Resolution to Kill

by E. V. Seymour

  Clay frowned. ‘So you’re saying that your powers have been misrepresented, that too much was expected of you?’

  ‘Which is why we are perceived as attempting too much and achieving too little. To put it bluntly, we are not, and never have been, authorised to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states. Our constitution does not allow it. Make no mistake, there are times when I wish we could, but unless there is fundamental change, something my predecessor tried to bring to the world’s attention, that stubborn tension between what we can and what we, perhaps, ought to achieve remains. We cannot infringe the rights of a foreign state.’

  Even when that state was massacring its own people, Tallis thought. As a former soldier, he was familiar with the argument.

  Chatelle was still speaking. ‘Unfortunately, it’s why I believe you may well be on the right track,’ she said, issuing Tallis the warmest of smiles. He couldn’t help but smile back. He reckoned she’d be a knockout on the cocktail party circuit. Drinks gatherings were the UN’s stock-in-trade.

  ‘So the American connection is coincidental?’ Clay said.

  Chatelle hesitated. ‘May I speak frankly?’

  ‘Please do,’ Tallis said, ignoring Clay’s jaundiced expression. There was something about Chatelle he found vaguely captivating. Perhaps it was the languid tenor of her voice, the sexy Belgian accent, but whenever she spoke she did so with authority and poise.

  ‘Many still perceive UN policy to be led by the Americans,’ Chatelle said.

  ‘They certainly have a powerful voice.’

  ‘Indeed, and that is often a source of resentment.’

  Tallis was trying to work out whether that was the nearest she would come to pointing a finger. He tried to ignore Clay’s poisonous stare. Chatelle continued to talk. ‘In my experience, America only acts either when its strategic interests are under threat or when it wishes to gain a foothold. America was largely uninterested in the Balkans. Indeed, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admitted that he found the conflict baffling.’

  ‘They got stuck in eventually,’ Tallis said. ‘As I recall, a great deal of shuttle diplomacy took place.’

  ‘Culminating in the signing of the Dayton agreement,’ Clay said, quietly grinding his jaw.

  Chatelle nodded, brown eyes twinkling, giving Tallis the impression that her enjoyment of their conversation went way beyond the cut and thrust of debate. Chatelle was checking them out, trying to work out their standpoints, perhaps even their suitability for the job.

  ‘Were you there?’ Tallis asked her.

  ‘I was in Bosnia in 1993, a young junior official working with refugees.’

  ‘A nightmare scenario, I imagine.’

  Chatelle canted her head. He swore a shadow passed over her expression so fleeting that he couldn’t be sure that it had been there at all.

  ‘The entire Tuzla region was strangled by a Bosnian-Croat blockade. Food supplies were disrupted, there were shortages of even basic medicines, electricity was patchy, which meant the water supply, which was pumped, was under threat. Imagine the very real prospect of dying of thirst, gentlemen. The population was in complete turmoil and living in desperate conditions. It was the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

  ‘At the time a fierce debate raged about the moral neutrality of the UN. People were screaming for the Security Council to pass resolutions so that the blockade could be lifted and relief flights flown in to the airport. Nothing much changes.’ She smiled ruefully at Tallis.

  ‘If you stay in the middle of the blacktop you get run over,’ Clay said, his voice a growl and at odds with the quiet splendour of the suite.

  Chatelle’s smile vanished. It was as if someone had turned off the light. ‘We were working in extremely difficult, dangerous and chaotic conditions. You may sneer, Mr Clay, but we had our moments of triumph. I have a particularly vivid memory of the time we sent in our field ambulances to rescue a number of abandoned and disabled children caught in the fighting.’

  Clay flicked the palms of his hands up, conceding the point.

  ‘Regarding present events,’ she said with a curt change of subject, ‘what about the current threat level? Would you say that UN Headquarters is more or less at risk?’

  ‘There are limits to predictability,’ Tallis said, cautious.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ she said. ‘But I need to protect my staff.’

  ‘At the moment there is no clear stepping up of activity.’

  Chatelle politely nodded, raised the coffee cup to her lips and took a delicate sip. She didn’t ask what they were proposing to do. She simply surveyed them with an expectant expression that implied that she was in their hands.

