by A P Bateman
“Very touching,” Villiers said. “The word of a dead man. And a desperate alcoholic wash-out, at that…”
King lunged forwards and kicked Villiers’ in the chest. Ramsay stood up, but realised he wasn’t going to do anything, and sat back down again. He looked at Amherst, who had remained impassive. Villiers was winded, and his head was lolling from side to side as he struggled to suck in breath. King grabbed the man’s lapels and pulled him close. Villiers tried to resist, but he knew he was outmatched physically. He tried to pull away, but King’s arms remained locked solid, his biceps forming under the leather jacket that seemed to threaten the integrity of the stitching.
“You were thwarting Russian defection, in collusion with the FSB or GRU. What was it, money?”
Villiers glared. “No!”
“Ideals, then?”
“You don’t understand!” He looked at Amherst expectantly and said, “Call off your goon!”
King pulled him closer, spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re a traitor!”
“No! I was working with the GRU, in a joint intelligence operation!”
“Bullshit!”
“I was preventing sell-outs from jeopardising vital research!”
“Their research.”
“I had an inside line, a way in to something we’ve wanted for so long! When it was complete, my contact was going to get it to us. We had to put off the defectors until it was ready!” Villiers said desperately. He looked at Amherst again and pleaded, “For god’s sake!”
“The GRU would never work with a foreign agency on a project like that,” Amherst said coldly. He took a fold of paper out of his pocket and opened it up. “These accounts are in your wife and children’s names. Offshore accounts, but I’m sure neither of them are aware they’re knocking on the door to being millionaires.”
Villiers’ shoulders sagged. King gripped more tightly just in case it was part of the man’s plan to lull him into a false sense of security. King looked down, saw the damp patch soaked into the area around his groin and doubted he had it in him.
“So, what are you going to do?”
Amherst stood up. “My man here wanted to break your neck,” he said nonchalantly. “And trust me, he’s more than capable. But we’ve had a chat about the bigger picture and he agrees, of sorts. You’ll be far more useful to us on a leash. An extremely tight leash. Of course, your wife and children will only be safe for as long as you cooperate. And it goes without saying that you’ll be under surveillance twenty-four-seven. In short, we’ll know what colour toilet paper you use. Which, we do already. And the man who has just made you piss your own pants will be all too pleased to twist your neck if you fail to fall in line with us.” Villiers went to say something but seemed to think better of it. “Your accounts have been frozen, and your assets seized. Your passport has been flagged and you will hand it over to us when you come in to Thames House tomorrow morning at nine for the first in a series of meetings. Naturally, you will still retain your position, for now, but I am appointing Simon Mereweather as my liaison. He will be working fulltime in the River House until further notice. We’ll call it a joint MI6/MI5 operation. He’s on his way over now, but I thought I’d spare you the embarrassment of him being in on this meeting. He’ll hear all about it later, of course.” Amherst stood up and casually adjusted the sleeve of his jacket. “We’ll start this new venture by maintaining your relationship with the Ruskies. And then we’ll gradually trickle-feed them disinformation. By the time we’ve finished with you, the Russians will be thinking how to get Novichok on your door handle. By then, of course, we’ll be your only salvation. Your only protection. So, play the game, stay onside and you might just have a future.”
King gripped tightly, pulled Villiers out of his chair and the man put up no resistance. A ragdoll in his hands. “Make no mistake,” he said coldly and threw him back into the stained chair. “The Security Service own the SIS now. And if you think about doing a runner, make no mistake, I’ll hunt you and I’ll find you, and I will kill you…”
76
“He’s a slippery one,” Ramsay said. “But I think he understands.”
“He’ll hang himself,” said King. “Metaphorically, that is.”
“Do you think?” asked Amherst.
“He’s arrogant. He’ll dust himself off, regroup, build his ego back up and he’ll cross the line again,” King said. “Which is fine with me, because I meant every word.”
The sky had clouded over, and it was raining. So much for the promise of spring. The spray from the vehicles had made a greasy smear in the windscreen wiper’s tracks. Seated in the front passenger seat, Amherst’s bodyguard cracked his window down an inch and checked his own rear-view mirror for the hundredth time since leaving the River House. King wondered how much the man had listened too, but noted he was probably too situationally aware to care. Parliament Square looked less colourful than before as they followed the road to the right and headed for Thames House.
