by Chris Ryan
Porter looked at the face and recognised it with a jolt.
It was the face of the rambler he’d seen bombing it down the side of Pen y Fan. The gunman who’d escaped the Storey Arms and given Bald and Porter the slip at the Beacons reservoir. The guy Porter had nailed in the shoulder.
Tank.
TWENTY-ONE
1714 hours.
‘His name is Bill Deeds,’ Lakes said. She paused and reached for another cigarette from her pack. ‘He’s ex-Parachute Regiment. Born in Clacton in 1969. Deeds got in trouble for a string of petty offences as a teenager. He flunked his exams but earned money working as a doorman in various clubs in the East End. In 1991 Deeds joined 2 Para. Three years later, he applied for SAS Selection. He failed the distance on the Fan Dance. The following year he tried out again, but he was kicked out for failing a drugs test. His failure left him with a lifelong grudge against the Regiment.’
‘What’s new?’ Bald said. ‘Half the crap hats hate our guts.’
‘Perhaps. But Deeds’ hatred runs deeper than most. After he failed Selection the second time around he fell in with an Essex-based crime syndicate run by a guy called Curtis Scarsdale. The syndicate is made up of former football hooligans and old East End gangsters who got into the cocaine smuggling business. Deeds needed the money. He did a few jobs here and there for Scarsdale.’
Porter listened in silence. There were always one or two bent squaddies in the ranks. Guys who were willing to sell out their muckers in order to make a few quid. The other rankers had a special hatred for those cowards. Lakes blew out smoke as Hawkridge took up the story.
‘In early 1997 Deeds went from low-life criminal to arms smuggler. Soon after he was deployed to eastern Bosnia with 2 Para, he established a contact with the local Serbian mafia. They came to an arrangement. Money in exchange for shipping arms off the local army base. The Serbs readily agreed. They needed arms, and several of their weapons caches had been intercepted by NATO forces. As for Deeds, he owed money to some Albanians. A gambling debt he’d racked up.’
Hawkridge crossed his legs. Lakes puffed away on her Parliament. Keppel sat frozen. Like a statue.
‘We’re talking a considerable arsenal of firepower, chaps. SA80 assault rifles, Browning Hi-Power pistols, Accuracy Internal sniper rifles and LAW anti-tank projectiles. Not to mention several crates of hand grenades.’ Hawkridge adjusted his glasses before continuing. ‘Enough to keep the paramilitaries in business for quite a while. The plan was to smuggle the weapons off the army base at Sipovo and transport them to the border at Potocari, where the Serbian mafia had established a stronghold.’
Porter said, ‘So what happened?’
Lakes stubbed out her cigarette and said, ‘We found out about the plot through a local intelligence asset inside Sarajevo. We set up a sting operation alongside the RMP. Two of Deeds’s associates were arrested, Dave Treadwell and Steve Blakeway. But Deeds himself never showed at the meeting point. Someone must have warned him. We put out an all-forces alert, but by then it was too late.’
Porter nodded slowly. His guts clenched like ice. Now he remembered where he’d seen Deeds’s face before. In the Regiment ops room. In Bosnia.
Back then Porter had been in the country for several months, as part of a team tasked with bringing down the gangs loyal to Milosevic. By that point the paramilitary gangs had become a serious problem. In return for being badged up and put on the Interior Ministry payroll, dozens of gangs had been given free rein to butcher Bosnian and Croat Muslims. The gangs could do as they pleased, and they took the offer and ran with it. Their men killed thousands of civvies in the villages up and down the border. In response, the Regiment had been covertly inserted with orders to put a stop to the gangs and decapitate their leaderships. Porter had been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his part in the op to smash the paramilitary gangs.
But he couldn’t remember much about Deeds. Far as he could recall, the guy had been a side-issue to the main event. A bent Para trying to offload stolen weapons wasn’t exactly a big deal when there were Serb warlords to bring down. There had been no concerted efforts to locate Deeds. His photograph had been distributed with orders to bring him in if spotted, but he’d never been the number-one target. The guy wasn’t memorable enough to warrant serious attention.
