by Chris Ryan
Even now, I still need to feel the adrenaline of a fight.
He trooped back down the alley, stormed inside the Drunken Monkey and found Kamlai at a spare table messing about on her phone. He motioned for her to leave and they moved at a fast pace down the alley, merging with the crowd on the main street before the cops showed up.
They headed south down Sukhumvit Soi 11 for a quarter of a mile, passing a long line of hole-in-the-wall restaurants, youth hostels and garish nightclubs. They hung a left on Sukhumvit Road, ignoring the ladyboys touting for business as they continued south-east for another half a mile. A hundred metres before they hit the Radisson they turned off the main thoroughfare and approached the side entrance to Bald’s apartment building.
As he dug his key card out from his trouser pocket, Bald could feel the hot stirring in his loins again. Beating the crap out of the England fans had put him in the mood. Bald wanted to celebrate.
He was looking forward to giving Kamlai the shag of her life.
Violence, thought Bald.
Better than Viagra, when it came to putting him in the mood.
Then his phone buzzed.
NINE
Eleven o’clock at night in Bangkok was five o’clock in London. Four minutes before he received the message, ex-SAS operator John Porter sat in a windowless basement, fighting a powerful urge to have a drink.
It was an urge he’d fought many times over the years.
One year, two hundred and nineteen days had passed since Porter had last touched a drop of the strong stuff. There had been moments when he was tempted to have a slug of Bell’s, but Porter had resisted. After years of hitting the bottle, he was finally sober.
But he could never be completely free of his addiction. Whenever he was stressed or angry, the old thirst came back. The need to drink himself into oblivion.
And right now, Porter was feeling pissed off.
He turned away from the small TV fixed to the wall and glanced at the thickset bloke sitting across from him at the chipped kitchen table.
Derek Sinclair, like Porter, was ex-Regiment. The pair of them had been assigned by their PMC to house-sitting duties, providing round-the-clock security for the twelve-bedroom mansion overlooking Kensington Palace Gardens. They worked in twelve-hour shifts, slept in bunk beds in the bedroom adjoining the basement kitchen and had their meals fixed up for them by the housekeeping staff upstairs.
Nothing ever happened except when the owner, a minor member of the Qatari royal family, rolled into town. Which was almost never. The only entertainment on offer was the Freeview package on the TV, along with complimentary membership at the local gym. The job involved weeks of sitting around doing nothing, punctuated by the occasional visit from the Qatari royals. There could be no duller or less demanding job for an ex-SAS man.
No stress. No danger.
Nobody shooting at you.
The job was just a placeholder. A way of keeping Porter in salaried work between ops for MI6. Several years had passed since he’d left the Regiment. Since then, Porter had been working for Six on a semi-regular basis. But Vauxhall wasn’t in the charity business. They weren’t able to offer him a steady income. Instead he’d been given a job with a British security contractor, run by someone with close ties to the intelligence services.
The arrangement was simple. Whenever MI6 needed Porter’s talents, the PMC’s directors would pull him off the gig and replace him with someone else. When the job was over, he’d return to work as if nothing had happened.
It was Six’s way of keeping him on standby, without dipping into their pockets.
Porter didn’t care.
He wanted dull.
Dull was good.
Dull meant he wasn’t going to reach for the vodka bottle and go back down that dark, destructive path.
But after sharing a room with Derek Sinclair for two months, Porter was ready to snap.
At fifty-four, Sinclair was two years older than Porter. They were close in age, but miles apart in terms of personal hygiene. Sinclair was the dirtiest guy Porter had worked with. He rarely showered, and wore the same white shirt for three or four days in a row when on the job. He didn’t even bother to change out of his gym kit after a running session, stinking out the cramped living quarters he and Porter shared.
Sinclair was also a professional bullshit merchant.
The guy was full of himself, despite the fact he’d been booted out of the Regiment for being a prize-winning dick. Whenever they were in the same room, he’d start bragging about previous ops he’d done or places he’d visited. He told the same old stories, over and over. Reliving the glory days of his time in the Regiment.
