‘Thanks. Where do you call home?’ asked Harry. He hadn’t had much opportunity to talk to the younger man yet. If he was a communications specialist, he couldn’t exactly be rushed off his feet, and Harry hadn’t seen much in the way of communications hardware in the office.
‘About quarter of a mile away.’ Rik pointed out to the suburbs. ‘It’s on Novroni. Number twenty-four. Old and scabby, but I’m doing it up to keep myself from going stir-crazy. Clare lives a few blocks that way.’ He indicated north. ‘The other two live on the outskirts.’ He hesitated. ‘Did Mace tell you about the no-comms rule?’
‘Yes. Everything goes through him. Is it set in stone?’
‘You bet. I have access to a server in London, but that’s purely for messages. It’s monitored closely and as bombproof as my granny’s knickers. Mace has a secure terminal in his office, but nobody else gets to touch it. It’s level-Alpha password-protected.’
‘I’ll pretend I know what that means. What about my mobile?’
Rik held out his hand. ‘Here — I’ll show you.’
Harry passed him his Nokia, which he hadn’t used since leaving London. Rik switched it on. He held it up so Harry could see the screen. It was blank.
‘They wiped it before you left. It won’t pick up a signal here, so you might as well dump it. I’ll give you a new one in the morning. It’ll be OK for the local network, but no further.’ He handed the phone back and put the car in gear. ‘It’s not too bad here. You’ll get used to it.’
‘That’s what Mace said.’ Harry wondered when they’d managed to wipe his mobile. At the time of the debriefing, probably, when he’d handed it in at security.
‘He’s right. Welcome to paradise.’
Harry watched him drive away before making his way inside and up three flights of narrow, concrete stairs inlaid with coarse tiles. They were worn down in the middle from the passage of feet over the years, and crackled with grit underfoot. The air was cold and damp, a depressing contrast to the conditions at the airport.
He shivered, wondering if this was a taste of the winter to come.
The interior of the flat was spacious but minimally furnished, like a student’s lodging circa 1968. Most of the items looked as if they had been sourced from a bric-a-brac salesroom. The living room, bedroom and kitchen held the basics, and carried a faint aroma of mildew and cleaning fluid. A wood-burner stood in the living room, black and cold and squat as a beetle, and the bathroom was ancient and damp, echoing to the plunk of water dripping from a furred-up shower-head the size of a soup tureen.
He sat down on the bed and contemplated his future. So far, he’d been a man in motion, one foot in front of the other like an automaton, following orders. Now he was here, he couldn’t see beyond the bleak surrounds of these four walls and the grubby little cowpat of a town outside.
Even Jean seemed too far away to be more than a vague memory.
He leaned back, depressed, suddenly too tired to care, and fell asleep dreaming about the young couple in the Land Rover and a tall gunman with dreadlocks and a pole belching fire.
TWELVE
Mace was in his office by the time Harry got in, feeling worn out from a restless night’s sleep. He tapped on the glass door and walked in, and was surprised to smell alcohol in the air. A half-full glass of amber liquid sat in the centre of the Station Chief’s desk.
‘Come in,’ said Mace, his words heavily precise. ‘Set yourself down and pull up a coffee.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of a filter machine in the corner.
Harry decided against it. The rim of the glass bowl looked toxic.
‘Your digs all right?’ Mace asked.
‘Magnificent. I’ll soon have it looking just like home.’ Harry didn’t bother pretending; he was sure the last thing Mace was concerned with was the well-being of his staff.
‘Good. Good.’ Mace ignored the sarcasm and sat back in his chair, nursing his glass.
‘Is there something you want me to do?’ Harry hoped this wasn’t chancing providence. He felt washed out, his eyes gritty, and wanted nothing more than to get through the day, have a decent meal and get to bed — preferably alone, although he’d have felt a lot happier if Jean was here.
