by Chris Ryan
Slater was a little embarrassed by Andreas’s crudeness.
‘That’s a rather unlovely metaphor, Andreas.’ Eve turned her level, grey gaze on Slater. ‘We were just thinking of getting a bite to eat. Will you join us?’
‘Why not?’ said Slater, amused at the directness of her approach and impressed by the way she took Andreas’s laddish remarks in her stride.
He followed them up Bond Street to Stratford Place. ‘We’re going to the Oriental Club,’ explained Andreas. ‘I seem to remember you being a bit of a curry addict.’
The club was old and quiet and smelt of furniture polish. Paintings of colonial administrators and engravings of battle scenes hung from the walls.
‘Are you a member here?’ Slater asked Andreas, as the hall porter removed his bags. It seemed unlikely.
‘I am,’ Eve answered. Beneath the coat she was wearing a darkly anonymous business suit. Neither she nor Andreas handed their briefcases to the porter.
In the dining room, when they had placed their orders, the three of them sat for a moment in silence.
‘So, tell me, Neil, how’s it going?’ Andreas asked eventually. ‘Do you think bodyguarding’s going to be your future?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Slater. ‘But it’ll do for now. It’s got its down-sides, but the up-side is that I’m in charge of my own life. If I don’t want to do a job I can just walk away from it.’
‘Did you read about the Karadjic snatch?’
‘I did. Do you know who did it?’
‘Some of the guys from A Squadron. Ray Mortimer led the team, apparently. The boss is over the moon – it was a real result. And I’ll tell you this for nothing.’ He levelled his gaze at Slater. ‘There certainly aren’t going to be any prosecutions on behalf of those Serbs they wasted. Cheers!’
Thoughtfully, Slater raised the glass of Kingfisher lager the waiter had placed in front of him. Eve, he saw, was drinking mineral water.
‘So how do you know Andreas?’ he asked her, although by now he was certain what the answer would be.
‘We work together,’ she answered, her expression neutral.
‘I see.’ She was the watcher, Slater realised, and Andreas was the talker. What would the deal be this time? he wondered. What were they offering?
They waited in slightly awkward silence as their curries were laid out on the hot-plate at the table’s centre. When the waiter had finally withdrawn Andreas lifted his fork and examined the insignia stamped into the heavy silver.
‘Neil, vis-à-vis that school stuff, you’re in trouble,’ he said quietly. ‘I spoke to Lark last night and his words were that there was only so far his department could stick its neck out for a civilian. Now this doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t want the whole thing to go away – everyone does, and the Saudis in particular. They’re supposed to be the Islamic state we can do business with, not some bunch of whacko trigger-happy fundamentalists. So they’ll be throwing plenty of time and money at the thing. But the bottom line is that the Firm protects its own. Without some commitment on your part, they can’t promise to go the distance for you. Given the way the press works these days, it’s just too risky.’
‘I see,’ said Slater. He was quietly furious. Who the fuck did these people think they were – following him about and, for all he knew, intercepting his phone calls too? Did they know about Grace? They could hardly fail to.
Expressionless, he turned to Eve. ‘So which is the chicken jalfrezi?’
For five minutes they busied themselves with their food. The other club-members and their visitors tended to be male, blazer-wearing and of a certain age. A couple of Gurkha Rifles ties were in evidence. A journalist of either sex would have been very visible indeed.
‘Is this one of your department’s places?’ Slater asked Andreas.
‘No, it’s more one of Eve’s places.’
‘Not a very feminine establishment,’ Slater ventured.
She turned amused grey eyes on him. ‘I’m not your stereotypical girly girl, Mr Slater. More pilau rice?’
When they had finished their meal Eve asked for coffee to be brought to them in the reading room. There, she selected a table some distance from the fireplace and from the other club members. Andreas ordered a glass of Cognac.
‘So tell me,’ Slater asked her warily as he stirred his coffee, ‘what exactly do you and your department mean by commitment?’
‘Basically that we’d like you to join the department.’
