by Chris Ryan
Lakes let her eyes fall to the floor. ‘Alan’s been something of a mentor to me.’
‘That’s tough.’
An uneasy moment of silence hung over the room. Then Bell leaned in close to Lakes and lowered his voice. She caught a whiff of his stale breath. It reeked of garlic and red wine.
Bell said, ‘Between you and me, we’ll have to start looking for Alan’s replacement very soon. These things can’t wait.’ He paused and a smile played out on his face like a knife slitting through silk. ‘Should this operation run smoothly, then your candidacy would be hard to ignore, Miss Lakes. Very hard indeed.’
NINETEEN
Hereford.
Two days later. 0811 hours.
Porter reached for the Bushmills. There were still a few drops of the good stuff left in the bottom of the bottle, along with the remnants of a stubbed-out cigarette. He shrugged and pressed the bottle to his lips. He tipped the whisky dregs down his throat. Then he reached for his pack of Bensons, sparked up a tab and took a long drag. Ah, better.
Breakfast.
Three days had passed since the attack, and Porter had done nothing but drink and stare at the grisly footage playing out on the news channels. Empty whisky bottles were scattered around the living room, along with several crushed fag packets and a couple of greasy takeaway cartons he’d barely touched. He hadn’t set foot outside since the Training Wing had been stood down. There was a media blackout in place. Orders from the CO. Every surviving guy on the Training Wing had been told to stay low and avoid going into town unless it was absolutely essential. Reporters from the national rags were out in force in Hereford, talking to all the local shags and punters in the hopes of finding out a few scraps of information and piecing together an exclusive. So Porter had shut himself indoors with the curtains drawn, drinking and trying to forget.
But he couldn’t escape. The news channels were having a field day. In the absence of hard facts, everyone was engaged in feverish round-the-clock speculation. The TV in the corner of the living room was tuned in to Sky News. A sombre-faced brunette reporter was standing in front of a police cordon down the road from the Storey Arms. Helicopters were buzzing overhead and a couple of local bobbies were standing watch on the other side of the cordon, keeping the hacks at bay.
‘Sources at Whitehall have confirmed fifty-five soldiers were killed in Friday’s attack,’ the reporter said in a grave tone of voice. ‘As of yet, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the bombing. Many are, of course, speculating that this may be the start of a new campaign by the IRA to undermine the Good Friday Agreement. Others believe that Islamic fundamentalists may be behind the attack. Earlier, the Prime Minister had this to say.’
The camera cut to the steps of 10 Downing Street on a grey afternoon. A million paparazzi bulbs flashed as a middle-aged man with wavy black hair stood in front of a wooden podium. Prime Minister Andrew Massey’s trademark cheerful smirk had been utterly wiped from his smooth face. Now he stood in front of the world’s press, brow heavily furrowed, wearing a look of grim sobriety.
‘Three days ago, Britain suffered an unprecedented attack on her armed forces,’ the Prime Minister began in a grave tone of voice. ‘My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families, and all those affected by this barbaric act. Let me be clear. Those behind the attack, whoever they are, wish to destroy our society. But we are stronger than that. Our resolve is firmer than the terrorists. At present, we do not know who was responsible for killing our brave young soldiers. But in due course, we shall find those responsible and bring them to justice, as a civilised nation. . .’
Porter hit the mute button. Finished his cigarette and chucked the butt into the empty bottle. Then he reached for the phone. His hands were shaking as he punched in the number. He put the receiver to his ear and glanced at the clock. 0812 hours. They’d be heading out the door on the school run any minute now. The phone rang and rang, and for a moment he thought no one would pick up. Then a young, bright voice answered on the fifth ring.
‘Hello?’
Porter smiled. ‘Happy birthday, love.’
There was an excited shriek on the other end of the line. ‘Daddy!’
Something warm swept through Porter at the sound of his daughter’s voice. Eight years old. His little girl. He could hardly believe how quickly the time had passed. He pressed the receiver closer to his ear. In the background he could hear someone rushing around.
‘Did you get lots of presents?’ Porter asked, his voice choked with emotion.
