The Bootneck

by Quentin Black

  Bruce didn’t see the need to tell Stanton what had actually occurred.

  “You said he’s a Royal Marine. I take it you meant he’s Poole?”

  Poole, the coastal town in the South West of England, was the home of the Special Boat Service. The SBS formed one half of the UK’s Special Forces; with the other half being the SAS, the Special Air Service, based in Hereford. Although the SBS was now open to all UK armed services, traditionally it recruited solely from the Royal Marines, and they still made up the vast majority of its membership.

  “No. He’s sniper trained, but apart from that he’s a regular Royal Marine,” answered Bruce.

  The space between Stanton’s eyebrows compressed. “And you say he was working alone?”

  “Yes,” said Bruce, “we can train him off the books. Bringing him into the fold from his unit won’t be too difficult. Royal Marines get drafted to different places all the time.”

  “This is a hell of a mess he’s caused”—Stanton said, pointing at Bruce with all eight fingers “three dead, with a Member of Parliament minus an ear, eyelid and the ability to walk. Questions are going to be asked. And you want me to sign off on training the man responsible for all this before we know more about him?”

  Bruce remained calm throughout this.

  In this instance, he couldn’t insist Stanton permit Connor Reed’s training. Despite the autonomy of his unit, he needed access to training instructors that only Stanton could sign off on.

  Bruce had more latitude within the UK security services than any outsider would have thought possible. Still, running a training programme completely independent from the country’s intelligence agencies was not feasible.

  Bruce knew Stanton was a bureaucrat and he needed reassurances.

  “Look, I haven’t asked you for anything in years, have I? I can fabricate his background so that his inclusion won’t raise eyebrows. Nothing I have done has ever blown back on the wider service. If the worst does come to the worst, I will fall on my sword.”

  Bruce’s gaze was unflinching as he let Stanton consider this. Finally, Roger Stanton gave a resigned nod of acceptance.

  Nick stood looking through the one-way glass at the shell-shocked Stephen Hardcastle. Bandages now covered the mutilated eye and ear. The ‘shock of capture’ still apparent in his body language—the hunched shoulders, and odd flicks of direction with his visible eye.

  Nick heard Bruce’s footsteps as he joined him. The older man towered over him by almost half a foot. Nick’s fur lined hoodie and jeans contrasted with Bruce’s sharp suit.

  “How was your drive?” Nick asked.

  “Not too bad, two and a half hours.”

  “What’s the plan regarding this tub of shit now?”

  “Ye have forty-eight hours before the working week begins to extract everything ye can out of him,” Bruce said, “by any means necessary.”

  “And then?”

  “Well,” McQuillan replied, “he’s committed treason hasn’t he.”

  Roger Stanton sat in his office thinking of his meeting with Bruce McQuillan. If anyone else had made the request to train a ‘rogue’, it would have been unceremoniously dismissed. His predecessor as head of MI5 had been one of three who had helped facilitate the existence of The Chameleon Project. The other two were the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Miles Parker—MI6—and Henry Costner, a personal advisor to the Prime Minister.

  Initially, financed to the tune of £13.7 million siphoned from various sources. Two years after its inception in 1999, two planes struck the World Trade Centre, and the clandestine unit’s funding tripled.

  Walter Morris, his predecessor, briefed Stanton in his handover of MI5 to him in 2004. Stanton remembered the lined face of the sixty-four-year-old Morris staring at him from where he now sat. The man’s posture had begun to stoop, and the grey highlighted the sides of a full head of brown hair. His voice had been as authoritative as ever.

  “The Project has been perhaps the service’s best asset for protecting the UK’s economy and citizens, Roger. They have been a necessity in this day and age, unfortunately.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “Yes quite,” Morris had said, “but there always comes a time when a dangerous dog, no matter how loyal, needs to be put down.”

  Stanton had said nothing.

  “The thing you should grasp in your new position Roger is that sometimes the finger has to be sacrificed to save the arm. Making tough decisions is what makes a leader.”

