A Sentimental Traitor

by Michael Dobbs

Sloppy had scrubbed up remarkably well, considering his circumstances. Immaculate St James’s shoes, creases in all the correct places; the old customs of a regiment refuse to die. It was the eyes that told the story, with their glaze of defiance and rims raw from being washed in drink. He was too far gone even now to show much surprise as Harry sat down next to him at the bar, offering little more than a flash of confusion. Yet behind the glower, in layers that peeled away, Harry could see pain, humiliation, and fear. It reminded Harry of a face he’d got to know recently, staring back at him from his mirror. He’d wondered how he would react when he finally got to Sloppy – smash a bottle over his head, break an elbow or an arm? Find some way of releasing his anger through gratuitous and excessive violence. Yet now he came to it, he didn’t see the point. Or, perhaps more accurately, that wasn’t the major point.

  ‘Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it, Sloppy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Christmas.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve both had some bloody awful luck since then.’

  The steward intervened: ‘Is that to be your usual, then, Mr Jones? On Mr Sopwith-Dane’s bill?’

  ‘Of course my bill,’ Sloppy interjected. ‘Let’s make it a bottle – Krug, not the cheap muck.’

  The steward offered a cautious eye before disappearing in search of his prey.

  ‘Krug, Sloppy? Are we celebrating?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Doesn’t make any bloody difference,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t pay for a pint of piss. Might as well go down in a blaze of glory.’

  ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ Harry replied coldly. ‘What the hell happened, Sloppy?’

  Mean, red eyes shot at Harry. ‘What happened? We went belly up, that’s what happened.’

  ‘Talk me through it. For old times’ sake.’

  Sloppy chewed his lips, his expression full of contempt. ‘You remember Belize? Jungle training? Hot as hell and ants all up your arse? There’s a liana that grows there, one of those huge bloody tropical vines, thick as a man’s waist. Wrapped itself around a tree and just grew and grew like Topsy. Covered the tree, smothered it. Until it got just so greedy that it sucked the life out of the tree and the whole thing collapsed. Dead tree. Dead vine. That’s what you lot are like.’

  ‘You lot?’

  ‘You were all over me in the good times, when the money was easy for you, but at the first bit of bad luck . . .’ He swallowed the rest of the drink as the steward came back with the Krug in a bucket of ice and poured two glasses.

  ‘It isn’t bad luck conning me into signing false documents.’

  Sloppy’s lip curled into a snarl. ‘At least you’ve still got your fucking leg.’ He turned back to his glass.

  ‘I want to know what happened, for God’s sake. I have a right. I’m told it all went into an investment fund. Shengtzu. Why?’

  ‘You think you’re the only one who got hammered? Lost everything they’d ever worked for? I didn’t inherit, I earned. And I lost everything!’

  Yet Harry refused to get dragged into recrimination. Instead he gathered himself, fought back against his desire to throttle the bastard, knew he would have to tease rather than tear what he wanted out of him.

  ‘Shengtzu, Sloppy. Why Shengtzu?’

  And, between flashes of defiance and fresh drink, Sloppy’s story emerged. Of Mr Anderson and his moist palms, his cufflinks and camp lips, and a ream of confidential papers about a fund that even to this day Sloppy believed were genuine. The truth, but only half the truth. And the wrong half, at that.

  ‘So this stranger walks in and spins you some line, and you bet the entire factory on it?’ Harry said, incredulous, knowing there must be more.

  ‘It wasn’t as simple as that, of course it wasn’t!’ Sloppy bit back, raising his voice, pouring himself another glass. The steward raised an eyebrow, but Harry’s eyes warned him to back off.

  ‘How “not simple” was it?’

  ‘Money, money, money, it’s all you bastards care about.’

  ‘That was your job. All of it.’

  ‘He had a quarter of a million in his pocket. Money where his mouth was. And you’d have taken it, too.’

  ‘He just gave it to you? Handed it across?’

  ‘Just like that. In a beautiful white envelope.’

  ‘Which you invested for him.’

  ‘In Shengtzu.’

  ‘And which he subsequently lost.’

  ‘Every single brightly polished farthing.’

