Someone called his name on the tannoy. Olivia Cartier’s PA escorted him through the glass doors and then walked him down from Portcullis House to the Palace of Westminster, through the gloom of the colonnade.
Cartier greeted him with a firm handshake. ‘How does the terrace sound? Not too cold for you?’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ said Vine.
They began walking down the Medals Corridor. They bought two coffees from the cafeteria, then made their way past one of the uniformed doorkeepers guarding the entrance to the House of Commons terrace.
As they paused momentarily on the steps, scanning the full length to find a spare seat, Vine tried to keep his focus. His mind still spun with the consequences of Gabriel Wilde’s disappearance and the inscription in the copy of The Odyssey. In case we don’t meet again, I want you to have this. All wisdom lies in this book. Take care of Rose for me. The better part of him had been stirred by Newton’s call and a chance for personal redemption, yet some unspoken part wondered if Wilde had got what he deserved. Vine allowed himself to indulge that sentiment longer than he liked to admit.
He followed Cartier leftwards, away from a gaggle of other MPs and researchers already on to their second pints. She set the tray down and pushed a black coffee towards him.
‘So, Newton gave me a ring personally. Said you needed to speak about something. I’m afraid my PA didn’t have any papers for me to read on this one?’
Vine settled himself into the hard wood of the chair and looked across at the frothing blue-grey expanse of the Thames to his right. Only one boat was puttering down the middle. Wind-battered tourists clustered uneasily on the deck, trying to avoid the spray.
‘Newton told me you knew Gabriel Wilde,’ said Vine, voice neutral and eyes trained firmly on Cartier’s face, alert enough to catch a reaction.
‘Yes. Good old Gabriel,’ said Cartier, chuckling to herself. ‘I first got to know Wilde when I joined the Intelligence and Security Committee. He was on a brief secondment to Whitehall liaison.’
‘That was the first time you met?’ asked Vine. ‘You didn’t cross over at Oxford? Or during your time at the Foreign Office?’
Cartier sipped at her coffee. ‘Who knows, probably shared a dining hall at one point. Could say the same for half the people here. But it was the first time we got to know each other properly … What’s this all for, if you don’t mind my asking? Newton was pretty gnomic on the phone. Nothing’s happened to him, has it?’
Vine let the question hang for a moment and watched a concerned expression work its way across Cartier’s face: forehead depressed, lips pinched, a slight tilt forwards on the chair.
‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘Nothing serious, anyway. Newton wanted me to speak to you because he said you saw him recently.’
Cartier breathed hard and looked upwards, as if trying to summon a calendar in her head. ‘Yes. So I did. Sorry, the last few weeks have been a total blur. Problems in the constituency. I was in Istanbul with the Defence Secretary, his PPS for my sins.’
‘How did Wilde seem?’ Vine asked.
‘Fine,’ said Cartier, leaning back in her chair. She crossed her legs and steepled her hands. ‘Looked pretty tired. We didn’t get to speak that much. Got the impression he was under quite a bit of stress, actually. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. I think I told him to take it easy. Have a holiday. If anyone needed it, he did.’
Vine felt a cool gust of wind flick at his cheeks from the river. ‘And what about the last year or two? Anything out of the ordinary that you noticed? Did anything change?’
She drew her cheeks in and laughed timidly. ‘No. As I said, he often seemed tired, but that’s hardly unusual in the field.’
Vine waited for the sentence to trail off before deciding to play his hand, a gentle bluff to see what he could draw out. ‘And what if I told you there was speculation that things weren’t quite right?’
Cartier looked slightly bemused by the question. ‘How do you mean?’
Vine kept his voice steady, as if he had copious evidence to back up what he was about to say. He inched forwards in his chair. Outside the official realms of Vauxhall Cross, he now had only limited resources, relying solely on his own tradecraft to get to the truth. ‘A shift in patterns. Not unknown in the field. Too close to the death and destruction. Breaks in routine, getting careless with safety protocols. What the white coats at Vauxhall Cross would call behavioural abnormalities.’
