The Vengeance Man

by John Macrae

"I'm afraid so." He looked hard at me, almost sympathetically. "It's hard to believe, isn't it?"

  For once that evening, we were in total agreement. I was silent. It was hard to believe. Isaac Roberts was no ordinary criminal or IRA terrorist. He was one of the most important men in the world: and one of the most visible too. The Roberts Group and his Global Holdings or whatever it was called owned several newspapers and that’s how he’d got his peerage in UK. If he'd been Italian he'd probably have been Prime Minister by now - several times... I desperately searched my memory banks; the last I'd heard of him was addressing the European Parliament about the need for a new banking system. It hadn't gone his way, I recalled, and he'd gone off in a huff in a private jet to his château in Switzerland. Or his island in the West Indies. Roberts was different; Christ, he had a huge house in Los Angeles and owned the biggest chunk of foreign companies in America. He'd tried to do a deal with Microsoft. He was supposed to have some links with the Russian Mafia, I’d read somewhere. But Roberts? The man was huge. He wasn't at all what I had been expecting. Lord Roberts was major.

  Mallalieu looked at me, pityingly. "Now I've told you who it is, does it make any difference to you?"

  I considered. "No. Not if you can convince me he's what you say he is."

  "Oh, I can provide you with all the evidence you need. Global Holding Corporation Incorporated Is one of the biggest providers of money laundering for the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. GHi is the controller of all pretty well all organized crime in the U.S. All of it mind you: if you start up peddling dope on your own, once you get above a certain level, then you're either busted, join the team or get killed. This is fact, not fiction, remember I'm telling you now; facts."

  I sat silent. Mallalieu pressed on looking grim. "GHi effectively runs the Russian Mafia by cleaning its money for it and providing markets for most of its goods. Mainly through Iceland. Now it’s Cyprus. Lots of little companies. All with mysterious sources of finance. A lot of it comes through EC offshore phony companies.”

  “No wonder the EU never publish their accounts.”

  Mallalieu nodded and smiled before going on: “Every train load of copper or oil coming out of Russia is taxed by the Mafia and paid off to GHi. Great chunks of it go to the Kremlin – personally. GHi organized all the arms sales to Iran, the IRA and any other half baked terrorist organization ready to cause trouble. It was GHi blew up the Railway Station in Algeria last year. At least, their local associates did. It was Roberts’ gang that bankrolled Saddam for years and backed Al Qa’ida long before anyone had even heard of it. Through bent Pakistanis and crooked banks. The CIA even helped him at one point. GHi organizes and runs pretty well all the illegal immigrant networks from North Africa into Italy, Greece, France and Spain. And Dover. It’s GHi that effectively owns half the congressmen in the USA and about one third of the European members of Parliament. Almost every drug sold in the world is done only with the permission and consent of GHi. Once a week two Colombians get off an aeroplane in Luxembourg and go to the International Banque with suitcases of high denomination dollar bills. This is fact, now, remember - not supposition. Hard fact – believe me."

  He stared at me with a kind of grim satisfaction.

  "The bank has a special team of tellers stood by, Tuesday morning and Friday morning. They even identify the duds and forgeries and politely hand them back. They hand back the duff dollars to the Colombian drug dealers! And who owns this famous bank?" He paused for breath. "Need I go on?"

  This I had not been expecting. "OK. OK. Assuming everything you say is true. How come he’s this great mastermind?"

  Mallalieu pressed his advantage. "But he is. He had a Board meeting of the key directors of his international group on a private little island in the Dutch Antilles last month. Every single one of the National Representatives of his organization was present. They didn't come as members of GHi, of course: they had their meeting the day before and others the day after. But, I promise you, Roberts chaired the meeting of his organization. "

  "I'll need proof."

  "It was in the bloody papers; Christ they even invited the Prime Minister to go and talk to them. The US Vice President went. Don't you read the newspapers?"

  "Of course I do: that's not what I meant. I meant proof that he's a crook, a ..." I petered out. I couldn't take it in.

  "Proof? Of course. I'll give it to you in the morning. You can look at it, but you can't take it away. I'll make you a deal: if you still believe me after you seen the evidence, can I take it he's yours? You'll sort him out?"

