by Chris Petit
Round stood up, the pulsing vein in his temple a sign of anger.
‘I’d take a long look in the mirror if I were you. You are fouling up. You broke into Beech’s house then dropped Churton’s name to get out of trouble and now you’re hell bent on slandering the man. These are serious people. You don’t flout the rules with them. God, you’re a mess. No wonder Heseltine asked who that déclassé man was who wandered into the party. Go ahead and fuck up if you want but don’t fuck it up for me.’
Round’s wife interrupted to say goodnight. She didn’t loiter and left without any show of affection. Collard wondered how much she had heard.
‘You were saying?’
The distraction broke the tension. Round laughed.
‘Takes a lot to lose my temper.’
‘You have a very depressed wife.’
‘She’s a walking medicine cabinet.’
‘You were going to marry a blonde and screw her every night.’
Round gave a bleak smile.
Collard said, ‘I know I’m a mess.’
Round sat down and leaned forward. ‘I want to find Nick too. What you’re telling me sounds just too fantastic.’
‘I agree. It’s like stepping through the looking glass. Nazir said there was an intelligence plot to discredit the Palestinians and bring him down. Israeli agents were meant to find a bomb on a plane. To give it an extra kick for the headlines, a nice young English boy was going to be used and arrested as the bomb-carrier, to show how unscrupulous these terrorists are.’
‘Does this have anything to do with what really happened?’
‘According to Nazir, someone penetrated the operation and the bomb got put on the plane and the rescue operation never took place. He says it wasn’t him.’
‘He’s bound to say that. I don’t believe life is that complicated. There are people in this world who are evil and fanatics and they put the bomb on the plane. Nazir is a skilled dissembler and he has led you up the garden path.’
‘Maybe, but that still doesn’t answer why Churton sent me.’
Round sighed. ‘Go on.’
‘I even wonder if this is about Nick at all.’
‘If it isn’t, then who the hell is it?’
‘I think Churton’s using me as a link in his plot to destroy Nazir and he doesn’t care if I go down too.’
‘Nigel will laugh his head off when he hears that. Dear heart, you are one of us. You’re cracking under the pressure.’
‘It’s not funny.’
Round composed his features into an expression of mock seriousness.
‘There’s an interesting word Nazir and Churton both used. Clairvoyant. Churton was talking about security and Nazir of satellite technology. They were saying the same thing: that these were the future, almost as if they had sat down and discussed it. Another thing happened while I was with Nazir. I got landed with a companion. Reporter, daughter of a multimillionaire media tycoon.’
‘Which one?’
Collard named him. ‘He owns most of the papers she doesn’t write for.’
‘You’re not suggesting she was there because of who her father was.’
‘Churton’s probably sucking up to Daddy, who is keen to take a distant, fatherly interest in her career. As it happened, Nazir knows her father too – is an investor in his business, in fact.’
‘Pure coincidence.’
‘No such thing. Terrorist or not, Nazir’s profits oil a lot of legitimate business with no questions asked.’
Round attempted to laugh the matter away. ‘If Churton topples Nazir she’s in pole position for a scoop.’
‘And if he doesn’t, it’s business as usual.’
‘God knows, you’ve been through enough but you’re letting it turn you cynical. You never used to be like this. There are still values left. Those responsible for the bomb will be hunted down and brought to account.’
‘If we’d had this discussion two months ago I would have agreed.’
Round looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting to bed if the wife’s going to get her screw tonight.’
Collard ignored the joke.
‘What do you think is really going on?’
‘I’m as baffled as you are.’
‘You can do better than that. I’m in a can of worms. Get me out of it. Call Churton.’
‘If you’re here for a shoulder to cry on, fine. If you’re asking me to make your peace with Churton, no can do. Churton’s not interested. He made a point of calling me to say so.’
‘What about the meeting with Nazir?’
‘He knows all he needs to know.’
‘From the reporter that tagged along?’
