by Chris Ryan
Dundas jammed his thick thumbs into his belt and rolled his tongue around his gums.
‘What do you want to do with those prisoners?’ he asked Gregory. ‘They’re your responsibility, not ours.’
‘Colonel Lubowa and I will take care of them.’ Gregory pointed out the head of the Presidential Guard. ‘They’ll be dealt with,’ he added.
‘We’ll need a body bag for Tiny,’ said Mallet. ‘He’s coming home with us.’
‘Of course,’ Thriepland replied. ‘I’ll see to it.’
He moved off, Dundas stalking him and barking orders at the men. Mallet walked away to put in a call to the Voice. Casey went in search of a medic. Gregory beat a path over to Colonel Lubowa. The latter had mustered the handful of surviving men from the Presidential Guard and Mavinda’s platoon. Now they began herding the rebel prisoners towards the back of the stronghold under Gregory’s watchful gaze.
‘What’ll happen to them, do you think?’ Webb asked Bowman as they watched the last of the prisoners disappear from sight.
‘They tried to overthrow the government, mate. The president’s hardly going to let them off with a slap on the wrist.’
‘You think he’ll execute them?’
Bowman considered, then shook his head. ‘Mike would never sanction it. They’ll probably interrogate the ringleaders, then chuck the lot of them in prison.’
‘That’s as good as a death sentence over here anyway,’ said Webb.
A while later, Mallet came back and gathered the team round.
He said, ‘I’ve heard back from Vauxhall. They’re arranging transportation for us now. We’ll be leaving on the same Herc these lads came in on.’
‘When?’ asked Casey.
‘Soon. A few hours. We’re still waiting for clearance. Once we’ve got the green light, I’ll let you know.’
Bowman said, ‘What’s going on with the coup?’
‘SFSG landed about an hour ago. Along with the detachment from the SBS. They’ve recaptured the international airport from the rebels. Moving on to the capital as we speak.’
‘It’ll be over soon, then.’
‘Looks that way. As soon as they’ve taken the broadcasting station, they’ll put out a pre-recorded statement by the president, telling his people that the rebellion has been quelled. Once that message goes out, the game’s up.’
‘The hard core elements won’t give up that easily.’
‘Maybe not,’ Mallet said. ‘But they won’t stand a chance against our guys, now that the Russians have abandoned them.’
The morning wore on. Bowman sat with the others near the steps of the stronghold, sipping boiling-hot coffee, each of them feeling physically and mentally exhausted. They looked at one another, but no one said a word. The mood was sober and quiet. There was no sense of jubilation. Just an overwhelming feeling of relief, tempered by the grief they all felt at the loss of their friend. Bowman saw a couple of men from D Squadron placing Loader in a body bag and thought about the promise he’d made in the basement.
As soon as this op is over, I’ll go clean.
I’ll keep it, he vowed. This time, I won’t slip. No matter how hard it gets.
The team waited. After a while, Gregory wandered off to speak with Colonel Lubowa. Mallet was fielding a constant stream of phone calls from the Foreign Office and Six. He was answering questions about the assault and getting information about the situation elsewhere in the country. The attack on the capital was going well, Mallet said. By late morning the combined SFSG–SBS force had captured the broadcasting station, and the rebellion began to fizzle out. General Kakuba had gone silent. His loyal officers were rumoured to have fled across the border.
The sun reached its zenith, beating down on the men on burial duty. Tractors were brought in from one of the nearby farms, and then D Squadron began the grisly task of clearing away the dead. Bowman looked on as they scooped up the corpses into the loading buckets and dumped them in an agricultural trailer. Another group of soldiers from the Karatandan platoon picked their way across the battlefield, gathering up body parts and severed torsos. The dead would be buried in a mass grave by the local forces, removing the evidence of the struggle before the arrival of the foreign press corps. The Foreign Office would be keen to downplay the fighting; they didn’t want some freelance photographer taking snaps of a field littered with hundreds of bodies. That would undermine the narrative they were building. The truth would remain buried for years, decades perhaps. Maybe even forever.