‘Oh, Dad, you have to see them all,’ Sandy went on breathlessly. ‘Mum got me a Barbie dream house and two Barbie dolls. And Stuart got me a pony. He’s amazing. I’m going to call him Dancer.’
Porter frowned. Stuart. The bloke Diana had been seeing after she’d relocated to Nottingham. Some moneyed-up big-shot who made his fortune in shopping centres in the north-west. Guy was forever splashing the cash on Sandy. You can’t buy love, thought Porter. But this prick was having a damn good go.
‘Is that so?’ he asked through gritted teeth, rage brewing inside his chest.
‘I have to go to school now, but you’re coming to my party this weekend? Dad?’
Before Porter could reply a sharp voice in the background said, ‘Pass the phone to mummy.’
Porter sparked up another tab. There was a fumbling noise, and he could hear Diana telling Sandy to go and wait in the car. Then his wife’s voice came clearly down the line. ‘You shouldn’t be calling here, John. Not without letting me know first. That’s what we agreed.’
‘I just wanted to wish her a happy birthday,’ Porter replied. ‘That’s all.’
Diana sighed. It came down the line more like an angry hiss. ‘I was meaning to call you. I saw the pictures on the news. Those poor soldiers. God, it’s so awful. Are you—?’
‘I’m fine,’ Porter replied flatly. ‘Can’t really talk about it.’
Silence. He took another pull on his tab and blew out smoke. He could hear Sandy’s faint voice in the background, pleading with her mother to give the phone back so she could speak to Daddy.
Porter said, ‘I was thinking, maybe I could come down for the birthday party. Give Sandy her present, like.’
And to see her face, he thought. Sweet Jesus, I miss her.
There was a long pause. Then Diana said, ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I wouldn’t be any harm. I’ll be in and out in five minutes. Christ, Di. I’m not asking for much here.’
More silence. Porter could feel it hanging in the air. Like fruit from a tree.
‘Stuart and I have been talking,’ she said at last. ‘We think it’s for the best if you stay away for a while. What Sandy needs in her life right now is stability. When she hears your voice, it – it confuses things.’
Porter gripped the phone so hard he thought it might crack. ‘I’m her old man, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Right now she needs a father, John. Not some stranger who occasionally shows up blazing drunk at two in the morning. Stuart’s here for her. For both of us. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.’
Porter said nothing. He smoked some more. He thought of all the angry things he could hurl down the line at Diana, but when you drilled down to it, there was only himself to blame. He’d fucked it up. Maybe Diana was right, the familiar voice prodded at him. Maybe Sandy was better off without her old man in her life. A rich twat like Stuart could give her a good life. She could have everything she ever wanted. What could he give her?
Fuck-all.
‘John? Are you still there?’
Porter hung up the phone. Stubbed out his tab and looked down at the clumsily wrapped present he’d bought for Sandy. A cuddly penguin he’d picked up at the local toy shop for twenty quid. And there was Stuart buying her a pony. A fucking pony, for Christ’s sake. How the hell could he match up to that?
Face it, John. You might be Sandy’s old man, but you’re just a washe
d-up old cunt.
The pounding between his temples returned. God, he needed another drink. He got up, rooted around the flat and came up empty. He was flat out of booze, and the shops weren’t open yet. The only thing he could find was a bottle of mouthwash in the bathroom cabinet. There was some alcohol in it, according to the label. Right now, that would have to do. Anything to numb the pain. Porter screwed the top off. He was about to take a long swig when the phone rang.
He set the mouthwash down and paced back over to the phone. Probably Di. Probably mad at him for hanging up just now. She’d give it to him with both barrels. He picked up the phone and said, ‘Yeah?’
‘Porter, it’s Stones here.’
Porter sat up straight. He recognised the voice of the Regiment ops officer. Stones sounded serious, thought Porter. But then again, he always sounded serious with that deadpan Brummie accent.
‘Boss?’
‘Listen, the CO wants you to come in for a chat.’
‘What for?’ Porter asked.
‘No bloody clue,’ said Stones. ‘But he’s been pacing up and down all morning. If I were you, I’d get my arse down here right fucking now.’