  “You must clarify on this particular point, Sir Morris.”

  Morris studied Stanton for a moment before answering.

  “The Project by its very nature works outside the judicial system. One day this ‘War on Terror’ will calm, and public perception will change. That’s when the media will resemble vultures looking for a feed. You’ve been in this game long enough to know. That’ll be when this service needs your protection. You understand this, do you not?”

  “I’ll take your counsel under advisement,” Stanton had answered, and Morris had pursed his lips.

  A week after that conversation, Stanton had sat in a briefing room in the MI6 Headquarters of Vauxhall Cross with two of the most powerful men in the country across from Bruce McQuillan.

  It was in this meeting that Bruce McQuillan revealed just how far he’d go to protect himself and his unit.

  The types Nick usually interrogated needed a cerebral approach; men used to and prepared for physical pain. In ordinary circumstances, he would have first attempted to enhance the detainee’s suggestibility. Techniques that helped achieve this included sleep deprivation, white noise exposure or as a last resort, drugs. After completing this ‘softening-up’ process, a series of questions would be asked, of which the answers would already be known to him. He would begin with these, punishing any lies the detainee told, giving them the sense that he knew everything anyway.

  Meanwhile, he would observe the detainee’s body language for any shifts, however subtle, in posture and/or eye position that indicated any falsehood. If the detainee spontaneously corrected themselves during their answers, it normally indicated truth telling—a liar would ‘stick’ to a story.

  Slowly, a relationship of sorts would be engineered, eliciting the necessary information.

  In this case, Nick didn’t have the luxury of time. He would have to be blunt in his approach. Luckily, he knew Hardcastle, who having been privately educated and now a career politician, was unlikely to have had a fight in years—if ever. With the politician used to a position of power for decades, having it stripped away would be alien and frightening. Nick didn’t normally enjoy administering pain but might here. He had confidence his approach would get a result. First, he needed to get Hardcastle’s attention—his injuries and the isolation had kept the politician in a state of shock.

  Hardcastle took a deep breath as Nick entered the room, and let loose a sudden burst of indignation.

  “You’d better pray to one’s Lord—” the MP started but was cut short as a fist rifled onto his already swollen nose.

  The crack was audible.

  He grabbed Hardcastle by the throat, squeezing on the Adam’s apple until the exposed eye bulged.

  “You’d better pray that the information you give me is valuable enough to spare your life,” Nick said, as he stared into the terrified eye.

  Three hours later, Bruce and Nick stood outside the interrogation room. Hardcastle lay inside, curled into the foetal position.

  “Well?” Bruce asked as they listened to the gentle sobbing.

  “He gave me everything: dates, times, codes, account numbers. Couldn’t get him to shut his face in the end,” replied Nick.

  “Any hint of deception on his part?”

  “Nah, I had a couple of the accounts verified already. He never lied to the control questions. You can go over the transcripts to see if I’ve missed anything.”

  “Why thank you,” replied Bruce wit
h a small smile.

  Nick accepted admonishment, replying, “What now?”

  “I’ll handle it from here. I get the feeling someone will be interested in seeing what happens to Mr Hardcastle.”

  6

  Connor lay on a bed of a small B&B on the outskirts of Hampshire. The day before last, after his meeting with Bruce McQuillan, he had received a Chinese dish of beef and black bean sauce, a fresh set of well-fitting clothes, and took a shower. He was then driven to the B&B and told to wait. The room and any subsequent meals were already paid for. They had even given him his commando dagger back.

  He sipped an instant black coffee while reading author Brian Tracey’s ‘The Power of Self- Discipline’. He’d loved reading since being a young teenager and couldn’t understand why more of the lads back at work didn’t. That said, proportionally more of the blokes in the Corps read than the guys he knew in ‘civvy street’. He remembered a lot of the lads skimming through the pickup artist book ‘The Game’, before heading into town and employing the techniques absorbed. Great and exciting people would compress a backlog of lessons into a book which, in some cases, took only a week for him to read. He appreciated that one could do too much reading and not enough living; like someone who voraciously read books such as ‘Teach Yourself How To Box’ yet would never have the courage to set foot in a boxing gym. Information was only useful if put into practice.