‘What happened to Deeds?’ asked Bald.
Lakes sighed heavily and toyed with the Zippo lighter. ‘We never caught him. We looked everywhere, but Deeds just went off the grid. He simply disappeared.’ She hesitated. ‘Until last week.’
She reached into the folder and took out another snap. Then she placed the photograph alongside the shot of Deeds striking a bodybuilding pose. This one was a black-and-white still from a CCTV feed. The image wasn’t exactly clear, but Porter could just about make out the muscular guy in a hooded sweatshirt and sneakers, standing next to a knackered truck. The figure had his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets and he was looking away from the camera, but it was unmistakably Bill Deeds. Same build, same size. Same widow’s peak atop his round head. There were five other guys next to him and a bunch of numbers and letters at the top that Porter didn’t understand. At the bottom there was the date and time.
06:34:00. 05:01:99.
Six days ago, Porter thought.
‘This was taken three days before the attack,’ Lakes explained. ‘Deeds and five other men entered the country at Harwich. They took a ferry over from the Hook of Holland using false papers.’
‘Do we know who the other guys are?’ said Porter.
Lakes gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘We’re still in the process of identifying the bodies. No luck so far on a match. They’re not on any of our watch lists. But we know for damn sure that Deeds was involved in setting up the attack.’
There was a long silence. Porter stared at the photos, trying to process everything. When Deeds had bugged out from the Storey Arms up Fan Fawr, he’d known to take the back route down the Beacons reservoir. Only someone with deep experience of the Brecons would know about that route. Now Porter understood. Deeds would have known that mountain well from the big runs on Selection. A hot rage swept through his veins just then. Deeds would pay. They all would. But there was still something else that bothered Porter.
‘I don’t get it.’
Lakes frowned. ‘Get what?’
Porter tapped a finger against the snap. ‘Deeds hates the Regiment. So bloody what? He’s not the first idiot to think that, and he won’t be the last. You’re not telling me he went out, recruited a bunch of guys and set up a bomb, just because he hates our guts. I’m not buying that.’
Lakes and Hawkridge swapped uncomfortable looks. Then Lakes spoke. ‘Of course not. We’re not treating that as a possible motive.’
‘Then why’d he do it?’ Bald demanded.
Now Hawkridge spoke. ‘We’re not sure, old fruit. Not yet, anyway. What we can say for sure is that Deeds wasn’t the brains trust of this operation. Our profile on the man suggests he was never more than a foot soldier in his activities. Besides, this attack has all the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. We’re talking months of planning. Funds, weapons procurement, blueprints. Deeds was probably recruited because he knew about Selection, and he probably agreed in part because of the resentment he has towards you chaps in the SAS. What we can say for sure is that Deeds is part of something much bigger.’
‘You just don’t know what, or who,’ said Bald, folding his arms. ‘I thought you lot were supposed to be in the intelligence business?’
Hawkridge glared at him. Then Lakes coughed and said, ‘We’re working on a number of theories. After Deeds went AWOL he went underground with the criminal networks running the Balkans. It’s possible the Serbian mafia was somehow involved. Maybe he’s just one link in a very long chain.’ She leaned across the table and met Bald’s gaze. ‘But my point is, there are two ways of bringing the perpetrators to justice. There’s the long way. A formal investigation. That would probab
ly take years. In the meantime, the attackers are free to do as they wish. If they’re smart, they’ll be going to ground even as we speak. By the time we have names, it’ll be too late. They’ll be out of our reach.’
Porter leaned back. Scratched his jaw. ‘So that makes us the shortcut option.’
Lakes nodded. ‘We want you to get to Deeds. Find out what he knows and then kill him. And then go after the others. Anyone who played a part in the attack is a viable target. Anyone involved in the planning or execution. But we want the ringleaders, not the foot soldiers.’
As he soaked it all up Porter could feel his left hand starting to shake. Christ, he needed a drink. As soon as we’re out of here I’ll get a drop of something, Porter told himself.
‘Do we know where Deeds is?’
‘Puerto Banus. Marbella. Since the day after the attack.’