‘Why? There must be scores of ex-Regiment blokes like me doing the rounds. And who are you people, anyway?’
‘In answer to your first question let’s just say for the moment that you come highly recommended. As to who we are, well . . .’ She thought for a moment. ‘How’s your modern history?’
‘Uneven,’ admitted Slater.
She smiled. ‘OK. Basically we’re a department of MI6, based at Vauxhall Cross. Our official title is the Operational Research Cadre, but we’re usually just known as the Cadre. Like all such departments we’ve had several identity crises over the years. We started life during the Second World War as a subsection of the escape and evasion unit known as M19, whose role was to set up ratlines for agents and POWs in occupied Europe.’
Slater nodded. He’d been introduced to a couple of wartime agents at the Special Forces Club behind Harrods. They’d been watchful, belligerent men, he remembered, unsoftened by the passing of the years.
‘When the war ended,’ Eve continued, ‘the unit’s infrastructure remained in place but its role changed. Until the early fifties its principal activity was the tracing and processing of former Nazis. And then, at the time of the Korean War, with the Cadre reduced to a single office at SIS headquarters, a decision was taken to run a major network of covert operatives in South East Asia. So new faces, new money, and a new role.’
‘Working alongside the CIA and the US Special Forces?’ Slater hazarded. ‘The Vientiane connection?’
‘That sort of thing. Those were the Cadre’s Dark Ages, I guess. You hardly ever meet anyone from that time; most of them just kind of, I don’t know, vanished. Into the jungle, I suppose.’
‘Strange days!’ said Andreas, swirling his Cognac in its balloon glass.
‘And now?’ asked Slater.
‘Now the Cadre is an autonomous, fully-funded research unit within Six.’
‘Research?’
Eve shrugged. ‘It’s as good a name for what we do as anything. Basically we’re problem-solvers. People – other departments, other services — come to us with . . . very intractable problems. And we solve them.’
‘I’m not sure that I like the kind of problem-solving you’re talking about,’ said Slater. ‘I’m sure we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t done your homework, so I assume you’ve seen my service record.’
Eve nodded.
‘Then you know about the circumstances surrounding my leaving the army?’
She nodded again.
‘Then you’ll know that I don’t do that sort of work any more. I don’t like it. And I don’t need the nightmares.’
Andreas leant forward. ‘Neil, like you said – and like we both know – there are scores of ex-Regiment guys like us doing the rounds. But most of them left the Army for a damn good reason – they were burnt out, they’d screwed up, they’d lost their nerve. That or they were so overwound that they wanted to put a bullet through everyone who so much as looked at them. But you’re not in that boat. You had a bad time, you got lost in the old Darklands for a while, but you pulled through. You must have pulled through to have done that stuff at the school. And for all that line you fed me in the New Year about getting shot of the system, I could tell straight away that you hadn’t really changed. Not deep down. Deep down you were the same old green-eyed boy I used to know in B Squadron.’
‘I’m not sure that I am that person any more, Andreas.’ Slater drained his coffee. ‘I’m really not.’
Eve leaned forw
ard. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Can I make a suggestion? Why doesn’t Andreas drive all your shopping home for you? And why don’t you come back to Vauxhall Cross with me? Just for an hour. There’s something I want to show you.’
If Andreas was irritated at being relegated to the role of bag-man he didn’t show it, merely leant back in his armchair with the remains of his Cognac.
For several moments Slater avoided Eve’s gaze. The fact that he was very obviously being flattered didn’t detract from the fact that the department’s offer had real temptations – the most immediate of which was the chance to stop agonising about the outcome of the Bolingbroke’s inquiry. And he’d never been inside the M16 headquarters. He felt a crawl of curiosity.
‘No strings?’
She shook her head. ‘No strings whatsoever.’
Slater felt in his pocket for his keys. There was nothing revealing or incriminating at the flat.
‘I doubt I need to give you the address,’ he said drily.
Eve and Andreas smiled.
