PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Kelly was out of his chair, apoplectic with rage. ‘You arrogant little shit! You ballsy little arsehole! You’re going on the first plane home, or you’re going to fucking jail! Mark my words, White, mark my fucking words!’

  ‘Bryce,’ Riley said with a smooth, genteel voice completely unruffled by Kelly’s outburst, speaking for the first time since Cole’s arrival in the office, ‘please calm down. I understand you’re upset, but I am afraid our American guest here is quite correct. I extended him the same courtesies as our own agents, at the direct request of the prime minister. Things perhaps didn’t work out quite as well as we would have liked, but we need some circumspection about this whole affair. At least we have a name now.’

  Kelly was still fuming, red in the face and sweating around the collar, but he had at least sat back down in his chair.

  ‘Javid Khan,’ Cole said to Riley, grateful for his support. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I said we needed some circumspection about the whole affair,’ Riley said, ‘which meant I don’t want poor Bryce here to give himself a heart attack. It doesn’t mean that I’m about to tell you everything now, given what’s happened. I’m sorry, but while we try and sort out today’s unhappy little incident, you’re going to have to just wait back at the DoubleTree, old boy. No offence.’

  Cole glared at the man, knowing that to argue would only weaken his cause. ‘No offence taken,’ he said with a forced smile.

  The meeting at an end, the only thing left to do was wait for his armed escort back to the hotel.

  And now, a meal and a shower later, he still felt angry about the whole thing.

  He’d spoken to Vinson back in Forest Hills, and the president at the White House, but their message had been the same – wait out for further instructions. Apparently the publicity he’d gained had alerted FBI Director Graham to the fact that he might not be who he said he was, and the ramifications of this were still being assessed. Added to which, there was the political fallout that had to be dealt with.

  It pained Cole, but he understood; relations between the two countries were important, and ruffled feathers had to be smoothed out for the common good. The Brits wanted him on the first plane home, but the president was angling to have him stay, in some capacity at least; but he knew that international relations might require him to leave.

  Still, he figured, Mark White could be made to go pretty easily; he didn’t actually exist, after all. Cole could merely change identity and stick around for as long as he wanted. It would make things harder, in terms of being directly involved in the investigation, but it would be better than nothing.

  His secure cellphone started ringing on his nightstand, and Cole rolled over to answer it, hoping it was Vinson – he’d given the man Javid Khan’s name, and asked his chief of staff to find out what he could.

  He saw the caller ID and smiled. ‘Bruce,’ he said as he answered, ‘tell me you’ve got something.’

  ‘I’ve got details on Khan,’ Vinson said, ‘but I wouldn’t get too excited yet, it’s pretty thin.’

  ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘I’ll read you the jacket. Javid Khan, born September fifth, nineteen seventy-nine, aged forty-one. Place of birth Karachi, Pakistan. Pretty good background, middle class – father was a dentist, quite wealthy for the area. Two sisters and a brother, all younger. Javid went on to study engineering at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad, before becoming an officer in the Pakistan Army. Information is scarce at this point, as although he did well, reaching the rank of Major, he then absconded, never to be seen again.’

  ‘He went AWOL?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vinson confirmed, ‘and that was the last the Pakistan Army ever saw of him.’

  ‘But Morgan knew who he was.’

  ‘Yes, he was of interest to British intelligence, SIS had flagged him as a unit leader of an ISIS brigade in Syria a few years back. Led attacks all over the area and was involved in the battles of Falluja and Mosul. He dropped out of the picture again though, until Five caught him on surveillance footage entering the UK a few months ago.’

  ‘They were following him over here?’

  ‘Unfortunately no,’ Vinson answered. ‘They didn’t pick up his entry until a few hours after he’d already left the airport – and by then he was long gone. They’ve been trying to find him ever since, and his face was well known to Five’s officers, which is why Morgan would have recognized him, and got so excited by the whole thing.’

  ‘So what we have,’ Cole said, ‘is an engineer, trained by the military but who was turned by Islamic extremists, entering the UK a few months before a major terrorist attack here. A man who then appears at the scene of those same attacks.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But we have no way of knowing if this was his plan, or if someone else was behind him and he was just a middle-man, a facilitator.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do we know if he’s been cut loose from ISIS? Is he still with them?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. NSA intercepts indicate he may have been disavowed, that he’s no longer with them, but that might be disinformation aimed at confusing us, muddying the waters. On the other hand, they’ve not claimed responsibility for the attack, which probably indicates that they aren’t behind it. But we don’t know for sure, and it’s an avenue we’re exploring.’

  Cole nodded to himself. ISIS, also known as ISIL and Daesh – although a major threat for several years – was now something of a spent force, hammered down finally by an ad hoc coalition of Kurdish fighters, Turkish soldiers, and western airstrikes guided by boots-on-the-ground special forces. There were still remnants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’, but it definitely wasn’t what it once was; Khan might well have decided to abandon a sinking ship and move on to pastures new.

