by Chris Ryan
‘I could. But she prefers blokes with a functioning cock. And a wallet that’s got more than a fiver in it.’
‘Bastard.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Bald polished off the last chunk of sausage, set down his knife and fork. Looked thoughtfully at his old mucker.
‘Tell you what, mate. If this goes to plan, we’ll take the leftover cash and hit up the go-go bars in Phuket. Celebrate my early retirement.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Porter.
‘Plenty of ladyboys in them places too,’ said Bald. ‘That’s more your sort of thing.’
‘Jock?’
‘Aye?’
‘Fuck off.’
Forty-two minutes later their flight was announced.
They breezed through the departure gate and squeezed into their seats near the front of the plane. They were booked on something called Economy Plus. Which meant they had about a quarter of an inch more legroom, and they got a personal USB charging point beneath their entertainment screens. The smile from the stewardess may have been friendlier too. Porter wasn’t sure. Women didn’t smile at him, as a general rule of thumb.
He took the window seat and gave Bald the aisle. A conscious decision. To put more distance between himself and the drinks trolley. Long-haul flights were one of his weak points. Hours of sitting around doing nothing, free booze being dangled in front of you by blonde stewardesses with massive tits. It was all too easy for Porter to give in to temptation and knock back a few miniatures.
People think once you’re sober, that’s the hard part over. But that’s bollocks. Being sober is when the work really begins.
The plane taxied along the runway while one of the flight assistants went through the long, boring safety routine. No one was paying attention. People were still tapping out emails on their phones, fiddling with laptop cables and earbuds or wrapping up calls to their co-workers or partners. In the midst of all this organised chaos, Porter sat back and stared out the window. He thought about the mission.
A shootout in downtown Washington.
An ex-spy on the run, armed with a dossier that people were willing to kill for.
The dossier is worse than your run-of-the-mill scandal, Tannon had said at the briefing. Far, far worse. If it ended up being made public, heads would roll.
Lots of them.
The same questions stabbed away repeatedly at Porter, like a bunch of ice picks to the base of his skull.
Who found out about the dossier?
What was inside it?
And why were the guys on the snatch squad after it?
The third point was easier to answer than the first two. According to what Tannon and Moorcroft had told them, whoever was after the dossier wanted to intercept Street before he went public. To shut him down.
But why?
What could Street have found that was so important? Bald had suggested a list of double-agents working for the Kremlin. Perhaps it was really that simple.
I don’t know, thought Porter. But whatever’s in that document, someone is taking a big risk trying to seize it. They’d sent a team of professionals to DC, and they’d risked discharging their weapons in public in order to stop Street getting away.
The voice in the back of his head piped up again. The one that told him he was missing something.
Something big.
The engines roared. The plane lurched as it nosed up into the sky. Lights pinged and beeped. Porter thought some more about the op, without getting anywhere. Maybe Bald was right, the voice told him. Maybe it’s none of our bloody business.
Just get in, find Street, and get the hell out again.
The rest is none of your concern.
He closed his eyes and settled into a troubled sleep.
FIFTEEN
They touched down in DC eight hours later. Ten-thirty in the morning, local time. Porter had slept shittily and intermittently. Bald had spent the flight watching crap action flicks on the tiny screen in front of him, in between flirting with the stewardess on the drinks trolley, a black woman with an arse the size of a drum kit. The woman wasn’t biting, but Bald didn’t take it personally. He just kicked back and enjoyed the view.
It took them twenty-four minutes to clear through immigration. Bald went first, followed by Porter. They were asked a ton of questions. Where they were staying, how much money they had on them, where they planned on travelling to while in the US. Then they were fingerprinted and digitally photographed and welcomed into the Land of the Free.
They needed wheels, so they skipped past the taxi rank and took the shuttle bus for the short hop to the cluster of car rental facilities located on Autopilot Drive. They made a beeline for the Enterprise desk and gave the booking details for the rental Six had arranged for them back in London. The over-enthusiastic assistant had them sign a bunch of forms then handed over the keys for a mid-size white Honda Civic, automatic. A small car by American standards. Practically a stretch limo, compared to the average British motor. But also the most popular vehicle in the US. It would allow Porter and Bald to blend in effectively with their environment.