‘Stop going on about the bloody woman. You sound obsessed by her. You wrote yourself out of the picture by not doing as you were told. What the hell did you think you were playing at?’
Collard said nothing, surprised by Round’s vehemence.
‘Thanks to you, I’m in trouble too. Nigel’s not taking my calls. I’m PNG.’
‘PNG?’
‘Persona non grata. He blames me for introducing you. He has you down as a loose cannon. Not enough of a team player. Bear that in mind when he drops you in the shit from a great height, which he seems to be doing to me as we speak. So thanks a million in return.’
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea.’
‘Remind me not to stick my neck out for you next time.’
‘It’s not Nazir I want to talk to him about. It’s about me. Whatever this thing is I am being accused of is intelligence-related. I want to know what Churton has to say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I met Nazir on his say-so. I am now being accused by the reporter who was at that meeting of a longstanding association with Nazir that involves illegal arms deals. If Churton doesn’t know about this then he should. Call him.’
‘Oh, bloody hell. I can’t.’
‘Have you heard of this sort of thing going on, what I’m being accused of?’
Round shook his head. ‘Never. There are export checks and regulations. We’re talking about the government, for God’s sake, not some tinpot dictatorship.’
‘It must be obvious I haven’t done anything. Call Churton. As a last favour.’
Round sighed. ‘Oh, all right. As a last favour.’
He knew the man’s private number off by heart. He shook his head at Collard after asking for Churton, said, ‘I see,’ a couple of times and apologized for calling so late.
‘Woke his bloody wife,’ he said, putting down the receiver.
The TV was still on in the background: aggressive cops laying down the law.
Collard left Round his hotel number.
The phone in his room was ringing as he opened the door. It was Round to say he had spoken to Churton. Collard could hear The Sweeney ending in the background.
‘Not interested.’
‘Is that all he said?’
‘Categorically not interested. Sorry.’
Collard wondered if Round had spoken to Churton at all.
The Heath Extension
The phone rang while Collard slept and he struggled to the surface hoping it was Stack. The room was dark. He had no idea of the time. A man with a patrician voice asked for him.
Nigel Churton.
Churton sat downstairs in the hotel lobby with a red setter on a leash. He wore a Barbour and a flat tweed cap and behaved like it was entirely normal for him to be there with his dog not much after six in the morning. He asked Collard if he had a car. Collard nodded.
‘You know where the heath extension is.’
It was the less-used part of the heath, near the Garden Suburb.
‘Meet me at the far end in ten minutes.’ Churton flicked the dog’s leash. ‘Come, boy.’
Collard drove up to Hampstead, wiping condensation off the windscreen. He had forgotten his coat. It still wasn’t properly light. He wondered if the dog was part of Churton’s daily routine. Traffic was alread
y building up down the hill, in advance of the rush hour. He passed Whitestone Pond, glassy in the still air, and took the road down towards Golders Green, turning opposite the park, all landmarks from Nick’s childhood.
He wondered why Churton had changed his mind. He must have talked to Round after all, to have got the hotel number. Perhaps Round was being cut out as he feared. It left Collard feeling very exposed.
Churton was on the heath in the lifting gloom. The day was raw and Collard shivered as he walked over to Churton, who was exercising mastery over his dog. A pause followed as they observed the dog’s retrieval. The dropped stick was wet with saliva.
Collard blew into his hands and stuffed them in his pockets. No one else was on the heath.
‘I hear you took a reporter with you to Nazir. Foolish and unwise to involve the fourth estate.’
‘I thought she worked for you.’
Churton grunted. ‘I understand Nazir told you to ask me about your son because I used him in a sting operation.’
‘Did she tell you that or did Oliver Round?’
Churton turned on him with barely suppressed fury.
‘How close to the flame do you want to stand?’
‘I’ll walk into the fire if I have to.’
‘Then don’t question me and listen. Nick acted as Nazir’s informant and we know that from Nazir.’