  ‘We’re following up all possible leads as discreetly as possible,’ Tallis said, trying to blend some conviction into his voice. It wasn’t desirable to admit that they needed more current, actionable intelligence.

  ‘I am aware of the need for secrecy,’ Chatelle said, smiling.

  He didn’t think that would be too much of a stretch for a woman of her position. Tallis met her eye. She met his gaze, smiled then rose to her feet. ‘You’ll keep me informed?’

  ‘Sure,’ Clay said, eager, apparently, to escape.

  ‘Thank you for your time, secretary general,’ Tallis smiled, turning to shake her hand, Clay already out of the door.

  Isolde Chatelle smiled back, slight pressure in her handshake. ‘My pleasure. Before you go -’ she said, bending down to retrieve her handbag; Gucci, by the look of it, Tallis thought. ‘- here is my card. If you need to get hold of me, day or night, phone this number.’

  Tallis thanked her, spirited it away, glad for her discretion. He caught Clay up by the lifts. Doors opened and closed and they descended to the ground floor, from where they trooped out of the hotel and walked several streets away to where Tallis’s Porsche Boxster was parked, Clay’s glowering silence like the approach of a grizzly bear before it attacks.

  Tallis bleeped open the Porsche, climbed inside, Clay clambering in next to him. Starting the engine, Tallis smoothly pulled into a swell of early-morning commuter traffic.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Clay let out. ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘I take it you were unimpressed.’

  ‘Spent any time in war zones?’ Clay belted back.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Then you’ll be familiar with the sight of UN officials swanning around with their 4x4s in the middle of chaos and destitution. The UN’s nothing more than a collection of diplomatic licence plates.’

  Pretty much what Diamond maintained, but coming from Clay’s mouth it sounded more damning. Tallis glanced across at him. ‘Were we at the same meeting? Chatelle gave me the impression that she was more than aware of mistakes made.’

  ‘Sure, by the Americans.’

  ‘She didn’t actually say that.’

  ‘I’m surprised you heard anything she said.’

  Tallis let it go. Clay was starting to sound like his brother Dan. ‘I assume from what you told Chatelle you’re warming to the female terrorist group scenario.’

  Clay didn’t reply, slouching down in the leather and making a point of closing his eyes. Tallis switched on the radio, tuned in to the news, then flicked to CD, selecting an early U2 album.

  Halfway down the M1, and halfway through ‘Acrobat’, Tallis’s phone cut in on his hands-free set. Pressing the green answer button on his dash, he took the call. Clay immediately opened his eyes and sat up.

  ‘Where are you?’ It was Asim.

  Tallis gave the location.

  ‘We need you back at base soon as.’

  ‘There’s been a development?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Should be with you in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Make it soon as. You’re both scheduled to fly out of Birmingham this afternoon.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Berlin. I’ll explain later,’ Asim added, cutting the call.

  ‘Thought
we weren’t using comms,’ Clay said, slow and surly.

  ‘What did you expect, carrier pigeon?’

  Clay gave a snort of laughter, unfolded his thickset limbs and glanced across at Tallis. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Tallis broke into a wide smile. ‘I have absolutely no idea, but at least it gets us out of the office.’

  ‘We’ve received information regarding the disappearance of an American by the name of Bruce Fitz,’ Beckett announced.

  They were in the Birmingham bunker, as Tallis referred to it. The word ‘American’ had a peculiar effect on Clay. If Tallis had to put it into words, he’d say that Clay was having a Stars and Stripes moment.

  Beckett turned to the screen behind him and touched a button on a hand-held control. A fleshy-faced white individual in his forties appeared.

  ‘You may be wondering why this man, a private security contractor, has been brought to our attention.’ Beckett looked from Clay to Tallis, who was starting to feel as if he was back in the classroom. Having never enjoyed school, he wasn’t that comfortable with it.

  ‘What does Fitz do unofficially?’ Clay asked, his close-together eyes wily.

  ‘SCS,’ Beckett said.

