Terminal Black

by Adrian Magson

  The staff had also observed that Harry had a face that spoke of experience and the kind of build that didn’t look as if it would budge if one of the start-ups got carried away with his own sense of self-importance. He was occasionally joined by a woman, a slim red-head with a throaty laugh that got the waiters all of a buzz because it was as sexy as hell. Even the female staff envied her poise and would have paid good money for that laugh. One of the waitresses said she’d seen the red-head running an up-market flower shop in Fulham, the kind of place that had a celebrity client list and charged the earth for elaborate arrangements.

  As for smart phones, Harry was enjoying a rest from his; it had died several days ago and he hadn’t yet felt the need to get it fixed. His few close friends knew where he was and had his landline number. And he was enjoying the silence.

  As usual he’d had taken a corner window table where he could study the traffic below, pausing only to give his order to a hovering waitress. Pot of coffee one, cups two, slices of chocolate cake two, no cream. She didn’t need to write it down; his order was always the same, although occasionally for a single cup, slice ditto.

  ‘You always have that,’ the waitress said with a faint smile and time to waste. ‘Chocolate cake.’

  ‘It’s my favourite,’ he replied. ‘Too good to miss.’ The restaurant was known for coffee and cake, the former excellent, the latter in Harry’s opinion, simply the best.

  ‘What would you say if I told you we were out of it?’

  ‘I’d throw myself in the river and die hungry.’

  She feigned shock at the thought. ‘Well, we can’t have that. Should I bring it right away?’

  He glanced at his watch. Jean was always on time, one of the many things he loved about her. ‘Give it a couple of minutes, would you? I think I can hold out until then.’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled and moved away with a swing of her hips, disappearing through a pair of batwing doors with twin glazed portholes.

  As the doors finished slapping together, two men entered the room. They looked around for a moment, scoping the place, then the one in the lead walked towards Harry. The second man stayed by the door, hands clasped in front of him.

  A minder, Harry knew instinctively, the hairs on his arms bristling. Capable looking, fit, watchful but not hostile. Hostile would have approached first, feigning innocence and circling around to the side, winding up and ready to jump.

  ‘Harry Tate?’ The first man also looked capable but was better dressed and sleeker. He walked with the slightest lift of one hip, as if he’d picked up a bruise in a weekend game of squash. Leader of the gang, thought Harry. ‘Mind if I sit?’

  ‘Actually, I do.’ Harry wondered which secret government agency these two worked for. Definitely not cops, though. There were so many off-shoots now, all employing people with similar backgrounds; hunters and catchers and seekers of information. The good ones were easy to miss if you didn’t know what to look for, the not-so-good like actors in a bad spook show. The furrowed brows and open mouths were the usual giveaway. But these two were different. Maybe they were from one of the shadowy departments operating between the cracks; the really clever dicks who’d been out there and done it all and didn’t need to show off. Either way, right here and now, it was an inconvenience.

  ‘It won’t take long. Better here than dragging you into an office down by the river.’

  That narrowed it down. MI6 or MI5, the River Boys and Girls. Spies or spy-catchers, take your pick.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘My name’s Ben Cramer. I tried calling but your phone’s not working.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘I checked. You might be missing some excellent work opportunities.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Cramer grunted. ‘In any case, we can still track it, broken or not. Maybe you didn’t know that.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’ Harry had left the phone at home, so any tracking would have involved feet on the ground, not signals in the atmosphere. It meant he was the focus of a Security Services or SIS field operation and they’d known where to find him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A quick chat, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I do, but I doubt that will put you off. Which particular cubbyhole did you spring out of?’

  ‘Let’s say I straddle the two main agencies with a bit of overlap. Mostly Five, if I’m honest, but one has to be a multi-tasker these days.’ He moved the cutlery around to make room for his elbows. He had the remains of a suntan on strong hands, and short fingernails. The kind of hands accustomed to gripping things that went bang.

