by Roger Pearce
Rico laughed. ‘I think my director expects something specific?’
‘Diplomatic bag on the ten twenty-five. We’ll courier it to him before bed-time. Happy now?’
Mark Bannerman was an Arabist in his late fifties, enjoying the twilight of a distinguished career in MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. The Nairobi station provided him with a beautiful colonial style house in Langata, less than five miles from the restaurant, where he enjoyed beautiful views of the Ngong hills from his verandah and, in bed, regular sex with his housekeeper. Bannerman knew the NIS approved of him because he had secret access to their internal memoranda. Soon after his arrival the NIS director had written about him as ‘a post-colonial grandee from Britain’s privileged upper tier’, a description that had sent a ripple of laughter through SIS headquarters at Vauxhall Cross.
The twice divorced son of an Anglican bishop from the Church’s neocon wing, Bannerman had at least two decades on his guest. Privileged and elitist, the only child from Tewkesbury had begun life a world apart from the fifth son of a smallholder in Migori, near Lake Victoria. In their youth, each had graduated with a First in PPE from Cambridge, and now their professional lives had converged in the mission to hunt down Islamist terrorists.
The Africans liked Mark Bannerman because he was not American. The CIA station chief still lectured them on George Bush’s war of terror at their fortress embassy in United Nations Avenue, but Mark Bannerman drove them to the countryside to buy them lunch. ‘If Daniel can be available after tea on Thursday,’ said Bannerman, lazily watching the waiter approach with their wine, ‘that would be extremely decent.’
‘Daniel’ was the NIS pseudonym for Mukhtar Abu Fazul, a twenty-three year old Al-Shabaab militia man suspected of complicity in planning the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in September 2013. Lifted forty-eight hours earlier from his hiding place in Kariobangi, a dirt poor suburb in the north-east of the city, Fazul now languished, unrepresented and untraceable, deep inside the stained concrete walls of an army interrogation centre off the Kiambu Road to the north.
They paused again for the waiter. In exchange for secret British government funds for an upgraded NIS IT system, Bannerman and another SIS officer from London were to be allowed unfettered access to the shackled Mr Fazul for as long as it took.
‘I promise we’ll behave,’ said Bannerman. ‘Just a friendly chat.’
‘And the “loose ends” you mentioned. We tie them together, yes?’
‘What are friends for?’ Beneath his hat Bannerman’s mobile was buzzing. ‘So shall I tell them we have a deal?’ Bannerman leant down to pick up the phone, then waited for Rico’s nod. ‘Good man. Mi scusi.’
Bannerman drifted off in the direction of the lake, examining his mobile as if seeing it for the first time, another part of the act. ‘Giles, we’re on,’ he said, softly.
‘Have you seen the news?’ The voice in London was of golden syrup.
‘Of course not. I’m still at lunch,’ said Bannerman, checking his watch: almost five o’clock. ‘I’ve pencilled in Thursday, so tell Ronnie to pack a bag and get his arse over here.’
‘You haven’t heard about Victoria?’
‘Too bloody busy doing your dirty work,’ said Bannerman as an image of Vickie Elder, the Service’s deputy head of station in Damascus, floated into his mind. He checked he was out of earshot from the cluster of tables. ‘What is it this time? Drinking or over the side?’
‘The railway station. Bombed.’
A pause. In its website, the Cool Rivers Country Club made much of its ‘signature pink flamingos’ and Bannerman watched a couple of them now, wading through the shallows at the far side of the lake. ‘And what’s that got to do with Kenya?’ Bannerman cursed inwardly, for he knew what was coming.
‘The sisters think it’s IRA.’
‘On what basis?’
‘Unconfirmed. They’re still totting up the corpses.’
‘Well you can fucking count me out.’ Giles Lovett was the senior man, though pay grades cut little ice with a man enjoying his final posting and Bannerman had a more credible field record. ‘Tell them from me.’
The voice in London had acquired an edge. ‘Security Service made a special request through the Home Sec.’
‘This is Five panicking again. And perhaps someone should have bloody asked me first.’
‘You’re at lunch.’
‘For Christ’s sake leave it a couple of days, Giles.’ In his agitation Bannerman had crossed onto the soft turf near the water’s edge. He took a step back as water oozed over the suede of his right shoe. ‘Things will settle down.’
‘Mark, you’re either not listening or being obtuse. I’m talking a full house. Home Sec, Foreign Sec. And C personally. It’s agreed. You’re coming back.’
‘Buggeration.’ High in the sky beyond the flamingos an eagle had spotted prey. He flipped the shades up to watch it circling and hovering.
Mark Bannerman had served with distinction in Iran, Israel and Lebanon. His finest work, however, unreported and unsung, had been in Northern Ireland as the principal British intermediary with the IRA and secret negotiator for peace. In the mid-nineties, while the Real IRA planned and executed its terrorist campaign on the mainland, Bannerman had been secretly shuttling between London, Dublin and Belfast in the effort to find the endgame to a generation of slaughter, building a skeleton deal around arms decommissioning and a ceasefire in return for early release of terrorists and political self-determination.