  It had also, Cole knew, never really been that active in international terrorism; the group had intended to establish a new caliphate within Iraq, Syria and beyond, and had never concerned itself unduly with lashing out directly at the west as Al ‘Qaeda had done.

  But then again, Cole reminded himself, many of the lone wolf attacks that had occurred in recent years had been a result of strong IS online propaganda. Could it be that Khan had been the go-between, an IS agent whose mission was to recruit such lone wolf attackers and provide them with weapons and equipment, help them plan the attacks?

  Perhaps the organization – now that its dreams in the Levant were seemingly over – was looking to become a more traditional terrorist organization in the Al ‘Qaeda mold? Looking back on what they’d achieved in Iraq and Syria, it was a sobering thought indeed.

  What was clear, though, was that Javid Khan would have been an important man in whichever organization he was now a part of. A former officer in the Pakistan Army and a senior ISIS commander, he was far from being a flunky; he was a major player for someone. But who?

  The question nagged at Cole, but he knew that frustration wouldn’t provide him with any answers. Between the British and American intelligence services, some of the finest analysts in the world – not to mention some of the most powerful supercomputers ever created – would be crunching data right now, looking for patterns, looking for the one bit of information that would cause the whole thing to unravel.

  And yet, Cole realized, one of the best intelligence analysts he’d ever met wasn’t even allowed to be in on the investigation.

  Michiko.

  ‘Could my daughter help?’ Cole asked – hating himself for it, his desire to keep her safe at odds with his desire to win, to get to the bottom of what had happened and beat the bastards who had done it.

  ‘You know I have a lot of respect for Michiko,’ Vinson said, and Cole already knew where it was going, ‘and I appreciate the fact that she is your daughter, but – at the end of the day, and please forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn here – you still barely know her, and she’s been working for a criminal organization for most of her life. You must unders
tand my reticence – not to mention that of the president, and dos Santos, and General Olsen – about letting her have access to anything classified.’

  Cole kept his instinctive anger in check. It was an argument they’d had many times already, and – intellectually at least – he supported Vinson’s position. But in his heart, he wanted to back his daughter, to campaign for her, to protest at how the others perceived her.

  And – right now – he believed with all his heart that she might be able to help.

  ‘I appreciate your concerns,’ Cole said, ‘but as commander of Force One, it’s me that has to make the decisions.’

  ‘I understand, and of course I’ll back you whatever you decide to do.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cole said, ‘leave it with me, and I’ll contact her myself if I decide to go down that road. I –’

  Cole was interrupted by a loud knocking on his door, and – phone still in his hand – he leapt off the bed and moved swiftly across the room.

  He was here as an advisor, and had no reason to suspect that anyone wished him harm, and yet he had not survived for so many years by being careless. He therefore avoided looking through the peephole in the door, knowing that an assassin’s bullet could all too easily find its way into his brain as a result.

  Instead, he looked down at the screen that was attached to a thin fiber-optic cable he’d slipped underneath the door when he’d got back to his room. It was tiny, almost invisible to the naked eye, and was therefore incredibly easy to take on international flights; it would also be undetectable to the person – or people – on the other side of the door.

  When he saw the image on the screen, displayed in perfect high-resolution, he was momentary taken aback.

  And then he put the phone back to his ear. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he whispered to Vinson. ‘The British agent I told you about, Elizabeth Morgan, the one that shot Khan? She’s right outside my door.’

  19

  ‘Mark,’ Morgan said simply as he opened the door to her, and Cole’s mind worked furiously as he tried to figure out why she was there, what sort of a state she was in.

  Had she been back to work since the incident? If not, why had she come here instead? And if she had been in to Thames House, had she been sent to see him by Bryce Kelly?

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asked next, and Cole realized that several seconds must have passed, and he was still blocking the doorway, trying to figure her out.

  He shook his head, wondered for a moment if it hadn’t actually been because he’d been mesmerized by her bizarre, almost supernatural beauty, and finally regained his composure.

  ‘Sorry Liz, of course you can, come in, please.’

  He moved out of the way, allowing Morgan to pass into the room, trying to assess her mood as he entered. The shock had obviously passed, but was she still upset?

  Cole hated himself for it, but his survival instinct made him also consider the fact that she was a threat. Even though it was her weapon that had been used, did she blame Cole for Cranshaw’s death? If so, might she have come looking for vengeance?

  As she glided into the hotel room, he checked out the lines of her lithe body, searching for a hidden weapon. He’d observed the way she’d concealed the Sig after drawing it out of the MI5 armory, and knew she was no expert at the art. By the time she’d reached the writing desk on the far side of the bed, Cole was fairly satisfied that she was unarmed.

  She pulled out the little wooden chair as Cole closed the door. ‘Can I sit down?’ she asked. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’

  Cole nodded. ‘It has,’ he agreed. ‘Of course you can. Do you want a drink?’

