Rogue

by James Swallow

‘It’s like that, is it?’ Welles replied.

  ‘It’s like that,’ said Marc.

  Welles paused. ‘Fair enough. But don’t get comfortable making demands.’

  He took a seat and the armed guards stepped back.

  ‘Right.’ Farrier placed his hands flat on the table. ‘Let’s get started.’

  He nodded to Talia, who was already busy at a digital notepad.

  The windows darkened from pale green to deeply opaque emerald, and a blank video screen on one wall blinked into life. The screen cut itself into sections, each becoming a still image or a box of video footage. Marc saw a street map of Oslo lit up with path indicators.

  ‘Tracey, give us the high points,’ said Farrier.

  Lane cleared her throat. ‘Around five months ago, signals interception at GCHQ noticed an uptick in chatter relating to elements of former OpTeam missions.’ She gestured at the screen. ‘At first we thought it was some low-priority actors that Six had crossed paths with in the past making noise, nothing that seemed a worry.’

  ‘At first,’ repeated Welles. ‘That supposition turned out to be very far off the bull.’

  Lane went on, ignoring the interruption. ‘Someone was poking around in the ashes. Confidential informants we had cut loose, contacts we were no longer using – a dozen of them were targeted by an unknown individual.’

  Marc watched a series of poor-quality, long-distance images appear on the screen: views from city streets, railway stations, from the inside of cars. The same slight, athletic woman was in all of them, her face hidden by a hoodie or the bill of a baseball cap. His skin prickled, unable to stop himself anticipating the reveal of her identity. He could feel the moment coming, like a storm about to break.

  Samantha Green. Could it really be her? Marc had seen her die, he had watched the light fade in her eyes.

  Or had he?

  ‘Unknown was designated as Echo-One,’ said Lane. ‘We now know she was gathering equipment, securing travel documentation and reaching out to dark net facilitators. Tooling up.’

  Farrier gave a nod. ‘Everyone she talked to had a connection that tracked back to an MI6 operation in the last five years. And those ops involved your former team, Marc.’

  ‘Nomad,’ said Lucy.

  Farrier nodded again. ‘We dispatched a team to track Echo-One, to determine her identity and intentions.’

  ‘Intelligence led us to Tunisia,’ said Lane, ‘then to Norway. Team Paladin were on the ground at this stage.’

  Marc remembered both of those places. Nomad’s mission in Norway had been a penetration, going in to clone the laptop of a British businessman suspected of selling proscribed military software to the Iranians. Tunisia was a long-duration surveillance operation on an extremist training site, but for Marc it had become something else. Lengthy nights alone with Sam Green had brought them closer together than either wanted to admit.

  It was the start of something complex and powerful between them. Something neither of them had been able to articulate. And then, before they could figure out the shape of it, she was gone in fire and smoke, and Marc was left with nothing.

  ‘The subject was traced to Oslo.’ Talia manipulated her data pad and more images appeared on the screen, overlaying the previous ones. ‘The usual track and mark protocols were followed.’

  ‘She used that against us.’ Lane’s tone turned cold. ‘We learned to our cost, she has an intimate knowledge of our standard operating procedures.’

  The digital photos told the story. First, they were shots of the woman through a torrent of rain, captured in motion. Then after-action stills and what could only be crime scene photos from the Oslo police. Marc saw the grisly, unidentifiable form of a woman lying against the blood-covered front seat of a car, with a stubby shotgun sitting in her lap. Then, broken bodies of men against steel tracks in the darkness of a subway tunnel, and finally, one more corpse slumped at the foot of a wall.

  ‘Damn,’ Lucy muttered to herself. ‘She didn’t do them clean.’

  ‘As far as we can determine, Echo-One led four members of OpTeam Paladin to a pre-arranged location and killed them.’ Farrier delivered the grim facts in short order. ‘She displayed skills and knowledge commensurate with those of an MI6 tactical field officer.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ Marc’s voice sounded dull and distant.

  ‘Ten days ago,’ noted Lane. ‘Afterwards, the target dropped off the grid and all we have are some comms logs that don’t mean anything, all coded references. She’s ghosted, and until she sticks her head up again, we have no way to reacquire her.’