  Ex-army, thought Harry; a bit like Kevin Costner on a bad day. Officer grade, maybe a captain, scooped up after a decent stint in an infantry regiment, too good to let go to industry or the private contract sector.

  ‘Be careful you don’t fall down the crack in the middle. Can you get to the point?’

  Cramer didn’t even blink. ‘I was warned you might be a little cranky.’ He adjusted one leg to a more comfortable position. ‘You’ve got quite a record, you and Red Station’s little band of stuff-ups. Between you, you left a few bodies lying around along the way. Messy.’

  ‘It was a messy situation. Have you come here to spoil my appetite?’

  ‘Nothing like that. It’s by way of a preamble, letting you know what I know about your background, so to speak. So what happened to the girl – Jardine, wasn’t it? The one who gutted Six’s esteemed controller, Sir Anthony Bellingham on the Embankment. Nasty way to go. What was that about?’

  ‘If you know about Red Station, you shouldn’t have to ask.’

  ‘Actually, I was elsewhere at the time, otherwise engaged. I’m having to play catch-up. Where is she now, by the way, Jardine?’

  ‘No idea. She moved on, left the game.’ A game that had nearly killed her, Harry reflected. Himself, too, at one point. Luckily for him, Jardine, MI6-trained and run and hating the world after they’d canned her to the dustbin outpost known as Red Station in Georgia for getting stung in a reverse honey-trap, had been close enough to save his bacon. He’d been able to repay the favour in due course, but it hadn’t made her any friendlier towards him or anyone else. Like others caught up in situations beyond their control she’d become damaged goods. Wherever she was now, she was better off out of it.

  A flicker of something in Cramer’s eyes might have been scepticism. ‘Pity. She’s got a permanent spot on Six’s finders-keepers bulletin board. Whoever tracks her down will earn himself a lot of brownie points.’

  ‘Him? Bit sexist, isn’t it? The agencies were equal opportunity employers last time I looked.’

  ‘You’re right. My bad. I’ll have to apply for a spot of retraining.’

  ‘And all that is history now, anyway. Years old. Why bother?’

  ‘Because we can’t have rogue officers knocking off the top execs and getting away with it. It looks bad for our rep. Let it go and there’d be a queue along the Embankment with guns out, looking for targets.’

  ‘Even though said top exec was a traitor?’

  ‘Even though. Them’s the rules.’

  ‘Is this about Clare Jardine?’

  Before he could answer, the door at the end of the room opened and a slim figure stepped through. The minder tensed, then relaxed; his thought processes almost visible. Anyone wishing to harm his boss wouldn’t come armed with a drop-dead smile or dressed with such understated elegance. Harry didn’t need to look to see who it was; he could tell by the footsteps. He kept his eyes on Cramer’s face. As the click of heels approached, the minder detached himself from the wall and followed the woman slowly down the room.

  Harry picked up a fork and waggled it back and forth. As the woman continued past the table his peripheral vision caught a soft sway of auburn hair brushing her shoulders. She left by the door to the washrooms at the far end. The minder relaxed, rolling his shoulders to show that he’d had her covered all along.

  ‘
Your man’s looking the wrong way,’ Harry said softly. He was holding the fork a hair’s breadth above the back of Cramer’s hand. ‘It’s crazy people with sharp cutlery he needs to watch out for.’

  Cramer blinked and looked down. He looked desperate to pull his hand away, but didn’t, displaying impressive cool.

  ‘Point taken. Although I’d heard you were dangerous, not crazy.’ Cramer sounded calm but his eyes gave him away. He hadn’t expected this. ‘Was that the other coffee and cake who just walked by? If so it was smooth, her picking up your signal like that.’ He looked towards the minder and opened his mouth as if to issue an order, but Harry interrupted him before the man could move.

  ‘Don’t. Seriously, don’t.’

  Cramer relaxed with a fleeting look of surprise. ‘By God, you’re serious.’ He inclined his head towards his man. ‘You know he’d be on you in a second if you tried anything.’