‘Not really. Thought it was about time I let you in on all the gossip.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s say you’re not unique, all right?’ Mace held up a finger. ‘Take young Ferris. MI5 computer bod. Something of a wiz, recruited from university and put to work for the greater good minding other people’s business. Trouble is, he got bored ferreting about in websites and computers belonging to terrorists, trouble-makers and general malcontents, and began using his skills closer to home; people in the government, people in power. One or two of ’em in the security services.’
‘Christ.’
‘Yeah. He’d have hacked Him too if he could have found His website. He wasn’t all that clever, though. He talked about what he’d done after hours. Silly boy. Should have known he’d get dobbed in by some back-stabber with ambition. Lots of that in this business.’
‘What happened?’ Harry was surprised Ferris wasn’t languishing in a cell somewhere. Hacking any computer was an offence; taking on the security services at their own game was tantamount to suicide.
‘He got tabbed. That’s a fancy name for having your legs taken from under you and sent out here, which is what happened to you. Your file gets tabbed, you’re due for a nasty surprise.’ He showed his teeth in another grin. ‘The people he took a sneaky look at didn’t want him loose on the labour market, so they decided to put him somewhere where they could keep an eye on him. Lucky for him.’
‘Why?’
‘He might have been propping up a patio in SW16, otherwise. They sent him here instead. Some might say there’s not much difference.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Harry felt uncomfortable hearing about the transgressions of his colleagues. He had second thoughts about the coffee and poured a cup. Even loaded with sugar it tasted like sump oil.
‘Why not? Clean sheets makes for untroubled sleep, so my dear old mother used to say. Course, they wouldn’t agree back at HQ, but that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Where was I? Oh, yes: Clare Jardine. Nice girl, but don’t get on her bad side. She comes from Six, along with all sorts of vile habits. She doesn’t do fluffy.’
‘Six?’ Harry was surprised. ‘I thought this was strictly a Five set-up.’
‘It started out that way. Then Vauxhall Cross asked to join the party in case they needed to export one or two of their own clandestine miscreants.’
‘I’m surprised they have enough to warrant it.’
‘You kidding? With over five thousand employees between ’em, it’d be a bloody miracle not to have some lame ducks. You any idea how many Fivers and Sixers get quietly canned every year?’
‘No.’
‘About two dozen at the last estimate, although they’re mostly minor. Some end up behind bars, others get the order of the boot and a rap over the head with the Official Secrets Act.’ He broke off and took a sip of his drink. ‘Then there’s the ones they can’t afford to kick off the end of the plank. Which is where this place comes in.’
‘Go on.’
‘Take young Clare, for instance. Passed all the courses with flying colours, didn’t put a foot wrong in the assessments and practical tests and left everyone else on her intake streets behind. She was only in Six for a year before she got spotted and chucked in at the deep end. Too deep, as it happened.’
Harry stirred his coffee and tried to match the woman he’d met with the kind of officers MI6 trained and ran. He’d got to know a few but they’d mostly been men.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know what a honey trap is?’ Mace’s voice was low.
‘I know the theory.’
‘Right. It needs two willing parties. Well, one willing, the ot
her as gullible as buggery. The trapper and the trappee. Jardine got badly stung.’
‘She was the target?’ It made him wonder why — and what she knew of value.
‘Knew you’d think that.’ Mace shook his head. ‘Our Clare was the honey pot.’
‘Oh.’ Harry revised his opinion. She clearly had hidden depths.
‘Trouble was, she got too close, too friendly.’ Mace shrugged. ‘Big no-no, that. Scale ten on the rectum-quivering chart. She should have made her excuses and pulled out, as the old-time News of the World journos used to say. But she didn’t. She stayed and tried to work the situation… and got burned. Turned out the target was setting her up, not the other way round.’
‘So why is she here?’
‘Like I said, she’s good. And hard-nosed. Don’t let the fact that she’s a woman fool you. She got snitty with her controller when he hauled her in, and threatened to tell what she knew. Seems in between the door and the target’s boudoir, she stumbled on some sensitive information. Nobody’s saying what, but it was enough to get her tabbed and sent her out here to lose her memory.’