Ten minutes later, Gregory emerged from the mansion. He made his way over to the team, grinning broadly.
‘This way, guys,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some entertainment lined up for you in the basement.’
Webb lifted his chin and frowned heavily. ‘This is hardly the time for a celebratory piss-up.’
‘Trust me, you’ll want to see this.’
Bowman looked up at him. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Booze? Women?’
The grin stretched across Gregory’s face. ‘It’s something better than that.’
‘Like what?’ Casey said.
‘It’s a surprise,’ Gregory replied. ‘But I can guarantee you’ll enjoy it.’
Bowman sighed wearily. They had just lost a close friend, they were physically spent, tired beyond belief, and now Gregory was suggesting they hit the basement for a party. He couldn’t think of anything worse. Or less appropriate.
‘Come on, guys,’ Gregory insisted. ‘This won’t take long, I promise.’
Bowman and Casey looked at each other. Gregory stood there, his eyes glowing with excitement. Then Webb shrugged indifferently. ‘May as well go and have a look,’ he said. ‘Nothing else to do until we get the clearance from Six, anyway.’
‘All right,’ Bowman said, climbing stiffly to his feet. ‘Let’s see it.’
‘Great.’ Gregory clasped his hands together. ‘You won’t regret it, guys. You’re in for a treat.’
Webb gave Casey a hand, helping her stand up, and then they followed Gregory towards the front door. Bowman looked round but Mallet was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where’s John?’ he asked nobody in particular.
‘Guest house,’ Gregory replied. ‘He’s in the conference room with Thriepland. They’re having a joint briefing with Six. He can join us later on.’
He led them through the entrance, past the river of splintered wood and broken glass in the atrium. As they trudged down the stairs to the basement, Bowman wondered why Gregory was so excited. He obviously had something big to show them. Entertainment, he had said. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it. But not beer or women. Some sort of orgy, perhaps, Bowman reflected. He’d heard of dictators hosting private sex parties. Maybe Seguma kept a secret harem in the basement.
Gregory paced down the corridor until he reached the door on the left, several metres short of the wine cellar. The rusted hinges grated in protest as he ushered the team into a dimly lit corridor with bare concrete walls and several steel doors on either side. Bowman counted twelve of them in total. The doors were closed, with arrow-slit viewing panels and food hatches set above the locks. Like cells in a police station, thought Bowman. Or a prison wing.
‘Where are you taking us?’ he asked.
‘You’ll see,’ Gregory said.
He stopped in front of one of the cell-like doors and fished out a set of keys from his pocket. A queasy feeling moved through Bowman as he watched Gregory twist open the heavy-duty lock. Something was wrong here, thought Bowman. Very wrong.
Bolts clanged. The door groaned open.
‘In here, guys,’ Gregory said.
They entered a damp, dingy space with bare concrete walls and strip lighting. Dried patches of blood scabbed the floor. A bucket in the far corner overflowed with faecal matter. On the left side of the room Bowman saw a bundle of bloodied cloths on a wooden bench, next to a set of DIY tools. There was a power drill, a bone saw, a blowtorch, an iron bar, several knives, a claw hammer and a selection of rusted nails.
A GSh-18 semi-automatic pistol.
And a cattle prod.
In the middle of the room, a rebel had been stripped naked and chained by his wrists and ankles to a metal bedframe. A short, stocky man with a chinstrap beard. Bowman had seen his face before, two lifetimes ago. Back in London. The lobby of the Broxbury Hall Hotel. On the TV. The mountainside interview with the reporter. The man had been wearing a pair of aviator shades back then, but the face was unmistakably the same.
General Moses Kakuba.
The rebel leader’s torso was covered in bruises. One of his ears had been sliced off. Chunks of flesh were missing from his arms and legs. A filthy rag had been stuffed into his mouth, stifling his screams of terror.
