He readied himself to go to work, the evening shift when he would load the shelves with produce for the morning – and wanted to pinch himself to prove that he was not dreaming and the call was genuine, that he was indeed wanted. And he had the assurance that he would be with ‘a team leader of quality’, which calmed him, someone to follow.
‘You know what? You know what he said to me, Brad?’
‘What did he say to you, Rob?’
‘Can’t credit it.’
‘Spit it out.’
A Special Forces team, Hereford and Poole, had ownership of an annexe off the main command bunker, more of a broom cupboard than a work area. The larger space adjacent to them was for the air strike coordinators who could call in firepower from the carriers in the Gulf or from Incerlik where the USAF had use of a Turkish strip, and the British base on Cyprus. They had a fridge in there and air-con and armchairs. Brad was a corporal and Rob was a sergeant. They had taken the call from London, and now had to decide how to reach Merc.
Not friends, but had occasionally enjoyed a beer in the bar of the International or the Marmounia back in Erbil and when he was out of the line. It was a complex arrangement and one closely monitored because of the Government’s fear of ‘mission creep’. They were part of a training team, but occasionally did an unauthorised sniper mission, taking down a prominent target when he went to defecate at dawn on the front line and was still bleary and made an opportunity for the cross-hairs – and they taught the fighters of the YPG the basics of field tactics, and had done time with Fire Force Unit 47, and had met him . . . Shy, often looking at his watch and indicating there was somewhere else he ought to be. And could recall that he’d a place in their lives from far back, in the glory days. He was not like those who’d come out from UK on a ‘crusade’ and were looking to fight ‘evil’ and to ‘save civilisation as we know it’. They’d seen him with spooks and assumed that he was in bed with them. They’d talked of him when the call had come from London and Brad had spoken to the toff-voiced girl who’d seemed to assume that he didn’t know the Official Secrets Act, talked of him while they’d tried to work out how to get her message through. Summarised: had arrived in the Kurdish sector, had dug himself in, had made a name for himself which was quietly built and based on a bedrock of support from the people in the Fire Force who served with him; had no rank, and no bars on his arm or pips on his shoulder, but had been elevated to responsibility. Difficult for either of them – with their military background and culture of promotion and command ladders – to pigeon-hole him. Didn’t talk about home, didn’t have arms disfigured with tattoos, girls’ names gouged out, didn’t boast about kill rates . . . Seemed as happy to be in a corner with a stack of Mercedes car brochures, or with an out-of-date copy of AutoTrader or Exchange and Mart, but he listened – without interrupting – when they briefed on close-quarters combat, and the reinforcement of a fire position’s defences . . . Just before Rob had raised him they had talked of where he was: a Forward Operating Base on Hill 425, a salient that stuck out from the main defence line and was of some use to the YPG, and some nuisance to the ‘bad boys’. Rob had called him. Not a long call. The essence was the passing of the instruction of the toff-voice, and where he’d be met, and a few of the logistics details, and they might even go get him themselves when the relief shift arrived, which would make a welcome change from the stale air of the annexe. Brad had listened, waiting for Rob to say how it would work, what the schedule would be and . . . rare astonishment on Rob’s face.
‘He told me to go take a flying fuck.’
‘He did what?’
‘What he said I should do . . .’
‘And explained?’
‘Did explain . . . was on a shit heap. Was taking casualties. Was refused air support. Was not even going to consider quitting on his people who held that crap piece of ground against “human wave” stuff. Would not be leaving without them. Would not be leaving – any of them – and giving it up, Hill 425, to the opposition. Was too busy to talk to me, would I get off the line and feel free to go take the “flying fuck”. I could hear it all going on round him . . . I suppose he’s gone native.’
‘You’d better get back to the totty and tell her the good news.’
‘And they were sending a plane from Akrotiri for him, the full works. Just said he wasn’t shifting, not giving up on his team or his heap of shit . . . Actual words were “Leave the boys and girls? Not while we’ve got these people in the wire. What, have them put in a cage and the ground round them soaked in petrol and a camera running? You’ll think of something to say, Bobbo”, then he cut the link. Takes all sorts, Brad.’
‘What’ll they do about it?’ Brad’s voice tailed off because Rob was already on the secure line calling London.
It was why the Maid loved him. A brief window of insight into what she would have called Boot’s dynamism, and she noted that Daff shared her feeling. Both of them stared at him, awe on their faces. Boot at his best.
The door of his office was open. He had not bothered to take off his coat, nor his familiar trilby. He had heard her out, the report of the call back from the Kurdish heartland, and the tongue-tied sergeant’s explanation over a poor connection given no help by the scrambler filter. On the wall beside his desk, where he now sat, was the framed print of the Wellington Boot. Barely a day went by that the Maid would miss going in with a duster and wiping and polishing the glass, and then she would flip it over the set of dentures on his desk. Other women on that corridor, aides and bottle washers, bad-mouthed their chiefs; she had never done so. She heard him demand access to an operations cell in some ministry bunker tucked away in the Home Counties. He’d looked up, seen their wide eyes, and because of his trust in them – reciprocated – had explained.
