by Chris Ryan
‘Pays well, does it?’ asked Bald.
‘Not bad,’ Porter replied evasively. ‘Between the security work and the L Det retainer, I’m doing all right.’
Which Bald considered an understatement. The security work alone would pay a decent whack. Throw in the salary Porter was on with L Det and the bastard was probably raking it in.
‘Good for you,’ he muttered. ‘Whereabouts are you living now?’
‘Just a place in town,’ Porter said vaguely. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want Bald knowing his exact address. ‘Put the deposit down last month, in fact. It’s not exactly Buckingham Palace and the place needs a bit of maintenance, but it’s a decent pad.’
Bald stared at Porter for a moment. This guy is small-time, he thought. A Regiment fuck-up. Kicked out of Hereford and blackballed by the head shed, and yet he’s managed to land on his feet.
‘Not bad for a lifelong drunk,’ he muttered.
Porter shrugged.
‘Speaking of which.’ Bald tipped his head at his mucker’s mug. ‘Is there a slug of whisky in there?’
Porter shook his head slowly. ‘I haven’t had a drink in months.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘It’s true,’ Porter insisted. ‘I kicked the bottle after the shit that went down in Russia.’
Bald regarded his friend suspiciously. ‘The last time I saw you, you couldn’t go a day without a drop of the hard stuff. Now you’re telling us you’re clean?’
‘That was then. I’m a changed man. Got Sandy to thank for it, as it happens.’
‘Your daughter?’ Bald raised an eyebrow. ‘How’s that?’
‘She found out I was on the drink again. She moved in with us, right after Charlie was born. Her kid. My grandson. I told her she could stay with us for a while, help her get back on her feet, like. I tried to hide the drinking from her, but she knew all my old tricks. One day she caught me in the garage, necking a bottle of vodka from my secret stash. That was it, Sandy said. She’d lost me once to the drink and wouldn’t let her kid go through the same experience. Told me that she’d rather Charlie grew up without a grandad than some sad old alcoholic. That was the reality check I needed, mate. I gave up the booze on the spot.’
‘You’ve not touched a drop? Not even a crafty pint?’
Porter shook his head proudly. ‘Not saying that it’s been easy. Christ knows, there are days when I feel like slipping. But you know what they say. One day at a time.’
Bald looked at Porter in disbelief. But even as he searched the guy’s face he could see that his mucker was telling the truth. He didn’t look like a heavy drinker. His face looked leaner and less puffy than Bald remembered. His hands weren’t trembling. His eyes were no longer bloodshot.
Fuck me, he thought. Porter really has cleaned up his act.
The guy has got a house, a secure job, a family.
And I’ve got nothing.
Bald had always taken pride in his survival instincts. His ability to adapt. Other guys had left the Regiment as broken men, struggling with their demons. But not Bald. He’d always managed to get by, relying on his natural cunning.
Now I’m the one in the gutter, he thought. Even this sad fucker is doing better than me.
He could feel his rage increasing by the minute.
‘What about this op?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘Any idea what this is about?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Porter said. ‘They haven’t told us anything except to be here for this briefing. You know how secretive them lot are at Vauxhall.’
‘Yeah, well. Whatever it is, there’d better be something in it for us. I’m not working for those tossers for free.’
‘What makes you think Six would give you anything?’
‘They went to a lot of trouble to bring me here,’ Bald replied. ‘Which means whatever they’ve got lined up for us, it must be urgent. That gives me leverage over them.’
‘If you say so, mate.’
Bald shot a look at Porter. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You trusted Six once before and look where it got you. Why do you think it would be any different this time? Especially after what you’ve done.’
‘I’m a free agent,’ Bald said. ‘No ties, mate. I don’t work for Six any more. They can’t make me do a fucking thing. If I don’t like what they’re offering, I’ll walk away.’
He got up and fixed himself a brew. Coffee, black, no sugar. They passed the time with small talk. Hereford gossip. What the other old faces from the Regiment were up to, guys who had gone on to work in the Circuit or were running their own companies, others who had retired to Vietnam or the Philippines. Porter was friendly enough, but Bald sensed a distance opening up between them. Porter had his guard up. He doesn’t trust me, Bald thought.