  ‘Play the footage from the trail car,’ said Welles.

  Farrier blew out a breath, then nodded. ‘Yeah, sure.’ He looked in Marc’s direction as Talia brought up another video window. ‘I warn you now, you’re not going to like this.’

  ‘Just run it,’ insisted Welles, and Talia tapped a button on her tablet.

  The video showed a windscreen streaked with rain, and part of a car door and side window. Marc oriented himself to the display. It was the point of view of a camera sitting on its side on the top of the dashboard. From a smartphone, he guessed, placed there and left running.

  He saw a woman lean into frame from the driver’s side, and recognised the fur-collared coat she was wearing. The same one from the police photo, surrounding the crimson mess of a ruined face. The phone recording picked up faint audio of a wailing siren and the fumbling of a key going into the ignition.

  ‘And here she comes,’ said Welles.

  A shadow moved into sight, a woman in a hoodie appearing at the side window. She had something in her hands, but it was hard to see it clearly.

  The driver reacted, twisting around, and there was a sudden bark of gunfire and breaking glass rendered tinny and flat by the phone’s low-grade microphone. Blood spattered across the inside of the windscreen and the driver fell away. The phone recorded wet, dying gasps as the driver’s killer threw the murder weapon into the car. The woman in the hoodie hesitated, then reached in and stole a shoulder bag that had been sitting in the footwell.

  For a brief moment, the killer was clearly visible, and Marc felt as if he had plunged into an ice-cold ocean.

  The footage ended, and after a moment a still frame from the recording replaced it on the wall screen. Blown up and sharpened by image processing software, it revealed half a woman’s face.

  Hard blue eyes above a full mouth and a small nose, a face that could belong to the demure girl next door or the wild woman you met on a crazy night of clubbing. Marc made out scars on her cheek, the puckering and pinking of skin left behind after healed burns.

  He wanted more than anything for it to be someone else, but it looked exactly like Samantha Green up there on the screen. Marc’s initial reaction and the sickened feeling in his gut told him that his instincts believed it was her.

  ‘That . . .’ He started to speak, faltered, and tried again. ‘How can that be her? Sam died in France three years ago. I was with her when it happened.’

  He recalled that terrible moment, holding her wounded and burned form as she struggled to hold on to life, then the monstrous crash of a grenade shell that blasted both of them into the stagnant depths of a canal. His last memory of Sam was her body sinking into the darkness, trailing streamers of blood through the dank water like ribbons of smoke.

  ‘It would appear otherwise,’ said Welles. ‘The image is a 77 per cent match to what we have on file for Green. Good enough to be actionable.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘One of our own. Back from the dead. Working against our interests.’ He let his sneer show. ‘Not the first time that’s happened with Nomad, is it?’

  ‘We can put at least three other kills on her,’ said Farrier, pressing on. ‘They were MI6 assets.’

  Marc was struggling to take it in, and at length he sat down, across the table from his old friend.

  ‘Why, John?’

  ‘If we knew that . . .’ Farrier trailed off. />
  ‘She’s operating under an alias,’ said Talia. ‘She’s using the name “Grace”.’

  ‘The same name as Green’s mother,’ added Welles. ‘We have her surviving family under close surveillance in case she attempts to contact them, but given her training and personality, I consider that unlikely.’

  Marc shot him a look, but stopped himself from saying anything he might regret. It was the right call to make, he thought, but it still felt shitty. Sam’s parents had buried their daughter years ago and moved on with their lives as best they could.

  ‘You were the last person to see her, Marc,’ said Farrier. ‘You’re the only surviving member of Nomad. The only person still alive who knows her, who had a . . . a close relationship with her.’

  ‘In the interests of full disclosure,’ Welles told the room, ‘be aware that my department is pursuing various lines of investigation, including the possibility that Dane and Green are working together. It’ll be up to him to prove otherwise.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Victor.’ Marc let out the words in a low growl. ‘A day ago I knew nothing about this. Maybe you could give me a bloody minute to get my head around it before you start throwing accusations!’