Amherst said, “The documents mention a name several times. Someone who oversaw the project from its conception. This person is of interest to us. A former communist hardliner. A general who ran a subversive wing of the KGB. His involvement in this horror-show project is compelling, because he will no doubt have further information. Undoubtedly more than we have gained thus far.”
So much for nipping this in the bud, thought King.
“What’s his name?” Ramsay asked.
“Vladimir Zukovsky.”
King felt the wall of his chest tighten, his heart skip a beat. Adrenalin surged through him, and he found he was gripping the door handle so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. His mind raced and for a moment he was caught up with images of things he’d rather forget. Of bodies and blood, of timers and detonators and cannisters of plutonium. He looked at the palm of his hand, the ragged scar from where he had cupped the detonator - a reminder of how close to oblivion the country had come. He closed his eyes and thought about Caroline, of the cove in Majorca, the engagement ring he had bought her after the operation had gone according to plan. Of the start of a new life ahead of them and Vladimir Zukovsky found and placed under permanent arrest. Simon Mereweather had been acting director, and King had put together the hastily conceived abduction plan while he was still on official sick leave. Caroline had been none-the-wiser.
“Are you alright, dear boy?” Amherst asked. The car swept past Downing Street and King turned and looked out of the window.
“I’m fine,” he said. But like so many things in his life, he thought he would never be able to truly outlive his past. The feeling that he would forever be haunted. And the feeling that whether he wanted it or not, a new and deadly chapter in his life would soon open. He looked back at Amherst and said dubiously, “Never better.”
77
There was very little to signify that the well-tended gardens in which he stood belonged to the family of a man long since deceased, but ever immortalised in the annals of history. A piece of land bought in 1921 by the Cumming family to commemorate Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith Cumming, KCMG, CB and the work he did in founding what had become the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. A simple plaque honoured this man, and a plaque had been added for every agent lost from 1914 to 1918 throughout Europe. From 1942, the garden of rest had become a Home Office registered graveyard of sacrosanct land. Not every agent had been buried here, but those who had all bore a matching gravestone, and those whose families had opted for their loved one’s body to rest elsewhere had still been honoured by a commemorative stone, identical to (C’s) own. Each stone was engraved with the name, date of birth, date of death and their time in service with MI6. No details were added according to one’s grace, standing or fortune, except that a single gold star denoted death in the field.
In 1961 a fund from MI6 had taken over lease of the land and undertook maintenance of the garden and subsequent licensing and registrar fees in accordance with births, deaths and marriages.
Other than that, the garden was known by few, even within the walls of the River House.
King studied the newly-dug grave. Tiny shoots had already protruded from the soil, and before the summer took hold, he imagined the mound would flatten and settle and the grass would cover it completely, leaving just the headstone in place, and no clue whether someone had been laid to rest, or merely commemorated along with so many others. King had read all the stones on another occasion, marvelling at how many dates fell within the first and second world wars. Another rise had been in the mid-sixties and early eighties, though few would know why or where. From the fall of the Berlin wall, the numbers had been less. Sometimes years without a soul immortalised by a stone with a star.
Peter Stewart’s name and star were bright, the stone glistening in the May sunshine. King took out the bottle of twenty-five-year old Haig. King did not know whether it was good or not, but he cracked the cap and took a swig, let the amber fire settle on his tongue and reach the back of his throat. It tasted like whisky to him, but the man in the wine and liquor merchants had said it was good, and the price would have King agree. He took another swig and it tasted better this time. He poured the rest on the earth and a little on the headstone, then put the cap back on and pressed the bottle into the ground and worked it into the soft earth until just the neck was in view.
“Rest easy, you old bastard,” he said. He wiped the corner of his eye, before it threatened to turn into a tear and added as he walked away, “Thank you.”
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading the Alex King books 4 – 6. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
You can find out more about my work at www.apbateman.com where you can see news of new releases, join my mailing list and have a general nose about! If you have time to leave a review on Amazon, I’d be extremely grateful, but hey – you bought the book, so I can’t really ask for much more!
I hope to entertain you again soon,
A P Bateman