  ‘That’s one hell of a lot of farthings.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pay him back. Pay you all back. In farthings.’

  Sloppy made some noise, a snort or a snigger, and drowned it in his glass, leaving Harry lost in confusion.

  ‘So has this Mr Anderson been on your tail, too, chasing you for his money back?’

  ‘No point. Don’t have any money. Diddly-squat broke, like you. I went down with my ship.’ He drank. ‘But Mr Anderson couldn’t complain. He doesn’t exist. Oh, I checked him out, of course I did. Seemed entirely genuine. Until the ship went down. Then he sort of vanished. I did some digging, not sure whether I should be apologizing or strangling the bastard, but it turns out he was never there. All the contact details he gave me were false or entirely temporary. Service addresses and pay-as-you-go phones, and all the rest buried somewhere so deep in the Caymans it’d take an earthquake to get at it.’ Suddenly his shoulders slumped, his face melting in misery. ‘Should have dug a little deeper, maybe, but we needed a bit of luck, Harry, you and me. Thought Mr Anderson was it.’ He was growing maudlin, the alcohol taking him prisoner. Nothing he said made much sense any more. The portrait of the Princess Royal gazed down in disapproval.

  Harry knew it was time to call his accountant, his bank, the police. Get the wretched man run in. Salvage something. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t save himself by sacrificing Sloppy, that wasn’t the way they had ever worked. It had been Sloppy who bailed him out with his CO when Harry failed to follow the orders he’d been given – Harry had found a better way of doing it, and done that instead. It was also Sloppy who’d got him out of the mess in Armagh, when Harry had been out on surveillance of a farmhouse stuffed with very bad men and been rumbled. In the ensuing firefight, Harry had been almost out of time and ammunition before Sloppy and his troop turned up to drag him out. That’s when he’d taken the bullet in the knee, one that would otherwise have finished up in Harry. He owed Sloppy. The sort of debts that don’t expire.

  Now he shook his old colleague’s arm, trying to rouse him from his stupor. ‘Sloppy, I need to know. Where are you staying? Where can I find you?’

  ‘Sending round the heavies?’

  ‘No, that’s not going to happen. You know that. Too much previous. But I need to know how to get hold of you.’

  ‘Me?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m the Scarlet Pimpernel.’

  ‘Where, Sloppy?’

  Sloppy got out his wallet, inspected the cash in it. Less than a hundred pounds. ‘While this lasts, at the Cheshire Cheese. After that, who the hell knows? Or cares?’ He picked up the bottle, but it was empty. He let it fall back into the ice bucket and soak the counter. Harry pushed his own glass over to him; it hadn’t been touched. Then, with a nod of gratitude to the steward, he got up and left.

  Harry had called saying he was stuck on a bench with a bottle. Jemma found him in sunshine by the Serpentine, with nothing more than a bottle of water.

  ‘You bastard,’ she scolded, but smiled.

  ‘I wondered what would get you here quicker, telling you that I cared, or that I was drunk.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Harry?’

  ‘Measuring the bench up for size. For when I sleep on it.’

  She might have told him not to be so ridiculous, that things would be fine, something would turn up, but she knew it would be nothing more than bromide, and Harry would know it, too.

  ‘This is also my office,’ he declared, moving up. ‘Please, come in.’ He patted the woo
den slats beside him.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said, taking the seat. ‘I’ve got an evening function.’

  ‘Is that what they call it nowadays?’ he asked, his voice mean. Hurt.

  ‘What do you want, Harry?’

  ‘I’m celebrating. This morning I got a call from a TV producer asking me if I’d consider starring in a television series.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating.’

  ‘He said I would be perfect, it could rehabilitate my reputation, but I declined.’

  ‘Why?’

  He smiled, a tight, bitter expression. ‘It was for Big Brother.’

  She wanted to cry out. Hadn’t he been humiliated enough?

  ‘And I’ve found Sloppy,’ he added.

  ‘And?’ she said, brightening.

  He gave her an outline, but as she listened she started stubbornly shaking her head.

  ‘No investor hands over a quarter of a million pounds, watches it being poured into an abyss, then quietly disappears into the night.’