‘You managed to trace Deeds, but none of the other gunmen?’
‘We got lucky,’ said Lakes. ‘Scarsdale’s gang has a Spanish operation.’
‘Scarsdale?’ Bald repeated. ‘The gangster Deeds did jobs for back in the day?’
Lakes nodded. ‘The same. His guys are major players in the European cannabis trade. They bring up shipments from Morocco, land it at Puerto Banus and then despatch it north by truck to France before it goes on to the UK. The problem is so bad that the local authorities have set up giant spotlights across the beach to catch the speedboats. Not that it does much good. Most of it comes in on luxury yachts now. The police are never going to search those boats. Not if they don’t want to piss off a load of oligarchs and sheikhs.’
‘What does this have to do with Deeds?’
‘The Met have been running a joint operation with their Spanish counterparts to try and bring down Scarsdale and his lieutenants. We’re talking years of undercover work. They’ve got a guy on the inside. Gathering evidence, tipping off the police.’
‘Three days ago they get a call from their inside man,’ Hawkridge explained. ‘Saying he’s found one of the shooters behind the attack on Selection.’
Lakes said, ‘Our guy overheard one of Scarsdale’s associates in an expat bar. Bill Deeds. He’s got connections with Scarsdale. They still do business together, once in a while. You could say that they’re tight. So Deeds gets drunk and starts bigging himself up. Claiming he was involved in the attack.’
Porter said nothing. None of this surprised him. Not after Northern Ireland. It had never ceased to amaze Porter how many seasoned IRA guys opened their mouths after a few jars of Guinness and start shooting their mouths off what jobs they’d done, or what jobs they were about to pull off. Without realising that their ranks had been infiltrated and the intelligence would invariably land on a desk somewhere in Whitehall. The security services relied heavily on IRA guys touting themselves at every opportunity. If every guy in the IRA kept their mouth shut, they would have had a lot more success in carrying out operations.
Lakes continued, ‘Our guy on the inside figured Deeds was bullshitting. Obviously. Guys like that are always bigging themselves up after a few drinks.’
‘Trying to buy himself some street cred,’ Bald said. ‘Typical.’
‘But then Deeds mentioned a couple of details. Things that no one else could have known about, because we’ve had a media blackout in place. Like the fact that there were six shooters. And that two instructors had been killed on top of Pen y Fan an hour before the main attack took place. Our guy passed the intelligence on to his handler.’
‘And the police alerted you,’ Porter said, joining up the dots.
Lakes nodded. ‘We checked it out. Had our teams trawl through CCTV footage. We have Deeds catching a ferry out of Fishguard approximately eight hours after the attack. We have him boarding an AerLingus flight from Dublin to Malaga seven hours after that, under the name Jack Holland. Once we confirmed the ID, we told the cops to sit on it and do nothing. Just watch Deeds and keep us informed of his movements.’ Lakes shrugged. ‘Like I said, we got lucky.’
Bald frowned. ‘Why didn’t the others follow him? To Spain.’
‘Maybe they had orders to disperse across Europe,’ Lakes speculated. ‘Three guys in three separate countries is a lot harder to track than three guys on the same flight. Or maybe Deeds panicked and headed elsewhere after he got cut off from the others. Either way, Deeds is there and he’s our only link to finding the other gunmen, and whoever organised this attack.’
‘Bring him in yourself, then,’ Bald suggested. ‘If you know where he is, slap a pair of silver bracelets on the cunt and get him talking.’
Lakes shot Bald a look that was half amused and half despairing. ‘I admire your thinking, John. But that won’t work. In fact, that hasn’t worked in about a decade. This is 1999, in case you hadn’t noticed. We rough up a suspect today, tomorrow he’s on the front page of the Guardian. By the end of the week there’s a sit-down protest at St Paul’s. We’re bound by law.’
‘But we’re not,’ said Porter.
‘Precisely.’
Hawkridge took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He continued. ‘The formal way of doing things is longer and more painstaking, naturally. But we’d make a breakthrough sooner or later. Either way, your job will be to carry out multiple hits. Your team will remain active for as long as it takes to bring the enemy to justice.’
