Tracers ht-2

by Adrian Magson

  He followed Ballatyne across the grass to the lakeside path. Two armed policemen walked a few paces behind and stood by, silently watchful. A crowd of people from the lakeside cafeteria had gathered near the entrance and Ballatyne delegated one of the officers to push them back fifty yards.

  ‘Bloody people think it’s a tourist show. Ferris’ll be arrested, you know that, don’t you?’ He was watching Rik being led to an ambulance with a paramedic supporting him and two armed officers close behind.

  ‘Don’t talk wet,’ said Harry bluntly. ‘If you arrest him, you’ll have to arrest me, too.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that and you know it.’ Ballatyne watched a duck swimming past a few feet away. ‘You’re one of the privileged few, authorized to carry. He’s not.’ He peered sideways at Harry. ‘Your record makes interesting reading.’

  ‘Rik was helping me. He saved my life — ask any of that lot.’ He gestured towards the crowd of onlookers who were being marshalled into a line by officers, ready to be interviewed.

  ‘We intend to, don’t worry. Not that it’ll help. You know how unreliable witnesses are: they’ll all remember something different and nobody will recall the good guy doing a heroic deed. To them, anyone with a gun is a villain — even the cops. Ferris will do time and there’s nothing I can do to help.’ He paused for effect. ‘Face it, Harry, he shouldn’t have been armed. What the hell were you thinking?’

  Harry felt like pushing him into the lake, but controlled his anger. For someone spouting the law, Ballatyne didn’t seem all that serious, in spite of his expression. It was as if he were leading up to something.

  ‘If Rik hadn’t been armed,’ he said quietly, ‘I’d be dead. So would Rafa’i and possibly a fair number of innocent tourists. You’d have an international incident on your hands and half the Islamic world shouting about how one of their leaders had been kidnapped out of Baghdad and assassinated in a royal park just a spit away from Buckingham Palace and Downing Street. Oh, and the assassin? A member of the British Army, hired by members of the Coalition and helped by two other members of the British Army. That’d make great press.’

  ‘Former members,’ Ballatyne corrected him. ‘Those two bozos handed in their papers a while back. And records will show that Joanne Archer died heroically in Baghdad trying to protect an Iraqi VIP. Anything else?’

  ‘So how do you explain a dead female assassin in the centre of London?’

  ‘Who cares? If we have to, we lie. Haven’t you heard of spin? It’s been all the rage since ninety-seven.’

  Harry felt hollow. Ballatyne seemed to have all the answers. But he wasn’t about to roll over just yet. ‘Before you do that,’ he said, ‘you might want to think how it will run in tomorrow’s media.’

  Ballatyne blinked and studied Harry’s face. ‘You’d never do that.’

  ‘Is that what my record says? A lot’s happened since then. The story’s already written. Somebody would print it — if not here, then elsewhere or on YouTube. Throw in what went on when Paulton and Bellingham tried to kill us both in Georgia and there’ll be a feeding frenzy.’

  ‘Like I said, you’d never do it.’ Ballatyne’s jaw was firm, but there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes.

  ‘You’ve known my status long enough. Yet you still chose to use me — and Rik — because it suited you to have Rafa’i’s killers taken out without official involvement. Try screwing me on this and it’ll come back and bite you on the arse.’

  Ballatyne sighed and looked away across the lake at a clutch of Canada geese making their way towards them. ‘I should come here more often, you know. It’s a nice place. Peaceful. I like ducks. They’ve got no agenda.’ He paused. ‘All right. But I want a quid pro quo. A big one. I want you to take Rafa’i back to Iraq.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Harry stared at him. So this was what he’d been building to all along. Ballatyne didn’t give a stuff about Rik breaking the rules; all he wanted was leverage. The man was nuts. ‘Rik goes free. No prosecution.’

  ‘Yes. We want Rafa’i off our hands, the sooner the better. What he gets up to once he’s back in that bugger’s muddle called Baghdad, we don’t care. He’s too dirty for us.’

  Harry grunted cynically. ‘So much for the Coalition’s golden solution.’