  I looked at him hard. "If he really is what you say he is, then I'd regard it as a public service. "

  "I thought you'd see it that way." Mallalieu smiled grimly; "Think of all those little voters in Romford..."

  A thought occurred to me; "Why the sudden rush to take him out now?"

  Mallalieu smiled again, but this time it was more of a grimace. "Because the bastard's a traitor too. A real full blooded double agent. Triple even; who knows?" Suddenly he looked haunted. "In fact, Roberts is a real..." and to my surprise he swore fluently and angrily in the language if the gutter.

  The evening was full of surprises. What had Roberts done to get Tom Mallalieu so worked up?

  Mallalieu continued. “This is all very delicate, you understand. Well, 'Six' tried to run Roberts, up to ten years ago." He was reminiscent. "They’d run high image commercial agents very successfully in the war. Practically invented the Hong Kong economy back in 1945. Well, that was SOE, really. The only gang to make a profit out of the war. So they put quite a lot of time and money into backing Roberts. Helped control international markets – economic intelligence. That kind of thing. Anyway, all he did was take their money and set up a string of offices as drug fronts. Then SIS discovered that he was offering himself as the CIA's chief source in London. They paid him, too. A lot more than SIS, of course, but it hurt, I can tell you. He had a lot of access to Westminster and the City, and he was the Chairman of one of the Independent Commissions reporting on the peace process in Northern Ireland. He had unbelievable access. Through him the Americans were getting a top level feed on UK and could use him and his companies to get indirect control of nearly all the terrorist movements in Ireland and then a good lead into the Balkans. Roberts’ companies indirectly supported a lot of the terrorist attacks, too. Worldwide. They got all the inside gossip from Westminster as well. The Yanks even had some daft idea of grooming him as a future Prime Minister at one time. Silly buggers.”

  "My God. You can't be serious. The Americans? Roberts? For PM?"

  "Oh, yes." Mallalieu looked even grimmer.

  "Even so," I said weakly, "That's not really a reason for topping him. What does that achieve? They're bound to retaliate."

  "Oh, wait. The best is yet to come. I said he was a double. Well, he's not just a lapsed SIS agent gone over to being an ex-CIA tout; their blue eyed-boy to run Britain, before he bought up half of California and decided to become a US citizen. He's also the Kremlin's front man, too!"

  "The Russians? I can't believe it."

  "It's true. I told you that he had big Russian connections. He's run by, if that's the right word for it now, by one Colonel Andrei Fedorchuk, the Russians’ main legal resident in London and Dublin. They've been grooming Roberts for the last three years as their candidate - one day - for some big office. Probably Secretary General of the United Nations, or the World Bank, I shouldn't wonder. The perfect front man."

  "How on earth did he get involved with the Russians?" I asked.

  "Business. Oh, that's not hard. Not since the Soviet Union collapsed. He did it by buying off most of the Russian political establishment, especially the ex-KGB guys who went into politics, and then financing every crooked deal they get up to in Moscow. He's the bastard that's siphoned off most of the International Monetary Fund cash to the Russian Mafia bosses. Almost every major company in the new Russia is now owned or run by GHi or one of its associates. Ironic, isn't it? He's
effectively bought Russia. Including most of the Duma and the Kremlin as well. I’m not sure if they’re running him or he’s running them."

  I thought that I was beyond surprise in the business, but this revelation shook me rigid. I tried to comprehend the complications. "I can't believe it. It's incredible." A thought struck me. "Do they know? I mean, do the Yanks know that Roberts is stringing for Moscow?"

  Mallalieu smiled. "That's a nice question. We don't know. We don't think so. But we do know that the Americans are really pissed off that GHi Corp has so much influence in Russia."

  "Why are they so pissed off?"

  "Because GHi moved quicker than Langley. The CIA and State Department had the same idea, but they couldn't move as fast as organised crime. Nothing beats the free market..."

  "Do they know all this?

  "I don't know," mused Mallalieu. "But they will soon. Once Roberts is killed."

  "And the Russians? Do they know that Roberts is - well - with the Yanks?"