  ‘The man wasn’t Mr Anderson, and neither was he an investor. He set Sloppy up.’

  ‘Harry, I don’t—’

  ‘Don’t you sense a pattern, a rotten smell? Just like you can smell a muck spreader even with the windows closed.’ He held her hand, squeezed it between both of his. ‘Mr Anderson was a set-up. Emily was a set-up. You were beaten up, too, Jem.’

  ‘But what’s the connection?’

  ‘Me,’ he said softly.

  ‘Why, Harry?’

  ‘Not sure. My past, I suppose, catching up with me. I’ve made a good number of enemies in my time, Jem . . .’ Destroyed men. Killed more than a few. She didn’t need the details, not now. ‘Someone is targeting me. Trying to obliterate me.’

  ‘And doing a damned good job of it, too.’

  ‘But that’s the point, they’re doing almost too good a job. This isn’t casual or amateur. Someone very powerful is behind all this. Which got me thinking – what’s the first thing you do to worm your way inside someone’s life?’

  ‘If you’re a journalist, or a private detective, say?’

  He nodded. She twitched her nose in concentration.

  ‘I’d . . .’ She blinked. ‘Hack your phone.’

  He reached into his pocket and extracted his own. ‘These things can tell you almost everything you want to know about its owner, if you’re clever enough to get inside them. Know Sloppy handled my money. Know about you. Know everything that was necessary to skin me alive.’

  She looked uncomfortable. ‘Can you tell, for sure?’

  ‘No, but I know a man who can. Old friend. Think it’s about time I had a drink with him. Can I borrow your phone?’

  She handed it across. He made a call, arranged to meet at a bar in an hour.

  ‘Thanks, Jem,’ he said, handing the phone back to her. ‘Should be fun. Think about it this way – the fight-back begins!’ A brief, taunting smile wriggled across his face, the first she’d seen in a while. ‘Oh, but I’m sorry, you can’t stay, can you? Your “evening function”.’

  Her nose wrinkled again, this time in disgust. ‘God, but you can be such a smug bastard, Jones.’ She sighed, shaking her head in defeat, already thumbing the text buttons on her phone. ‘How do you spell “pathetic excuse”?’

  Glen Crossing was a man whose waist had seen leaner days. Much leaner. He liked to lay the blame on his kids and the diet of crap they shared with him, but since leaving the Army he had pursued a lifestyle that befitted a senior corporate executive, and both salary and belt size had increased substantially. Twenty years earlier he’d been the best squash player and telecommunications wonk in the regiment. He was still the best telecommunications wonk.

  As Harry walked into the hotel foyer, Crossing waved at his old friend from his post at the bar, rising to greet him, buttoning his jacket as he saw Jemma in tow and trying to hide the midriff. Stuffy hotel bars weren’t the preferred habitat for either of them, but the early summer weather had taken hold and most of the usual drinking joints were packed and noisy, and Crossing had assumed that whatever Harry wanted to see him about so bloody urgently was unlikely to be the sort of thing he’d want to have to shout across a crowded bar. ‘Harry, my old mucker, so very good to see you. And . . .?’

  Harry introduced Jemma.

  ‘Anew lady in your life,’ Crossing declared.

  ‘We’re just friends,’ Jemma said.

  ‘Then he’s a damned fool,’ Crossing replied.

  ‘Thank you,’ she smiled, accepting the compliment.

  ‘Let me buy you both a drink,’ he announced.

  ‘Er, no thanks, Glenny. I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.’

  ‘And why the bloody hell not?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be able to return the favour. I went down with Sloppy.’

  ‘Well, bugger my boots,’ Crossing sighed, his exuberance deflating rapidly. ‘Only one thing for it. I’ll have to buy the whole bottle.’ He busied himself ordering drinks. ‘I’d heard whispers about Sloppy, of course, but I had no idea he’d taken you with him. Life’s rather left you hanging on the old barbed wire, hasn’t it, my friend? Goes without saying, if there’s anything I can do . . .’

  ‘One thing.’

  ‘It’s yours.’

  Harry produced his phone and laid it on the bar. ‘I think someone might have tampered with it, Glenny. Copied the information. Might even be listening to phone calls.’