  ‘Well, let’s say he turned out to be low-grade gilt. Apart from the fund-gathering, we’ve had confirmation from two sources in Iraq that Rafa’i knew about the intended bombing of his compound in advance. I won’t go into all the nasty details, but it looks like he got wind of an attempt on his life and decided to use it to his own advantage. We’ll never know for sure, but it’s my guess he took Archer’s disappearance to a meeting as a signal that something was about to happen. He might not have known what her part was in all this, but probably figured she was being withdrawn so they could take him out without harming her. He may have counted on playing them at their own game and using Archer to vouch for him once he was over here.’

  ‘So what has this all been about?’

  ‘Propaganda. Power. Pecking order. The man’s no fool; he’s learned to read people. He’s a politician. He knew it was only a question of time before someone in his own community took a pop at him. But what if he turned it on its head? His survival and reappearance, followed by a triumphant entry to Baghdad, would be like the Second Coming. And with the funds and support he’s been gathering, it would create havoc. He’d be in a position of incredible power — for a while, anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It wouldn’t last. They’d use him for his contacts and influence, then get rid. It’s the nature of things over there. A lot of people don’t want him to get even that far.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Oil people. Money people. Some members of the new Iraqi government.’

  ‘What’s the Coalition view?’

  ‘I really couldn’t comment on that.’

  Harry tilted his head in disbelief. ‘You know who they are, don’t you? The people behind this.’

  Ballatyne appeared to consider his words carefully before answering. ‘Some of them. We know who organized the assassination attempt and this follow-up farce. One of them is an official in the new Iraqi administration. He was over here recently, and met with others who have connections to the oil industry here and in the States. We’re moving on some of them right now. We’ll leave the rest for later.’

  ‘They must be insane.’

  ‘Scared, more like. Scared that if Rafa’i gets to power, he’ll lock the gates to the oil wells and throw away the keys. It would plunge his country back into the Dark Ages and send the price of oil through the roof. And there are plenty of people who don’t want that to happen.’ He shrugged. ‘But there are other problems attached to Rafa’i’s continued safety. Which is where you come in.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You were correct, in your own bullish way: if Subhi Rafa’i were to die here, God only knows what would happen. We think the bomb plots so far have been bad? The repercussions of him dying on British soil would close this country down for years. There’s hardly anyone in the Middle East who wouldn’t believe it was all some Coalition plot.’

  ‘So you want him back in Baghdad.’ Harry frowned. ‘Isn’t that what he wants?’

  Ballatyne gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Not quite. We’ll be dropping him back in Baghdad, but there won’t be any triumphant entry. We’re letting it be known that he allowed his own people to die in the compound to save his own skin. We’ve got proof and we can leak it in such a manner that nobody will know where it came from. There’s also the matter of how some of the money he’s been gathering has “stuck” in a private bank account in the Caymans. He’ll be discredited for good. . especially among the money men.’ He studied his hands as if looking for dirt. ‘I wouldn’t rate his chances of survival too highly after that.’

  Harry shook his head, wondering at the minds that had been thinking about this situation all along. ‘So what’s t
his big favour?’

  ‘Well, as you know,’ the intelligence man continued smoothly, ‘we’re pretty short of good people at the moment, what with all the trouble spots we’re trying to police around the world. We need all the experienced hands we can get.’

  Harry waited, wondering what was coming.

  ‘How do you fancy a trip to Baghdad? All expenses paid, of course. Not like this one — which I remind you, you got into by yourself. Incidentally, I should ask to see your card, just for the record.’ He waited, eyebrows raised, until Harry took out his wallet and extracted a credit card. It was made out in the name of a minor finance house and looked no different to any normal card.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Ballatyne waved it away without examining it. ‘No need to go any further. Bloody things are probably easy to falsify now, anyway.’

  ‘So what next?’ Harry put the card away.

  ‘You’ll have help on the ground, filtering our troublesome cleric back into his home district. You should be back out within two days, three at most. Then we’ll drop you somewhere quiet to recuperate. Long enough to get the press concentrating on something else.’

  ‘Rik’s not in any state to travel.’