  Lucy made a ticking noise with her tongue. ‘So let me get this straight. An MI6 agent from Dane’s old unit not only survived being blown up and drowned, she hid out for . . . what? Three years and change? And now she’s back on the grid, and raking up stuff you would rather she didn’t?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Farrier. ‘Sam . . . Grace clearly has an agenda that isn’t compatible with ours. We need to find her and lock her down before she does something that turns up on News at Ten.’

  ‘With all due respect, that sounds like a you problem,’ said Lucy.

  Welles leaned forward in his chair. ‘We’ve been polite until now, Keyes. But rest assured, this ministry is quite happy to make it into your problem—’

  Farrier spoke over the other man. ‘Victor! Be quiet for once in your life.’ He looked across at Marc and Lucy. ‘You’re absolutely right. It is an us problem. I’m not going to even try to argue with that.’ His gaze locked with Marc’s. ‘You have plenty of reasons not to want to get involved with this. But I’m asking you for your help. Asking,’ he repeated, sparing Welles an acid glare, ‘not demanding.’

  ‘What if I refuse?’ said Marc.

  ‘Then you walk away.’ Farrier frowned, and opened his hands. ‘Just do me one favour first? Think it over before you decide.’

  *

  The dingy backstreets beyond the Metaxourgeio district were the parts of Athens that most tourists never saw. Above narrow lanes clogged with vehicles, the cracked and pollution-stained fascias of apartment blocks and cheap hotels rose up on concrete pillars, blotting out all but a sliver of the night sky. At ground level, metal security gates and untended doorways were covered with graffiti, and here and there, fast food vendors and electronics stores whose wares were of equally suspect origin crammed into alcove-sized spaces. It was late, and drinkers from local bars had spilled out into the streets in a vain attempt to cool off. The hard heat of the day was still present, motionless pockets of it trapped in the airless canyons between the buildings hours after sunset.

  Cutting through the area, Sophocleous Street took its name from the Greek playwright of ancient history. The man in the dark cap walking stiffly along it, keeping to the shadows, wondered idly what Sophocles would have thought of the place, had he peered through time to see it.

  Would the writer of tragedies see the decay of his city as another example of the same? In recent years, the changing fortunes of Greece and Athens had brought illegal immigrants and drug gangs into the area, and now they were bedded in, enough that the local police could barely keep a lid on the criminality.

  The man in the cap was shorter than average, but thickset, and sometimes the thoughtless and the unwary misread his height and the colour of his skin as markers of an easy victim. It didn’t help that he had a limp now, and he moved more slowly. He could tell there were eyes on him, measuring him up as possible prey.

  Across the street, a gangly figure in a lime-green basketball player’s vest whistled in his direction, mocking and threatening. It was a test, a strident hyena call sent out to gauge his reaction. Showing fear would label him as a target. If he ignored it and walked on, that too might have the same result. It was best to hope that the hyena would lose interest and find something else to occupy his attention. The man in the cap had no time for distractions from the locals.

  He passed another group of rough men coming in the other direction, and they openly glared at him, bristling with territorial instinct. His face did not fit here, which meant they would most likely consider him a tourist. Outsiders were not welcome.

  He pulled the bill of his cap down low. The name on the fake Republic of Korea passport in his pocket called him Park Ban-Woo, but that was a lie for people unable to tell the difference between one Eastern face and another. Hiroshi Saito had been born a Japanese citizen, but he had been exiled from his home country and the Osaka streets he grew up on a long time ago.

  He stepped around a beggar on the pavement and continued towards his destination. Osaka had dark corners like this one, and he drew on his experience of them to navigate the Athens backstreets. The faces and voices might change, but the character of such places never altered. It was terribly familiar.

  Once he would have moved through a place like this with a squad of killers at his side, and the animals would scatter. But he wasn’t given that status any more. Saito had fallen from enforcer to messenger, and in doing so, he was forced to confront the reality of what he was doing. He had given years of his life in service to the Combine, to work off a debt that could not be repaid.