  He liked hotels and B&B’s. It was the feeling of being looked after in a place that wasn’t familiar. Though the feeling of home was nice to come back to, moving around and travelling came naturally to him.

  This stay had the added bonus in that he wasn’t paying for it—they were.

  That they released him so quickly surprised him. He was expecting a lengthy debrief at the least.

  Still, Reed couldn’t quite believe his luck.

  The room phone began to sound, and he picked it up on the second ring.

  “Meet me downstairs in five,” said a voice Connor recognised to be Bruce’s.

  The phone went dead.

  He pulled on a white polo shirt, fur lined boots and made his way downstairs. He found Bruce in a light grey suit chatting to the receptionist as she laughed.

  “Here he is finally,” Bruce called, like he’d known him for years. “Thought I was going to have to have another shave then.”

  The attractive forty-something-year-old brunette smiled at him as if she and Bruce were sharing an inside joke.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Look after yourself, Janette.”

  Connor saw Janette flash Bruce a fabulous smile.

  Once outside, Connor fell into step beside him as they walked along the quiet residential street. It was the kind of weather he liked—hot but with a gentle breeze.

  “You’re going on a course.”

  It was an order.

  “To turn me into James Bond?”

  “Yeah, you’ll be just like him, with you being a working class lad of average height with a Yorkshire accent.”

  “Tha’ accent adds to tha’ character. Besides, Daniel Craig is my height.”

  Bruce didn’t acknowledge the attempt at humour.

  “Your accent, your real accent, is distinctive and something you’ll have to learn to drop if the situation requires it. We’ll get into that later.” Bruce stopped at a Blue BMW M3. “This is us.”

  “You drive this?”

  “Yes, why shouldn’t I?”

  “Bit flashy isn’t it? Besides, aren’t you technically a Civil Servant?”

  “Why? Are you a Communist? —not a believer in capitalistic enterprise?” Bruce said with a laugh.

  “A little random and deep, comrade,” Connor answered. “Anyway, where are we going?”

  “To show you something I think you’ll like.”

  They got into the car.

  After a couple of hours, Connor began to recognise where they were heading as they approached the road he’d initially taken to Stephen Hardcastle’s home. He felt a sense of unease as he mentally examined the reasons why Bruce might have brought him here—Maybe they are going to kill both Hardcastle and I. Maybe make it look like a burglary gone wrong. Surely they wouldn’t let me stay at a bed and breakfast if that was the case? Or are they going to show me how I fucked up?

  He stopped himself; all he could do was wait it out.

  Bruce had been quiet for the journey as they listened to a political discussion on the radio. The M3 was a pleasant drive.

  As the car turned into Stephen Hardcastle’s long driveway, Connor saw the Jaguar back in its usual parking place. Three sturdy looking men surrounded the open boot.

  “Let’s go,” ordered Bruce, as he switched off the ignition.

  Connor walked a pace behind Bruce, heartened that he let him do so. Though if the men were planning to take him, it would be doubtful he could physically restrain the tall, broad, Scotsman in a way that would make the others back off.

  Connor’s eyes picked out the unconscious Hardcastle in the boot. The smell of petrol taunted his nostrils.

  “What’s this?” asked Connor.

  “Mr Hardcastle, so overcome by the guilt of giving up civil servants to a terrorist cell, decided to commit suicide by dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight inside his boot. At least, that’s what the letter on his dressing table will say.”

  Reed hid his surprise. He’d seen many things a lot of other people hadn’t, both before and during his military career.

  This was unexpected, though.

  “Isn’t there a risk of the closed boot preventing the amount of oxygen needed to feed the flames?” he asked.

  The other men looked at Connor.

  “Maybe, but the fumes from the petrol can he has in there will take care of the rest,” Bruce replied.