  ‘It didn’t look that serious. Small calibre. . minimal damage.’ Ballatyne chewed his lip. ‘OK. We can hold Rafa’i for a couple of days while the shoulder gets patched up. But that’s the limit. This is urgent.’

  Harry remembered Rik’s reaction on seeing the hot box in the Saab and realizing that Harry was carrying a weapon. That issue still hadn’t been explained. He gave Ballatyne a level look. ‘What if I refuse?’

  The intelligence man snorted. ‘You could try. You’re still on the reserve list, remember? Why do you think we allowed you to run with this once we found out who you were? You were highly regarded, you know, before you went private.’

  ‘Really?’ said Harry evenly. ‘Pity nobody thought so at the time.’

  ‘Yeah, well — our loss. Still, we can’t grumble, can we? It turned out OK.’ He began to move away, then turned back. ‘I’ll give you some extra motivation.’

  ‘You can try.’

  Ballatyne was holding a five-by-four colour photo. He handed it over. It showed an anonymous street with cars, pedestrians and smart office buildings. The sun was shining and people were dressed in lightweight summer clothes. They looked relaxed, unhurried. One man was frozen centre-frame, about to step into the open door of a taxi only yards from the camera. He was wearing a smart linen suit and carrying a briefcase, a businessman on his way to a meeting. Although slightly grainy, the photo was clear enough for instant recognition.

  It was Harry’s former boss, now on the run from the security services.

  Henry Paulton.

  He felt the earth tilt and looked at Ballatyne. ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No. One of our spotters recognized him while on another job. She couldn’t do anything without blowing her cover so she took a shot on her camera phone. Not too bad, considering.’ He took the photo back and put it away. ‘Do this job for me and I’ll let you have a copy. I’ll even tell you where it was taken.’ He grinned nastily. ‘I imagine you and Paulton must have lots to talk about.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  ‘What was all the chat about?’ Rik rejoined Harry. He looked unsteady on his feet and had an unhealthy pallor, but was managing to stay upright. ‘Why did they take the cuffs off?’ He winced and moved his shoulder gingerly.

  ‘We’re off the hook,’ Harry said, and nodded at Rik’s wound. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Only when I get my arm twisted. What do you mean, off the hook? We shot people in public. How do we get off a thing like that?’

  ‘A favour for a favour.’ Or rather, two favours, Harry reflected. He explained Ballatyne’s demand. ‘Two days’ work followed by a paid holiday, then we can go back to doing what we do, no questions asked.’

  ‘There’s got to be a catch.’

  Harry shrugged and moved away towards the lakeside cafeteria. There was always a catch. He needed a stiff drink, although he wasn’t sure if they served anything stronger than tea or coffee. His eye brushed across the covered hump of Joanne’s body on the grass. No, he needed to get further away than this. He leaned against a strip of fencing.

  Rik said, ‘You were going at it with Ballatyne. What was that all about?’

  ‘Horse trading,’ Harry replied. ‘He took some convincing, that’s all.’ He didn’t mention his threat to go public with the story, since the chances of pulling it off were infinitesimally small, anyway. And Rik would be all for spewing it on to the Internet without a second thought for the consequences.

  Rik wasn’t happy. ‘No. That’s not what it looked like. You and he were talking like. . like equals.’ He stopped. ‘Jesus. . I bloody knew it! You’re — what do they call it. .?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I know — carded. That’s what got us out from under this, isn’t it? Otherwise we’d be on our way to Paddington high-security nick!’

  Harry didn’t say anything.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? That’s why you had the hot box in your car, isn’t it? I thought you’d tooled up in case stuff got critical. But you’re still on Five’s payroll!’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘So what is it, then? Tell me.’

  ‘They asked,’ said Harry simply. ‘When I handed in my papers, they asked me to stay attached. I said OK.’