‘Is it working?’
‘It’s fading.’
‘And Fitzgerald?’
‘He’s just unlucky. Ex-para, one of Five’s heavies for a few years — the kind used to lift someone off the street when they needed it. Then his wife ran off with the milkman, turned his kids against him and he lost the plot. Smacked a colleague who said the wrong thing. They were going to pay him off but he asked for a hard posting instead. This was it. Should have known better, being ex-army. Never volunteer for nothing.’
Harry looked at him and said, ‘What about you?’
Mace’s face remained blank. ‘You don’t have clearance for that information, son.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘Anything else you want to know?
‘Yes. What you said about the Russians coming; is that what all the local military activity is about?’
Mace eyed him for a few moments, then grunted. ‘They didn’t let you in on much before sending you out here, did they? Christ, what a bunch.’ He finished his drink and pushed the glass away. ‘Right, quick briefing. Thirty miles south of here is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. It runs oil from the Caspian all the way through to the Med. It’s what some folk call strategic… turn off the pipeline and there’s no oil for the motoring masses in Europe to drive their four-by-fours. Amazingly, our lords and masters have only just woken up to the fact. To the north is a breakaway region called South Ossetia, which sits up against the border with Mother Russia. And this is where things get interesting: the Ossetians have decided they want to be Russian rather than Georgian, which isn’t going down too well with President Saakashvili and his mates. It’s a source of tension.’
‘I heard.’ Like much of what passed for news, it had gone in one ear and out the other. But Harry wasn’t entirely ignorant of what was going on in this part of the world.
‘Good. What you probably won’t have heard is that things have been hotting up in this region. The separatists are pushing the envelope ’til it bursts and the Georgians are getting pissed and rattling their sabres. Can’t say I blame them, really.’
‘How seriously?’
‘Enough for some ordnance to have been lobbed back and forth over the border. Homemade, a lot of it, but it still goes bang when someone gets too close. Serious enough — ’ he paused and scratched his face with a bitten fingernail — ‘to have attracted the attention of Moscow. And we all know how that could pan out.’
Harry tried to work out what might happen, but gave up. It was a tortuous trap of a puzzle with no predictable outcome. ‘What are the odds?’
Mace pulled a face. ‘Putin doesn’t take any pushing around. If he gets in the mood, he’ll do something. It doesn’t have to make sense to us, just his own people. Still,’ he smiled, revealing coffee-stained teeth, ‘that’s above our pay grade. All we can do is monitor the situation and hold on to our hats.’
‘And if it blows?’
‘If it goes tits up, just hope for a clear road to the airport and a full tank of petrol.’
THIRTEEN
Clare Jardine was waiting for him when he left Mace’s office. She was dressed in black cargo pants and walking boots, with a dark fleece top. Her hair was tied in a severe bun. She clearly wasn’t dressing to impress.
She tossed him a set of car keys. ‘I’m going out. Mace says I have to take you with me, God help me. I’ll let you drive; it’ll be your first taster of life out here.’ She indicated a kettle on a side table, with a couple of flasks standing next to it. ‘Make yourself some coffee; we’ll be operating in a Starbucks’-free zone.’
I love you, too, thought Harry, and picked up a flask while she paraded impatiently back and forth. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, pouring in boiling water.
‘I’m meeting a contact at a truck stop twenty miles north of here. He says he’s got some figures on military truck movements which he thinks might be of interest.’ She rubbed her thumb and fingers together to indicate that money was involved.
Harry shook the flask and screwed on the top. He’d made it black and strong, to keep him awake. It seemed to be what everyone drank around here, with the possible exception of Mace. Maybe it explained Jardine’s spikiness; she certainly seemed wired up.
‘So why would exposing me be a good idea?’ he said.
Jardine stopped pacing and stared at him. Rik Ferris, working at a PC monitor, looked up with interest. ‘Why wouldn’t it?’ she replied coolly. ‘You saying you don’t want to come?’