  "We don't know that for certain, either. We think that he's still playing for them both. And trying to control crime in both countries. It's classic play: both ends against the middle stuff, and he probably thinks he's too big to get hammered. So that's why WE are going to take his piece off the board. And both the Russians and the Cousins are going to think that the other party's hacked their boy."

  I was silent, contemplating the magnitude of duplicity that must lie behind Roberts' activities. The international criminal dimension paled into insignificance alongside these latest revelations. But no doubt about it: Roberts must be smart to keep all theses balls in the air so successfully. And profitably too. He must have a mind like a gyroscopic computer.

  "Put it like this," said Mallalieu. "If the Russkis thought that they were being doubled, they'd drop him. Right? Dead in his tracks."

  "Probably literally. And so would the Yanks."

  "Exactly. Neither side could allow a man of that stature to play for the other's team - if they knew. You’ve got to remember this man is bigger, richer than most countries. And the organisation he fronts is certainly bigger. It’s got to be broken. Who knows what his real loyalties are? But I could take a pretty good guess.” Mallalieu heaved his shoulders in a dismissive, almost Gallic, gesture. "So there we are. It's neat, isn't it? And remember, once he's gone, there's no-one else in capable of putting together what Roberts has achieved. Not for some time, anyway. He's the only really mega-big fish: without him the Organization will probably split into its various pieces."

  I drained my glass and thought furiously. An image of Lord Roberts' smooth, plausible face endlessly mouthing sound bites of platitudinous telly-speak rose in my mind. I could hear him now: "The problem is one of world crime," he'd said on TV a few nights ago. "If only all the nations of the world would work together, these dreadful things wouldn't happen." I began to warm to my task, particularly now I knew who it was. A thought struck me.

  "How do we know, if the Russians and the Yanks haven’t sussed him out two-timing them? How good's your information?" I didn't really think that Mallalieu was setting me up, but I'd have been naïve not to check. And even more naïve to uncritically believe Mallalieu's answer.

  "Excellent. It's A-1; confirmed by impeccable sources. It's true all right, don't worry about that." He tapped his nose. “Let’s just say that Six and Five have for once got their act together.”

  "Well, why our Firm? Why don’t they do it? Why now?"

  "I can't tell you that sort of detail, because even I don't know. The liaison people don't tell me everything either. But I do know that HMG must be seen to have clean hands – officially. And I can assure you that the information is recent and all one hundred percent accurate. And the word from the top is it's urgent."

  "From the top?"

  "That's right." He pointed at the ceiling. "From the very top."

  I thought he was overplaying it: but Tom Mallalieu didn't overplay things. I nodded and took a deep breath. "Right. Seems clear enough. So how and when, Colonel ?"

  "Ah, well, there's a twist." I had suspected there might be. "You see, they want everyone to get the blame except us."

  I looked askance.

  "They - Whitehall - want the US to think it is the Russians, and the Russians to think it is the Americans. Certainly at the start. And when both sides tumble to it, we want them both to realise that it’s us, the Brits, saying, 'don't meddle in things that don't concern you: we're still the biggest player on our own turf. He was once one of ours. So we’ve sorted him.’ But Roberts has got to go - and seen to go as messily as possible - by all sides. Someone’s got to cut the head off the beast. And we’re the ones to do it."

  I tried to see the ramifications. It looked peculiar, but no more so than lots of deals in this business. Mallalieu probably wasn't telling me everything; but then, why should he? 'Need to know' is a principle I respect and admire. But one thing puzzled me still. "Why doesn’t some silly bugger just plant a bomb in his car? Another terrorist atrocity? That would work. And people’d believe it?”

  He shook his head. “Security’s too good. This guy has bought in the best personal security in the world.”

  “Not from us, he hasn’t.”

  “Well, actually….” For the first time, Mallalieu looked embarrassed. “Let’s just say we have unwittingly made him a more difficult target.”

  I sipped the Armagnac. “Anyway, why won't you use the Bull Pen? What's wrong with them?"

  He dropped his eyes and fiddled with his glass. "Ah, yes, well ..." He drank, buying time.

  "Don't you trust them? It's much more in their line, this hard man stuff."

  His eyes met mine. "Let's just say I trust you more." His face was hard and his gaze flinty. "There are one or two things that we've got to sort out in the Bull Pen before dishing out jobs like this. Let's leave it at that, shall we?"