  He kicked some dirt with the toe of his shoe. Trying to explain that he was, as Ballatyne had said, one of the privileged few, would merely rub salt into the wound. Rik wouldn’t understand. The truth was, they had offered the situation to him and he’d taken it. Not right away — he’d made them sweat a bit first. Childish, maybe, but it felt right at the time. A sort of acknowledgement that they’d screwed up over the way they’d treated him. But eventually, he’d said yes. They couldn’t afford to lose good people, they’d said, the situation being what it was. Ballatyne had echoed the same words.

  ‘And you agreed — after all they did to us?’

  ‘I thought it might be useful, a way of keeping in touch. But it’s not without strings; they get to call on me whenever they feel like it.’

  ‘You’ve done this before?’

  ‘No. This was the first.’ Not that I knew it, he wanted to add. Not until it was too late, by which time we were both in it up to our necks.

  ‘Did you know all about this Rafa’i stuff?’

  ‘Of course I bloody didn’t. No more than you did. According to Ballatyne, once they discovered who I was, they let us run with it.’

  Rik laughed bitterly. ‘So why not say? Didn’t you trust me?’

  Harry turned and walked towards the Mall, then stopped and came back. He couldn’t let it go like this. There was too much riding on it. Friendship, for one. And Rik, for all his casual attitude, was bullish enough to gnaw at it like a dog on a bone. It would eat away at the bond they had formed since Red Station. And Harry couldn’t let that happen. ‘I never thought they’d call on me,’ he said, ‘and they didn’t. Christ, it’s not as if there’s a national shortage of manpower.’

  Rik lost the angry look. ‘How many others are carded?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not many. Special Forces, mostly. . a few specialists. I figured that as time passed, my name would slide down the list and eventually fall off the end.’ He shrugged. ‘As it happened, they didn’t need to call because I was already in the middle of it.’ He gestured towards the covered shapes on the ground. ‘I haven’t said thank you — for back there. I owe you. I’m sorry you had to do that.’ He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound mawkish, so he started walking.

  ‘Wait!’ Rik hurried after him. ‘Hang on. I’m stupid for getting out of shape about it, but hear me out, all right? In Five, you were operational, I was in support — I get that. There’s a big difference. I shouldn’t be surprised they’d want to retain you. The others in Red Station — Mace, Clare, Fitzgerald — they talked about you, d
id you know that?’

  Harry said nothing. He was sure they had, out of curiosity if nothing else. But he was trying to forget about them. . trying not to forget about Paulton. Wouldn’t be able to, even if he’d wanted. Not now he knew the man was out there. And reachable.

  ‘First off,’ continued Rik, ‘you clearly didn’t give a monkey’s for the party line. Second, Clare admired you because you made everything look so easy. You knew exactly what you were doing and you had instincts. We all wanted to be able to think like that.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Harry countered. ‘So?’

  ‘So why wasn’t I carded?’

  Harry stared at him. He’d expected Rik to be annoyed because of the secrecy, of not confiding in him about the card. But not this. ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘I’m just asking.’

  ‘You just found out why not! You get the authority to carry a gun — big deal. You want a normal life? Forget it. You want to be on edge every time there’s a terrorist incident, waiting for the phone to ring? To be dragged out of the cupboard whenever someone like Ballatyne feels like it because they’ve run out of options? You want to get pushed into the firing line when they don’t have anyone else handy? Ferris is young, unattached and expendable — nobody will miss him if he screws up. Believe me, you really don’t want that. Stick with computers — it’s what you’re good at.’

  ‘You came out OK.’

  ‘She didn’t.’ Harry nodded across the grass at Joanne’s body, his throat tight. ‘Neither did you, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ He let that sink in, knowing the shock of the shooting still hadn’t registered fully on the younger man. That would come in the hours and days ahead, when the sudden overload of adrenalin had worked its way out of his system. For now, he was coping, ready to believe a bullet wound was an easy trade-off for what they had gone through. But Harry had seen what Rik hadn’t: the gunshot wounds on Joanne’s body. There were two wounds to her left side, where Harry’s shots had hit home, and one to her right shoulder. Rik’s shot, going high. Shock from a wound and the adrenalin rush would do that: make the body wobble just enough to throw off the best of aims. But seeing the target react and fall would still make it look like you’d got a centre hit.