“The second,” he shrugged. “The first type can usually be persuaded to go with a pay-off. The second are childish narcissists. They want publicity and a safe billet somewhere open and free. Like Russia.”
I peeled open some marmalade and scooped it out with my finger. It tasted bitter and sweet. “How does this concern me?”
Marcus’ eyes hardened. “My bad apple is involved in a delicate operation. Yes, in Africa.”
“So my next job is already compromised?”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “I’d be remiss not to consider you as an asset, perhaps flush out the suspect.”
“Who’s your traitor? And what does it have to do with a prison break?”
Marcus fixed me with piggy eyes. They shone with cunning. “I don’t know who the traitor is. All four suspects are in the field. I don’t want to scare them off with a formal investigation, not in the middle of planning such a risk-laden operation.”
“Where do I fit in?” I replied. “It’s not like we ever meet spooks.” It was a golden rule that we never directly interacted with intelligence agencies. That way we remained deniable and they kept their arses covered. When I’d first met Marcus, entirely unintentionally, my handlers found out and went ape-shit.
“Ach, you’re too sharp for me. We’re deliberately exposing you to them, breaking a rule. It will make them feel more trusted and therefore more likely to make a mistake. Usher them into the inner sanctum, see what they do…”
“I’m not sure I like being bait,” I snapped.
“You didn’t seem to mind on your last job for the Germans.”
“I had a rifle and a target,” I shrugged. “I can handle that, but not your spy-games.”
“Oh come now,” he cooed. “The current DIADEM agrees. We’ve ensured all four suspects are DIADEM-indoctrinated.”
DIADEM was the codename of the deniable MI6 officer who tasked The Firm via our handlers, an arm’s-length proxy. And I only knew that because Marcus’ late wife, also a career spook, had once been DIADEM. His knowledge of The Firm was one of the things I intended to prise out of him.
Marcus pushed a steel key-ring towards me.
It looked like one of those novelty bottle openers you get in upmarket Christmas crackers. Mind you, I drink a lot of beer so it was less of a novelty and more of a lifestyle essential.
“There’s a GCHQ-grade encrypted memory stick hidden in that. It contains profiles of the four SIS officers. Their operation was called CORACLE. You’re tidying up, getting an asset out of there.”
“Who thinks up operation names?” I asked. “Isn’t a coracle a little round boat?”
“It is,” Marcus smiled. “But this one’s sprung a leak. And the leaker is, I’m convinced, siphoning intelligence to the Chinese Ministry of State Security.” The Chinese were buying up Africa piece by piece. Corrupt African politicians were in the pocket of Beijing, China aggressively seeking resources to fuel its relentless economic expansion. Mind you, they weren’t doing anything we hadn’t pioneered a hundred years ago.
“I’m being asked to play detective again.”
“Don’t be modest, Cal. You’re an excellent problem-solver, I like that about you.”
“I don’t like it,” I replied. Playing spook Cluedo in some hostile East African war-zone wasn’t my idea of fun. I’d rather be in a field in Kurdistan, being shot at by big-game hunters.
“I’m afraid it’s Hobson’s choice. The alternative is to explain to your new handler why we’ve had this meeting.” Marcus looked sadly at his next croissant.
“True,” I shrugged.
“Alternatively,” Marcus continued, “go on this operation anyway and get killed because you didn’t identify the treacherous bastard planning on selling you out.”
“So what’s in it for me?”
“This life you’re in, an indentured gun? You do want out, don’t you? Maybe knowing more about The Firm might help?”
“Sure,” I said. “We both know my chances of surviving ‘til the end of my contract.”
“If it doesn’t send you mad first, Calum. Are you still on medication?”
“Booze, mainly,” I replied.
Marcus nodded. “I’m prepared to give you some information. In fact, you might find a report on that memory stick, just to whet your appetite. It will automatically wipe itself after you’ve read it, just to be safe.”
First Harry, now Marcus... It was like The Firm was a dam, holding back a dark reservoir of secrets. Was I being offered the chance to make the first crack in it? “Why are you offering me this?”
“It’s in my interest,” he shrugged, offering me a sticky pastry.
