‘Because he figured he was dealing with some very heavy people. And he’s out on bail facing a prison sentence. He’d be looking for money to pay his lawyers.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Shepherd. ‘Okay, when do I call them?’
‘Sooner rather than later. We’re keeping Pernaska’s suicide under wraps. His wife and daughter will be held by Immigration in Croydon until the investigation’s run its course – Pernaska’s contact here will be expecting him to get in touch today so we don’t want to go beyond tonight because they might start asking questions. Call this afternoon, but be cagey. It’s going to take a day or two for us to get the tracker in place. Make contact, but tell them you’ll need time to think about where to do the handover.’
‘Do I tell them I know what’s in the cans?’
‘Best not – or maybe that you think it’s drugs. Then play it by ear when you meet.’
‘How do I explain that I’m footloose and fancy-free?’
‘Tell them you’ve got a good lawyer and he got you bail. You used your house as security.’
‘And you’ll keep Pepper and Mosley out of the way?’
‘It’s already in hand. So, you’re up for this?’
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’ll text you the number. Be handy if you could record the conversation with them.’
‘I’ll do it from home later tonight,’ said Shepherd. He cut the connection.
He was still half a mile from Liam’s school but already the traffic had slowed to a crawl. Ahead all he could see were middle-aged women at the wheel of expensive SUVs. As a kid Shepherd had spent thirty minutes on the bus to get to and from school, with a ten-minute walk at either end – his parents had been happy for him to go out on his own. At weekends he’d disappear on his bike for hours and they were perfectly happy, providing he was back before dark. Those days were long gone. Now Shepherd lived in Ealing, which was as safe as anywhere could be, but every year across the UK children were raped and murdered, or disappeared never to be seen again. Teenagers were out on the streets with knives and guns. Twelve-year-old crack addicts thought nothing of mugging a kid for his mobile phone and lunch money, while paedophiles were allowed to roam at will. There was no way Shepherd would allow Liam to use public transport to get about, and while he knew that the school run was a waste of time and fuel he, like most other parents, preferred it to the alternative.
Liam was waiting outside the school gates. He waved at the CRV and ran towards it, sports bag banging on his hip. He frowned when he saw that Shepherd was driving. He pulled open the passenger door, climbed into the front seat, dropped his bag in the back and fastened his seatbelt. ‘Where’s Katra?’
‘I said I’d pick you up today. We can go and have a burger.’ Shepherd put the CRV in gear and pulled away from the kerb.
‘You said we’d play football yesterday,’ said Liam sullenly.
‘I got held up,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Where were you?’
‘I had to go and see someone and they were late.’
‘It was a pinkie promise,’ said Liam, folding his arms and staring straight ahead.
‘I know.’
‘Pinkie promises are real promises.’
‘I meant it when I promised, I really did, but something happened.’
‘And you didn’t even get up this morning.’
‘I was tired.’
‘It’s like you don’t care.’
‘I care, Liam. Of course I care – I’m your dad.’
‘You don’t always act like my dad.’
Shepherd felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He didn’t know what to say, because he knew that Liam was right. Recently he hadn’t been behaving much like a father. He was a policeman who happened to have a son, and more often than not his son ended up playing second fiddle to the job.
‘Do you want McDonald’s or Burger King? Or we could have KFC?’
‘I don’t like KFC much.’
‘McDonald’s, then? Or Burger King?’
‘McDonald’s, I guess.’
Shepherd drove to the nearest branch and they went inside. Liam ordered a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. Shepherd had a cheeseburger. They sat at a table by the window. ‘How was school?’
‘School’s school,’ said Liam.
‘I was hoping for a bit more information than that,’ said Shepherd.
‘We did geography. And literature.’
‘Yeah, what are you reading?’
‘Anthony Horowitz’s new Alex Rider book.’
‘Alex Rider?’
‘He’s great. He’s a kid who’s a secret agent. He does the coolest stuff.’
‘And you read that at school?’
‘Yes.’
‘In my day we did Dickens and Jane Austen.’