In Porter’s experience, some blokes never moved on after they left the SAS. They spent their time looking back on their careers through rose-tinted glasses, shooting the shit about old COs and weaponry, and generally boring the life out of anyone in listening range.
Sinclair was one of those guys.
For the first few weeks Porter had done his best to ignore him and concentrate on the job. But now they had been cooped up inside the Qataris’ mansion for two months. And Sinclair was really getting on his nerves.
A six-pack of Carling would help block this idiot out.
He took another sip of his coffee and tried to focus on the news channel. The main story was about a shootout in downtown Washington, DC. A lawyer in his early forties had been shot dead, and another victim had been wounded in the leg. The shooters had managed to flee the scene of the crime. Police were not treating the incident as a terrorist attack but the investigators said they were looking at all possible angles. The president had sent out a tweet suggesting whoever was responsible would be punished severely, along with anyone who’d assisted them.
Yeah, thought Porter. Because there’s nothing that criminals fear more than being threatened on Twitter.
The news shifted to the next item. A story about the new president meeting with the Russian ambassador. There was an accompanying shot of them both, shaking hands for the cameras, grinning like a pair of wanking monkeys.
‘This job is a bag of bollocks,’ Sinclair moaned in his Brummie drawl.
Porter set down his coffee mug. Turned to Sinclair and shrugged.
‘It’s not so bad,’ he said.
Sinclair made a face. ‘Are you off your nut, mate? We’ve been sitting on our arses for weeks on end, doing sod-all except patrolling this gaff. What’s so bloody great about that?’
‘It’s quiet,’ Porter replied. ‘Plenty of free time to stay fit. And the pay’s steady. There’s plenty of worse jobs.’
And I should know. I’ve done a fair few of them.
Sinclair snorted. ‘Speak for yourself, mate. This work is doing my fucking head in.’
That makes two of us, Porter thought to himself.
He took another sip of his coffee, half-wishing that he’d laced it with a double-measure of whisky.
‘I’m a fucking Regiment legend, me,’ Sinclair droned on in his dull voice. ‘I should be doing better than this. Thirty grand a year, for guarding this place? Do me a favour. I’m worth more than that.’
‘If you say so,’ Porter said through clenched teeth.
‘I do, mate. I do. I mean, look at me.’ Sinclair pointed to his flat stomach. ‘Rock-hard abs, these. Have a feel, if you want.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Suit yourself. But I’m telling you, I’m still in good nick. Better than half them lads over at Hereford these days. Reckon I could still pass Selection and all.’
Porter gave a dry laugh. ‘Sure, mate.’
This guy’s delusional. He’ll be telling me he could storm the Iranian embassy single-handedly next.
Sinclair’s expression hardened. ‘I’m serious, Porter. You might be ready for the scrapheap, but I ain’t. I’ve still got something to offer. I should be out in Syria making top whack, not pissing about here.’
Why don’t you just fuck off then, Porter was tempted t
o reply. But he kept his mouth shut. He clenched his jaw, gripped by a sudden desire to punch Sinclair in the face. Another twelve weeks of this bollocks, he thought to himself as the blood boiled in his veins. Another three months of listening to this tosser bigging himself up, telling the same old tales and stinking out the basement with his dirty kit.
It’s almost enough to make me want to go back to working for those backstabbing bastards at Six.
Almost.
His phone trilled urgently on the kitchen table.
New message.
Porter swiped to unlock and tapped the icon.
The message was from his daughter, Sandy. It said, ‘Corey & me had a big fight. Kicked me out . . . Now saying he won’t pay maintenance. Don’t know where else to go. Pls call me back. S xx.’