Cartier looked momentarily perturbed. She masked a twinge of unease by taking another swig of coffee. ‘Suspicious behaviour, you mean?’
Vine kept his answer firmly neutral. ‘It’s certainly one possibility.’
‘And is this a view shared by the JIC?’
Vine knew he had to be careful. Newton had sent him to find answers, not stir up new trouble. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.’
Cartier raised her eyebrows. She sat back and turned towards the river, as if debating whether to reveal something. At last, she said: ‘Well, I’m not entirely sure I should either, then …’
Vine felt suddenly alert. He kept his voice level, knowing he couldn’t allow anything to break the spell. ‘So you did notice something?’
Cartier still looked unsure. She took another gulp of coffee and traced her finger round the rim of the mug. ‘This is just shooting the breeze, right,’ she said. ‘Nothing official. I’m not being recorded? This doesn’t go any further?’
Vine shook his head. ‘No. This stays between you and me.’
‘Good.’
‘So?’
Cartier stared to her left, losing herself in the undulating patterns of the river. ‘If you want my theory, I got the impression he was working on something. Something big,’ she said. ‘Whether official or unofficial, I couldn’t tell. But when I first knew Gabriel, he was full of life. He could drink everyone else under the table, get twenty minutes sleep and he’d still look fresher than you in the morning. He was absolutely on board with the direction of Western foreign policy. If anything, I’d have marked him down as something of a hawk. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I always got the impression that he was a bit of a neo-con. He could see why Saddam had to be removed. He absolutely accepted the case for the war on terror after 9/11.’
Vine nodded. He felt his pulse begin to quicken. He knew that Wilde, a bullish mask put on in polite company to hide any lingering doubts. ‘But recently?’
Cartier turned away from the river. She looked back at Vine. ‘I think it was after the coup in Egypt following the Arab Spring. Or at least I always got the impression that was what changed it for him,’ she said, her voice less certain, the stagey volume dimmed. ‘Then trouble began brewing again in Iraq and the civil war in Syria. He began to see a decade of Western foreign policy in the Middle East had brought nothing but carnage. He was sitting on the sidelines with blood on his hands.’
‘He actually used those words?’
Cartier sighed. ‘Yes. I think he was looking for a way to make things right. My impression was he had started circumventing official procedure, trying to save it all on his own. Going straight to Cecil and bypassing the MI6 bureaucracy.’ Cartier stopped. ‘I think there might also have been other problems …’
Vine held back, trying not to seem insensitive. ‘Personal problems? His marriage?’
‘I don’t know. But I think he was struggling on numerous fronts.’
‘And the final time you saw him? Did he raise any of this then?’
Cartier yawned. She flicked a hand through her hair. The cold had begun to give way to a slight drizzle, the other drinkers and eaters clearing their trays away and moving inside.
‘That’s the thing,’ she said, picking up her coffee mug. ‘He said he’d found the answer.’ Cartier looked straight at Vine with a bloodshot stare. She seemed uncertain of what she was about to say. ‘He said he’d found a way to seek redemption. To wash away the blood on his hands for good.’
9
&nbs
p; 2004
‘Cecil wants us to take the next one,’ says Vine.
‘What’s his background?’ asks Wilde.
‘Lived in Britain for ten years, just back from three months in the arms of the Americans.’
‘Enhanced interrogation?’
‘No, all-paid trip to Vegas. What the hell do you think?’
‘Sorry, silly question.’
‘Tech-ops guy, by the sound of it.’
Vine slows the car and opens the window. Both of them flash their security passes for the uniformed figure at the gate and drive through towards the car park.
‘Why have Langley let him go?’ Wilde asks.
Vine squeezes in between two Land Rovers and then kills the engine. ‘They’re drowning in cases. Can’t send them all to Guantánamo. They can only handle the big fish. Need us to sweat the link men. Number 10 are keen to show our use to the White House.’
‘Fair enough.’
They get out of the car. It is dark, dawn barely broken.
Wilde stares at the buildings in front of them. ‘These places don’t half make you want to top yourself. So depressing.’