‘Who?’
‘Never mind,’ said Shepherd. ‘What does he do, this Alex Rider?’
‘Fights bad guys and saves the world.’
‘And how old is he?’
‘He’s a teenager.’
Shepherd grinned. ‘And you believe that a teenager can save the world?’
Liam raised his eyebrows. ‘They’re books, Dad. Stories.’
Shepherd rarely spoke to his son about his work. He hadn’t told Sue much, either. Not the details. Not that every now and again his life was on the line, that he’d looked down the barrels of several guns, and that while he hadn’t actually saved the world he had fought more than a few bad guys. Part of him wanted to tell his son a few war stories, to see his eyes light up with excitement, but he didn’t want Liam to know how dangerous his work was. In the real world, heroes didn’t get shot in the chest and live to fight another day. Fist fights hurt like hell, and when you did shoot someone you never forgot the way the body slumped to the ground and the blood pumped out of them as they died. There was nothing glamorous about violence, although Shepherd couldn’t deny the adrenaline rush it gave him.
‘What about we go and play football tonight?’ asked Liam.
‘Sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘We can have a kickabout.’ Liam grinned. Then Shepherd remembered Major Gannon. ‘I’m sorry, Liam,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to meet someone.’ Liam’s face fell. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s important.’
‘It’s always important,’ said Liam. He put down what was left of his burger.
‘Come on, finish your Big Mac and we’ll buy you some comics. Maybe a new game for your PlayStation.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Liam.
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can play football then.’
‘Whatever.’
Shepherd could see he was close to tears. ‘Liam…’
‘I want to go home.’
Shepherd reached over to ruffle his son’s hair, but Liam leaned back, out of reach. Then he pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the door.
Shepherd walked through Harrods, taking a circuitous route through the perfumes department as he checked for a tail, then headed for the street behind the shop. The Special Forces Club was in a red-brick mansion block, typical of the upper-class residences in Knightsbridge. There was no plaque on the wall to identify it: it had been taken down in the wake of the terrorist attacks in America. The front door was never locked – the club was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
There was a small reception desk in the hallway, manned by a short, stocky former SAS staff sergeant who had once killed three men with his bare hands. Shepherd nodded at him as he signed in. ‘How are they hanging, Sandy?’
‘Fine, sir,’ he said, with just a touch of irony. There were no ranks in the club.
Shepherd jogged upstairs to the first-floor bar. He saw Major Gannon sitting in a winged leather armchair by the window. Shepherd ordered a Jameson’s and ice from the white-jacketed waiter and went over to shake hands. As he sat down in an armchair, he saw the Major’s metal briefcase by the wall. It contained the secure satellite phone that those in the know called t
he Almighty.
‘Working hard, Spider?’ said Gannon.
‘No rest for the wicked. Immigration scams. People-smuggling.’
‘The new frontier,’ said the Major. ‘Last I heard there was more money to be made out of people-trafficking than there was from drugs.’
Shepherd grinned. ‘I think that, pound for pound, cocaine still has the edge, but overall you’re right. It’s a bigger business.’
‘With less of a downside,’ said the Major.
‘Yeah. Get caught with a few hundred kilos of a class-A drug and they’ll throw away the key. Get caught with a containerload of Chinese workers and you’d be unlucky to get three years. Plus the traffickers get paid in advance, cash on the nail. The going rate into the UK is six thousand dollars. The drugs guys don’t get their money until the drugs are delivered.’
‘We’re in the wrong business,’ laughed the Major. ‘Here we are, defending the free world for a pittance and the chance of a pension, while the bad guys live like princes.’
‘We get the medals,’ said Shepherd.
‘Ah, yes, the medals,’ said the Major.
‘And we know we’ve got right on our side.’ Shepherd raised his glass to the Major. ‘So that’s all right, then.’
The two men clinked their glasses.
‘What about you?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Much on?’