Twenty-five minutes later Porter was rolling through the gates at RAF Credenhill. He eased his motor into the packed car park and unfolded himself from behind the wheel.
The atmosphere inside the camp was restless. Porter could sense it as he marched across the parade ground towards the main Regimental HQ, a plain building overlooking the parade ground. The Regiment was on high alert. The SP team was back at Hereford, with a second squadron overseas on stand-by for further action. All the guys were milling around the camp and bumping guns, their kit squared away, ready to move out at a moment’s notice. No one said much. They were spitting mad for vengeance.
Porter trudged past the guard room. It was eerily quiet. Normally all the lads would be sitting around watching pornos and taking the piss, but this morning the guys were grim-faced and silent. Porter paced up the stairs and hurried down a narrow corridor leading towards the Kremlin, the Regiment’s inner sanctum. As he swept past the ops rooms Porter wondered again why the CO had called him in this morning. It couldn’t be anything to do with the Training Wing, he knew. Selection had been suspended indefinitely, with the remaining students being processed back to their parent units and the head shed conducting a root-and-branch review of the SOPs to try and prevent a similar attack happening in the future. Besides, half of the instructors were dead. There would be no new Selection courses for a while.
So why does the CO want to see me now?
Porter arrived at the door of Lieutenant-Colonel Graydon Ruck. He straightened his back and knocked on the door. There was a slight pause. Then a booming voice carried through the wood.
‘Enter.’
Porter stepped inside a small, sparsely-furnished room. The Commanding Officer of 22 SAS sat behind a metal desk piled high with manila folders and printed-out documents. Graydon Ruck was a tall man, pencil-thin, with eyes the colour of stainless steel knives and lips that were pressed tight, like he was trying to crack nuts with them. Ruck was one of the new breed of officers in the Regiment. The guy looked more like a manager at a branch of Barclays, or maybe a regional head of sales for an office supplies company. He was political, corporate. Safe. Ten years from now Ruck would probably be making six figures in a cosy position as head of security for an oil firm, living with his trophy wife in a Buckinghamshire mansion while Porter rooted around for loose change down the back of the sofa.
There were two chairs opposite Ruck. The one on the left was empty.
Sitting in the chair on the right was John Bald.
‘Glad you could join us.’ Ruck fixed a smile at Porter. ‘Please, John. Take a seat.’
Porter hesitated for a moment. The fact that Bald was here confirmed his earlier suspicions. This definitely wasn’t anything to do with the Training Wing. He figured maybe the CO wanted to run over their statements before they spoke to the police. Make sure they were singing from the same hymn sheet. He shrugged casually, dropped into his chair and turned to Ruck. The guy had heavy bags under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth.
‘I’ll make this quick,’ Ruck began impatiently. ‘I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to get through, as you might well imagine. Whitehall’s been on my case every hour since the attack. On top of that, trying to manage this media blackout is a bloody nightmare.’
Porter saw something in Ruck’s eyes. Something he’d never seen before. It was fear, he realised. The Regiment found itself in unchartered territory. The loss of a few Blades during an op would have been bad enough. But to have so many of their own slotted a few miles from the Regiment headquarter, was a shock that everyone was struggling to deal with. Including Ruck.
‘You’re being seconded to MI6,’ Ruck went on. ‘Both of you. Effective immediately.’
He leaned forward and planted his hands on the desk, waiting for a response. Porter frowned. Bald stared at Ruck, puzzled.
‘What for, boss?’
Ruck rolled his eyes. ‘Take a wild guess.’
‘The attack?’
Ruck nodded. ‘I’m not privy to the ins-and-outs. Vauxhall wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the particulars, as you can probably imagine. But reading between the lines, it looks like they’re putting together a covert team. Downing Street wants action, gentlemen. Apparently the chaps over at Vauxhall are being given carte blanche to get the bastards who did this. It seems they’ve requested you two to help out on the ground.’
‘Why us?’ Porter asked.
Ruck shrugged. ‘Frankly, your guess is as good as mine. All I know is, they asked for you two specifically.’ He added bitterly, ‘They must have their reasons, I suppose.’