Vine locks the car door. He finds himself amused once again at the occasional clarity of Wilde’s reactions, the off-duty comments when there is no one in the room left to seduce. It is the instinct of the games field, a sense of fair play. ‘And here was me thinking war was supposed to be fun.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Not really.’
‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘Why? Not another lady waiting for you in London?’
Wilde smiles. ‘I’ve been thinking it’s time to settle down.’
‘Of course you have.’
‘I’m serious.’
Vine laughs. They walk inside, eager for the warmth. There is another flash of passes, and then they are through to a room littered with used coffee cups and takeaway pizza boxes. On the monitor above them is an empty industrial warehouse with a single seat in front of a table, the rest of the screen bare.
A solitary figure, eyes webbed with sleep, gets up and nods. ‘You guys taking over?’
‘Unfortunately,’ says Wilde. ‘Where’s the coffee machine?’
‘Kettle in the corner and jar of Nescafé best you’ll get.’
‘Anything we should be briefed on?’ asks Vine.
The man shakes his head. ‘He was in a bad way when we got him. Broken bones, malnourished. We’ve brought him back to the land of the living. But he’s fragile. Still sleeping.’
‘Time for a wake-up call then. How many guarding him?’
‘Two. But he couldn’t run more than ten metres without collapsing. Nothing to worry about on that front.’
The man leaves while Wilde goes in search of the kettle. Vine picks up the secure line and instructs the guards to get the prisoner prepared for interrogation. Twenty minutes later, the phone bleeps.
‘He’s ready,’ says Vine.
Wilde downs the dregs of his second cup of coffee. ‘Do you want to play good cop or bad?’
Vine only ever has one answer, the bravado masking the bug of unease in his stomach. ‘Bad. So much more fun.’
They pause next to the door, craning up at the monitor to see the prisoner brought in. On the monitor, the door of the warehouse opens, and two RMP guards emerge, both grasping the puny arms of a third man between them. He is dressed in a white t-shirt, baggy tracksuit bottoms and unlaced trainers. He looks thirty, perhaps thirty-five. His hair is shaved short, muscle tone wasted. He seems unsteady on his feet, unable to take the full force of his own weight, face gaunt and shrunken.
Vine forces strength into his voice. ‘Showtime.’
‘Remind me what this is all for,’ Wilde says, finishing a cigarette and stamping it on the ground. ‘Him, here … this.’
Beyond them the base is packing up for the evening, the mosaic of lights gradually dimming. Vine looks out and marvels at how mundane it feels, the normal rhythms and frustrations. Despite its purpose, the scene around them retains a stubbornly normal sheen. Trucks still humming around the base, cramped offices lit with a pale glow, the snatches of half-heard conversation drifting lazily up towards them on the balcony.
‘I don’t like this any more than you do,’ he says, tiredness keeping him from summoning anything more profound.
Wilde turns, almost laughing. ‘Are you sure about that?’ He sweeps his hand across the view, as if able to topple the lot with the back of his hand. ‘Fact of the day. Did I ever tell you my great-grandfather was part of a cavalry charge with Churchill?’
‘More than likely.’
‘Well, behave yourself and hear it again.’
‘If I must.’
‘Incredible story. The Battle of Omdurman. On horseback, weapon in hand, staring his enemy in the face. He wrote in his diary that he had looked on death and made his peace with it.’
‘A poet as well as a trained killer …’
‘Wizard with a paintbrush too, as it happens. But that’s not the point, Sol.’
‘What exactly is the point?’
‘I mean what a way to fight a war. Putting everything on the line like that. Charging into the fray with your head held high, praying to God you survived the day.’
‘A dead body is dead, no matter how it died. The means don’t change the ends.’ He looks across at Wilde, the scar of animation on the smooth curves of his face. There has been another terror scare that morning, Whitehall locked down for hours, a chaos of police sirens, helicopters overhead, offices evacuated. Ministers whisked down underground corridors and hugged tight by security details while the rest of the populace tottered about unprotected.