‘Still looking after the Increment,’ said the Major. ‘I’m doing such a good job, apparently, that they don’t want me to do anything else.’ The Increment was the government’s best-kept secret: a group of highly trained special forces soldiers who were used on operations considered too dangerous for Britain’s security services, MI5 and MI6. The Major headed the unit from the Duke of York Barracks in London, close to Sloane Square. Calls from MI5 and MI6, and the prime minister’s office, came through on the satellite phone, which was never far from his side. The Major was able to draw on all the resources of the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service, plus any other experts he required. ‘I keep telling them I’m too long in the tooth for all this action stuff, but they just pat me on the back and say I’m the best man for the job.’
‘It’s good to be wanted,’ said Shepherd.
‘Which is why I asked you here,’ said the Major. ‘Somebody wants you. Or, at least, a chat with you.’
‘About?’
‘That’s need-to-know, and apparently I don’t need to know.’
‘Terrific,’ said Shepherd.
The Major sipped his drink. ‘He’s here now.’
Shepherd smiled tightly. ‘The guy at the bar behind me? American, late forties, grey hair cut short, thin lips, class ring on his right hand, Rolex Submariner watch, the anniversary model with the green bezel, grey suit, pink shirt, blue tie with black stripes, black loafers with tassels, drinking gin and tonic?’
The Major grinned. ‘You and your photographic memory,’ he said. ‘But it’s vodka he’s drinking, not gin. How did you know he was a Yank?’
‘The class ring’s very American. And he’s reading the International Herald Tribune,’ said Shepherd. ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’
The Major smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘He’s very American.’
‘FBI, CIA, DEA?’
‘None of the above. He used to be CIA but now he’s something in Homeland Security. A special unit ans werable to someone at the White House.’ The Major picked up his metal briefcase and stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘It’s for your ears only, he says.’
‘Secret Squirrel?’
The Major clapped Shepherd’s shoulder and headed for the door. On the way out he nodded to the man at the bar, who slid off his stool and carried his drink to Shepherd’s table. ‘Thanks for this, Dan,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘Richard Yokely.’ He had a slight Southern drawl.
Shepherd shook his hand.
‘Can I get you another drink?’ asked Yokely.
‘I’m fine,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m surprised to see an American drinking alcohol. I thought, these days, you weren’t allowed any vices.’
‘I’m sure my secret’s safe with you,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m old school. I reckon it’s more about the results a man gets than his appearance.’ He leaned across the table. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I still enjoy the odd cigar.’ He chuckled, sat back in his chair and stretched out his legs. ‘So, thanks for coming. I’ve heard a lot about you, Dan. All good.’
‘That’s a worry,’ said Shepherd, ‘since I’m supposed to be undercover.’
‘We’re on the same side,’ said Yokely. ‘I get to see some very secret files. And your name was mentioned in glowing terms.’
‘And who is it you work for?’
The American shrugged carelessly. ‘I don’t have a business card, as such,’ he said. ‘Or an office. Truth be told, I’m more of a facilitator.’
‘For whom?’
Another shrug. And a slight smile. ‘For the government. In the same way that your Superintendent Hargrove is answerable to the Home Office, I answer directly to the head of Homeland Security. It’s a very tight chain of command. I talk to my boss, he talks to the President. Sometimes I talk to the President direct. And in the same way that your unit doesn’t have a name or any of those cute initials they like to give everything now, I don’t have a designated department.’ He grinned. ‘I’m just little old me. The be-all and end-all.’
‘And your brief?’
‘To save the free world, Dan. To make the world a safer place.’ He took a sip of his vodka and tonic, then swirled the ice round his glass with his index finger. ‘What you did, down in the Tube, that was one hell of a thing.’
Shepherd said nothing.
‘You saved a lot of lives,’ said Yokely.
‘I killed a man,’ said Shepherd.
‘Yes, you did,’ said the American. ‘You shot him in the back of the head. And some. Would you care to run it by me?’