Porter felt another wave of anger surge up into his guts. Corey was Sandy’s long-term waster of a boyfriend. The pair of them lived in a shoebox flat in Bromley and had been on and off more times than the light switches at a hotel full of OCD sufferers. Things between the two of them had become worse after Sandy announced she was pregnant. Now it seemed like Corey had made good on his threat to give her the boot.
He scooped up the phone, slipped on his jacket and stood up from the kitchen table. Sinclair looked up at him, a look of confusion playing out on his face.
‘Where you off to, mate?’
‘Out,’ said Porter. ‘For a stroll.’
‘But you’re on shift in twenty minutes.’
‘Then I’ll be back in nineteen.’
If I spend another minute in this basement, I’ll end up nutting this twat.
Sinclair started to say something in reply but Porter was already stepping out of the living quarters. He passed the broom cupboards and utility rooms and private cinema, then climbed the ornate staircase leading up to the ground-floor reception room. Porter crossed the room, beat a path across the wide entrance hall and headed for the main doors. One of the Portuguese maids was busy dusting surfaces and she nodded quickly at Porter as he hit the doors and stepped outside.
The chill London air was a relief after the stuffy confines of the basement. Porter trotted down the pathway, slipped out of the gate and brought up Sandy’s contact details on his phone. Hit Dial.
The phone rang. And rang.
No answer.
Porter tried again, then hung up without leaving a message.
Well, fuck it.
He turned right and marched south towards Kensington High Street. The gym he used was situated off the main street but Porter wasn’t interested in smashing his personal best on the treadmill today. Without even thinking about it he found himself making his way towards one of the nearby boozers. Like any seasoned alcoholic Porter had scouted the area when first taking on the job and he knew where all the decent drinking holes were to be found. The place he had in mind was down a side street, sixty metres south of the main thoroughfare.
Porter had started drinking back in the Regiment. He’d been part of an op in Beirut that went disastrously wrong. Three Blades died that day, and although he’d been cleared of any wrongdoing, Porter had taken the blame for their deaths.
Shortly after, he turned to the bottle.
For a while, he’d managed to hide it from his superiors. But eventually the drinking cost him everything.
His career, his home.
His family.
Ten years ago, he’d been a dishevelled wreck, sleeping rough and drinking cans of K cider while he begged for pennies from the commuters outside Victoria station.
He’d worked hard to rebuild his life since then.
He’d cleaned up his act. Kicked the bottle. Taken up a job working as an asset with MI6. Porter had even patched things up with Sandy. For years she’d refused to have anything to do with him. Now they spoke once a week. Like a proper father and daughter.
Things were settled, but fragile.
The slightest stress or frustration could set him off, Porter knew. On those days, he struggled.
Today was one of those days.
He reached the pub in a few quick strides. An old-school place tucked away in the shadows, it had somehow avoided being transformed into an organic coffee house or a gluten-free pizzeria. It was the kind of place that still had a darts board on the wall and a one-armed bandit in the corner and a menu that hadn’t been updated since the 1970s.
Porter stepped inside and made for the bar. A familiar pub smell lingered in the air. Eau de Fag Ash. The woman behind the bar looked fifty or thereabouts and shot him a bored look. Porter ran his eyes over the array of craft beers he’d never heard of.
Just one pint.
Something to take the edge off.
Porter knew he was making excuses. Classic alcoholic behaviour. I need a drink because of X or Y. But he was beyond caring. I just want to have a bloody pint.
‘Yes, love?’ the woman asked.
He was about to order when his phone trilled urgently in his jacket pocket.
Porter stepped away from the bar as he fished out the handset. He swiped to unlock. Glanced down at the phone.
A new text message.
But this one wasn’t from Sandy.
The sender’s number wasn’t any of the paltry few in his Contacts list. It was just a long line of numbers that meant nothing to him. The message was just three short sentences, fourteen words long.
And seemingly innocuous.
Your mother wants to meet at the tea room. The usual place. Saturday. 12pm.
Porter knew what the message meant as soon as he read it. He’d received dozens of similar notes in the past, all framed in the same coded language.