  Special Collection Service, Tallis registered, specialising in intercepting foreign political, military and internal security telecommunications from within American embassies abroad, or, of more vital significance, operating within denied environments, places like Iran and North Korea. Fitz’s high profile explained how he had been missed rather more quickly than the average Yank.

  ‘What else do we know?’ Tallis said.

  ‘A former marine, Fitz was sent to Somalia in the early 1990s, working under the auspices of the United Nations.’

  ‘Them again. So what are you saying?’ Clay drawled. ‘A guy’s gone walkabout and you think because he did his duty twenty years ago he’s been abducted, or become a homicide victim?’ Judging by the flare in Beckett’s nostrils, Tallis wasn’t the only one to detect the insolent note in Clay’s voice. ‘More likely he’s been singled out because of his connection to the SCS.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Beckett said crisply. ‘The fact is that he teamed up with a black girl.’

  ‘Teamed up?’ Clay frowned. ‘You mean as in screwing?’

  Beckett glowered with distaste.

  Is he for real? Clay’s expression suggested.

  ‘He was last seen with a woman,’ Beckett said. ‘Bearing in mind his prior connection to Somalia and the United Nations, we can’t rule out that what seems like a simple event has more sinister overtones.’

  ‘Honey trap?’ Clay glanced at Tallis, who shrugged. A man like Fitz should have been aware of such a possibility. Then again, if he were on leave, it was conceivable he’d let his guard down. Stupid but credible.

  Swivelling his beady eyes to Tallis, Beckett asked for his opinion.

  ‘I presume the police in Berlin have covered all the angles.’

  ‘They’re German,’ Beckett said drily. ‘Of course they’ve covered the angles.’

  ‘Where was Fitz last seen?’

  ‘Friedrichs, a nightclub off Kollwitzstrasse.’

  Prenzlauer Berg, Tallis thought, remembering the place from a previous trip. ‘And no

  trace of the girl?’ He was reminded of the woman who’d shot the former Chinese ambassador in Bruges. Then again, the Chinese representative was killed quite openly and brazenly. Job done.

  ‘She has disappeared into thin air.’

  Tallis imagined computers crunching data, searching identities and travel manifests. Whatever the deadly duo maintained, Tallis did not believe that they’d wholly dispense with technological backup, not when it could yield such amazing and quick results, not when the missing person was high profile. ‘There must have been witnesses.’

  ‘Some, but we all know witness statements are variable.’

  And notoriously unreliable, Tallis thought. ‘Do we have a description of her, any scars, any abnormalities, what she was wearing?’

  ‘Several statements,’ Asim said, pushing a sheaf of papers towards Tallis and Clay. Tallis leafed through them and handed them to Clay. The overall image conveyed: smart, groomed and good-looking; no tribal marks, no missing limb. No lead.

  ‘Someone must have seen them get into a cab or a car. And this guy looks big.’ Tallis’s eyes drifted to the screen.

  ‘Six three,’ Beckett said.

  ‘There you go. She must have had an accomplice,’ Clay said.

  And that certainly chimed with Tallis’s thoughts on the earlier incident in Belgium. ‘What about CCTV?’

  Beckett cast a withering smile. ‘Sadly for us, the Germans do not have the same slavish devotion to surveillance as UK governments.’

  ‘They also have more robust data protection constraints,’ Asim chipped in.

  ‘The witness statements,’ Clay said, pinging one of the pieces of paper with his finger and thumb. ‘There’s no clue to the girl’s nationality?’

  ‘Nothing clear-cut, I agree, other than she probably hailed from Africa or the sub-Saharan continent.’

  ‘Think she’s Muslim?’ Clay said, grinding his jaw.

  Given Fitz’s real occupation, Clay had every reason to suspect that there were other dark forces at work, Tallis thought. And maybe he was right.

  ‘Your point?’ Beckett cut in.

  Clay shrugged as if he couldn’t be bothered to explain.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Asim said.

  ‘I fear we are going off piste,’ Beckett said, determinedly looking at Clay.

  Ignoring Clay’s expression, which possessed the same potency as paint-stripper, Tallis briefly considered whether Beckett had received prior intelligence.

  ‘Paul?’ Asim said, jolting him back to the three men in front of him, the claustrophobic room and the reality.