‘Why him? Why take the trouble? Why not cast the net wider? Because of who he is and what he is, and the sort of boy that Daff identified for us more than a decade ago has been worth monitoring. As if all the faith we put in him, and others, was for a culmination, this moment, what his talents deserve . . . Do they come on trees? Sadly, not. Something very steady about him, and a leader who inspires – not Henry Five stuff, but a man who makes “ordinary” people feel good, and they’ll follow, and go extra yards. He’s in a shooting war now, but that’s not why we want him . . . Looking for that calm under pressure, the ability to survive when the odds are stacked, and the boy – what did we call him? Yes, Hatpin, yes – the boy will, as night follows day, wobble. One thing to agree to everything I say, but quite another when I’m not there and cannot work the verbal thumbscrew on him, do the psychological water-boarding. So he does not back away, I’d want Hatpin to have our friend, Gideon Francis Hawkins, right up alongside him . . . No one else, no one better.’
The little smile. The Maid watched, listened. Daff, beside her, was motionless. Neither woman had ever succeeded in lifting a veil and so understand the relationship, between Boot and his wife – Gloria, daughter of a long departed Assistant Director, manager of a bric-à-brac store in Hampton Wick, south-west London, widow to the obsession of a battlefield in Belgium – and he had never touched either of them who worked his outer office, or showed a sign of wishing to. After that little smile, his face had hardened and the link would have been made to whoever he had demanded to speak to.
No bluster and no wheedling, no raised voice nor deferential whisper. The Maid would have described his tone as that of a householder ordering a delivery of coal or heating oil. A clear voice, and matter-of-fact tone; couched as a request but that was for the sake of politeness. The authority was there, blazoned, and seemed out of kilter to those watchers in the outer office. Odd from a man who would not have stood out in a crowd and had a wan complexion and spectacles with heavy lenses, and grey hair that was thinning and wispy above the ears. What should be done and when . . . not ‘why’ because that was none of their damn business. He finished the call. No gratitude expressed before its termination. Boot stood and took off his co
at and hat, and unravelled the scarf from his throat.
The Maid asked him, ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Set you up nicely before you go upstairs. Probably what we all need, a cup of tea.’
‘Something choice for me, Boot?’
Offices with grand views up the Thames and down the river, and the light was dipping over the London skyline, and artists would have thought the vista worthwhile but challenging, and the water was silver, and the roofs and jutting towers were bathed in grey gold. Boot never wasted a moment with admiration of what was laid out below him.
‘Quite choice. I think you’ll like it.’
Did he want coffee, water, a sherry? He declined and was waved to an easy chair.
‘And time is against you?’
‘Time, forgive me, is a bugger. Short of it.’
The Big Boss sat, loose-limbed, on the edge of his desk, jacket off and tie unknotted. He held a small knife, one for opening envelopes, and used its tip to clean his nails. His heels beat a tattoo on the desk’s panels, and he showed the enthusiasm of a man who had once been a warrior and was now constrained by the limits and loftiness of his position. There might have been a gleam of envy in his eyes, also caution. Like two maelstroms that collided, and might then create true havoc . . . Envy, aloft in VBX, had an advantage over innate caution. He had reason to be wary because the man sitting in front of him was renowned for the silkiness of his proposals – but Boot was credited also with good triumphs, unpublicised. His host, whose sanction he needed, cut to the quick.
‘Take it as read that I am exercised by the cyber business, exercised and frankly rather fearful, and I’ve read the last tract from your ?Trust, the young lions, which moves beyond fearful to frightening. You have a proposal. Give it me, Boot, warts and all.’
Boot did not gild nor economise with truth and facts. A quiet voice, and all done with the fluency of confidence. As he spoke, a device was being put together, of a size that would go neatly into a laptop, and he said what weight of explosives would be used, and its origin, and the same for the detonator. He listed the factor that confirmed ‘attribution’ and passed two photographs towards the Big Boss. One showed a pale, concave-chested youth, straggling hair and spots on his lower cheeks and tiredness mingling with stress in his eyes. The second picture was of a two-storey building surrounded by a perimeter fence, and he gave the date and time of a meeting and was able to point out the first-floor window of the room where it would be held. He took his time and was not interrupted. His own position was simple, Boot played the part of facilitator. The man across the Bokhara carpet from him was the can carrier.
‘High-quality people to attend the meeting, as good as they have. A reasonable assumption, a specific attack on a scale rarely seen will follow: financial mayhem, possibly catastrophic damage to the infrastructure, loss of intelligence capabilities, our defences depleted. And we are in the front line. You know all that. I can justify this as a pre-emptive mission. And we wrong-foot them. It’s what we do rather well, I hazard.’
A deeper breath, a pause that had theatrical effect, then an explanation. By the following day, mid-afternoon, what Boot described as his Brains Trust would report again – a couple of A4 sheets – on levels of infiltration from state-sponsored attacks, and there would be a paragraph on ‘immunity’ and another on protection and one that would be headed with the word for deception, maskirovka, and the skills with which the assaults by cyber weaponry were disguised. Stuff about danger, and stuff about the ever-increasing scale of the probing, and the vulnerabilities of UK infrastructure. And Boot escalated, ramped it, and his voice was compelling.