He stared hard at Collard, forcing him to hold his eye.
‘Nazir was our agent.’
Collard felt he was back on his high ledge.
In his voice of authority, Churton gave Collard his most succinct summary of events yet. It pained him to admit that Nazir had fooled them into believing his loyalties lay with the British. Nazir had double-crossed them but they were now in a position to get him.
‘Nazir bombed that plane. Don’t be in two minds about that. However, we have persuaded him we believe this not to be the case and he has agreed to a meeting. Our representative will collect him from somewhere of his choosing and escort him to a place of ours. He asked for you to be that representative.’
‘Me?’
‘He said he didn’t want any professionals. Send the amateur, is what he said. Take that meeting.’
Collard had been groping his way around in the hope of some illumination. He remembered Evelyn’s warning about the impossibility of definitive truth. So far, everything was shades of grey. He said as much to Churton.
‘Not at the centre. Nazir is guilty and we know he did it.’ Churton gave Collard his chilliest gaze. ‘That’s why you must take the meeting, so we can arrest him then and there and let the law take its course.’
He suggested they walk while Collard thought the matter over.
‘Nazir was in control from the start. The Israelis provided the Germans with intelligence on the original Palestinian cell. What the Israelis didn’t know was that Nazir was the real source of that intelligence. He was working for us, essentially setting up and betraying his own people. In a dirty business you don’t succeed by keeping your hands clean. In a way you are right, nothing is black and white. I’m sorry you had to get dragged into this.’
The smile was unexpectedly sympathetic.
‘Nazir’s right. I’m not a professional. I am out of my depth.’
‘We’ve got a safe pair of hands. We won’t drop you.’
‘Does Nazir trust you enough to come?’
‘We have passed on a vital piece of information which gives him every reason to. What that is I can’t say. However, I can tell you what happened so you’re perfectly clear.’
Churton stopped and looked at Collard, who knew they were moving closer to the heart of things.
‘The Americans ran a half-arsed undercover drug-smuggling operation from Frankfurt that was meant to compromise Nazir’s. German and American airport security were told to leave certain flights immune. The attraction of the American operation to Nazir is obvious – if he doubled up and used the same flights as the Americans it meant his couriers stood no chance of getting caught.
‘Like Nazir the Americans used kids as couriers. Nick was recruited by a man called Quinn as part of the American operation.’
Collard’s body pricked with cold sweat despite the temperature. Churton filled in the gaps as he saw fit and Collard clung on, knowing men like Churton had a highly selective sense of what constituted shared knowledge. ‘Of course’ was a favourite expression for its implied mutual understanding. However partial Churton’s account, Collard was persuaded.
‘How did Nazir know that Nick had been recruited by Quinn?’
‘Through his network of informers. The American operation in Cyprus was not secure. Nazir met Nick personally and convinced him he was a British intelligence agent. Perhaps he charmed him, perhaps frightened him, for the one piece of information he needed, which was the date and flight of Nick’s run for the Americans.’
Collard had a flash of Nazir relaxed, smoking and playing with his fake lighter and understood how Nick would have been dazzled by the man’s confidence and charm; the perfect English accent and manners, the romantic spin given to the intrigue. Nazir was everything Collard was not.
Collard said, ‘The bomb got through because it was a day when security had been ordered not to interfere.’
‘Nick was doing his run for the Americans; Nazir’s courier was the boy Khaled; Nazir switched Khaled’s consignment with the bomb.’
‘And what was Nazir’s reason?’
‘The Syrians suspected he was working for us and put pressure on him to prove he was theirs.’
In his languid way, Churton was as plausible as Nazir. He said it amused Nazir to play with people because he remained at heart a street fighter.
‘What happened to Nick? Why didn’t he get on the plane?’
‘I’ve no idea. Why didn’t you?’
‘By complete chance.’
‘Maybe he lost his nerve and followed your example.’ They walked up the heath in silence, following the dog, which was after a scent.