  ‘All right,’ Tallis said. ‘If we go with the current line of thinking, I believe Fitz’s abduction in Berlin displays a change of tactic.’

  But Clay wasn’t going with it. ‘Fitz was a special target, not your average John Doe. He could have been lifted for a million of reasons. So far we have no evidence to suggest that he was taken by the same people.’

  ‘It’s a fair point,’ Tallis admitted.

  ‘Just think we should keep an open mind, is all,’ Clay said, exchanging a glance with Tallis, the nearest he came to thanking him for coming onside.

  ‘I agree,’ Asim said with a disarming smile, clearly calculated to annoy Beckett, ‘but in the absence of more information we’ll work with the current hypothesis.’

  Why? Tallis thought. Accustomed to Asim working his own agenda, he was more convinced than ever that they were being fed only part of a meal, all vegetables, no meat. Clay again looked to Tallis for support, but this time Tallis knew to shut up.

  ‘Think he’s alive?’ Clay said, pushing it.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Beckett answered.

  ‘Supposing he’s alive, what happens if this turns into a hostage-taking situation?’ Tallis said.

  ‘Different ball game,’ Beckett said.

  ‘And a nightmare, but it must remain covert,’ Asim added, emphatic. ‘We wish to avoid playing this out in the public arena.’

  You might not have a choice, Tallis thought.

  ‘No problem,’ Clay said, a smug lilt to his voice.

  ‘And one of the reasons we require your expertise,’ Beckett said.

  So that’s what Clay’s involvement was all about, Tallis twigged, remembering Jon’s assertion that the Alliance was expert in hostage retrieval.

  ‘The only live lead we have right now is Berlin. What’s your German like?’ Beckett addressed Clay, who cast Tallis a chill dead-eyed look.

  ‘As good as my Turkish.’

  Tip-top, then, Tallis thought, remembering. Beckett had no need to ask for his own credentials; he was already fully conversant with the contents of his file.

  ‘This might help.’ Asim handed Tallis a slim contact repo
rt. ‘The agent is a young Iranian living in Germany who has a pretty good handle on the more criminal elements of Berlin society. He’s been prepared for your visit by his handler, Harry Schwartz.’

  ‘Does Schwartz know what we’re really doing there?’ Clay frowned.

  Asim shook his head. ‘Harry’s not in the loop. We gave him enough to satisfy his curiosity.’

  Tallis flipped the file open, his eyes flicking to the top right-hand corner of the inside page and a photograph of the Iranian contact, Alia Faghiri. A dark tangle of eyebrows crested black hooded eyes over a wide boxer’s nose. Lips were full. His most striking feature: his mane of

  jet-black curly hair. Tallis skipped the tedious detail and confined himself to reading the opening precis of a previous meeting, then handed the report to Clay, who speed-read it. It occurred to Tallis that Clay was looking at it with a different mindset; that he was exploring any Muslim connection. Again Tallis considered why this Middle Eastern expert was being teamed up with him. Or, put another way, what was in it for the Americans? The answer came back like a flash: what was always in it for the Americans, the al Qaeda connection. Russia had defined previous American foreign policy. Now it was the turn of Muslim fundamentalists. Why else would the Alliance be hanging around the Balkans? For no other reason, Tallis thought, than to pursue disgruntled Muslims and suss out their connections. If that was the American agenda, and notwithstanding the order for a complete techno-blackout, Tallis couldn’t be sure that Clay wouldn’t beam the nuance of every conversation and every revelation directly back to Langley, the CIA’s headquarters.

  ‘Good,’ Clay finally said, pushing back his chair and handing the report back to Asim. ‘What time’s our flight?’

  ‘1530 hours,’ Asim said.

  ‘Better bust a groove, then,’ Clay announced to nobody in particular.

  CHAPTER TEN

  They sat in first class, no expense spared, flying in a Lufthansa Airbus A340-600 over Europe. Tallis had the window seat, Clay seated next to him. Curious to know about Clay’s professional experience, this seemed as good an opportunity as any to exploit it. ‘I’m guessing you’ve spent time in the Middle East.’