“What happens when I’ve identified the target?”
“I’ve yet to decide,” he glowered. “I’ve a range of options to manage the… traitor.” Marcus took the mobile he’d given me from the table. He replaced it with a compact satellite phone. “From now on use this.”
I looked at the phone. It was a good quality commercial brand, the type a security contractor would take into the field.
“It looks normal enough,” said Marcus, “but it’s been through the propeller-heads at GCHQ. It’s as encrypted as it’s going to get.”
He stood up, the meeting over.
“How often do you want me to call in?” I asked. I had no option but to accept. Seldom had a rat been put in such a baroque maze, and with such a compelling piece of cheese at the end.
“I’ll call you,” he replied. “And, for what it’s worth, thanks for… ”
“Please don’t say help,” I interrupted. “It suggests a level of choice.”
“OK, how about understanding? Will that do?
“I guess,” I replied. I walked towards the door, the satellite phone clasped to my chest.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel, Cal.”
I shot him a look.
“There’s change in the air, Captain Winter, it’s like a bad smell. Men like you and I need to seize any opportunities from it, if we’re to survive. I’m going to need you.”
“Everybody’s talking in bloody riddles at the moment, Marcus.”
“I know.” The SIS man smiled and returned to his breakfast. “We’ll talk after you get back from Africa.”
The bastard was toying with me. Along with what Harry had said, I was sure big wheels were turning. Leaving the room, I took a taxi to an electronics store on the Rue de Toul. I bought a tablet computer and a small digital camera and returned to my hotel. It was a quiet back street place, anonymous but comfortable. Plugging in the memory stick, I brought up the files. Navigating through the device, I could see that they were copy-protected. I tried to use a screen capture tool, but the program knew what I was trying to do. A dull pinging noise warned me it wouldn’t work. I suspected as much.
Scanning the material, I decided it was like low-alcohol beer. It tasted like beer but lacked the bite you needed for it to be beer. I needed context. I photographed each page with the camera, uploading the lot to an encrypted online drop-box.
Oz was due at any moment. I hid it for later. I’d sold the trip to Toulouse as R&R while we waited to fly back to London. So when Oz turned up we hit the bar, ordered cold beers.
“What have you been up to?” he said, chugging back a cold Kronenbourg.
“This and that,” I shrugged.
Oz patted me on the back. “You look like someone pissed in your cornflakes.”
“I’ve had enough of The Firm’s bullshit.”
Oz looked over my shoulder, into my room, and sipped his drink. “What are you going to do about it? All this dripping about The Firm is starting to get on my tits.”
I gave Oz a look. He wasn’t stupid. My plan, to screw over The Firm, on the other hand, was. “How can they stop us going public, blowing the whole thing open?”
Oz rubbed at the bags under his eyes. “For starters, you’ve been in the nut-house. You ain’t the most credible witness. And all you’ve got is a phone numb
er for a Handler you’ve never met.”
“But... what if I recorded all my conversations with them?”
“If they thought you were playing that game you’d be dead already.”
“Oz…”
“Don’t you think that for every job The Firm isn’t back-stopping you as a rogue head-case?”
I shook my head. “They can’t watch us all the time. I wonder if they watch us at all.”
“They do, but they can’t watch us all the time. They check up on us now and then. I know they do. They use paranoia to keep us in line.”
I had that itching feeling, like the one you get when you have a discussion about fleas. “Who are they?”
“You must have heard the stories,” said Oz. “They’ve got people who used to be like us. And if we get too lively, they’re the ones who make us disappear.”
“How do you know all this?”
The ex-SBS man shrugged. “I see people now and then, in the crowd or in a car near my place: people who used to be in this line of work. It’s not a coincidence.”
I scratched at my neck, felt it redden as I swallowed my drink. “Doesn’t it drive you nuts?” Something squirmed in my brain, the demons that I fought so hard to keep away. Hatred, for The Firm, for Marcus, for everything, buzzed in my head.
“No,” Oz shrugged.
“How do you deal with it?” I said, voice cracking.