Shepherd looked at Yokely for several seconds, then nodded slowly. That Gannon had arranged the meeting meant that Yokely could be trusted. Shepherd just wished he knew what the meeting was about. ‘I was working undercover, infiltrating an armed-response unit,’ he said. ‘As part of that operation I was on the Underground. Armed. There were four suicide-bombers primed to detonate at the same time. One was killed above ground – by muggers, as it happened. One went off above ground. One detonated on a platform at Liverpool Street station. I killed the fourth.’
Yokely grinned.
‘What’s funny?’ asked Shepherd, quickly. Too quickly. He’d sounded defensive.
‘Your terminology is much more forthright than I’m used to,’ said the American. ‘The guys I work with would never be so up-front. They’d refer to it as “terminating the objective” or “managing the situation” or something equally banal.’
‘I killed him,’ said Shepherd flatly. ‘Shot him seven times.’
‘You didn’t think that was overkill?’
‘The two bombs that went off killed forty-seven people and injured more than a hundred others,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t take any chances with suicide-bombers. Even mortally wounded, they can still press the trigger. You have to keep firing until you’re sure, absolutely sure, they’re dead. Or in a non-living situation, as your guys would probably say.’
‘You shot him from behind,’ said Yokely.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘So you couldn’t see if he was holding the trigger?’
‘It was a fair assumption.’
‘In fact,’ said Yokely, slowly, ‘you couldn’t even be sure that he was a suicide-bomber. Not from what you could see.’
‘He was wearing a vest packed with explosives,’ said Shepherd. ‘There was a timing device too, so that if he was incapacitated, the device would still explode.’
Yokely held up a hand. ‘Please don’t get me wrong, Dan. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t a totally righteous kill. You deserve a medal for what you did, no doubt about it. I’m ju
st interested in the mechanics of what happened.’
‘I identified the target. I killed him before he could detonate the bomb. End of story.’
‘I suppose it would be trite to ask if you had any regrets.’
‘Regrets?’
‘About killing a man in cold blood.’
‘No one kills in cold blood,’ said Shepherd. ‘That’s a fallacy. The adrenaline courses through the system, the heart races, the hands shake. You can train to suppress the body’s natural reactions, but no one kills coldly.’
‘You’ve killed before, right?’
‘In combat. Under fire.’
‘So what happened on the Tube, that was the first time you’d shot an unarmed man?’
‘Like I said, he wasn’t exactly unarmed,’ said Shepherd. ‘He was wired up with a dozen pounds of high explosive.’
‘Which you couldn’t see from where you were.’
‘What are you getting at?’ said Shepherd.
‘Stay with me for a while, Dan,’ said Yokely. ‘My point is that you made the kill without seeing the imminent threat for yourself.’
‘Major Gannon had the area under observation through CCTV,’ said Shepherd. ‘He was in the British Transport Police observation centre.’
‘But even he wasn’t one hundred per cent sure,’ said the American.
‘Maybe. But all’s well that ends well.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Yokely, enthusiastically. ‘But tell me, how important was it to you that the Major was directing you?’
‘I trust him totally,’ said Shepherd.
‘And if it had been someone else? Suppose it had been a Transport Police chief inspector who had made the call? Would you have been as willing to shoot?’
Shepherd sat back in his chair and considered the question. To an SAS trooper, obeying orders came naturally: rank commanded respect, even if the man who held it didn’t. From time to time Shepherd had carried out orders he hadn’t agreed with, but not often. In the police the situation was nowhere near as cut and dried. Promotion had more to do with politics and point-scoring than it did with ability, and Shepherd constantly came across officers whose judge ment was questionable. Working for Superintendent Hargrove’s undercover unit insulated him from having to follow orders given by men he didn’t respect or trust, and that was the nub of the American’s question. Would Shepherd have shot the terrorist if anyone other than the Major had given the order? At the time Shepherd had been working under-cover in SO19, the armed-response unit of the Metropolitan Police and while the officers he’d worked with had all been first rate, he doubted that he would have trusted them as much as he trusted the Major. He took a sip of whiskey. ‘I might have hesitated if it had been anyone else,’ he said.
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