecting this.
He pulls away, holding me at arm’s length. ‘You OK, man?’
‘Yeah,’ I smile, trying not to get choked. ‘Yeah, I’m good.’
Alex is holding out two bottles of fancy lager in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other, a tattoo visible on the inside of her forearm; ‘Modus Vivendi’ – Method of Living. Craig takes one of the bottles without smiling. ‘And my change, if you don’t mind.’
‘In this place? You must be joking,’ Alex laughs. ‘This isn’t some old man’s pub with sticky carpets in the backstreets of Glasgow, you know.’
‘We have poncy wine bars in Glasgow too, you know,’ he says. ‘At least so I’ve been told.’
I grab my lager and Alex clinks her glass with our bottles. As she gives me a quick peck on the cheek, a waft of coconut and lemon comes from her hair. Apart from at the funeral, which is all a blur, I realize I’ve never seen her outside of an operational role, where you wear slightly too-large clothing to conceal various kinds of equipment. Wearing a black silk top and black trousers with suede ankle boots, she’s slimmer and more delicate in build than I see her every day. I also realize I’ve never seen her wearing make-up before. She looks good, but it’s slightly disturbing all the same.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t get you a pint,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry. The bottle will come in handier if things get a bit tasty in here.’
She laughs and shakes her head. ‘Fucking hell, Logan. Always thinking operationally, right? I honestly don’t think we’re going to get in a brawl in a place like this. Not unless we start chatting with a bunch of people who haven’t paid their road tax.’
Craig clinks his bottle against mine again. ‘We’ll fucking have those bastards, aye? No one messes with the DVLA.’
I just manage to stop myself spitting out a mouthful of lager as Alan and Ryan walk up to the bar.
‘What’s so funny?’ Ryan asks with a grin.
‘Ah, just the man,’ says Alex, taking Alan’s arm. ‘Logan was just about to buy a round, but he was waiting for you.’
The big man, looking slightly uncomfortable in a jacket and shirt with a collar, as opposed to his normal baggy T-shirt, smiles sheepishly. ‘Thanks, I’ll have a lager, mate.’
‘No, no, that’s not what she means,’ Craig says with a wink at Alex. ‘Logan here was hoping you might have some sort of fancy device that would screw up the card reader so it didn’t take any money off him.’
‘Hmm, I don’t know.’ Alan starts stroking his chin. ‘I suppose there could be a way if you just—’
Ryan claps him on the back. ‘He’s joking, Alan, you muppet. Come on, I’ll get them in. You guys OK?’
We all nod. ‘Yeah, we’re fine for now.’ I tilt my bottle, indicating I’ve still got plenty. ‘You get yours and we’ll find somewhere to sit.’ As Ryan squeezes himself into a space at the bar, we naturally move over to a booth where there’s a wraparound sofa and a big oval table. We’ll be out of the spotlight and no one will have their back to the bar, so we’ll be able to see everything else that’s going on around us. And hopefully we’ll be out of earshot of anyone trying to listen in to our conversation. Perfect.
Ryan returns with a tray of drinks, including another glass of wine for Alex and two more bottles for me and Craig. I start to protest, but Ryan waves me off. ‘Save you getting up in two minutes, mate.’ With his long hair and tattoos, I didn’t think Ryan would fit into a place like this, but with his dark suit and black collarless shirt, he looks surprisingly at home. Come to think of it, even though we’re off duty, we’re still surveillance operators. Blending in is what we do. Alan, the only one of us not used to operating on the ground, is the only one who looks a bit uncomfortable.
Ryan raises his glass. ‘Here’s to meeting our untaxed vehicle targets for another month. Congratulations, team.’ We all smile and clink glasses and bottles. ‘Shame Riaz and Claire can’t be here to share the glory.’
‘What’s the deal with them?’ Craig asks. I know Riaz has got a wife and kids at home. Claire’s situation is a bit different. I remember Alex telling me she’s unmarried with a daughter, and her mum looks after the child while Claire is away at work for extended periods.
‘I think they’ve got stuff going on at home they need to get back for.’
Funny how simple words like that can seem like a punch in the gut.
We chat for an hour or so, avoiding the difficult subjects that are at the back of all our minds, and focusing on the inconsequential stuff. I learn that Craig has a wicked sense of humour beneath that flinty Glaswegian exterior, that he grew up on a council estate (which makes me feel we’re quite similar) and got a place to study history at Edinburgh University (which doesn’t). Ryan’s another one who makes me feel like an uneducated oik. It turns out he’s a member of Mensa and is probably smarter than the rest of us put together. He explains he got his tattoo of the koi carp after a trip to Japan. This leads me to discover that Alan, who I thought I knew reasonably well, likes to spend his free time night fishing for carp. I tell him it sounds like the most boring way to pass time imaginable, and he counters by saying that’s precisely why it’s the perfect training for surveillance work, requiring infinite patience and the ability to stay focused over long periods. Which leads to a whole lot of banter about why Alan sits behind his workbench tinkering with electronics when he could be out on the streets, helping us track down the bad guys. As for Alex? I used to think I knew her pretty well. I know she grew up in a sleepy Wiltshire village, where she was something of a nature girl. I remember being plotted-up for hours in the shadow of a run-down block of flats with absolutely nothing happening, but when we got back to Thames House she had a big grin on her face because she’d seen a peregrine falcon stooping at a pigeon. We’ve been on a lot of ops together. And she was there for me after Sarah and Joseph, big time. She’s probably the reason I’m sitting here and not in a casualty ward somewhere – or worse. But watching her now, as she sits back on the sofa sipping her wine with an amused smile on her face, I wonder. What do I really know about her?