Colonel Lubowa stood over the prisoner, the sleeves of his army shirt rolled up to the elbows. He was beating General Kakuba senseless with his fists, delivering vicious blows to his stomach, his face. A second man dressed in the uniform of the Presidential Guard leaned against the bench, cheering Lubowa on. The dull wet slap of bone against flesh echoed through the cell as the Colonel shovelled a punch into the prisoner’s ribs.
Bowman’s stomach went cold. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Webb snapped.
‘I wanted to show you the secret interrogation centre we run down here. This is where we deal with the president’s enemies,’ Gregory replied casually.
‘This isn’t an interview room,’ Bowman said. ‘This a fucking torture chamber.’
‘More or less the same thing over here.’
Gregory flapped a hand at the terrified figure bound to the bedframe. ‘We found the general hiding in the ditch with some of his men. Trying to play dead. It’s a good job I recognised him, otherwise he might have been taken away with the wounded.’
Bowman felt sick. ‘Why are we here?’
‘The president wishes us to dispense with the general . . . once we’ve had our fun with him, of course. We’ve already enjoyed ourselves, as you can see. I thought you guys might want to take over. Think of it as a treat, for all your hard work.’
The guard roared with laughter as Lubowa struck the man again.
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Gregory. ‘We’ll take it from here.’
Lubowa gave the man a final punch to the face before he stepped back from the mattress. He wiped his hands with one of the dirty rags, tossed it aside and nodded at Gregory.
‘He’s all yours,’ he said. ‘Let us know when you’re done. Make sure you don’t get started on the next prisoner without us.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
The colonel barked at the guard. The latter stubbed out his cigarette and followed his boss out of the cell, closing the door behind them.
The rebel leader groaned in agony. Bowman could barely believe what he was seeing. He remembered the box of cattle prods he’d seen in the wine cellar. He remembered the look of fear in Major Mavinda’s eyes when he had heard Gregory’s name. Suddenly understood. The guy isn’t just Seguma’s chief of security.
He’s running his own personal torture camp.
Gregory walked over to the bench, picked up the cattle prod. Held it out towards Bowman.
‘This usually gets a good reaction from them. Who wants to go first? Josh?’
For a moment, Bowman was speechless.
‘You’re not serious,’ he said finally. ‘You can’t fucking do this.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s wrong. It’s against the Geneva Conventions, for Chrissakes.’
Gregory waved his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t pretend to be offended. You know the president’s track record. How he operates. This can’t come as a great surprise to you, surely.’
‘I don’t give a crap about Seguma. The guy’s a tyrant. But I thought you would be above all of this.’
‘I’m his chief of security. This is my job.’
‘Torturing prisoners?’
‘Sending a message to his enemies.’ Gregory held up the cattle prod. ‘This is the only language these scum understand. You can’t sit down and negotiate with these people, Josh. They’re not interested. The only tactic that works here is violence.’
Bowman shook his head furiously. ‘This isn’t like you, Mike. You would never have stood for this shit in the Regiment.’
‘That was then. Things are different down here. Torture is a fact of life in Karatandu. I’m not just talking about the president. The KUF are as guilty of that as anyone.’ He pointed the prod at Kakuba. ‘The general is personally responsible for hundreds of killings, rapes and mutilations. His men massacred the president’s staff at the palace. They’ve razed dozens of villages. He’s not one of the good guys.’
‘Doesn’t make it right.’
Gregory stared at him with a downturned mouth. ‘I’m disappointed, Josh. I thought you’d be fine with all this. Your bosses certainly don’t have a problem with it.’
Bowman frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Vauxhall knows what we get up to down here. They’re perfectly comfortable with the arrangement. As a matter of fact, they’re the ones who supplied the cattle prods.’
‘Bollocks. You’re lying.’
Gregory chuckled. ‘Do you really believe Six wouldn’t sanction torture?’
‘I’m not an idiot. They’ve done some pretty dark shit in the past, I know. But they’ve got their limits. They would never agree to this.’
‘Why not? They’ve done far worse on this op.’
Something cold moved like a bayonet through his stomach. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Gregory cocked an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘Know what?’ Bowman demanded.