  ‘But not before this fork got used on something other than cake.’

  SIX

  Cramer gave a signal for the minder to return to his post. ‘OK. Bigger dick session’s over. What do I need to say to convince you I’m serious?’

  ‘What you want might be a start. But remember I’m old hat. I have no interest or value to whoever employs you.’

  ‘Not according to your file.’

  ‘What file?’

  ‘Everyone’s got a file, Harry – may I call you Harry? Past, present … in some cases future. Files are the in thing these days – only digital, of course. Lots of bytes about lots of hats, old and new.’

  ‘Sounds like things got even more bureaucratic since I got canned.’

  ‘Bitter?’

  ‘It was a set-up.’

  ‘I suppose. And?’

  ‘You don’t look like a Thames House recruit.’ It was a punt; you never knew what you could learn about people without seeming to try. It worked more often than not.

  ‘I was army for a few years, like you. Then I got picked up by Six. Things didn’t work out so I transferred again.’

  ‘What happened? Did you use the wrong cutlery?’

  Cramer responded by straightening his left leg away from the table and hitching his trousers to reveal a shoe fitted to a prosthetic leg made of a shiny construction, some sort of poly-fibre mix. ‘I was attached to a Six Basement team. We were sent after a bomb-maker and local warlord in Kandahar. The information on him was crap but we didn’t know that. We were told he was ready to change sides so I was given the all-clear to meet him. He wasn’t anything of the sort. On the way in I trod on an IED he’d left for us. I don’t remember much but they said it misfired.’ He shrugged. ‘It bloody hurt, that’s all I know. Goodbye, Afghanistan.’

  Harry knew about the Basement. They were the specialists MI6 kept for when they needed something doing that they didn’t like to admit to. Drawn from the ranks of special forces, they were mobile and 24-hour RTG – ready to go. Where the CIA had the Special Activities Division, Six had their pursuit team controlled from their headquarters in the lower levels of the ziggurat at Vauxhall Cross. But they hadn’t always been the only ones they’d used.

  ‘What happened to the Hit?’ he asked.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You heard.’ He was sure Cramer was being coy. The Hit, so called, had been led by a man named Latham. They’d been sent to deal with the potential embarrassments that were the members of Red Station once it became clear that the Russians were about to roll across the border into Georgia in support of South Ossetia’s demand for independence. The exposure of such a place was a likely career-ender for the two men who had conceived the idea: George Paulton, from Five, and Sir Anthony Bellingham, from Six, and having a bunch of quarantined and highly resentful foul-ups, so called, scooped up by the Russians and potentially liable to talk their hind legs off was unthinkable. Thus, the Hit.

  ‘It never was official, as I understand it,’ Cramer replied. ‘They were unsanctioned.’

  ‘Try being pinned down by them in a hostile zone and shot in the arm and you wouldn’t see the distinction.’

  Cramer pursed his lips. ‘I guess. Sorry. What can I say? It shouldn’t have happened.’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, I hear you coped well enough, you and the others. I take it Latham’s dead and buried?’

  ‘No idea what you mean,’ said Harry. It was time to move on. ‘You didn’t get an offer of a desk job, then?’

  Cramer took the switch in his stride. ‘Hardly. While under medication I apparently said some very uncomplimentary things about my bosses’ incompetence, planning and parenthood.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Harry knew all about talking out of turn. He was a past master at it.

  ‘A trawling newshound overheard and blew the op wide open. They suggested I wasn’t playing by the rules and relegated me to the side-lines, crewing a desk and a phone. Then I got a call from a joint services panel who wanted to build a dual-agency team and … well, here I am.’

  ‘And knowing my background you’re still ready to talk about all that?’

  ‘Sure, why not? It’s all out there in the spyosphere if you know where to look. Nothing’s secret for long in our game, right? Besides, a point in your favour says you’re not given to blabbing.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Richard Ballatyne.’