Twelve minutes later, Vickers swept inside the meeting room and marched over to their table. ‘They’re ready for now you, lads,’ he announced. ‘Follow me.’
Bald set down his mug. Porter necked the dregs of his tea and stood up. They followed the sergeant major out of the brew house and across the training camp, passing several low-level buildings until they reached a plain two-storey structure set back from the main gate. Bald recognised it as the surveillance block.
From the outside it looked like a dull office, but a lot of dark shit went on inside those four walls, Bald knew. A lot of secret meetings and shady ops. The kind no one ever discussed outside of Hereford.
Vickers ushered the two of them through the entrance. They quick-walked down a long corridor and climbed one flight of stairs, before Vickers stopped outside a solid-looking door. He knocked twice, levered the handle and stepped aside, gesturing for the others to enter.
Porter trudged into the room first. Bald lingered in the doorway, feeling like he was on the edge of a precipice. About to leap off and plunge into the unknown.
Then he stepped inside.
TEN
He entered a windowless, sparsely furnished briefing room. Bald had spent time in hundreds of such rooms over the past twenty years. Fluorescent panel lights, dull-coloured walls, industrial carpet. There was a whiteboard at one end of the room, a flat-screen TV fixed to the far wall with a laptop rigged up to it. A large table dominated the space in the middle, with a couple of secure landline phones.
Two figures sat on the chairs at the far end of the table. A man and a woman.
Bald recognised the man immediately. David Moorcroft, their former handler at MI6. The last time Bald had seen Moorcroft he’d been a senior intelligence officer with the General Support Branch: the secretive department at Vauxhall that carried out black ops, using current and former Regiment men to provide the muscle in the field.
Moorcroft wore his age badly. The lines on his face were deeper, the crow’s feet more pronounced now. His white hair was thin and wiry, like steel wool. He looked every one of his sixty-plus years. But there was a determined glint in his eye that Bald hadn’t seen before. He had the look of a man who had just been given the all-clear after a cancer scare. The veteran spy was still immaculately dressed in his Savile Row sharkskin suit, grey silk tie and brilliant white pocket square. A pair of bright yellow socks, decorated with Martini glasses, were visible beneath the hemline of his trousers, the one nod to his unconventional personality.
Bald hadn’t seen the woman before. She was younger than Moorcroft – much younger. Late thirties, he reckoned. She had a no-nonsense manner about her. She was dressed in a black trouser suit and light-blue shirt, with a tan-leather cross-body bag resting on the floor beside her chair. Her hair was cut short, her face slender and angular, her green eyes fixed on her phone. She was puffing on some kind of long pen-shaped device that Bald guessed was an electronic cigarette. Her right foot tapped impatiently up and down on the rough carpet, he noticed. She had a busy, restless energy about her. The kind of person who checked their emails every five minutes on holiday. Someone who never switched off. Who probably didn’t know how to.
At the sight of the two Blades trooping into the room Moorcroft rose from his chair. The woman stayed seated, continuing to tap away on her phone, hurriedly typing a message. Moorcroft smiled wanly at Bald and Porter and gestured to the empty chairs.
‘Guys, thank you for joining us. Sit down, please.’
They took up a couple of seats at the table. Moorcroft locked eyes with Bald. The smile on his face crumbled.
‘Jock. I must say it’s a privilege to see you here today,’ he said, his voice dripping with condescension. ‘I’ve always wondered what a ghost must look like.’
Bald stared back at the veteran spy, controlling his anger.
‘You very nearly had us fooled back there,’ Moorcroft added. ‘There were plenty of us over at Vauxhall mourning the death of one of Scotland’s finest sons. Didn’t take us long to figure out what had happened to you, of course. A polite suggestion. Next time, try hiding somewhere rather more remote than the Mexican coast.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Bald growled. ‘Last time we met, you said you were up for retirement.’