  "OK." I shrugged. "But I'll need to know some details. Like how and when." I smiled. "And do I get a bonus?" He didn't laugh.

  “When is soon. I'll let you know. And how ... well, that's with something rather special. That's why I picked you." I took it as a compliment.

  I pressed him further, but he wasn't going to be drawn. Now that he'd fleshed out the job, a reaction had set in, and he looked older and tireder, the mobile face thin and drawn. He looked his age. He countered all my questions by saying that he'd brief me in detail within a few days, and began to yawn.

  "Fine," I said finally. "But I do have one pretty important question, and I'd like an answer before I go."

  "Go on." He glanced at his watch.

  "What's my cover? Do I have protection?"

  He rubbed his eyes and dabbed the rim of his glass. "You do and you don't," he said eventually.

  My ears pricked up. I don't like answers like that. "Oh? How?"

  "If you're implicated, you're on your own. I'd advise Creggan Rules[5] and run like hell. Call in from Rio, anywhere, but don't expect a prodigal son reaction. But no-one except you and I knows it's you, so the operation should be cast iron secure."

  I'd heard that one before, and I didn't like the 'should be secure'; but I didn't know enough about the op to criticize, yet. But I trusted Mallalieu as far as I trust anyone. I resolved to make my own judgement about security later, when I knew a little more.

  "Now," said Mallalieu, in a brisk change of mood, "Let's not talk about this any more. We can do that later." He stretched hugely and scratched himself. "Let's finish off this Armagnac." And that was that. He refused to be drawn on the subject again, or indeed, anything controversial, as we took the last two glassfuls of spirit.

  As I left, he put his hand on my arm, holding the front door ajar. The cold night air spilled in, welcome as a draught of cool well water. "I don't have to talk security to you. And I don't have to remind you to keep your mouth shut." He stressed the 'you'. "But this one's a very hot potato." I nodded. "That's why I'm giving it to you. You're the only one I can trust to do a thing like this. It's
you, not people like Jonno Briggs. Do you understand? "

  I agreed. Briggs was a pratt. It was late and the Armagnac was warm in my stomach. He looked relieved and patted my arm. "I knew I'd made the right choice."

  My head buzzed with the drink and the night air, as I wandered out to the cab he'd called. Somewhere, faintly, a clock struck one o'clock.

  Back at the flat, I splashed water on my face and collapsed onto the bed, to fall into a heavy doze, haunted by blood-red nameless things, interspersed with Spicer's silver-cold mummy and Harry Plummer's serious, flat eyes staring at me. Varley screamed at the poker waggling in his chest, and a running mugger collapsed, shot through the spine. Mortar bombs fountained silently up in the dust, and a crimson explosion of blood cascaded down again and again onto the sand of the square at Hasak. I woke, sweating and dry-mouthed, at four o'clock and staggered to the bathroom. While my heart hammered down to its normal speed, I gulped a pint of cold water, before going back to a sound sleep until the alarm woke me at half-past six.

  I had lots to think about on my run that morning. And my head hurt.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE ARMS OF VENUS, Warminster

  Fortunately my hangover was not tested that morning.

  Mallalieu didn't send for me early. That meant I spent an irritating morning sorting out a series of leaks that could only have come from some loud-mouth in the Bull Pen. Apparently Harry Plummer had called by and told Mallalieu and Andy Hawkesville that he had received reports from both the Box and the Branch indicating trouble. The SB reported that a reporter from one of the national dailies was investigating Jonno Briggs and his new employers; there were even hints that Briggs had been not merely indiscreet, but positively stupid in shooting his mouth off. I discussed the matter with Mallalieu later and decided, with a certain grim satisfaction, that we had had better do something fast before the company featured as the latest bogeymen in some press exposé.

  When I went in to see Mallalieu after lunch, he was his usual urbane self. Looking at that polished charm, it was difficult to reconcile it with the man ordering a killing the previous night. I thought wryly that maybe Mafia trigger men feel the same way about the Don. Pushing such thoughts away, I went in hard about the deterioration in the Bull Pen. To my surprise, he waved it away, agreeing almost out of hand.