‘We look at the new sciences, and they tell us how to defend ourselves, within tight parameters, and we know that we lose in more areas than we win. We can fry a few computers, we can wipe their memories, we can inconvenience but achieve little more. They damage us, we do not damage them. Forget the Americans’ gripes, or the Germans, think only of UK. Imagine it, a meeting where our principal politician takes their President to one side, the two of them and an interpreter, and says, “Vladdy, I’m not happy with the cyber business and what you’re chucking out from your territory. I’d like it reined in, wound up . . . You game for that, Vladdy?” Would get a sneer of contempt. What I am saying is that we face their “Pearl Harbor Opportunity”, riots on our streets, food shortages, power outages. It is in their hands. Am I carrying you with me?’
‘Listening, Boot – but confess to nerves because of where you are bringing me.’
‘I feel confident that the areas of anxiety are pretty much closed off.’
‘Advantages, what should I look for?’
‘We bring their world, the playground bully’s world, crashing down around their feet – not something they will enjoy.’
The lighting was soft and there were gentle voices from the outer office that played through the closed door. Dusk was settling over the river, and the bridge below them was a stream of cars and lights. There could be rain within the hour.
‘You’re not asking me for a sub-committee’s evaluation?’ Almost a boyish grin from the Big Boss, and forewarned of the answer.
‘Not on the schedule we are presented with . . . This is Monday. The opportunity is Thursday. Can I do the sort of risk assessment and mission statement that a sub-committee require in the next hour, and you have a team wheeled in . . . We need to be on the move tomorrow . . . It is in your hands, Director.’
A fist smacked on to the desk. Getting there, close to and ready to breast the tape.
‘Open to argument, Boot . . . But I need to know – would we be making a difference?’
‘It’s an unpleasant and unwelcome shock for them. Disruption on a considerable scale, something to remember, a high degree of confusion that spreads unpredictably . . . And the buck passing and back stabbing would be wondrous to behold.’
‘Nearly there but, please, more.’
‘And we have “deniability”. They love deniability, treasure deniability in the way elderly paedophiles do. Remember the deniability after they’d poisoned – an order given from the fulcrum of power – the defector. More deniability when their damned missile brought down that aircraft on to those Ukraine plains. I’d be giving you “deniability”, by the wheelbarrow.’
‘Are we talking, Boot, I repeat, about making a difference?’
‘They’ll be rats in a sack, hating each other, trust out of the window, and the big men alongside their chief will be scratching each other’s eyes out. Easy to imagine that the “atrocity” is the work of rivals, not the poor old toothless lion, with mange on its arse. A major diversion, I’d call it, for that cabal of gangsters that call the shots there. We might leak a bit as well, through Helsinki or Stockholm, tit-bits about civil war among the inner circle. But, for that to happen, I have to have your ink on the paper.’
‘Not galloping too fast, Boot? Assure me.’
‘Think of the Duke. Everything was on the hoof. Moments of weakness had to be defended, moments of strength exploited. We have to react to the opportunity presented. Will you sign it off? It’s a breathtaking chance, one cast in gold.’
‘A good man?’
‘Just putting that together.’
‘A man of proven ability?’
‘It’s an old way of doing things, and they are often the best ways. Do I understand the arts of cyber attack, cyber theft, cyber espionage, and all the new jargon that goes with it? I do not. What I do understand is the value of robust response. Retaliation. And if the disguise cloaking it is approaching foolproof, then I like it even better. What we know of him, our man has the talents we require. Director, I have to know, and not tomorrow.’
He put an intolerable pressure on the Big Boss’s shoulders. Acknowledged it, felt none the worse for it, and tried to imagine how it would be in the dropping light of a damn bloody awful day, with the last of the sun burning into their eyes, and in combat – which he had never known. Stress and anxiety, yes, never close-quarters fi
ghting – and he thought he might have shouted from the rooftop, where all the antennae made a scruffy forest, that his man should hold on . . . just a bit longer, hold on tight. ‘Don’t quit on me now. Don’t let those savages get their hands on your collar. Hang on in there . . .’ Should have shouted it towards the rain clouds.
‘You’ll not quote me, Boot, never do that. God knows, I take a chance. Ruled by the heart and not the head. I share it, even sparsely, and I hit an immediate wall of “mitigation” – “mitigating circumstances” – and therefore a reason to do nothing, the Pitmans for “appeasement”, and the hope that if we do nothing, make no fuss for their incursions, human and cyber, and look the other way, give them bloody tea and cakes and jam, then they will go away. That’s the wall and I am, sensibly or not, prepared to skirt it and walk round it. See me before you deploy your dogs. Go for it.’
The Big Boss turned away, and Boot was up out of his chair, and away. Could permission be rescinded once granted? Possibly . . . He took a lift down, and seemed light-footed, and plunged out and into his own corridor and the blood pulsed in him.
A Damned Serious Business Page 8