“The Firm is better than the alternative. And when you’re time is up they let you go.” Oz patted my shoulder, “dig in, son, that’s my advice. Hack it for a bit longer then get out and enjoy your dough. It’s a clean slate, right?”
“It’s never a clean slate. I want The Firm gone, fucked up.”
“Why? What do you get out of it? And don’t say revenge.”
“Revenge.”
“Man the fuck up,” Oz laughed, finishing his beer. “Let’s watch the world go by. It might be the last opportunity we’ll get for a while, if we’re off to hot and sandy places.”
“Sure,” I half-smiled through gritted teeth. I felt the hate suddenly dissipate, like poison gas, from inside my head. “I wonder who we’re rescuing in Africa.”
Oz pulled a face. “Well, whoever the poor bastard is, they must be desperate.”
“Why?”
“They’ve hired us, haven’t they?”
CHAPTER THREE
London
We were taken to a decaying office block, overlooking a stretch of motorway. The room smelt of mildew, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling like little silk nooses. Briefings follow a familiar script: they wheel in bosses who won’t set foot on a two-way range, but want to meet the tame killers who will. They give you a plan full of holes and expect you to make it work.
Studying my fingernails, I ignored the spook at the door. At Heathrow he’d introduced himself as Hugo Jackson. He was a mixed-race guy of Chinese heritage, all spiky black hair and hipster clothes. “Shall I get us coffee?” he smiled. His accent was cut-glass English public school.
“I thought you’d never ask,” said Oz. He wore a new suit and a Royal Marines tie. He looked like he was dressed for a court appearance, or maybe a funeral.
Hugo was the first CORACLE suspect Marcus had identified. His report, anodyne and stripped to the barest details, contained nothing more than a skeleton resume for each suspect. I’d studied his file the night before. ‘Hugo Jackson’ was Hong Kong Chinese, with fluent Cantonese and Mandarin. English educated, he’d attended Harrow and Oxford. His British father, a bigwig at HSBC, landed him a job in cyber-security after Hugo graduated from Balliol. He was one of four officers entrusted with operation CORACLE, a cluster-fuck of epic proportions. That, and his links to China, made him a suspect.
He left the room to get coffee. Hugo struck me as a decent enough bloke: laid-back and polite. And for a posh public schoolboy, he was happy to fetch a brew. But experience taught me it meant nothing.
Ten minutes later Hugo returned with a tray of chipped coffee mugs, “Princess Juliet’s here,” he whispered.
A smartly business-suited woman and an ex-colleague of mine strode in behind him.
“I’m Juliet Easter,” said the woman. She was thirtysomething, with glossy chestnut hair and a wind-burnt, freckled face. Her accent had a trace of Africa in it, her voice exuding authority. She had a prettily broken nose, just wonky enough to be cute. “But, please, call me Juliet.”
Juliet Easter, CORACLE team leader, was the second suspect.
“Can we get a drink?” I said bluntly. I’d been dry for a day, and Easter’s confident manner irked me already. Weren’t we here to sort out her fuck-up?
“Cal… Relax,” Oz whispered.
“I was warned about your legendary interpersonal skills,” she replied easily, eyes locked playfully onto mine. I noticed that her fingernails were chewed. No wedding ring, either.
The guy loitering next to her was Tom Dancer. He’d been a company commander in my old battalion, half a lifetime ago. Unlike me, he’d been successful in SF selection, leaving as a Major after two tours on the SAS. He had a head of thick, fair hair and a broad, handsome face. He’d been a popular guy, tipped for high rank. “Cal,” he said, offering his hand. “You’re looking great, good to see you after all these years.”
“You don’t, you fat bastard,” I teased.
“Too many business lunches, old boy,” Dancer grinned, patting his paunch. Well over six-feet tall and barrel-chested, he wore a bold pinstripe suit and a Hermes tie. He looked like something out of a City of London investment bank.
“There’s a lot to cover and not much time,” said Easter. “Then, you never know, we might find you that drink. Tom, please begin. Hugo, you can go.”
Hugo nodded obediently, performed a theatrical bow and sauntered out of the office. “Of course, my moon and stars!” he purred over his shoulder. So, he was a George RR Martin fan, too. I wouldn’t like to be spoken to like that, and wondered if Hugo did either.