Mother was his handler at Vauxhall. Tea room was the private suite at the Lancaster Hotel off Euston Road, regularly swept for bugs, and used by Six as a briefing room when meeting with their outside assets. The date was straightforward but to get the correct time you had to deduct three hours. So midday indicated the meeting was actually scheduled for nine o’clock in the morning.
Porter read the message through once more, then hit Delete.
He didn’t know what Six wanted with him. There was no clue in the message about the job.
But I know one thing, Porter thought.
My boring life is over.
He cast a long, wistful glance at the bar.
Then he turned and left.
TEN
Thirty-nine hours after he got the message, Bald stepped out of the taxi in front of the Lancaster Hotel. He handed over a pair of twenties to the driver and took the change. The thick-bearded driver waited for a tip that never came and gave Bald the stink-eye before pulling out into the choked traffic of Euston Road in rush hour. Bald watched the guy for a few moments then made his way up the flagstoned taxi rank towards the hotel entrance. He was fourteen minutes early for the meeting.
He’d taken the first available flight out of Thailand, catching the eleven o’clock service to Heathrow direct from Bangkok International, on a creaking old Boeing 747 that served up cheap heated meals and overpriced cans of Belgian lager. Bald didn’t much care, because he wasn’t picking up the tab. Thirteen hours later, he touched down at Heathrow. Collected his brown leather holdall from the luggage carousel, grabbed a taxi from the long line outside the terminal. Fifty-seven minutes later he arrived outside a serviced apartment block in Aldgate, a quarter of a mile from Liverpool Street station.
Kliner Security owned the apartment, one of several they had scattered around the city. Paid for with the profits creamed from the decade-long wars in the Middle East, and the major security contracts handed out to private companies in the years since. The place had everything he needed, and a load of stuff he didn’t. Designer coffee machine, a TV with more apps than channels, a fridge the approximate size of a meat locker.
By the time he’d checked in and unpacked his bag, it was ten o’clock in the evening. He awoke early the next morning, showered and fixed himself a pot of black coffee before catching another cab to t
he Lancaster. Bald didn’t feel jetlagged. The opposite, in fact. He remembered reading in a magazine somewhere that travelling east was always worse than travelling west. Some science bollocks.
Let’s get this over and done with, Bald thought as he swept through the sliding glass doors into the lobby.
The hotel was a solid three-star job. Plain walls, cheap furniture that came in various shades of beige. Nothing spectacular. Evidence of the new accountability at Vauxhall. Six didn’t go in for the lavish five-star places any more. Not with Whitehall pen-pushers scrutinising every invoice and receipt. Hotels like the Lancaster were cheaper, and more anonymous.
Bald scanned the lobby, searching for his usual handler. There was no sign of the guy, so he beat a path towards the bar located on the far side of the lobby. The place was half-empty. A few men and women in suits, sipping on flat whites while they crowded around laptop screens or chattered on their phones.
Apparently not an MI6 agent among them.
Bald knew the type. Stern, humourless, pretending to look casual while they studied their surroundings. They were unlikely to be staring hard at a PowerPoint presentation.
But he did see one familiar face in the bar.
The guy was sitting at a table in the far corner. Dressed in a dark short-sleeved shirt and a pair of beige combats, sipping a cup of black coffee while he people-watched through the window.
Not a businessperson.
Someone Bald recognised immediately.
He moved past the suits before drawing to a halt in front of the table. Nodded at the coffee cup and said, ‘Shouldn’t that be a pint of wine?’
John Porter looked up. He blinked, stood up from his chair and smiled at his old mucker.
‘Jock. Jesus.’
‘Expecting someone else, mate?’
‘No one.’ Porter creased his brow. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I get a kick out of hanging out in crap London hotels. What the fuck do you think?’
Porter thought for a beat, nodded. ‘Six reached out to you as well.’
‘Aye.’
‘They didn’t say anything to me.’
‘Does that surprise you?’