And what, for that matter, do any of us know about Jeremy Leyton-Hughes? Posh cunt, obviously. Eton and the Guards before being tapped up for MI5. And he seems to have slithered up the greasy pole all the way to being assistant to the director general without any notable achievements along the way. What are his secrets? I’m about to put the subject out for general discussion when Craig breaks the spell and finally asks the question we’ve all avoided so far.
‘So, Alan, we haven’t had any updates from Leyton-Hughes, but have you got an inside track? Is there any news on the brothers? Have they hit them yet?’
Alan looks pained, like he’s been hoping no one was going to ask him about this.
‘No, not yet.’ He takes a swig of his lager, clearly an avoidance mechanism.
‘But . . .’ I press him.
He sighs. ‘I know the Police CTU that took over from you guys had a loss.’
Alan hangs his head; even though he’s not responsible, he clearly feels like he should have told us earlier.
Exasperated shakes of the head and muttered ‘fucks’ all round. We’ve all stopped drinking as we wait for Alan to continue.
‘I’m sure Leyton-Hughes will be briefing us up later but all I heard from the grapevine is the police teams sat outside the house for hours with no sign of the brothers at all. They eventually breached the address to arrest them but it was empty.’
Ryan jumps in straight away. ‘We had them to that addre
ss though, did they smash the wrong door in?’
Alan continues with a head shake, almost in disbelief. ‘No, it was the right address you had the brothers going into. The person who was watching the front door missed them both leaving and they managed to get away.’
The anger at the table is almost tangible. How the fuck could this happen? Our attention drifts back to Alan, who still has his head bowed. I can see there is more he wants to say. ‘Alan, what else happened?’
Reluctantly he continues. ‘They searched the address, it was empty. Sent sniffer dogs in . . .’ He raises his head to look at us, we know he’s about to deliver bad news. ‘They found the bags they were seen leaving with at Liverpool. Bags were empty.’ He takes a large breath and releases it as a sigh. ‘The sniffer dogs indicated presence of explosives in the bags.’
‘Where the fuck are those explosives now?’ Alex voiced what we were all instantly thinking. Alan’s raised eyebrows shows no one has a fucking clue. But if Stone Fist and Iron Sword had two bags’ worth of explosives that have been transferred somewhere, it’s bad news.
‘I think it’s just been handed over to A4 now. They’re searching everywhere for the brothers.’
‘It just goes to prove we should have seen this through to the end.’ Alex is furious.
‘And is that it for us? For Blindeye? At 2100 hours tomorrow do we get a new target? A new op?’ Ryan’s giving Alan a long stare, as if he’s convinced our tech guy knows a lot more than he’s letting on.
Alan freezes under Ryan’s concentrated gaze, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He shuffles uncomfortably, then looks at his watch. ‘Blimey, I must be going. I said I was going to . . . I’ve got to sort some stuff out for tomorrow.’
I think Alan maybe does know something, but I hate seeing the guy in this position. I punch him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Just when your round was coming up. Fucking typical. See you tomorrow, mate. Take it easy.’
Ryan takes this as a sign to ease off. ‘Cheers, Alan. Thanks for everything. You have a good night.’
We watch him scuttle off gratefully through the other drinkers.
‘My round, then,’ Alex says reluctantly, but it’s going to take more than another drink to get us back in the party mood.
‘So,’ says Craig, neatly summing up what we all feel, ‘now we just sit on our arses and wait for the next fuck-up.’
17
It’s nine o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting in a cafe on the other side of town from last night’s wine bar with the sun pouring through the windows, but I’m not in a sunny mood. The night out at the wine bar had started as a much-needed release of tension and a way for a few of the team to get to know each other a little better in a relaxed environment, i.e. not in the middle of trying to keep control of a pair of armed and dangerous terrorists. But after Alan’s bombshell about the CTU team losing Iron Sword and Stone Fist, the mood had changed, and we spent the rest of the night speculating about what the brothers’ endgame might be, based on everything we had seen of their behaviour, and in particular their recce around Harley Street.
We also tried to come up with plausible reasons for Blindeye being taken off the board, just when it seemed as if we had an opportunity to finish what we’d started. Although Jeremy has a point about us not being equipped for all-out house assaults and arrests, it still would have been better to keep us on it. Leyton-Hughes has dropped the ball here.
We called it a day around eleven, after Ryan muttered ‘politics’ darkly to himself, suggesting a world of painful experience he didn’t elaborate on. That had finally killed the mood. I’d come to realize he was the sort of person who thought long and deeply before expressing an opinion – clearly it was all churning away in that massive brain of his. All that said, it was good to pretend for a few hours that we were just normal colleagues on the piss. In a funny way, it was actually quite like a training exercise; seeing how well you could maintain your cover in a crowded environment. But reality was never far away. There was a clock ticking back in London, and we could all hear it in our heads, even through the shouts and laughter in a noisy bar.