  She sighed, her body sagging, and Cole realized she was still emotionally very drained by what had happened.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a beer, if you’ve got one,’ she said.

  Cole walked over to the minibar and opened it up, checking the contents. ‘Heineken okay?’ he asked, pulling out a can.

  ‘As long as it’s got alcohol in it, I’m happy,’ she said, and Cole poured it out for her into a glass before getting one of his own and going to sit at the foot of his bed, just opposite her.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened today,’ Morgan said, before Cole had the chance to offer sympathies of his own. ‘The entire thing was my fault. I fucked up, and Tom died because of it.’ She took a large swallow from the glass, tears starting to well at her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ Cole said. ‘But I don’t think you can blame yourself, there were a lot of things that contributed to what happened. No offence, but you and Tom should never have been given weapons in the first place. You can’t blame yourself for that.’

  ‘But I can,’ she said. ‘I could have practiced more, the training’s been there over the years if we’d wanted it.’ Cole started to protest, but she held up a hand. ‘And it was my own stupid fault for blurting out his name like that in the first place, like it was my first day on the job. You must have thought I was a bloody lunatic.’

  ‘I was surprised,’ Cole said diplomatically. ‘But we all make mistakes.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘I made too many. First the lunatic shouting, then we misjudged the situation at the mall, Tom and I shouldn’t have gone in first, we should have backed off and left it for the SO19 boys. But,’ she continued, taking another large gulp of the Heineken, ‘I felt so shit, having made that first mistake, I wanted to make amends for it.’ The tears started to fall again. ‘You have no idea what I’ve had to put up with, being an agent at Five; all of the men want to fuck me, none of them think I can do the job, and all of the other women hate me.’

  Cole nodded in understanding. He did know how it could be, how women in certain positions had to do their jobs twice as well as the men to even be taken half-seriously. And a woman who looked as good as Morgan would get her fair share of lewd comments, as well as the hatred and jealousy of women who simply didn’t look as good.

  He knew, also, how she would have felt when Khan had started running – like all the hard work she’d put in over the years would have been for nothing if he got away. She’d have been the laughing stock of Thames House before the day was out.

  ‘So you had to be the one to catch him,’ Cole finished for her, to show that he did understand. ‘To take away attention from alerting him, you knew that the only way would be if you didn’t let him get away.’

  Morgan wiped the tears away, looked at Cole. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Exactly.’

  She finished her beer, and Cole threw her another. She snapped open the tab and started drinking from the can, ignoring the glass now.

  ‘But we let him get too close, he surprised us – surprised me – with his speed, he suckered me in and took the gun before I could react.’

  ‘But then you did react, did the only thing you could and tried to get the weapon back.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘and killed my partner by doing it, shot him straight through the heart, the . . .’

  And that was it, the dam broke and all the tears came flooding out, her body wracked with convulsions as she sobbed uncontrollably.

  Cole paused, unsure of what exactly he should do. The funny thing was that – if the girl had been a mark, a target, and he’d been on a mission that revolved around gaining her confidence – he would have had no problem in embracing her, giving her a shoulder to cry on. He would have said the right things, made the right moves.

  But with a colleague of sorts – if not exactly a friend – he found himself unable to console her, unable to provide the warmth of human comfort. He wondered if it was even in him to give in this way, save for the image of it he kept for when it was an operational necessity.

  He wondered – not for the first time – just what sort of person he was. Was he like the empty shell of the actor who lived only for the next part, so that he could live vicariously through the characters he temporarily inhabited? After so many years of covert missions, inhabiting the lives of others, suppressing his own emotions and
feelings, was there anything left inside of him?

  Even the name Mark Cole, the one name among the many that he used that he could actually identify with, wasn’t really his own. He had been born Mark Kowalski, and the name Cole had only been taken when he’d been declared Killed In Action and had started to work for Hansard as an off-the-books assassin and saboteur.

  But he had no answers; and so in the end, he just sipped his beer and waited for her to finish.

  Eventually she did finish, having cried herself out; so much so that she seemed physically exhausted. She put the can of beer down on the writing table and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, ‘I’m really sorry. You must really think I’m some sort of crazy person.’ She shook her head, staring down at the carpet. ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here.’

  ‘You’re not crazy,’ Cole said, knowing something about this subject at least. ‘You’ve just been involved in an incident which has left you shaken, and pretty understandably. There’re no rules about how you should react to something like this.’

  He paused, looked at her, waited for her to raise her eyes to his. Eventually she did and – holding her gaze – he continued.

  ‘But you did come and see me, and I think you do know why.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘I don’t. I really don’t.’

  ‘It’s because I was there. You’ve probably been talking to people – professional people –all afternoon about this. But they weren’t there, how could they know what it was like?’ He shook his head with conviction. ‘They couldn’t, not really, not like you and me know.’

  Morgan, he could see, was listening to him closely now. And why not? He’d been through the same thing himself many times over the years.