The M16 building towered over Albert Embankment and the Thames with a kind of colossal arrogance. Here we are, it said, in plain sight. Make of us what you will.
For all its visibility, and for all the supposed new openness and accountability demanded of the security services, Slater knew that the building housed one of the least transparent organisations in the world. The public were given the impression of inside knowledge in the same way that audiences were let into a magician’s act – for no other purpose than to distract them from the main order of business. Even the windows were opaque.
‘Welcome to Ceausescu Towers!’ Eve said drily, and Slater followed her through the tall glass doors into the atrium, where he filled in a security form and was handed a visitor’s pass to clip to the lapel of his jacket.
The lift door opened with a sigh on to a bare air-conditioned corridor with small, high-set, triple-glazed windows. At the far end was a door marked ORC (9). Swiping a card and punching a code into the keypad, Eve gestured that Slater precede her into a small, open-plan office containing several computer terminals. At one of these a man in heavy black spectacles was listening to a head-set and making notes. At another a woman with a spiky punk hairdo was scrolling through aerial photographs. Each raised a hand in silent greeting as the pair entered.
‘Has anything come in for me?’ Eve asked, hanging her coat on a stand by the door.
The spike-haired woman nodded. ‘Couple of things. Nothing urgent. And I’ve got those pictures you asked for.’ She handed Eve a black envelope.
‘Thanks.’ Eve turned to Slater. ‘Let’s go into the briefing room.’
The room was windowless and spotlit. Haifa dozen chairs stood at a rectangular mahogany table.
‘Have a look at these.’
She took two colour photographs from the black packet. One showed a clean-shaven young man in a sheepskin jerkin and military fatigues, the other was a blurred portrait of a lightly bearded figure in a Mujahidin cap.
‘You may or may not recognise these men — they’re the ones who tried to kidnap Masoud al-Jubrin. The one on the left is Ali Akbar Dilshah, and this one is Riza Talibi. They were council members of the Hizb al-Makhfi, a Saudi-based terror group which has carried out actions in several countries; most recently, of course, in the UK. Six has been watching these men for some time now. They were both trained at camps in the Dasht-i Lut desert in Iran, and both spent several years fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. There’s also an Algerian connection. These were not amateurs.’
‘I was pretty sure they weren’t,’ said Slater.
‘I’m sure. But just in case you’ve got the slightest regret about what you did to them, I’d like you to look at the other pictures. They show the specific acts of violence for which these men and their group were responsible.’
Slater went through the pile. It was as bad as anything he’d ever seen. The first picture showed a shopping arcade in which a bomb had exploded. There were several corpses, some of them barely recognisable as having ever been human. Other victims, maimed but not yet dead, scrabbled in agony amongst the blood and the glass. The second photograph showed a line of blank-eyed teenage girls propped up against the dusty mud wall of a building. Their throats had been cut from ear to ear and their chests were sheeted with blood.
‘The girls went outside the house without a veil,’ said Eve.
Slater nodded and continued through the pile. An elderly couple lay face down and naked at a roadside; it was clear they had been whipped to death. There was another bomb-scene: a screaming woman clutching a dead child, a young man staring incredulously at the mess of flesh, bone and denim that had once been his legs. The final photograph was of a young woman lying on a table, her head severed from her body.
‘That was Riza’s sister,’ said Eve, her grey eyes expressionless. ‘He killed her when a rumour started that she’d been seeing a Christian male nurse attached to one of the hospitals.’
Wearily, Slater replaced the photographs in the packet. He said nothing.
‘Sometimes people just have to be stopped,’ said Eve. ‘Their actions amount to a declaration of war, and the only rules you can apply to them are the rules of war. But I hardly need to tell you that, do I?’
‘No,’ said Slater. ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’
She got to her feet. ‘Come with me.’
He followed her from the room and into a side office whose floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a dizzying view towards the north-west. Like those outside in the corridor, the windows were triple-glazed and treated against laser penetration and radio frequency flooding. Far below them, its steely surface galvanised by an erratic spring wind, was the Thames. Beyond the river, their grey mass softened and illuminated in the sunshine, were the towers of Westminster, Belgravia and Whitehall. Beyond these, fainter, St James’s Park, Constitution Hill and Buckingham Palace.