‘In Europe only,’ Lakes said. ‘Avoid Russia. We’re trying to repair relations with Moscow, we can’t have anything messy over there. Nothing in the US, of course. They don’t know a thing about this operation and the last thing we want to do is to piss off our American friends. It goes without saying that civilian casualties are to be avoided at all costs, as well as local law enforcement.’
Bald said, ‘Do you want us to make them look like accidents? The kills.’
Lakes shook her head and said, ‘The opposite. We want them to suffer. We want every terrorist piece of shit to pick up the morning paper and see what happens when you attack us. The bigger the impact, the messier the death—’
‘The louder the message we send,’ Porter finished. ‘I get the idea, love.’
Lakes sparked up her third tab of the meeting. Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily towards the ceiling. Hawkridge said nothing. Keppel just sat there, watching Bald and Porter with his granite eyes. Lakes turned to him.
‘Marcus, if you wouldn’t mind.’
Without saying a word Keppel reached down to his brown leather briefcase and produced a pair of documents. He handed them over to Lakes. She took the documents and placed them on the coffee table. One in front of Bald, the other in front of Porter. Then Keppel passed her a couple of Montblanc fountain pens. She placed them next to the documents. Bald glanced up at Lakes, clenching his brow.
‘The fuck is this?’
‘It’s your contract. Actually, it’s two contracts. The first is a resignation letter. It states that you are being discharged from the Regiment, effective immediately. As soon as you sign that letter, your status will change to civilian. You will be removed from the government payroll, your bank cards will be changed and your military ID rescinded. To all intents and purposes it will look as though you’ve resigned from active duty. Only you haven’t.’
‘It’s called sheep-dipping,’ Hawkridge butted in. ‘It will appear to anyone on the outside that you’ve been stood down and are now on Civvy Street. But you will still be employed by HMG. We’ll place you both into Templar as clean assets. That’s your second contract. A boilerplate agreement between yourselves and Templar, hiring you as security contractors. You’ll have a new identity, new documents, new bank accounts. New everything.’
‘Think of it as money laundering,’ Keppel said with a smug smile. ‘Except with people instead of currency.’
Lakes glanced at her colleagues then turned back to Porter. ‘Nobody will know your past. Where you’ve been, what you’ve done. Who you were. You’ll be entirely clean, or as close as it’s possible to get in today’s world.’
‘We
haven’t talked money,’ said Bald.
‘Yes,’ said Lakes. ‘We have.’
Bald shook his head. ‘You’re trying to fob us off with the same salary we were getting in the Regiment. But this isn’t some regular op. You want us to do your dirty work, fine. But you need to pay the going rate.’
Lakes attempted a smile. ‘You care more about money than revenge?’
‘Who says we have to choose? We’re up for slotting the fuckers behind the attack, love. We’re up for that all day long. But if we’re gonna put our necks on the line, we should be getting paid properly.’
‘Out of the question. Money’s tight at the moment. The budget’s being squeezed.’
‘You can always find some more. This is the MoD. You practically have a licence to print the stuff.’
Lakes glanced at Hawkridge. Shifted. Looked back to Bald. ‘Fine. We’ll pay you one-and-a-half times your salary.’
‘Triple it,’ said Bald.
‘Double your salary,’ said Lakes. ‘That’s our final offer. Do we have a deal?’
Porter stilled his trembling left hand and looked down at the contracts. They were giving him the big sell, Lakes and Hawkridge and Keppel, but there was no need. He was already sold on the idea. His name, his past, everything that had happened to him in Beirut. Finally he was being given the opportunity to draw a line in the sand. Put it all behind him and start again. Twelve hours ago Porter had been drinking himself into an early grave and trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong. Now they were offering him the chance to wipe the slate clean.
Lakes said, ‘Marcus will be your go-to man during the operation. Anything you need will come via Templar. Safe houses, vehicles, hardware. We’ll supply the intelligence and the money, but to all intents and purposes this is a private Templar venture, independent of – and unknown to – HMG.’