‘Postponed, old fruit.’ Moorcroft attempted to resurrect the smile. It was a half-hearted effort. ‘The demands of the service.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘We’ve had a change of direction after this Swindon business. Downing Street has finally woken up to the threat from the East. Old Russia hands like me are suddenly back in fashion. Our funding has been increased. Specifically, the Moscow desk. The powers that be have asked me to stay on for a while. I agreed, for my sins. I’m afraid the dream of retiring to the Cotswolds has been put on hold for the time being. My wife didn’t take the news too well, as you might imagine.’
‘Tragic.’
Despite his attempt to look disappointed, there was a smugness in Moorcroft’s voice. Nine months ago the guy had been on the way out, part of the old guard being cast aside in favour of a younger, hungrier generation of spies. Now Moorcroft found himself front and centre of the action again. Which was right where the guy wanted to be, Bald thought. Moorcroft was a lifelong spy, the type who died on the job. The retirement cottage in the Cotswolds wouldn’t hold the same thrill, however hard his wife tried to argue otherwise.
‘Of course,’ he said, looking hard at Bald, ‘national duty is a concept quite alien to you.’
Bald stared at the spy with flat eyes. ‘Did you invite us here just to tell us about the sad state of your marriage, or are you going to tell us what the fuck is going on?’
‘In due course.’ Moorcroft sat down and gestured to the woman at his left. ‘First, allow me to introduce my colleague, Madeleine Strickland. Madeleine is working with me at General Support. She’ll be your point of contact during this operation.’
Strickland finished tapping on her phone, thumbed it to sleep and slipped it into the front pocket of her leather bag. Bald realised he was looking at Moorcroft’s new number two. Strickland smiled politely at him. Not cold, but not exactly friendly either.
‘No need to introduce yourselves,’ Strickland announced, raising a hand. ‘I’ve read your files. Both of you.’
She spoke with a broad Scottish accent, although it wasn’t as strong or as rough around the edges as Bald’s Dundee brogue. Clearly Strickland had worked hard to tone it down for the benefit of her well-spoken English colleagues.
‘Let me guess,’ Bald said. ‘Glasgow?’
Strickland smiled. ‘Maryhill,’ she said.
‘Rangers or Celtic?’
‘Neither,’ Strickland replied. ‘Partick Thistle.’
She smiled again. A proud Scotswoman. Probably a good drinker, too. Bald liked her already. ‘What did you make of our files?’ he asked with a grin.
Strickland shifted on her chair. ‘There were some interesting notes. Particularly in your case.’
Porter said, ‘What happened to Tannon?’
Bald glanced quickly at his mucker as he recalled their last mission together. Back then, Dominique Tannon had been their contact at the GSU. The brightest prospect in the department at the time. Porter and Tannon had been close, Bald knew; closer than Porter had ever let on. Bald had suspected there had been something between them, although Porter had always rigorously denied it.
‘She didn’t work out for us,’ Moorcroft replied brusquely. ‘You’ll be dealing with Maddy from now on. Unless that’s a problem?’
As he spoke Bald noticed the smug expression on Moorcroft’s face. The veteran agent had been on the cusp of losing his job to Tannon, Bald recalled. Now she was out of the picture, and he wondered how sorry Moorcroft was to see her go. He also wondered how much Moorcroft might have had to do with it.
He might play the role of the good old Etonian, thought Bald, but Moorcroft is as crafty as any of those bastards at Six. No wonder the bloke has got some of his old spirit back.
Moorcroft crossed his legs. ‘Now that we’ve all been introduced, guys . . .’
He nodded at Strickland and gave her a paternal smile, giving her the floor. All eyes turned towards the younger agent.
Strickland cleared her throat, her foot still tapping rapidly against the worn carpet. ‘Tell me,’ she began. ‘How much do you know about Derek Lansbury?’
Porter and Bald looked briefly at one another. ‘The politician?’ Bald asked with raised eyebrows. ‘The one who’s always on TV smoking fags and sipping pints of bitter?’
‘Yes. Him.’
‘Not much,’ Bald said. ‘Just the bare bones. He was one of them blokes campaigning against the EU a couple of years back. Good mates with the Yank president. On Twitter a lot.’