Porter loaded up the built-in GPS system and punched in the address for the Hilton on Connecticut Avenue. The Civic had that new-car feel to it. Engine purring, all the new parts working in harmony as they bulleted along the freeway. The navigator guided them east along VA-267 and then onto I-66, past Arlington and Rosslyn, the outer satellites orbiting around the big hub of DC. After twenty miles they crossed the bridge over Roosevelt Island and headed east along Constitution Avenue, past the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans’ Wall. They hung a left on 18th Street, got snarled in traffic and inch-crawled their way north through Dupont Circle. Twelve minutes later they steered the Civic into the Hilton underground car park.
They checked in at the reception desk, collected their room cards and dumped their bags in the twin room.
‘Not bad,’ Bald said as he cast an eye over the room. ‘Better than the usual shithole Six puts us up in.’
Porter grinned. ‘You’re used to luxury these days, Jock?’
‘Too bloody right. You should see my pad in Bangkok. Five-star living, that. Got our own spa and gym and everything.’
‘How’d you afford it all? Kliner aren’t paying us big money.’
‘Thailand, mate. Cheap as fuck out there. Everyone knows that.’
‘I thought that was just the women.’
Bald gave him the evil eye and ducked into the toilet for a piss. Porter fished out his burner phone from the side pocket on his cargo trousers. Fired it up, then tapped the Contacts icon and scrolled down to the names listed under ‘C’. He found the number listed for T.C., and hit Dial. Then he pressed the handset to his ear.
Cooper answered on the second ring.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Who’s this?’
Porter gave his name. ‘Dom sent us. We’re friends of hers. We just arrived in town.’
‘At long bloody last. It took them long enough to send someone.’
The guy didn’t sound like the average MI6 agent, thought Porter. Not a posh twat. More like a barrow boy who’d worked his way up the corporate ladder. Maybe a grammar-school education, followed by a scholarship to Cambridge. There was still a trace of a northern accent there. Manchester, possibly. Porter had spent some time there as a kid, back when his family had moved over from Belfast. A brief stay in a rundown terrace, before they had moved south to Luton. Porter had been six years old at the time. The Northern Irish kid thrown into a rough school, forced to stand up for himself. These days, he didn’t even have an accent.
He said, ‘Where’s the RV?’
Cooper said, ‘Do you know the Dupont Hotel?’
Porter had studied a layout of DC and the surrounding terrain on Google Maps during his downtime back at the serviced apartment in London. ‘I know the one.’
‘There’s a wine bar next to it. The Blue Room.’ He added, ‘I can give you a lift if you pr
efer?’
‘No need,’ Porter replied. ‘We’ll see you there. What time?’
‘This evening. Six o’clock.’
Porter checked his G-Shock. 1156 hours.
The meeting time will be whatever Cooper says, minus four hours, Moorcroft had said back in London. So 1800 meant they’d be meeting at 1400 hours. A little over two hours from now.
‘We’ll be there,’ Porter said.
Bald and Porter left the Hilton forty-nine minutes later. They’d showered and changed out of the clothes they’d travelled in, swapping their thick shirts for looser-fitting flannel shirts over their cargos. Both wore chukka boots, with Porter carrying one of the guide books Moorcroft had given them and Bald clutching a folded-up tourist map of DC he’d snagged from the hotel reception.
They both looked exactly like their cover suggested: a pair of middle-aged Brits on a sightseeing trip.
They took a long detour to the RV. Along the way they ran a few basic anti-surveillance measures, heading down the side streets, changing direction in the middle of the road and stopping in front of shop windows to see if anyone had eyes on them.
One hour before the meeting, they reached the RV.