  You were a fool to hope you would one day find a way out, he told himself. Now you are in this until the bitter end.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the hyena in the green vest talking with the men who had passed him, and the bleak thought dissipated. This was not the time to lose focus.

  A couple of the men broke off to trail after him, but he gave them scant consideration. The taverna he had been looking for was up ahead, a hole-in-the-wall place marked by a sputtering, half-dead neon sign. He threaded his way inside.

  It was a tiny, cramped space and too brightly lit for Saito’s tastes. There were no shadows, no corners, nowhere to hide from the stark white light spilling down from the naked bulbs overhead. A blurry television set high up on one wall showed highlights from a soccer match, the watery sound from the speakers making the commentary hard to follow. Not that any of the drinkers inside were listening, their conversations loud and fuelled by glasses of raki and cheap, gassy beer.

  His contact was at the bar and he had to look twice to be sure it was her. The woman’s hair was a different colour from the photo he had been given, and the expression on her face was slack. On a stool at the side of the chipped wooden bar, she was laughing uproariously with a balding man, slapping his tattooed bicep. The woman who called herself ‘Grace’ was demonstrating anything but that quality. She acted like a foolish drunkard, blithely unaware of everything around her.

  But then she saw Saito, and it was as if a different person suddenly took her place. She straightened, and the half-drunk act she was putting on melted away. The man reacted, slow and confused. She said something insulting to him, enough that he spat on the floor and shoved past her angrily on the way to the urinals out back.

  Saito took the stool the other drinker had vacated and took off his cap.

  ‘Alfa,’ he said, asking the barman for a beer of his own.

  She looked at Saito intently. ‘You’re obviously him.’ Her accent was British, rough-edged and smoky. ‘Bit old for an errand boy, aren’t you?’

  He leaned closer, speaking quietly. ‘What happened in Oslo?’

  ‘Everything that had to,’ she replied. ‘All dealt with. Do you have a complaint? The extra
ction was fine, I have my money.’

  ‘You were paid,’ agreed Saito. ‘But the balance of the remainder is contingent on the completion of the entire operation.’

  She chuckled. ‘Your bosses afraid I’ll drop out halfway and stick you with the dirty laundry?’

  Saito toyed with his beer bottle but didn’t drink from it. ‘I am here to remind you of your obligations.’

  ‘Are you now?’ The woman sized him up. ‘I know your type, yeah. All the crap about duty and shit, who owes what to who, blah-de-blah. But it’s bollocks, innit?’ She patted his knee and gave him a false, boozy wink. ‘You’re a chump if you think otherwise. No honour among thieves and cut-throats, Jackie Chan.’

  ‘He is Chinese,’ Saito corrected. ‘I am not.’

  ‘Whatever, mate.’ She waved away his reply. ‘I want an advance on the next payment.’

  ‘That was not the arrangement.’

  From his vantage point on the stool, Saito could see a group of men near the doorway. The drinker Grace had insulted was outside with them, and he caught the flash of a lime-green vest, a grinning face. He took a better, tighter grip on the beer bottle.

  ‘It is now,’ said the woman, as she absently ran a hand over her face. Where her dark hair hung down over her cheek, it didn’t quite hide a streak of burn scarring that started at her throat and ended near her temple. ‘The way I see it, I’m the bloody showstopper now, aren’t I? You lot need me for your game, so that gives me a bit of leverage. You want me to play on, you gotta keep me sweet.’

  Saito didn’t argue the point. He pulled an unmarked credit card from the pocket of his jacket and slid it across the bar to her.

  ‘Twenty per cent of the next payment, encoded in bitcoin as specified.’

  She did a sleight of hand trick and the card was gone, just as someone on the television scored a goal and the bar patrons collectively booed their displeasure. Grace chuckled again.

  ‘You had it ready. You knew I’d ask. You’re a sharp one.’

  ‘I am a pragmatist,’ he noted. ‘I prepare for all eventualities.’

  ‘So what gives next?’ She cocked her head, and he noted that she shot a look in the direction of the doorway. ‘We sticking around? I hope not, because I’ve been here a day and already I’m done with the place.’