As the months turned into years, the brutal murders continued and the political chasm grew wider, but Mark Bannerman neither lost faith nor uttered a word of condemnation. Night after night he chivvied, cajoled, charmed and compromised his terrorist interlocutors. He got drunk with them, bargained, made concessions and threats, then faithfully repeated their message to London.
By the end, Bannerman had done whatever was necessary to bring them to the table. The spy as conciliator had forged peace through pragmatism. It would be a step too far to say the Real IRA trusted Mark Bannerman; but gradually the spook with the silver spoon became the only representative of Her Majesty’s Government with whom they would do business. He had become the acceptable face of the enemy.
‘We want you in the air tonight,’ said Giles. ‘Briefing here tomorrow then straight across the water. Congratulations. You’ll need your running shoes.’
The handful of politicians who knew Bannerman said he had walked a tightrope. Vauxhall Cross viewed things differently. Within SIS he soon became known as the Marathon Runner because, for them, it was the sheer scale of his achievement, rather than its sensitivity, that would secure their legacy.
‘Does anyone actually know for sure this is dissident?’
‘The cops and Five are completely unsighted. Everyone in full denial mode.’
‘So make them do the leg work first. Let’s get some certainty here.’
‘That’s what we want from you, Mark. The actualité’.
‘Very funny. And the answer’s no. I do the job on Daniel first. With Ronnie.’
‘Mark…’
‘Come on Giles, I’ve worked my nuts off to get this far with Rico.’
‘Well done again. Now go home and pack.’
‘Just give me two more days. Then I’ll dance a fucking jig if you want.’
‘Tell your man that Ronnie will bring someone else out from London.’
Bannerman gave an involuntary glance back towards Rico, who was also on his mobile. ‘NIS won’t accept that.’
‘So cancel the money. You’re checked in on BA64. Twenty-three fifty from Jomo Kenyatta. You’ll feel better after a glass of champagne but make sure you get a good sleep. Penny will pick you up our end.’
‘Penny? This is not the way…’
‘Mark, please don’t make this sound like an order.’ Click.
In the distance, Bannerman watched the eagle suddenly swoop to earth and fly off with its wriggling prey. ‘And
why don’t you fuck yourself, Giles,’ he murmured to himself as he turned to deal with Rico.
Chapter Eight
Monday, 10 October, 14.04, SO15 Reserve, New Scotland Yard
Kerr had taken a call on his BlackBerry from Gemma Riley but needed to speak with her face to face. He waited in 1830 while Dodge took two more calls from contacts in Belfast and made one of his own to Armagh, then hurried down the fire escape stairs to Reserve. Dodge claimed to have Northern Ireland covered, but Gemma was his primary source in London. Speed was vital. He had to tap into her memory before it drained away in the whirlpool of mistaken sightings, red herrings and false trails that destabilised every terrorist investigation.
Through the glass partition he saw Gemma multitasking at her desk, phone tucked beneath her chin as she worked the keyboard and scanned a list on her notepad. Evidently, she had also found time to shout for back-up: squeezed between the computer terminal and the shredder were two young officers Kerr recognised from the public order unit on the seventeenth floor, one making calls while the other searched the Registry database.
Kerr’s target was exactly as Gemma had described him, sitting nearest the window, the back of his shirt untucked and dark grey with sweat. He was dialling a battered iPhone with a badly damaged screen, cracks radiating from a hole the size of a ball bearing.
‘Slim?’ Gemma’s stand-in assistant immediately turned the phone face down on the desk and revolved slowly in his chair. His legs were splayed wide, stretching the trousers tight over his thighs and crotch, and a heavy shoe with a tarnished metal buckle caught Kerr’s shin. Slim was slow to take Kerr’s hand and, when he did, his grip was soft and clammy.
‘Who wants to know?’ he demanded, a fragment of potato crisp trembling on his lower lip.
‘I’m John Kerr.’ Something sticky had transferred itself to Kerr’s palm. ‘You should leave now.’
‘I’m on till four,’ said Slim abruptly. Beside the phone Kerr spotted a betting slip receipt for the 1.50pm race at Haydock Park. The horse was ‘Shooting Star’, and the bet £5 to win.
‘You left your post uncovered,’ said Kerr as the phone began reverberating on the desk. ‘We don’t do that here.’ The incongruous James Bond theme filled the room as Slim picked up, and Kerr made out the name ‘Perry’ through the shattered screen.
Slim held the phone up, waiting for Kerr to back away. ‘I need to take this.’
Kerr grabbed Slim’s wrist, cancelled the call and tossed the phone back on the desk, sending a sliver of glass onto the floor. ‘Property services are getting you back a day early,’ he said, sweeping an empty crisp packet and fast food container from the desk into the trash.
Slim looked truculent, but the voice sounded weak. ‘That’s not the deal,’ he mumbled, taking a fix on Gemma for some back-up.
Kerr pulled Slim’s jacket from the back of the chair. ‘We just came under attack and you sneaked out to place a bet,’ he said calmly. The jacket was dog-tooth check with shiny elbows, and it released a wave of sweat and stale cigarettes. ‘So you’re out.’