  ‘How wonderful. You handed it over any time recently?’

  ‘Every time I’ve been to the gym, through a scanner, been laid out cold in a bar. You know how it is.’

  ‘It’s possible to set these things up as remote microphones, listen to conversations, even when the phone appears to be switched off. Israelis are brilliant at that. Trouble is, it really buggers up the battery life.’ He put on a pair of heavy-framed reading glasses and began peering at it, his face puckered in concentration. ‘So you want to know whether there’s mischief afoot.’

  ‘Can you do that? How long will it take?’

  The eyes came up from examining the phone to give Harry the most withering of looks. ‘About ten seconds, if you stop prattling on.’ He produced a paper clip, bent it, and used it as a tool to prise out the SIM card. ‘You know what your UICCID serial number is, Harry?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘No, most people haven’t the foggiest. Nerd stuff. It’s like knowing the chassis number of your car. Who ever bothers with it? Unless you’re good, very good, like me.’ He looked up through his glasses. ‘Yep. You’ve won yourself a major prize.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Someone’s had a go at this. Or should I say, more likely is having a go at this. The serial number on your card isn’t one of the regular ones your phone should have.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Jemma intervened, trying to peer over his shoulder at the small chip.

  ‘This card isn’t the original,’ he said, holding it for her inspection between his finger and thumb. ‘Looks identical, except for the dodgy serial number.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Well, only reason for doing something like that is to nobble you. My guess is that your calls are on permanent divert to another number where they are almost certainly being intercepted. All your SMS stuff, and data, too. Inbound and outbound. Pretty much everything. You wouldn’t notice, the increased delay in connection is barely a nanosecond. Standard practice in the City nowadays, they have to do it by law.’ He fiddled some more, head bent, muttering technical stuff that was gibberish to Jemma, until he raised his eyes in triumph. ‘Yup. They’ve definitely screwed around with your IMSI. This one belongs to one of the small specialist mobile operators.’

  ‘Can you find out who’s doing it?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Now that might take a little longer. About a minute or so.’ He produced a notebook from his bag and began clattering with the keys. ‘Just checking your account, Harry . . . Gotcha! Your inbound calls are being
routed to this number.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Cross peered closely at his screen. ‘Registered to a company that I very strongly suspect is a dummy.’

  ‘I get the feeling that if we followed the trail it would take us somewhere exotic and untouchable like the Caymans,’ Harry said.

  ‘Which is about as useful as sticking your head in quicksand.’

  ‘Is there no way of tracking it down?’ Jemma said, struggling to keep the disappointment from her voice.

  ‘Oh, yes. If we involved the security services and they got a warrant. But otherwise . . .’ Crossing shook his head, and Jemma sighed. But Harry’s brow remained rapt in concentration.

  ‘Then we will have to find out for ourselves,’ he said, very quietly, but with an edge that made her feel she was in the presence of something dangerous, as if she had walked into a darkened room and found the eyes of an untamed animal peering at her.

  ‘How do you plan to do that, Harry?’

  ‘By rattling their cage a bit. In fact, by rattling it so hard their teeth fall out. Preferably through their bloody ears.’ Then he paused. ‘Trouble is, I suspect a few of my own teeth are going to have to come out first.’

  A cloud passed across Jemma’s face. She knew he wasn’t joking. She excused herself, headed for the ladies. The two men watched her retreat.

  ‘You want to make secure calls, Harry, get yourself another mobile. One of the cheap throwaway jobbies,’ Crossing said, his eyes still on Jemma.

  ‘Thanks, Glenny. I owe you.’

  ‘Be happy to take that young lady of yours in compensation.’

  ‘You know something,’ Harry sighed, ‘so would I.’ He sat inspecting his phone. Even while he was staring at it, the thing began to vibrate. A blocked number. He tapped the screen to answer it.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Arkwright, Mr Jones.’

  Harry froze, had difficulty locating his wits. ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant Arkwright?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Arkwright,’ the policeman corrected him. ‘Your case file, it’s been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service for review.’

  Harry felt as though a hundred horses were stampeding across his stomach.