  Ballatyne was MI6. One of their controllers responsible for field operatives and agents, and one of the few men Harry trusted. ‘What is “our game” exactly? Mine’s free enterprise.’

  Cramer sniffed. ‘Come off it. You’re grubbing around at the lower end of the security industry doing odd jobs for whoever needs a former spook.’

  Harry recognized the tactic: unsettle the target and get him to lower his guard. Anger was always a good way in. But he wasn’t about to play ball. He put the fork down and got to his feet. ‘I’ll see you around.’

  He’d taken two steps when Cramer called out. ‘Wait. Sorry. That was rude of me. Please … sit down.’

  ‘Do I need this? No.’ Harry was conscious of the minder moving to block his way. He looked relaxed and ready; accustomed to a spot of rough-house and probably very good at it.

  ‘Maybe not. But an old friend of yours needs your help.’ Cramer waved the minder away and gestured at the chair, waiting while Harry sat down.

  ‘Old friend?’

  ‘One of the other Red Station residents. Rik Ferris.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You see much of him?’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘But you’ve worked with him.’

  ‘Off and on.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘I don’t know. About a year ago. Why?’

  ‘We think he’s become a problem.’

  Harry waited but Cramer didn’t elucidate. ‘How?’

  ‘He’s disappeared. Dropped off the radar.’

  ‘So he’s on holiday somewhere. He doesn’t have travel restrictions on him, does he? Anyway, how would you know he’s gone?’

  ‘Pure fluke, the way these things often are. He was on a random surveillance list … like a lot of former spooks. But that wasn’t what triggered the search. He was recently picked up in communication with a known hacker who’s done work for Moscow. That’s bad enough.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘Now I’m told he’s in possession of some highly confidential information. If he’s meeting with a Russian contact, that makes him a potential traitor.’

  Harry counted to ten, wondering what Cramer or his bosses were really after. How had Red Station reared its ugly head again, an echo of recurring charges and accusations? He couldn’t see why, since that had all been cleared up and disposed of. Or had it? A clatter of pots and pans in the background and a voice calling for clean aprons jarred his focus. Maybe this story was an elaborate stitch-up, a ruse to get him on-side for one of Six’s nefarious double-dealing jobs.

  ‘Rik wouldn’t jump ship. His mother wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘If
you knew her you wouldn’t need to ask. She knows he was with Five and would skin him alive if she thought he’d gone over the fence. A pity the country hasn’t got more like her.’

  ‘Past tense, I’m afraid. Ferris’s mother died four months ago. Breast cancer. Word is he went to pieces and hit the bottle, along with some other stuff. He must have thought a lot of her.’

  Harry experienced a sense of shock. Rik had a flat in Paddington but kept in close contact with his mother south of the river and had made no secret of his closeness to her. But would her death have been enough to send him off the rails? He didn’t want to believe it but grief has many outlets, affects people in different and subtle ways.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like him,’ he said at last. ‘And how would he have got hold of anything in Six’s files? He was with Five. Last I heard they weren’t good at exchanging their little secrets with each other.’

  ‘That’s not totally accurate – his level of access, I mean. Before he got himself dumped Ferris was on loan to Vauxhall Cross in an IT support role while Six was getting some new systems up-do-date.’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘He never mentioned it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m surprised, you two being such good buddies and all.’

  ‘We didn’t live in each other’s pockets and the past was the past. Some things weren’t for sharing.’

  ‘But you worked together. No little chit-chats over the campfire about old times?’

  ‘That’s past tense, too. Like I said, I haven’t seen him for a year.’

  ‘Did you fall out?’

  ‘No. We went different ways. He stayed in IT. I’m more your blunt instrument kind of person. Some jobs don’t require both skills. It happens.’

  ‘True enough.’ Cramer flicked at something on the tablecloth. ‘And he never gave any indication that he might change sides?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t in him. Why would you assume otherwise?’