The hotel was situated a hundred metres south of Dupont Circle, a grand old place with marble columns either side of the entrance and about a million American flags hanging from the portico above. To the right of the hotel stood the Blue Room wine bar. On the opposite side of the road, thirty metres away, Porter noticed a long row of shops. A Panera Bread bakery and a Wells Fargo and an organic coffee house.
They crossed the road, ducked inside the coffee house and found a table next to the window. From their position, Bald and Porter had a clear view of the wine bar across the street as well as the main approaches north and south of the hotel. They would spend the next hour monitoring the RV, observing to see if anyone had eyes on the place or if Cooper showed up early. It was unlikely that the agent was playing games with them but it was SOP in the field to run surveillance on any RV ahead of a planned meeting.
Bald sipped at his black coffee. Porter had ordered a latte the size of a forty-gallon drum, topped with about an inch of cream.
‘Don’t go trying to sneak anything in there,’ Bald said, nodding at his mucker’s drink. ‘You won’t be having any Irish coffee on the job.’
‘Like I said, I don’t do that shit any more. I’m clean.’
‘Aye. That’s what every drunkard says.’
‘You’re a cynical bastard.’
‘Maybe. But I’m a cynical bastard who’s gonna get his dick sucked back in Thailand. That’s more than you can say.’
They fell silent for a few moments while they OP’d the wine bar across the street. People came and went. Guys in suits entered, guys in suits left. Nobody was hanging around or looking out of place.
Porter took a swig of his epic coffee and said, ‘You think this Cooper bloke will know where to find Street?’
‘They’re best mates, or so Tannon reckoned. He’s got to have a good idea of where Street might have gone.’
‘He might be wrong.’
Bald shrugged. ‘This isn’t a difficult op, mate. It’ll be a few days here on Easy Street. We’ll get our man, stick him on a plane and do the debrief. Then I’m on the next flight to Bangkok.’
Porter looked unconvinced. ‘You really think Six will let you just walk away?’
‘After everything I’ve done for those wankers, I should hope so.’
‘This isn’t like quitting a job at Tesco. This is the secret service. They’ve got leverage.’
‘So have I.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Bald grinned. ‘All them years we’ve been working for Vauxhall and the Firm, I knew they’d try to shaft us one day. So I made plans. Hid a few things away, like.’
‘What things?’
‘My insurance policy,’ Bald replied cryptically. ‘Something that would make those fuckers think twice if they tried anything on.’
Porter stared at his mucker but Bald didn’t elaborate. Christ, thought Porter.
Jock’s even craftier than I reckoned.
He checked the clock on his burner.
1326 hours.
Thirty-four minutes until the meeting.
They watched.
And waited.
Thirty-three minutes later, a red-and-grey-striped taxi eased to a halt in front of the wine bar and a figure climbed out of the back seat.
Terry Cooper.
Porter recognised the agent from the recent snaps MI6 had included in their itineraries. Cooper looked just as smooth in real life as he did in the photos. Like a banker on the cusp of early retirement. The squash-playing physique, the hundred-buck haircut, the lantern jaw. Cooper was carrying a brown-leather attaché case, Porter noticed.
He straightened his back, adjusted his tie and made for the Blue Room. Porter and Bald observed him closely, watching his movements and his body language to see if anything was off. They were looking for tell-tale signs. A glance over the shoulder, indicating that someone knew or suspected they were being followed. Or a nod or visual acknowledgment of someone already in the immediate area. But Cooper didn’t look suspicious. He simply moved at a steady pace towards the entrance, looking straight ahead. Then he yanked the door open and stepped inside.
Through the lightly tinted glass Porter saw Cooper briefly scan the faces seated around the bar. He drew a blank. Checked his watch, as if making sure he had the right time. Shook his head and then beat a path over to a booth in the far corner, away from the crowd of afternoon drinkers. Bald and Porter got up from their table and left the coffee house.