‘Surely that’s what we’re missing in all of this,’ says Wilde. ‘That sense of nobility. We’re viewing this war as if the enemy are atoms, individual units we can manipulate, torture or take out as we choose, and the rest won’t be affected.’
Vine stays still. He knows Wilde too well not to recognize the symptoms of his intermittent epiphanies: a captivating brightness to the eyes, voice tinged with a slight husk.
‘But they’re not,’ he continues. ‘If we’re ever going to win, we need to understand who they are. Their tribes and traditions, loyalties and families. If we think we’re just going to impose McDonald’s and Burger King from ten thousand feet, then we’re doomed.’
‘Thus sayeth the archangel Gabriel,’ laughs Vine.
‘We’re not prison guards, Sol, we’re spies. Name a Moscow Centre hood that was turned chained to a concrete floor. We need to get him one on one … It’s the only way. You know it is.’
Vine shakes his head. ‘No. Absolutely not. We’d be burned alive. What the hell would the Americans say?’
‘Who bloody well cares what the Americans say?’ says Wilde, flailing his arms in frustration. ‘They butchered the poor bugger and still couldn’t get him to talk. It’s how we have always done it, the British tradition. Trust me, we’ll never get anything out of him if we just keep sitting there.’
Vine looks over at Wilde. Standing closer, he can see a tenseness in the face beneath the smooth veneer.
Wilde stoops to light another cigarette, then tilts his head back and lets loose a cloud of smoke. ‘He’s not an equation, Sol, he’s a human being. We’ve got to treat him like one.’
Vine glances at his watch. They have endured a whole day with nothing to show for it. The prisoner is barely alive, probably brain-damaged, all secrets evaporated long ago in the chaos of his arrest. He has said nothing, barely even confirmed his name, just shivering in silence. ‘How long would you need?’
Wilde smiles and nods in acknowledgement. ‘An hour. Tops. Just let us get some air. Let him think I’m a friend, someone he can trust. The fifth floor never needs to know.’
It is four hours exactly after Vine receives the order to stay for a second shift that the phone rings. Wilde has gone to try and sleep, ready for another early-morning start. Vine is stil
l working through case reports on his laptop.
‘Yes?’ he says.
‘Sir, it’s Private Henderson from the residence.’
‘What is it, Private?’
‘We need you here. Now.’
‘Of course.’ Vine puts the phone back, feels a jab of anxiety at the tone. He closes his laptop, checks his mobile for any missed calls and then asks the RMP guard on duty for the direction to the residence. It is a three-minute walk across the car park and into a separate building.
He flashes his pass and continues up to the first floor. Henderson, a thin man with moist eyes and a round face, is waiting on the stairs.
‘What the hell’s happened?’ asks Vine.
Henderson doesn’t answer immediately. He just walks up the stairs and pushes through a door into a narrow hallway. ‘This is where we kept him, sir,’ he says, pointing at a room on the right. ‘One of us in the other room, him in here. Bathroom done up in the middle. We thought he was asleep.’
Already, Vine feels a stab of queasiness. He follows Henderson into the bedroom, a cramped, dusky space made worse by the sight on the bed. The sheets are stained with blood, the sleeper’s eyes lidded shut. The wrists are turned upwards. Right by the arm lies a fragment of razor blade.
‘Ring the emergency number,’ says Vine, his voice edged with panic. He pauses and glances at Henderson. He can feel his heart pounding, trying to will himself to think faster. ‘Where’s the log book?’
Henderson looks back. ‘Sir, I’m not sure …’
‘Where’s the damn log book?’ Vine shouts.
‘In the other room, sir.’
Vine nods. ‘Go downstairs and make the call.’ Henderson still dawdles, his body locked with indecision. ‘Now.’
Vine waits until he hears Henderson’s feet on the stairs, then walks through to the other room. The log book is on the table, blue biro by the side. He scans the room for cameras, finds none and then opens it to today’s date. He runs his finger along the timings and sees the entry.
My Name Is Nobody Page 4