  “How did you convince him to write the letter out?”

  “I told him we needed some insurance if he ever decided to turn on us—he went for it. These types always do. Predictable really. Now, would you like to do the honours?”

  Bruce held out a box of matches.

  Reed hesitated, surprising himself, considering what he’d already done and been prepared to do to Hardcastle. Perhaps it was because all he saw was a helpless body now and not a monster. However, the face of Rayella came to him, and he smiled.

  He took the box, his reluctance all but disappeared.

  “Throw the box in after you’ve lit him up,” said Bruce.

  Reed struck a match. The body went up in a burst of flames, and began to thrash as the siren of screams sounded. The smell of burning pork assaulted Connor’s nose, and a moment or two later the boot was closed, muffling the bawling.

  “What about the reciprocal universe?” asked Connor as they retreated.

  “Well that’s it there in action, isn’t it?” Bruce replied as the thudding Jaguar smoked.

  Pierre Gaultier strode along the bustling streets of Paris wearing a wry smile. The sun lit his side of the sidewalk, relieved by a breeze. He was wearing navy blue suit trousers offset by a cream shirt rolled up at the sleeves, revealing his tanned forearms and a Berguet watch. It was the smile of contentment a man unconsciously wears when his stars metaphorically align.

  He remembered when he was around twelve years old telling his Uncle Jean of his wish to be one day famous. When his Uncle Jean asked why, he replied, ‘For the girls, for the Ferraris and to be able go anywhere I want to’.

  His uncle responded, ‘Your wish should be to be wealthy rather than famous. Being famous is to be forever in a golden cage where you won’t be free to wander among the people.’

  At times like this it gladdened Pierre that he’d heeded his uncle’s advice. He thought Paris to be a beautiful city, its greenery interspersed with magnificent architecture which suited his love affair with decadence. He walked along the street with a view of the Seine river, admiring the bustling multiculturalism of the city.

  Gaultier had a thin but wiry frame. He sported stylish blo
nd curls on the top of his head that was shaved at the back and sides. His mouth was a little thin and his nose a touch large, but the Frenchman carried himself with an easy confidence that attracted women. That and my dress sense—he thought.

  The former French Commando had made his first arms deal fifteen years ago while working as a security advisor in the Congo; he’d supplied a local militia group with a pallet of re-conditioned AKM’s and 47s from a Middle-Eastern source. Now the arms dealer’s business had grown to make him a multi- millionaire.

  Pierre didn’t have any serious moral dilemmas regarding what he did for a living. He reasoned every organisation primarily backed their own interests. One’s beliefs were essentially pre-determined by the environment surrounding them—if you grew up in a village in Afghanistan, you were unlikely to become a Rabbi.

  Civilians had, at times, been killed in the crossfire with weapons he knew he’d supplied. This had once given him pause for thought. Over the years however, these feelings had receded; just because they were civilians didn’t mean they were righteous people.

  He had stopped supplying explosives after the 2007 Marriot Hotel bombing in Pakistan. The images of civilians burnt alive were too much even for him. More so, the realisation certain governments’ agencies would hunt him more aggressively if the explosives he sold killed the civilians of their country.

  Still, his power base had grown stronger as time passed and his most of ardent clients had an anti-West agenda. Hezbollah, IRA and some upper-level Somali pirates had all been customers at some point.

  After the attacks of September 11th, Pierre came to a crossroads. The West was under a genuine threat from these despotic fundamentalists. However, these zealots were potentially his most lucrative customer base. Saudi money was as good as anyone else’s in his eyes. Besides, western contracts had all been secured by the big players.

  He would be targeted by some of the world’s largest and best-funded intelligence agencies if known to supply them. The feared Israeli Intelligence service of Mossad was particularly ruthless in dealing with the suppliers of their enemies. The death of former Hamas military commander Al-Mabouth had been still fresh in the memory, and had reminded everyone that Israel was never above flouting international to deal with their enemies.