Porter said nothing. From the look on Ruck’s face he guessed that the suits at Vauxhall had kept the CO out of the loop as far as possible. Nothing would have pissed him off more, Porter realised with an inward smile. Ruck was comfortable kissing Whitehall arse and ingratiating himself with the Westminster set. Being kept in the dark on a top-secret op involving two of his men must have really been eating away at the guy.
‘Military transport’s sending a car down at 1300 hours. They’ll pick you up from the gates out front and drive you down to London.’
‘Where’s the RV?’ Bald asked.
‘The Wainwright Hotel in Marylebone. An MI6 liaison will meet you at the Piano Bar at 1700 hours.’ Ruck leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers on the desk. ‘That’s as much as I know and as much as they were willing to tell me. Questions?’
Porter pursed his lips. There were a million questions pinballing around inside his head, but there was no point asking Ruck any of them. Clearly whoever was running things over at Vauxhall wanted to share as little as possible with the CO. Which suggested that whatever the suits wanted from Bald and Porter, they wanted it to be strictly off the books. If that was how the Firm wanted to play it then fine, thought Porter. They’d get their answers soon enough.
‘None, boss,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Ruck straightened his back and gestured to the door. ‘Then I suggest you both get a bloody move on.’
TWENTY
1300 hours.
The car was waiting for them at the camp gates. A Rover 400. Possibly green, although it was hard to tell beneath the six inches of dust and bird shit. Which made it perfect for transporting a couple of Regiment men down to London. Bald climbed into the back. Porter folded himself into the front passenger seat. After the briefing with the CO he’d returned home and taken a hot shower and then shaved and changed into his civvies. Now he wore a pair of dark-blue jeans and a grey leather jacket over a wrinkled flannel shirt and t-shirt combo, as well as a scuffed pair of Merrell boots. He felt vaguely more human than a few hours earlier.
The driver was a prematurely balding guy in a crumpled suit who introduced himself as Glover. He didn’t say much, and
Porter didn’t bother pressing him for details. If Ruck knew the sum total of fuck-all, Glover was likely to know even less. The three men were silent as they headed south out of Hereford and hit the A40 just outside of Gloucester. Every few miles Glover checked the rear-view mirror, no doubt to make sure they weren’t being tailed. They weren’t, as far as Porter could tell.
He tuned out and watched the landscape ticker-taping by. He found his thoughts drifting back to the meeting with Ruck. What the fuck did the Firm want with a couple of outcast Regiment men? Whatever it was, it had to be questionable, Porter decided. If the spooks had wanted the SAS for an above-the-board op, they would have fully briefed Ruck rather than keeping him in the dark. They would have asked the CO for his best men, and they would have asked for more than two of them. So whatever the Firm had in mind for Bald and Porter, it wasn’t going to be a regular security detail. Porter found his curiosity building as they raced towards London.
After maybe a hundred miles the landscape shifted to a palette of greys and dirty browns. They were heading into Porter’s old neighbourhood now. Glover turned off Western Avenue and steered the Rover onto the Westway, rolling past Wembley Stadium. They motored down a three-lane stretch of worn blacktop flanked by rows of council houses that looked like a set of rotten brown teeth. Everything was instantly familiar to Porter. The drab industrial estates and halal food shops, the neglected parks half-filled with teenagers pushing prams and migrants clutching plastic shopping bags. They shuttled along the flyover past Shepherd’s Bush and White City and a bunch of other places choked with traffic until they emerged onto the sprawling intersection at Edgware Road. Then Glover took a road that funnelled them down towards Marylebone.
It was like moving from one city to another. All the tower blocks and council estates disappeared from view, replaced with a neatly-arranged grid of elegant red-brick townhouses interspersed with gleaming glass-and-steel towers. The streets were lined with quaint trees, and scrubbed clean of bird shit and gum. The cars were all Maseratis and Bentleys and Mercedes CLK coupés. The only black face Porter saw was the guy sweeping the steps of the old Marylebone Town Hall. All the people wore tailored suits and carried leather briefcases. They walked quickly, like they had somewhere important to be.
