by Chris Ryan
‘Aye,’ Bald muttered. ‘We get it.’
‘Good.’
Moorcroft fixed his gaze on Bald for a moment, as if emphasising his point. Then he relaxed his expression and eased back in his chair, smoothing out a crease on his trouser leg. ‘Right, I think we’ve covered the basics. Maddy will run through the specifics with you. Unless you have any questions?’
‘I have one,’ Bald said.
A thin smile spread across Moorcroft’s lips. ‘Yes, Jock?’
‘What’s in it for me?’
The veteran spy laughed cruelly. ‘We just saved your life, old bean. That’s all the reward you’re going to get. Unless you’d prefer us to stick you on the next flight to Moscow?’
Bald snorted and shook his head. ‘I’m in a different situation from Porter. You’ve got no authority over me. If I’m gonna do this, I want something in return.’
Moorcroft did a double take. ‘You must be joking. Who the hell do you think you are, making demands of the British Government?’
‘I’m a bloke you need, with fuck-all to lose.’
‘You should be doing this out of duty, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Yeah. Tried that once. Didn’t work for me.’
Moorcroft screwed up his face and regarded Bald as if the latter was something he’d trodden on in the street. Strickland sat upright, brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and smiled sympathetically at Bald. He had the sense that Strickland was on his side, in a way that Moorcroft was not and never had been. Maybe it was a Scottish thing, Bald thought. Or maybe the relationship between Strickland and her boss was more complicated than he had assumed.
‘We can’t offer you money,’ she said. ‘It’s simply not in our gift . . . not after everything you’ve done. But perhaps we can offer you something else. A job with L Detachment, perhaps?’
‘Work for the Regiment again? You must be fucking joking.’
‘Why not? You’re clearly good at what you do. A man in your position, you should be desperate to get back into the service.’
Bald shook his head. ‘I’ve done my time. That’s all behind me now. Anyway, we had an agreement after the last job. You lot agreed to leave me the fuck alone.’
‘That was before you decided to cut and run with a million in stolen gold.’ Moorcroft smiled wickedly. ‘Besides, if we had honoured that agreement, you’d be dead by now. All things considered, we did you a favour.’
‘I’ll send you a thank-you card in the post.’
‘This deal is better than nothing,’ Strickland said. ‘You can see that, right?’
‘I want a better one,’ said Bald. ‘I need something steady in my life, but I ain’t going back into the Regiment.’
‘What, then?’ Moorcroft threw up his hands.
‘I know you’ve got your fingers in all them big oil companies. I want a job in security with one of ’em, I don’t give a toss which one. Something that pays well, with a tidy pension and full insurance. Some management position in health and safety, preferably.’
Moorcroft cocked his head at Bald, drummed his fingers on the table. He glanced over at Strickland, as if seeking her approval. She nodded at him. He turned back to Bald, stopped piano-playing the table and sighed.
‘Very well. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Bald said.
‘On one condition.’
‘Aye?’
Moorcroft leaned forward. ‘You do this job properly. You make sure that we get everything we need on Lansbury to bring him down. If there’s insufficient evidence at the end of your operation, then the deal is off. Think you can manage that?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
Moorcroft stared at Bald for a moment. Gave him a look so cold you could have played ice hockey on it.
‘You need to do better than that,’ he added. ‘Because if you fuck this one up, I’ll make sure that you pay for the crimes you’ve committed over the years. Every single one of them. I’ll bury you, if it’s the last thing I do before I leave Six.’
TWELVE
Moorcroft left the briefing room a short while later. He explained that Strickland would be staying on at Pontrilas for the next twenty-four hours, to oversee the operation to install Bald and Porter on the bodyguard team. The three of them would remain in the camp, monitoring the situation with Lansbury’s bodyguards, reacting to events on the ground as they happened. The look on Strickland’s face suggested she wasn’t happy about staying on. Perhaps she resented having to carry out a task that would normally be left to a junior liaison officer, thought Bald. She probably felt she had more important things to do than sit around in a cramped room with a pair of veteran operators.