Slim heaved himself to his feet and looked around the room. ‘No wonder you Special Branch types are in the shit.’ This time he spoke up, his voice surprisingly high pitched for such a heavy man.
As Kerr jerked his thumb to the corridor Slim grabbed the phone, snatched his jacket, struggled into the sleeves and forced his personal coffee mug into one of the pockets. He shot another glare at Gemma, who was in mid-conversation but managed a simultaneous shrug and wave without missing a beat.
Kerr watched Slim until he entered the lift, then rolled his chair over to Gemma and waited for her to finish her call. Behind her, sunlight suddenly flooded St James’s Park as the rain clouds drifted north. She swung round to close the blinds but Kerr checked her, shifting sideways to avoid the glare. ‘Sorry, but he buggered off for a good twenty minutes,’ she said, ‘just when it was getting manic.’
Kerr pulled one of her tissues and wiped his palm. ‘I’ll work something out. Have you got the recording?’
‘I had a listen with Dodge, then sent it to tech for enhancement.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘We’ve got a male speaking from a busy street in the rain. Rubbish attempt at an Irish accent, according to Dodge.’ She checked her notes. ‘“Englishman on a bender in Dublin putting on a Belfast accent.” Something like that.’
‘He told me.’
‘Nothing sounds authentic,’ said Gemma, sliding Kerr the torn pages from her pad. ‘This is what I managed to get down at the time. Crowded street, constant traffic noise with people talking around him. He’s not disguising anything. Why stand in full view getting soaked when he could be home and dry?’
‘Because he’s watching?’
Gemma nodded. ‘There were heavy vehicles swishing past. Buses or lorries.’
‘Let’s see what the CCTV throws up. Anything else?’
Gemma frowned in concentration. ‘That’s it. Unless tech come up with anything better.’
Kerr drew a little closer and lowered his voice. A couple of metres behind him Gemma’s emergency helpers were discussing a name thrown up from Registry. ‘What about Alan?’
‘Doc said he’s okay physically,’ said Gemma. She showed him a roll of lint and bottle of antiseptic at the corner of her desk. ‘I tidied him up again when we got back. And he’s, you know, fully functioning. Right?’
‘Seems to be.’ Kerr rubbed his shin where Slim’s shoe had connected. ‘Do I send him home?’
‘Don’t waste your breath. Alan still thinks PTSD is a nasty rash.’ Gemma gave a short laugh and grabbed Kerr’s hand. ‘John, do you have any idea how stubborn he is?’
‘Obviously not.’ Kerr exhaled and peered across the park. ‘And from today no-one knows him better then you.’ He smiled at her and they both stayed silent for a moment, thinking of Pauline, ignoring the voices in the background.
The love affair between Gemma and Alan Fargo had surprised Kerr and delighted the whole team since its birth over a year earlier. Theirs truly was the attraction of opposites. Gemma had always been a free spirit in the capital’s fast lane, a living, breathing directory of clubs, bars, restaurants, exes and phone numbers. But her newest lover had never married or even enjoyed a long-term relationship, so far as Kerr knew. Until now, with few interests outside his vital work at the Yard, Alan Fargo had always been Kerr’s fixture, unwavering, locked into the same grey channel between home and the office.
Fargo had only opened up to Kerr once, in the Booking Office Bar at St Pancras Station on a return trip from Paris. ‘She’s like a firework display, John,’ he had volunteered over his second Kentucky Spritzer. ‘You know, New Year’s Eve on the Thames, when it goes on and on. Expensive, crazy. It’s bonkers. Sounds and colours you never dreamt of and you can’t guess what’s coming next.’
By this time, in early January, Fargo had already lost thirty pounds and was beginning to reflect Gemma’s brightness. With overwashed white shirts ditched for fresh pastels there was a different aura around him, a lightness, as if sunshine had reached him through 1830’s dusty, lopsided blinds. Gemma Riley, a decade younger but with light years’ more experience, had turned his friend’s life around, and Kerr knew she would rescue him from his grief.
‘He’s staying at mine for the next few nights,’ she said. ‘We’ll pick up some clothes and stuff later. And I’ll be holding his hand when he identifies the bodies.’
‘Very good. What about a spell of compassionate? He must still have some loose ends in Cornwall?’
‘Alan’s already told you where he needs to be, hasn’t he?’
One of the detectives tapped Kerr on the shoulder and held out the phone. ‘Kerr.’ He listened briefly, then handed it back. ‘Gotta go. Commander’s waiting upstairs.’ On the way out he paused by Slim’s vacated desk to glance at the betting slip. ‘Loser,’ he said, screwing it up and tossing it into the bin as he hurried away.
‘John,
wait!’ Kerr was halfway to the fire escape stairs when Gemma called out to him. Behind her in the office two phones were ringing but she ignored them and scampered down the corridor. ‘Horses.’
‘What?’
‘In the background. I heard them over the traffic. You know, the clippety clop. There were two, I think. Perhaps we should be looking further afield? You know, flagging up riding schools in the suburbs, that sort of thing?’
‘Let’s wait for the cell site analysis. But feed it in downstairs, will you?’ He smiled. ