Jericho’s office was above a travel agent’s. At the top of the flight of stairs was a heavy door with a brass plate identifying Minerva Trading. Beyond the door was a bare wooden desk, the territory of his driver and the two Gurkhas and in the drawer beside his knee, greased for smooth and silent opening, was the H&K with magazine attached. Beyond that lobby area was a further desk occupied by his Woman Friday, Penelope, who dealt with the bogus work of importing and exporting. An inner door led to her main hub and secure computers. A door to the left reached Jericho’s quarters and the wardrobe where he kept the clothing sometimes regarded as eccentric and sometimes as pathetic. Penelope had her own apartment nearby. A final armoured doorway opened on to his communications area. He was jealous of his autonomy; other than at the Queen’s Birthday Party at the embassy, he never met the Oman station chief or used the safe facilities there. His message had been sent. Elation coursed through him. They’d send a team, would have to, that level of response was required. He wondered if the girl was back in her ditches yet, searching for pottery shards of former civilisations, and whether she’d managed an internet connection, and if she knew what the Faraday Fracture was, and all the other bloody trenches on the bed of the Atlantic.
Details vague so far. Big meeting planned in the next week. ‘Emir’ and ‘Ghost’ to brief essential players on attack method for major operation. I expect to be asked to be there. Location not decided. Using HW as contact. Belcher
It was already after dark in Yemen, and the Oman city of Muscat from which the signal had come, and approaching dusk at VBX. Lights reflected off the Thames water and rippled as cargo barges passed below them, and Lizzie and Farouk hovered in George’s room on the Third Floor.
George said they had to be there, and with boots.
Lizzie said Doris was barely fit enough to walk a poodle, and she listed those who were unavailable through disgrace, drink or dormancy. But she agreed that a presence was required.
Farouk said that was only one name, one individual, who fitted the slot.
Lizzie, aged forty-one, and career driven, and with encyclopaedic knowledge of matters Yemen, said what George wished, needed, to hear. They had broken the bank getting the resources to put Belcher there. It would be criminal to let the moment slip or – worse – pass it to ‘esteemed allies’. ‘We take the crap from them often enough. This gives us an opportunity not to have to go snivelling to them with a begging bowl.’
Farouk was fifty-three. The Service was his whole life. He was seldom at work later than seven in the morning and rarely left before eight in the evening, and was fiercely proud of the position given him. Loyalty to his chief was unmatched. ‘There’s only one man, George, and we do it our way. How it should be.’
George was into his sixty-fourth year and nearing the end – which would mean God knows what except walking a dog on the Surrey hills, manicuring a garden and having his ambition atrophy by the day. ‘Tell you the truth, as I approach my swan song, I’d be rather partial to a “shock and awe” exit. It’s a revolting place, and still in the Middle Ages as far as standards of cruelty are concerned. So we’ll want, along with him, people with resolve, courage: yes, people who’ll go the whole mile. The names from Belcher represent the High Value Targets we most want to take down, and we won’t lean on our ally’s crutch. Go to work, please.’
It was a moment to savour.
The marksman eased the rifle away from his shoulder, laid it gently on the ground sheet he was lying on, and marvelled.
He was on Stickledown, at Bisley’s 900-yard range in Surrey. He had been shooting since mid-afternoon. The light was going and he would only be out for another quarter of an hour; he would have dearly liked to fire a dozen more rounds. There were three other groups stretched out along the line, and far away from them were the targets they had been firing at. The guns had fallen silent, as if it were the eleventh hour of the eleventh day. He watched and heard the murmurs of appreciation from the manufacturer’s team, who liked him to use their product, and if he liked the new variations on their weapon, he’d tell them they were good, and if he did not he would shrug then give it them straight. They did not own him: truth was, nobody owned the retired sniper. He’d fired, over the last quarter-century, often enough on Stickledown, the most celebrated of the National Rifle Association’s ranges, but this experience was new to him.
The stag had emerged from pine trees to his right. Its path took it directly across the front of the guns. He was excellent at judging distance, and if he had cared to drop the stag he would have set the telescopic sights, a Steiner 5-25×56, for a distance of 430 yards. He didn’t use the telescopic sight to watch it. He had not seen a stag of that size intrude on the territory of the range before. It seemed not to notice that away to its left were the shooters’ supporters, including some of the finest marksmen in the country. It had good antlers, was well fed from the summer and it moved at a steady trot. Several rushed to take photographs. He just revelled in the moment.
He was Rat. His birth names were Richard Andrew Taggart, once called flippantly Roger Alpha Tango, but for a majority of his years with an infantry battalion he had been ‘Rat’. He didn’t mind, he was not fazed by the name. The stag had left them, might never have been there, and the rifles cracked again and targets were lowered and then raised again. It was the best, now, that he could manage, on Stickledown on a damp afternoon as the summer ebbed and the winter came close. He shot for another fifteen minutes, then quit. He was not effusive about the weapon, nor did he have a criticism worth voicing, and coffee was poured for him from a flask and the Rangemaster, .308 calibre, was packed away and spare ammunition boxed. Others, too, were finishing their session. He looked beyond them and away to his left, always did if he was on Stickledown in the late afternoon. The man was there. Old, frail – he had not worn well – but celebrated in the club house.
He sat in a canvas chair, a veteran’s rifle, a Second World War .303 Lee Enfield on the ground sheet below. Until two years before he had always brought a small spaniel with him, though that had died, rumour had it. The man had been a haulage company salesman and was now a consultant, and all that he cared about in life now was the ‘crack and thump’ of the range. It was said that he had been a marksman in Iraq, in the days between the Gulf Wars, had been a sort of mercenary and had – almost – brought a minority race its freedom. Would Rat end up like that, talked of with reverence? But few wanted an out-of-work sniper, pensioned off.
His mobile bleeped.
The wrought-iron gates, high and wide, were padlocked with an old and rusted chain. A car came towards them and then veered right, but before its driver swung the wheel, the headlights caught the building’s façade, and shadows from the ironwork leaped on the brick and ivy. Corrie Rankin stood, stared, and then the light was gone. The little torch, sufficient to guide him on the pavement, did not reach the porch of the great house or its boarded-up windows. The deterioration had been fast. His phone went. He looked at the screen and pocketed it again.
He was walking from his mother’s two-bedroom, chocolate-box cottage past the house where she had been housekeeper, and on to the pub. His mother had worked for Bobby and Daphne Carter, whose home it had been. The Carters were long gone, tax exiles in Monaco – and their son, stuck-up and a little shit, was in the City. What had seemed like a safe refuge to Corrie was crumbling, the roof failing. Squatters had been there, and the place was barricaded against their return. He had had, almost, the run of the place, and the Carters had shown him great kindness: the kindness had extended to hiring him a tutor at the time of his teenage exams, so he gained good enough grades to put him on the path to university. It would not have happened without them. Not many from his school went to university, and he felt he’d repaid, in some degree, the faith they’d showed in him. Something else remained in him from days at the big house when he lived with his mother in a staff annexe: the words of class and station and place. The Carters’ son had recognised the gulf betw
een them and seldom missed an opportunity to remind young Corrie of it.
He had been a ‘work in progress’ for Bobby and Daphne Carter, a little exercise in ‘social engineering’, which they might have regarded as fun. The legacy had been that Corrie bristled at anyone expecting deference, exuding privilege. The house would soon be a ruin; the Carters would have employed skilled accountants who could turn the old pile into a worthwhile tax loss. He heard an owl hoot. The week before he had gone to Syria for his infiltration into an aid team, he had brought Maggie down here. They had walked the same route from his mother’s retirement cottage, past the house where the squatters had a party blazing, and to the pub at the crossroads in the village. The only time he had ever brought a girl home. He had come back, with orders to rest, after his release from hospital. His mother had not been informed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or by SIS that he had been kidnapped and was a hostage. He had come back here, badly wounded, and she’d chided him for not writing, not sending a fucking postcard from Islamic liberated territory. His mother, Rosie Rankin, was a cross to bear.
He reached the pub. A second call came, was ignored.
He liked this place. He’d come down, would see his mother for an hour, walk to the pub, join in with games of darts or pool if he could. There was an open-sided shed beside the toilets at the back, facing into the garden, and there he’d enjoy a fag and talk football with guys he’d gone to school with. He’d drink beer, local stuff, and pass the time and laugh a little. He’d come back here after half a year away, his appearance hell and his face buggered, and they’d asked him if it were cosmetic surgery gone wrong. He’d told them he’d been hit by a bus in the Jordan desert while hitch-hiking, and the bus hadn’t stopped and he’d been nursed to health again by seventy virgins who thought he was dead and they were in Paradise and . . . Shrieks of laughter, bedlam and too much grog. It was never referred to again and no one in the pub had ever accused him of lying.
A text came. He paid for a round, then checked it: Belcher surfaced. 7 a.m. here. George.
He read it, wiped it.
His mother would be asleep when he came back from the pub, and still asleep when he left in the morning to return to VBX. Meanwhile he mingled with the citizens he supposed he was paid to defend and keep safe in their beds; they didn’t know the half of it. The jukebox played Seventies music, and it seemed like the right place to kill an evening. No one in London cared that he was not there, counted the hours until he came back. He could picture Belcher and his white face, and the tremble in his hands because he was scared near to death. It had been hard work turning him; but Belcher’s future was not Corrie Rankin’s problem – never had been. He liked the talk in the bar, and the warmth.
If he was being called back in then it would be for something of substance. His strengths would have been evaluated. He had walked a road close to death and had survived, which gave him pedigree, but many lives had been lost. The cat lying snugly in front of the pub’s open fire probably had more lives in the bank than he did.
Chapter 3
He’d come in by train. ‘Ah, Corrie, good to see you. Sit down please.’ Early start into a terminus, then a bus. ‘Lizzie, I’m sure Corrie would like a coffee, a stiff one, milk and no sugar as I remember.’ Corrie hardly needed a vehicle in central London. ‘A good journey, I hope . . . and sorry about the hour, but we didn’t want to waste any.’
A little watery sunlight penetrated the tinted windows that overlooked the bridge. The first barges were being towed down river and a dredger made slow progress. Pedestrians stamped across the bridge. ‘A bugger of a time to get to work, and for me . . . these are going to be exciting opportunities.’ Lizzie brought his coffee: she was an angular woman, high cheekbones and big shoulders and sharp hips. She passed him the cardboard beaker, which meant it was from the machine and not from George’s private stock. He realised, as he took it, that his hand shook and they’d all have seen it.
George was behind his desk and had tilted his seat back, was the veteran, running out of opportunities to preside over a major show. Over by the coatstand, under a watercolour print of Beirut’s old seafront, before the civil war took its toll, was Farouk, in shirtsleeves, his baggy eyes hinting at having been there several hours. Farouk created the broad brushstrokes of a plan, and Lizzie filled in the logistical details. George was a rubber-stamp warrior who could take the credit if it worked, but was an expert at blame-evasion if it screwed: they had all been there to put Corrie in amongst the aid team on the run over the Turkish border and into Syria. Corrie remembered very clearly what he had been told, another bloody early start on the day he had travelled. We’ll reap a great harvest from this one, Corrie. It’s a very worthwhile mission. Keep your head down, stay safe, what you’re good at. His fingers trembled as he steered the beaker to his mouth: foul stuff and too hot.
George’s voice oozed with enthusiasm. ‘It has to be you, Corrie, because you’ve the proven balls for it and history with a prime player – and I can’t think of any other individual in this place who is better equipped to fulfil such a task. Now, we are thinking on the hoof because it is intelligence that is only a few hours old, but we have to react. We don’t have the time – thank the Lord – to go to committees and face the squeamish. Your sort of job beckons, Corrie. So, what’s on the table?’
Since coming out of hospital, going back to work, Corrie had made an art-form of keeping his head down. It was widely known that he had done something ‘special’, though not what, and rumour might have run rife with that little knowledge. Whispers had eddied in the corridors; some had been admiring and some harboured jealousies. He had stayed aloof from conjecture. George had paused for effect, and would not have seen the back of Farouk’s hand move across his mouth, stifling a yawn.
‘Your acquisition of Belcher was as remarkable a recruitment as any I know of. And you left him with a number that linked to Jericho, whom I respect, even though he’s a loose cannon. So the call came through and contact was made. A very effective little operation was set in place, big resources committed but looking to the long term, and we believe our foresight was justified. Jericho is in Muscat and will be the field officer, but the target area is Yemen. You know much about Yemen?’
Corrie shook his head, then sipped again at his coffee. He felt that Farouk and Lizzie, either side of him, had their eyes fixed on his face.
George said, ‘Very few folk do know much about Yemen. Briefly, an ancient civilisation has gone with the sweep of the desert sand; that was followed by a sort of medieval existence, which is still where we are today. Government has virtually collapsed, law and order is in the hands of military potentates, tribal barons, and AQAP – Al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula. Should we always concentrate on the Iraq and Syria situation, the ISIL advance, the beheading of innocents, the chance is that we allow some serious and dedicated opponents to slip off our screens, people who are dedicated to hurting us. If I lose sleep at night, and I’m not denying I do, the cause would be AQAP. I hope I have your attention, Corrie.’
He could always be guaranteed to conjure up an award-winning performance. If Corrie looked away from George’s face he could see the hawk-sharp nose and bright eyes of Farouk by the coatstand, and if he looked the other way there was Lizzie propped against the window ledge, arms akimbo, features expressionless – and beyond her was the river and its slow traffic and the pedestrians on the bridge. All so damn normal. Corrie knew about demons, had looked them in the face, had cringed as the blows had come in. He knew of the hammering strike that could break a leg bone, and he had killed a goatherd as the price of his freedom. And, those he carried a shield for, sitting in buses or cars or taxis, would know little of a world outside, and likely preferred not to know more. He nodded.
‘We press on. There is a governorate to the east of Sana’a. It is pretty much free range for AQAP there. Intelligence is sparse, that’s an understatement. To get an agent in there requires enormous luck and bucketloads of cour
age from all those involved on the ground, and a firm fist. We have the agent there – Belcher. His courage is standing up so far – long may it continue. I want you, Corrie, to be the ‘‘firm fist’’. There is to be a meeting, very soon, next several days, attended by the chief man in that area, whom we know as the Emir. There’s another key player – we have no picture of him since his days as a Saudi prisoner. He is called the Ghost in those parts; his job is to think outside of everything we do, each precaution we take. More importantly, he is a bombmaker of immense imagination and sophistication. There will also be clean skins, skimmed up from every continent, who will support an attack on our aviation system, though how, I don’t know. Where, when? We don’t have that information either. But we think, Corrie, that a little window is coming slightly ajar, and we need to take advantage of that moment when we can squeeze through the gap. The opportunity may not be repeated. We milk Belcher. We have a cut-out in place where he will bring information. You will collect it and act on it. Corrie, you will be close, a boot on the ground. You will oversee the “taking down” of these key people. This is sanctioned from the top. It has total support. I am certain you are the right person for this operation.’
George smiled. Corrie, involuntarily, licked his lips.
‘And, of course, Corrie, you are absolutely free to turn this down, if you think it’s beyond you. Always be a billet for you here to push paper round. I’d never want to have a pressed-man on board. It’d be quite a reunion for you, wouldn’t it, you and Belcher? But, of course, it’s your decision. Let’s take a break.’
The goatherd gave cover to Belcher and the Sudanese boy.
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