Thirty seconds after Moorcroft had departed, the guy from 264 Signals showed up. Strickland made her excuses and left the room to get settled into her accommodation, leaving Bald and Porter to be briefed by the Scaley. A neatly presented guy with short dark hair and a finely-stubbled jaw who introduced himself as Sergeant Corey Hogan. He didn’t look much like a computer whizz, but Bald knew the type. Scaleys were all the same, in his opinion: tech fanatics who spent most of their lives in front of computer screens, geeks trapped in the bodies of soldiers.
Bald and Porter looked on as Sergeant Hogan laid out a series of items on the table in front of them. An iPad Mini and a pair of iPhones, several wiretap devices and a bug sweeper. Plus a shiny black clip-like device the size of a thumb drive.
Porter puffed out his cheeks. ‘That’s a lot of bloody kit to run through.’
Hogan grinned and said, ‘This is all new equipment, lads. Cutting-edge stuff. You’re lucky to have the chance to use it in the field.’
The Scaley had a dull, monotone voice that belonged in a secondary-school physics laboratory.
Fuck me, Bald thought. Half an hour with this bloke is going to put us both to sleep.
‘Yeah,’ he grumbled. ‘Can’t wait.’
Hogan pointed to the thumb drive first. He took one look at the two grizzled men in front of him and said, ‘I’m assuming neither of you lads has seen one of these before?’
‘Don’t get cheeky with us, mate,’ said Bald. ‘Just tell us how the fucking gizmo works.’ He smiled but there was an edge to his voice.
Hogan nodded quickly. ‘Right you are, lads.’ He snatched up the tracker and pressed his thumb and forefinger together, working the clip. ‘This is a wireless tracker,’ he continued. ‘It transmits a GPS signal whenever it’s switched on. Clip it to a shirt or belt, and it’ll track the target’s movements wherever they go.’
Porter nodded. ‘Same as them Fitbits everyone wears these days.’
‘Kind of. Except this device has a microphone hidden inside it, for picking up chatter. This is how we’ll keep track of the target whenever he’s in private meetings or locations outside of his hotel. Attach it to the side of the belt, if you can. You’ll get better audio quality that way.’
A frown line formed above Bald’s brow. ‘We’re supposed to get him to just wear this thing? Won’t he get suspicious?’
‘He shouldn’t do. Plenty of bodyguard teams use similar devices these days, as a way of keeping track of the principal at all times. Using them is totally legit. You can ask the target to wear it without raising any red flags. This one even comes with an SOS button they can press, in case of emergencies.’
Bald nodded at the tracker, said, ‘How are we supposed to track the target, once we’ve fitted this thing to him?’
Hogan set down the tracker and reached for the iPad Mini. He entered the passcode, swiped across the screen and tapped on an orb-shaped grey icon, opening an app. Bald leaned over for a closer look. The app interface was broadly similar to Google Maps, with a blinking blue dot fixed over their current location. At the bottom of the screen were three smaller icons. Hogan pointed to the one on the left.
‘This button here initiates the two-way recording feature,’ he said. ‘Press it once and it’ll start broadcasting
live audio back to a secure room in Vauxhall. Press it again to stop broadcasting.’
‘I get the idea,’ Porter said, nodding keenly. ‘This is just like them rebro kits we used back in Northern Ireland.’
Hogan suppressed a laugh. Barely. ‘Yeah, sort of. The concept is kind of similar.’
Bald said, ‘Those other icons. What do they do?’
‘This one allows you to geofence the tracker,’ Hogan said, indicating the middle icon. ‘Which basically means you can mark out a specific area on a map, and if the tracker strays outside that zone an alarm goes off. Useful if you want to make sure your mark doesn’t leave the area around a hotel, for example.’
‘And the other icon?’
‘Location history. Tap on that and it’ll bring up everywhere the tracker has been within a certain period.’
‘Could be useful,’ Porter mused.