‘There’ll be other atrocities unless we stop Nazir. He’s in too deep with the Syrians now to climb back out. That attack is the start of something. I’m asking if you will be the bait.’
Collard hesitated.
‘Nazir murdered those people on that plane as surely as you and I are standing here. We have a very small window of opportunity to nail him. He would have murdered your son and he would have murdered you too without a second’s thought. You can refuse but for the sake of the dead I am sure you won’t.’
‘All right. I’ll do as you ask.’
‘Excellent. In return we’ll find your son. Intelligence services and police forces from around the world are at my disposal. They’ll locate him in a matter of days. Trust me on this. I’m bringing someone in you know to rehearse the meeting. He’s waiting at your hotel.’
‘You must have been confident I would agree.’
‘One way or another.’
Churton sounded vaguely sinister. Collard believed his version but that didn’t make him any more inclined to trust. He felt as he had at their first meeting, unable to tell whether he was being admitted to the inner sanctum or about to be fed to the lions.
He suspected the whole affair came down to less than a dozen people, all more or less in the know but with only one or two fully apprised, leaving the rest scrabbling to find out what really happened. The answer lay not in the safe houses of Neuss or Frankfurt or in Beirut or Nicosia but in the grand offices of men like Churton, who airily said as they parted he would see if he could make ‘the other thing go away’, leaving Collard with the distinct impression that Churton had been behind it all along.
The Cathedral of Malign Intent
Angleton interpreted the crash as a seismic shift, heralding vast, unimaginable change – the moment when the dying body of the Cold War could be laid out on the table for autopsy. Buchan had predicted it in Greenmantle at the start of the century. The old trouble spots would quickly erupt as communism slid
away to reveal the blood feuds waiting. Angleton saw this with posthumous clarity, driven by the logical illogic of any dream, made more urgent by the tenuous belief that if he cracked the mystery he would be allowed to proceed.
Sandy Beech had been blackmailed by the Brits in the 1970s into setting up Nazir, both of them bagged by Nigel Churton, then of MI6, now heading up HMG’s investigation into Flight 103, on the old principle of giving the job to the man who knew what needed tidying.
The whole thing had been a racket, of course, as Nazir knew. Persona non grata one day; returned to the fold the next. When Slobbery Bill had routed his arms-to-Iran channel through London, Churton took care of the British end and was forced to swallow his pride when Sandy Beech – the man he had double-crossed – turned up in London as Casey’s agent, resurrecting his old smuggling chum Nazir to take care of business at the other end! Churton strangled his vowels more than usual when forced to say, ‘No hard feelings. Let’s bury the hatchet.’
Why not when the war between Iran and Iraq was a long rolling bonanza? Fuck trade embargos! They all queued to get in on the act; even the Israelis shovelled arms through the back door to their arch-enemy Iran.
Angleton wanted to bodysnatch Collard – much as Churton’s people had hijacked him and were in the process of rewriting the wretched man’s past (and pretty spiffily too). He would have taken Collard up the A1 to Coldingham, arriving at first light. Coldingham was an old RAF airbase stuck in featureless countryside near Grantham, announced by a barbed-wire perimeter fence and a guardhouse with security barriers. It had been bought up cheap by Oliver Round ostensibly as a storage depot. Angleton understood its function perfectly.
Collard could have talked his way in. Opticon had been asked to cost an upgrade to the original security system, which he had previously supplied. Angleton saw the smudged black-and-white images of Coldingham’s CCTV security system, rotating screens showing nothing happening, frames so empty of movement they could have been photographs. He was struck by the mysterious vastness. Storage bunkers had been added with its acquisition.
Had Collard gained access to those grassed-over humps that covered the new bunkers he would have stood overwhelmed by the secret arsenal of hardware, carefully stored in bay after bay, with enough gleaming cannon shells and short-range missiles to destroy a city. The bays might have reminded him of an enormous library of weapons.