The Blue Room was a hipster’s idea of a speakeasy. Hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, brass pendant lighting. A long line of beers on draught, cocktails served up in mason jars. Half a dozen trim guys in tailored suits sat around the bar, tapping out emails between taking swigs of their craft beers. Some sort of jazz music played over the sound system. There was no TV. It was that kind of joint.
Cooper had been given photos of Bald and Porter, evidently. Because he stood up to greet them as soon as they approached the booth at the far end of the bar.
‘Terry Cooper,’ he said. ‘You must be the guys Dom sent.’
‘Aye,’ Bald said. ‘That’s us.’
They pumped hands. Cooper had a firm handshake, abrupt. ‘You’re right on time. That’s good. I like punctuality. Please, take a seat. We should order something. Then we’ll get down to brass tacks.’
A waitress came over and took their drink orders. Cooper went for a bottle of fifteen-dollar mineral water. Bald took a full-fat Coke. Porter’s eyes lingered for a moment on the selection of bourbons on the menu. They had Wild Turkey 81 proof, Four Roses yellow label, Makers Mark, Woodford Reserve. All the good stuff. He thought about ordering a double. Imagined necking the booze, the warm feel of it as it slicked down his throat and flowed through his bloodstream, silencing the voices inside his head.
He looked up and saw Bald staring at him. There’s no way I can order a drink while Jock’s around, he thought. Porter reluctantly settled on a Diet Coke instead.
The waitress moved away. Cooper sized Porter and Bald up, as if examining cuts of meat at his local butcher. Porter glanced at the attaché case next to Cooper. It looked expensive. He guessed the guy had come to the RV straight from the British embassy.
‘Dom tells me you’re experts at this sort of thing,’ Cooper said.
Porter nodded. ‘Exfils. Yeah, you could say that.’
‘I must say, you’re a bit on the old side. I wasn’t expecting Six to send a couple of pensioners.’
‘Ant and Dec were all booked up,’ Bald replied drily. ‘So you’ve got us instead, mate.’
Cooper glared at him. ‘Is this some sort of joke to you?’
‘This is what we do for a living,’ Porter insisted. ‘That’s all you need to know.’
The conviction in his voice seemed to sa
tisfy Cooper. The guy eased back into his seat and folded his hands.
‘Very well. I’ll make this brief. There isn’t much time, as you’re probably aware, and I’m worried Charles is seriously out of his depth.’
Porter said, ‘Six already filled us in on what happened.’
‘How much did Dom tell you?’
‘The basics. Everything we needed to know. Nothing we didn’t.’
Cooper smiled like a proud father. ‘That sounds like Dom. Very discreet. I taught her well, it seems.’
‘You were her boss?’
‘In a way. A long time ago. I was more of a mentor, you might say. I helped Dom, back when she was still finding her feet at Vauxhall. I can’t take all the credit for her rise, though. Dom’s done very well for herself.’
‘She didn’t mention you two had previous.’
‘She wouldn’t. But we know each other well. She’s the reason you two are here, as a matter of fact.’
‘How’d you mean?’
‘Six was wary about getting involved with the disappearance of a disgraced former agent. Too much baggage for their liking. But as soon as Dom heard about the situation, she agreed to intervene. My name still carries weight around Vauxhall, it seems.’
Cooper flashed a smile full of fake modesty. His smile, his clothes, his accent: everything about Cooper suggested a guy who had worked very hard to pass himself off as old-school MI6. Porter could sense his patience wearing thin, and they’d had only been chatting for a few minutes.
‘You and Street must be good mates,’ he said.
‘More than that. Charles is a very dear friend to me. He might not be with Six any more, but he didn’t deserve everything that happened to him over the years.’
‘You mean all the stuff about getting sacked for shagging that Russian?’
Cooper nodded. ‘Charles is a bit of a maverick, I suppose. One of the last of the old school. He had a certain way of doing things, you might say. In the old days you could get away with that sort of thing, but not any more. The poor chap couldn’t change.’
‘But you did.’
‘I’m adaptable. One of the reasons I’ve thrived in this job. But Charles is very much his own man. Always has been.’