And one thing I was not going to do was get drunk. I was determined not to lose control; not to say or do anything that would make my colleagues doubt my fitness to do the job. And determined that when I woke up today, it would not be sweating and breathless from a screaming nightmare, but in my right mind. Leyton-Hughes might have stood Blindeye down, but all my instincts told me that this wasn’t the time to relax.
When you’re not sure what the hell is going to happen next, that’s when you need all your wits about you. Maybe this was just paranoia rearing its ugly head, but Leyton-Hughes giving us twenty-four hours downtime almost felt like an attempt to mess with our heads, to break our concentration. On the other hand, I admitted to myself, that could just be the opinion of someone who doesn’t want a break from the job because they don’t have a life outside it any more.
On that sour note, I dump three packets of sugar into my mug of tea and stir it until I’ve created a mini whirlpool. I’m sat in the corner, away from the counter, with a good view of the door, so I clock Alex as soon as she walks in and makes her way over to my table. The cafe is almost full at this hour, but most people are intent on their food, their phones or the paper – sometimes all three. Alex is dressed in jeans and white T-shirt, all trace of make-up gone. This is more like the Alex I know; the glamorous mystery woman of last night has vanished, like Cinderella after the chimes of midnight.
‘You all right?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. You?’
She takes the seat opposite and puts her phone on the table. ‘Yep. Been for a bit of a run. There’s some nice country round here, actually.’
‘Seen any interesting wildlife?’
‘Apart from a drunk sleeping it off under a hedge, not really.’
‘No wolves or bears, shit like that?’
She shakes her head in mock exasperation. ‘You’re such a fucking city boy, Logan. If there were wolves roaming the streets you probably wouldn’t even notice.’
I laugh. ‘Where I grew up, the pitbulls would have made short work of any wolves.’ I pass the plastic menu over. ‘What’re you having?’
‘Same as you, I expect,’ she says. ‘Full English with all the extras?’
‘You know me too well,’ I grin. At that moment the waitress, a pale-faced, stick-thin girl of about sixteen, shuffles over from the counter and puts a huge plate of sausages, fried egg, beans and fried bread in front of me, before turning to Alex.
‘Yeah?’ she says, completely uninterested.
‘I’ll have what he’s having,’ Alex replies, as the waitress is already walking away.
‘Talking of dangerous animals, any news on our guys?’
‘Nah, nothing. I keep checking my phone every five minutes. I’ve just got a feeling, you know?’
At that moment Alex’s phone pings with a text message. She reads it with a frown, then tosses it back onto the table. ‘Twat.’
I look at her quizzically.
‘Sorry. Just some bloke I’m seeing. Was seeing.’
‘Ah. Sorry. What happened?’ I didn’t even know she’d been seeing someone, but now I feel protective.
‘We’d been going out for a couple of months, and I thought it was going all right. But I didn’t tell him who I worked for obviously, and he quickly figured out I was hiding something.’ She smiled. ‘Guess I’m not as good an operator as I thought. Anyway, he put two and two together and thought I must be seeing someone else. The last straw was when I came round to yours. No way was I going to explain anything that was going on, so he snapped.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry. It’s my fault, I could try and talk to him, to explain?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Better to find out at this stage. It clearly wasn’t meant to be. Reckon I probably dodged a bullet.’
I can tell she’s making light of it. I don’t want to think of this guy really hurting her. But I
don’t press her for any more details. I’m surprised she’s even told me this much. Up until now her personal life has been a complete blank to me. I’m trying to think of something else to say when I see her staring at the TV on the wall in the opposite corner of the cafe.
‘Logan . . .’
The sound is off, but the scrolling ticker at the bottom is flashing BREAKING NEWS – HOSTAGE SITUATION CENTRAL LONDON.
I leave my breakfast and we both move to the unoccupied table directly under the TV. Above the headline the screen is showing a terraced street. The camera seems to be behind a group of several police vehicles, so it’s hard to figure out which house they’re trying to focus on, but you can see police tape cordoning off both ends of the street and people being evacuated from surrounding houses. Armed police are swarming into the area.
We exchange a quick glance. Alex mouths, Brothers? I lean close to the TV, trying to make out more detail, while Alex immediately starts scrolling through her phone. Back in the day, when there was a major event like this, people would huddle round their TVs, or even their radios, to find out what was going on. But social media has changed all that.
It doesn’t take her long to find what she’s looking for, whispering to me, ‘Look, Logan, it’s the brothers. They’re pushing a live feed out on extremist sites. There’s multiple feeds on Facebook and Twitter.’
Passing me her phone, I can see a live video feed of Stone Fist and Iron Sword standing either side of a middle-aged man sitting on a chair with his hands behind his back, presumably tied. His white shirt is stained and missing a button, there are abrasions on his face, and one eye is swollen up. He’s clearly been roughed up, and has the blank look of someone in shock.