‘Unless the principal decides to ditch it,’ Bald pointed out. ‘If he knows we’ve stuck this thing on him, what’s to stop him from taking it off whenever he feels like it?’
‘Nothing,’ Hogan admitted. ‘Best practice is to plant a secondary device on the target whenever possible. That way you lull them into thinking that by removing the first device, they’re clean.’
‘Which means finding a way of planting something on them, without them knowing about it.’
Hogan pointed to a series of tiny metal devices, each one no bigger than a two-pence coin. ‘These beauties look like commercially-sold GPS trackers. They’re the same design and size, but instead of transmitting a signal they have a tiny built-in microphone. You can place them virtually anywhere. They come with a reusable sticky back that’ll stick to anything. Once you’re done, just wash it off with cold water and it’ll be as good as new. Although the sound quality isn’t as good as the bigger devices, obviously.’
‘How do we deactivate them?’ Porter asked, inspecting one of the coin mics up close.
‘You send a text,’ said Hogan. Seeing the blank looks on their faces, he went on, ‘The coin mics are operated remotely. Each of these devices has a SIM card inside it. Simply enter the correct six-digit code on your phone and send it to the number stored on your device for the coin mic. Depending on which code you enter, you can activate the mic or shut it off, or adjust the volume. I’ll go through the relevant codes with you both once we’ve run through all the kit.’
Bald said, ‘If these mics are operated from our phones, does that mean we need a good signal to work them?’
Hogan nodded keenly, swept an arm in a broad arc across the kit on the table. ‘All these devices transmit through the GSM network. Signal range is important.’
‘What happens if he goes somewhere the signal is shite?’
‘Then you won’t be able to operate the devices remotely,’ said Hogan. ‘But if you’re in a built-up area then you shouldn’t have any problems.’
He set down the coin-sized listening device and picked up a white plug with a USB charging cable sticking out of it.
‘This is a modified phone charger,’ Hogan carried on. ‘Our guys have planted a bug inside the charging house. We’re very proud of this. Some of our best work.’
Porter picked up the adapter and stared at it. ‘How does it work?’
‘Replace this with Lansbury’s regular adapter, and when he plugs his handset in, we’ll have instant access to any information stored on his phone. We’ll be able to open files, access the camera, his iCloud passwords. Everything. And it’ll pick up and transmit chatter within a five-metre radius. We’ll also be giving you a couple of matching adapters for his iPad and laptop as well. They work on the same principle. Plug them in, turn them on and they’ll pick up anything being said in close proximity, as well as giving us a backdoor into the devices.’
‘Do these things only work when the gadgets are recharging?’
Hogan shook his head. ‘Once the target plugs the phone in, that gives us a backdoor into all their accounts. Unless they subsequently change their passwords, we’ll be able to access all their accounts remotely from Vauxhall, whenever we want.’
‘Fuck me.’ Bald sighed and shook his head. ‘It’s a long way from wearing a mike and stuffing it under your shirt, like.’
Hogan laughed. ‘Wait ’til you see what we’ve got next. You’ll like this.’
He set down the bugged adapters and picked up a solid bronze coin, roughly the size of a poker chip. Bald leaned in for a closer look.
There was an engraving of the Regiment’s famous downward-pointing blade, wreathed in flames, with the motto beneath it. The words 22 SPECIAL AIR SERVICE had been etched around the rim in silver lettering. A small blue gemstone had been set into the coin above the sword, with a pair of sniper crosshairs carved into it. Bald had seen the lads from Delta Force carrying something similar in the past, but with an image related to their own specific unit. Challenge coins, carried by anyone who had served in the same outfit. Some Yank tradition going back to the First World War. A soldier would draw his coin in a bar, and the person being challenged had to produce their own coin or buy the next round.
‘This is an SAS challenge coin,’ Hogan said. ‘You’ve heard of them?’
‘I thought only the Yanks went in for that crap,’ Bald replied.
Porter chuckled and said, ‘You’ve been out of the loop for too long, Jock. All the lads have got them now. It’s becoming something of a tradition.’
‘Christ. Give me strength.’