‘I’m saying your contact might know you, but he won’t know me from a fence post. Seeing me will either scare him off or give him another face to identify if he gets compromised.’ He shrugged. ‘Just thought I’d mention it.’
Jardine’s jaw worked hard as she processed the inference. ‘Are you an expert?’ she said, her cheeks colouring, ‘or is this just superior alpha male bullshit?’
Harry sighed. She’d taken his response as a challenge, but he really didn’t give a rats. He had no idea how solid her contact was, nor how long she had been working him, but he wasn’t about to follow her blindly without question, no matter how well she knew the ground. It was his neck at risk, too.
‘Think what you like. But I’m entitled to ask when a risk is worth taking. Besides, can’t satellite tracking give us troop movements?’
‘You’re right, it can.’ Mace was standing just inside the doorway. ‘But we need more details than satellite images can supply. A lot of these buggers aren’t big on badges and we need to know who and what they are. Up close and personal is the only way.’ He nodded and went back to his office.
Harry shrugged. It sounded reasonable, but he still didn’t like it. When Clare Jardine turned and walked out, he followed. As he passed Rik’s desk, the young man lobbed him a small black mobile and said, ‘Remember, no calls to Australia and no online gambling.’
By the time he got downstairs, Jardine was standing next to a battered grey Toyota Land Cruiser. Harry pressed the remote and they climbed aboard. The engine sounded smooth, although the car looked as if it was a survivor of a demolition derby.
He soon discovered why.
Jardine told him to head north and pointed the way. He took the vehicle out through the town, and they were soon in open country, on a road which might have been a major route here, but would have been downgraded as a track elsewhere. The surface was pitted with holes and the edges were crumbling, with deep gullies waiting to catch unwary drivers. The locals held the centre of the road with suicidal aggression, their victories marked by a regular scattering of broken car and lorry parts along the verges.
Ten minutes out of town, they passed a convoy of military trucks filled with men in drab uniform and helmets. They looked heavily-armed and wary. Harry saw no obvious regimental or unit insignia save for a small lightning bolt on one sleeve.
‘Local militia,’ Jardine explained. She sounded cool but professiona
l.
‘Whose side are they on?’
‘Their own. They follow orders from their regional commander — a sort of warlord.’
‘Won’t that conflict with the regular army?’
She gave a ghost of a smile. ‘If it does, they’ll probably kick the army’s arse. They’re better equipped, better motivated and get paid more. Until then, they flex their muscles and train a lot just to remind everyone who really runs the place.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t get tested by someone with bigger muscles.’ He was thinking of what Mace had said about the Russians.
She looked at him, probably wondering how much he knew of the local situation. ‘It depends who they decide to back. If they fall back on old loyalties, they could jump either way.’ She pointed to a fork in the road, and he followed her directions to take the left one. ‘Let’s hope it never comes to that.’
The road they were now on became wider, but not much better. There was almost no southbound traffic, and Harry was able to pull out and overtake whenever conditions allowed. They passed several huge haulage or military trucks, belching fumes and hogging the centre line, and more than once Harry found himself holding his breath as the Land Cruiser was nearly brushed off the road by one of the lumbering vehicles. To have squeezed over too far would have invited disaster, but the alternative — to be wiped out by a clash against one of the huge wheels — would have been terminal.
A flash in his mirror and a blast of air horns alerted Harry to someone else heading north. He pulled over as a big four-by-four shot by, nearly taking off their wing mirror. Clare Jardine grabbed for a handle, but seemed unfazed by the manoeuvre. The vehicle disappeared, leaving Harry with a vague impression of two men inside and a smiley face sticker on the rear window.
Forty minutes after leaving town they came to a large, low building ahead, plastered with signs and posters and surrounded by trucks. Jardine signalled for Harry to pull in. He did so, parking close to the building. There were no other cars that he could see, and he guessed this was the area’s one and only truck stop.
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