Moorcroft smiled thinly. ‘Once again, Jock, your breadth and depth of knowledge continues to astound.’
‘I’m a soldier. I don’t really give a shit about politics. That’s best left to you and the other greasy-pole monkeys in Whitehall.’
Strickland said, ‘Derek Lansbury isn’t just a politician. He’s much bigger than that. He’s the leading voice of populism in the West today. Perhaps the most influential voice on the right-wing in a generation.’
‘Not bad for a chap who once ended up in detention for calling his geography teacher a nig-nog,’ Moorcroft added.
‘You know the bloke?’ asked Porter.
‘Vaguely. He was in the year above me at Charterhouse. Derek was a bloody nuisance even then, as I recall. Not exactly what you’d call a star pupil. He was always protesting about something or other, handing out Young Tory leaflets at lunch. A good fly-half, mind you. And a fine public speaker. He became school prefect after promising everyone free sweets at the tuck shop. Chap has come a long way since then.’
‘Clearly.’
Strickland said, ‘After Charterhouse, Lansbury read PPE at Brasenose College and then took a job at the Daily Telegraph, reporting on the weekly goings-on at Brussels. He left three years later to become a speech-writer for the eccentric anti-federalist, Michael Sidebottom. Lansbury adopted many of Sidebottom’s core ideas and principles, subsequently took over the party and rebranded it as the British Independence Movement.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you’ve both heard of it.’
‘Aye, we have,’ Bald said. ‘That’s the one with the logo of a ship with a Union Jack flag flying from it.’
Strickland said, ‘Lansbury has spent the last twenty years of his life waging a one-man war against the European Union, railing against the Establishment and denouncing Brussels on his weekly podcast and YouTube channel.’
‘No one else took Derek seriously, of course,’ Moorcroft added. ‘From what we can gather, he was something of an embarrassment to his political colleagues. One of those fringe politicians, pandering to the worst instincts of the electorate. This was before the referendum.’
‘Which is when everything changed for Lansbury,’ Strickland said. ‘Overnight he went from being a virtual unknown to one of the most recognisable figures in politics, rubbing shoulders with the American president and posing for selfie
s with Eastern European strongmen.’
‘And cashing in on it, I bet,’ Bald grumbled.
Strickland nodded. ‘Since the referendum, Lansbury has been quick to position himself as the de facto head of the populists, campaigning on behalf of his chums, lighting up Twitter with inflammatory statements. He’s even got himself a gig on American radio, hosting his own talk show. Quite an achievement for a man who almost got himself expelled from school. Whatever you think of his political views.’
Porter said, ‘What has any of this got to do with us?’
Strickland didn’t reply. She looked towards Moorcroft, as if seeking permission. He nodded.
‘We have reason to believe that Derek Lansbury is working for the Kremlin,’ Strickland said. ‘And you’re going to help us bring him down.’
ELEVEN
No one said anything for a cold, long beat. Bald looked from Strickland to Moorcroft, waiting for one of them to continue. Strickland looked towards the old Etonian, deferring to her superior. Moorcroft uncrossed his legs and said, ‘We’ve long known that Lansbury has Russian sympathies, of course. It’s no great secret that many of Europe’s populists and strongmen admire the Russian president and his particular way of doing business.’
Porter rubbed his stubbled jaw, deep in thought. ‘I thought all them Tory types hated the Russians?’
‘That was true in the bad old days of the Soviet Union. Thatcher, Reagan and all that. But times have changed, old bean. Dramatically so. The populists and Moscow suddenly find themselves on the same side of the political fence, so to speak. Both of them despise the liberal consensus of the West. Both want to see the break-up of the various major post-war institutions, for different reasons. And they have both been extremely successful at challenging the status quo, portraying themselves as defenders of a white cultural tradition raging against a morally corrupt liberal elite.’
‘Lansbury has been more successful than most,’ Strickland added. ‘He’s not exactly shy about his pro-Russia stance, either. He’s a frequent contributor to Russian state television, peddles the Moscow party line on his YouTube show and through social media.’