‘Six was behind the poisoning. In London. The attack on Freddie Lang. That was their handiwork.’
Bowman felt a cold chill on the nape of his neck. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No fucking way. They wouldn’t do that.’
‘Why do you think they haven’t identified the suspects yet? The middle of a royal wedding, all those people, and there’s not one witness? Not even the Russians could pull off something like that.’
Bowman couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe. His mind was reeling.
‘But . . . how?’
‘Six contracted the job out to a couple of ex-Regiment guys. They do all the wet work for the government. They got them into the hotel disguised as bodyguards or something.’
The chill ran like ice down Bowman’s back. He remembered the two men in the ballroom corridor. The face-mask strap dangling from the pocket. The absence of crucial CCTV footage.
Five has looked into it, Mallet had said. It’s a dead end. The cameras weren’t working.
‘How the fuck do you know this?’ Webb asked.
‘My handler told me,’ Gregory replied simply.
‘You’re working for Six?’ said Bowman.
Gregory nodded. ‘They approached me soon after I took the job. They wanted a second source close to the president, you see. To verify the information they were getting from David Lang. They suspected he might be feeding them bullshit. So they came to me. I’ve been working for them for a couple of years now.’
‘But why would they tell you about the poisoning?’ Casey said. ‘Six would keep something like that top secret, if it was true.’
Gregory said, ‘They didn’t have a choice. I was the one who tipped them off about that backstabbing bastard Lang.’
‘You knew about the meeting with the Russians?’
‘I’m the president’s chief of security, Josh. It’s my business to know everything that goes on around here.’ Gregory ran a hand down his beard. ‘I knew Lang was sneaking around, having lots of meetings with shady Russian businessmen. More than usual, anyway. So I had him followed by my people. We ran a huge surveillance operation on him. That’s when we realised Lang was double-dipping with the Kremlin. I heard about some big meeting in Monte Carlo and told my handler. Said they might want to look
into it. Stop it from going ahead.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. I didn’t hear back from Six. Lang went about his business as normal. A couple of weeks before the meeting, I decided to lift the sneaky prick myself. Give him a taste of this.’ He waved the cattle prod in the air, like a magic wand. ‘Find out what he was planning.’
‘You were going to torture David Lang?’
‘That was the plan. Then my handler got in touch with me out of the blue. Demanded an emergency meeting. Not like him at all. He said he had big news. When I got to the meeting, the guy was very twitchy. He looked panicked.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Casey.
‘He told me to leave Lang alone. I asked him why. My handler said Six was going to deal with him. I told him I had ways of making Lang talk, but he claimed Six had a better plan. When I asked him for details, he just smiled and said that his brother was going to have a nasty accident. His exact words.’
‘That’s why they used Novichok to kill Freddie Lang,’ Casey interjected. ‘To make it look like Moscow was behind the attack?’
‘Exactly.’ Gregory pointed a finger at her. ‘You’re a sharp one. ’
‘Why would Six want to poison him?’ said Bowman. ‘Why not just arrest David, if they knew he was up to something dodgy?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? They needed a way of turning the screw on Lang. Pressure him into calling off the deal with the Russians. Subjecting him to a hard interrogation wouldn’t get them anywhere. So they decided to kill his brother and pin it on the Russians. Make it look like Moscow was planning a double-cross.’
Bowman shook his head in disbelief. ‘But . . . that means Six carried out a chemical weapons attack. On their own soil. People were poisoned, for fuck’s sake. Hospitalised.’
Gregory shrugged. ‘Best way of getting David Lang to spill his guts.’
‘Who else knew about this?’ Webb demanded.
‘Only a handful of people. The higher-ups at MI6, myself. The guys tasked with the wet work. And your boss, of course.’
‘John knew?’ Bowman said. The bayonet sank deeper into his guts.
‘He runs the Cell. He’s plugged into everything that goes on inside Vauxhall,’ Gregory replied. ‘He knows all their dark secrets. John would have known about it from the start.’