Easter rolled her eyes. “Geeks,” she sighed.
“What’s Hugo’s speciality?” I asked.
“What, apart from being an arse? Hugo’s role isn’t relevant at the moment,” Easter replied, firm but polite. “Tom?”
Dancer shot his cuffs. “You’ve heard about Mel Murray?”
“I saw the news,” I said, the penny beginning to drop. “He was taken prisoner by government forces in Zambute, right?” Zambute: your standard-issue basket-case African dictatorship, forever teetering on the brink of failure. It was like North Korea with wildebeest.
Oz nudged me and rolled his eyes.
“Yes,” Easter added. “The CIA world fact book describes the Zambutan-Somali annexed Zone as possibly the most dangerous place on earth.”
“You’re not selling this job to me,” I said.
“I don’t have to,” Easter replied, eyes sparkling. I couldn’t work out if Easter was agreeably jaded or simply trying to lighten the mood. She slipped off her jacket and sat down, revealing a neatly-ironed white blouse that contrasted nicely with her tan. I noticed Dancer quickly brush her leg with his hand below the table. She didn’t seem to mind.
Oz sipped his coffee. “Murray owns Focus Projects, right?”
A Private Security Company, Focus Projects boasted Mayfair offices and a corporate box for the rugby at Twickenham. Retired Generals queued up to beg their former juniors for a chance to sit on the board, earn a small fortune for a couple of days work a month ‘consulting.’
“I’m Ops Manager for Focus Projects,” said Dancer proudly. “Mel Murray isn’t just my boss, he’s a good friend. His work in Zambute wasn’t about energy security.”
That wasn’t the gossip I’d heard on the private security circuit. Apparently Murray was a bastard when he was CO of 22 SAS, fucking-up Tom Dancer’s chance of promotion to half-colonel. Then again, Dancer wasn’t the sort of bloke to hold a grudge, especially where a boatload of money was concerned.
“Since when does SIS care when a deniable drop
s in the shit?” I replied, straightening my leg. It still hurt when I flexed it.
“Murray was my responsibility,” Easter replied, not taking the bait. She pulled a file from a treble-locked case. “This contains what you need to know about Operation CORACLE, which was our effort to covertly disrupt Chinese economic expansion in Zambute.”
“CORACLE is fatally compromised,” Dancer added. “We’re implementing an exit strategy. Scooping Mel up is the last piece of that jigsaw.”
“The Chinese?” said Oz. “Ain’t we mates with them now?”
Easter shrugged. “The Treasury’s volte face on China hasn’t exactly… helped our position.”
Britain, like everyone else, was selling their crown jewels to Beijing. We were like a crippled war widow, shuffling off to a pawn-broker with her husband’s old medals. Meanwhile the Russians were creeping back across Eastern Europe like poison ivy, while we junked our military capability.
“No disrespect to Colonel Murray,” I said, “but why is he so important?”
“Yeah,” Oz added, “doesn’t he just get a token show trial and a couple of years in prison?”
Dancer put his hand on my arm. “Mel has…”
“…royally fucked up,” Easter snapped. Her steel-grey eyes flashed, a frond of glossy hair falling across her face.
I shouldn’t have noticed, especially not during a mission-critical briefing, but Juliet Easter looked smoking hot when angry. There was a slight flush on her face, flinty eyes almost feline when they narrowed. Her lips formed a lush pout, which made me think bad thoughts. Oz saw the look in my eye and guffawed. Like I cared - apart from booze and schadenfreude, nothing cheers me up like a beautiful woman.
“Colonel Murray is a grand-standing buffoon,” she scowled. “He’s wrecked two years of intelligence work playing Lawrence of Arabia.” She was even cuter when she sneered, discretely painted lips drawn back over a neat row of teeth.
Dancer sighed. “Well, I suppose Mel did step outside his brief.”
“Outside his brief…?” she snorted. “There’s blatant electoral gerrymandering down to Murray, as well as weapons procurement via groups the CIA have decided are linked to terrorists. It’s a diplomatic and political disaster if he cracks under torture.”
The Devil's Work Page 3