‘There’s a place for you here if you want it, Neil,’ Eve said quietly. ‘What more can I say? The work’s hard, the company’s good, the money’s crap to middling and there’s a not bad canteen.’
He felt his phone vibrate against his hip. ‘Excuse me,’ he said apologetically, and glanced downwards.
‘FREE TONIGHT? RING ASAP.’ He smiled to himself, and flicked off the display.
‘Good news?’
‘I think so.’
Eve ran her fingers through her blunt-cut fair hair. ‘I’m going to give you a number,’ she said. ‘Ring it if you want to get hold of me. Any time, day or night, OK? Any time.’
He took the card.
From Vauxhall to Green Park took five minutes on the Victoria Line.
‘Neil,’ Grace said when she saw him. ‘You’re not wearing a single—’
‘I came straight here,’ he told her, looking down at his jeans and desert boots. ‘I haven’t had a chance to change. And by the way, I’ll be paying you back for all that gear.’
She slipped her arms around his neck. ‘Darling, don’t even think about it. You are free tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. But what happened? Where’s your husband? I thought he was supposed to be in London tonight.’
‘He rang half an hour ago,’ she said, flipping open the waist-stud of Slater’s Levis. ‘From Frankfurt.’
When they finally lay still the light had gone from the sky. As Slater lay half asleep on the ruined bed Grace gently raked her nails up and down his back.
‘So, do you fuck any of your other ladies?’ she whispered, nipping his ear between her teeth.
‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head.
‘I bet you do,’ she said. ‘I bet you make them scream.’
He opened his eyes a fraction. ‘Are you being serious?’
‘Tell me about all those fat Middle-Easterners,’ she breathed. ‘What do you do to them? And all those Manhattan social-register types, how do they like it best?’
‘Do you seriously think that’s how I spend my time?’ Slater mu
rmured.
‘I wouldn’t mind, necessarily. As long as you were here whenever I wanted you. And you told me about all the others. In detail.’
He raised himself on one elbow. ‘Grace, there aren’t any others to tell you about. There’s just you. I’m . . . I’m amazed you could think I wanted to see anyone else.’
‘So, what do you do all day with them?’
‘I follow them about. Like I did you.’
‘But they must want more, some of them.’
He let his head fall back to the pillow. ‘I’ve got no idea.’
She climbed across him. Straddled his drowsy form. ‘Neil, darling, don’t be cross with me.’ Slowly she began to rock her pelvis back and forth. He made a point of not responding.
‘You’re cross with me, aren’t you?’ She closed her eyes and continued the movement. ‘Mmm . . . but maybe not that cross!’
Furious, he felt his body betray him.
‘Go on, Neil,’ she gasped. ‘Turn me over. Fuck me like I was a prostitute . . . Tell me I’m a whore. Tell me I’m a filthy backstreet whore.’
He could do the actions, but he couldn’t make himself say the words. For the first time, he found her unreachable. After a few minutes she gave up the ghost. Subsided next to him. Said nothing.
‘What would you like to do this evening?’ he asked her eventually.
She looked at him quizzically, and he gently touched her cheek. For a moment she seemed to flinch at his tenderness, and then she gave a small laugh.
‘Well . . .’ she began brightly. ‘Madonna’s giving a party at Chinawhite. We could go to that. There might be some amusing people there.’
He hesitated. ‘With me going as what?’ he asked her. ‘Your bodyguard? Your lover?’
‘What would you like to go as?’ she asked him, raising an exquisitely shaped eyebrow.
‘Well, I’d like to go as your boyfriend, but I’m risking my job if I’m seen. And I don’t expect your husband will be too happy if he hears we’ve been out on the town together, either.’
‘Don’t worry about David. David just wants me to be happy. He expects me to go out and have a good time.’