Hogan tapped the gemstone fixed above the Regiment insignia. ‘There’s a tiny microphone fitted here, and a GPS tracker. It can be activated or turned off remotely, using the same text-message procedure as the sticky mics. Battery life lasts for thirty hours on continuous use. If it runs out of juice, you can replace it with any standard watch battery.’
‘What good is a fucking challenge coin going to do us?’ asked Bald.
‘It’s the perfect excuse for either of you, if you need to carry a microphone into a secure location. Anyone asks you to empty your pockets or pats you down, you can just claim to be carrying the coin as a former member of 22 SAS. No one will suspect that it’s a bug.’
‘What’s the range on them things?’
‘The bug will transmit across a range of twenty-five metres on high frequency,’ Hogan replied in his boring matter-of-fact voice. ‘If it’s a building with walls of eighteen inches or more, the range drops down to twelve metres. Try not to put it next to a radio or TV, anything that emits an audio source, as it’ll drown out the reception.’
‘We might not know this shit,’ Bald said, shooting Hogan a look, ‘but we’re not complete fucking idiots.’
Porter said, ‘What if me and Jock aren’t able to listen in to what’s being said? We’ve got jobs to do to maintain our cover. We can’t spend all day sitting on our arses, listening to the chatter.’
Hogan smiled to himself and shook his head. ‘You’ll be taking portable hard drives with you.’ He gestured to a couple of passport-sized devices protected by rugged cases. ‘Any bugs you plant in the principal’s room will automatically transmit audio data to these encrypted drives. Once a month, you’ll deliver the drives to a contact at the British Embassy. They’ll send everything digitally back to Vauxhall to be de-encrypted and processed.’
Porter looked sceptically at the hard drives. ‘Those things are capable of storing a month of audio?’
Which prompted a chuckle from Hogan. ‘These drives have a storage capacity of two terabytes. One terabyte can store up to seventeen thousand hours of audio, so I think you’ll be okay.’
He set down the SAS challenge coin, reached for one of the two iPhones laid out on the table.
Bald said, ‘If you’re planning on explaining to us what one of them is, you’re gonna regret it.’
‘These aren’t regular phones,’ Hogan replied. ‘You’ll be using these to stay in contact with your handler at Vauxhall. These are false-screen phones.’
‘What’s one of them?’ Port
er asked.
Hogan said, ‘False screen phones look and function exactly the same as any regular smartphone. You can send WhatsApp messages from them, play games, take pictures and so on. But there’s a difference. Here.’
He unlocked the phone. Pointed to an icon.
‘This is a fake Flashlight app. Open up the app and it’ll bring up another screen asking for your passcode. Punch in the code, seven-four-eight-two. Then you’ll get another screen. Like this.’
Hogan walked them through it. The display went black for a second, then woke up again. Bald found himself looking at a sparsely populated Home screen. Plain wallpaper, no downloaded apps.
Hogan said, ‘Once you get this screen, you’ll know that the phone is encrypted. You can send and receive messages and make calls to your handler without anyone listening in. Once you’ve ended the call, go back to the flashlight app, enter the code again, and the phone will return to its normal state.’
‘And there’s no way of anyone finding out what we’ve been doing on the encrypted side?’ asked Bald.
‘Not unless they know how to access the keypad, and the code that goes with it. Otherwise, the only dodgy thing they’re going to find is your browsing history.’
‘As long as they don’t find anything else.’
‘They won’t. Trust me.’
Porter said, ‘What if Six needs to reach us, when the phone isn’t encrypted?’
‘They’ll only contact you if it’s an emergency,’ Hogan said. ‘If your handler thinks you’re at risk, one of you will receive a call from a number in Hereford, telling you that your Uncle Jim has died unexpectedly. If you receive that message, you know that your cover has been blown and you’ll have to extract immediately.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Bald muttered.
Porter grinned. ‘We’re running a routine close protection job, Jock. Not hunting down targets in some Syrian shithole. What kind of trouble do you think we’ll run into?’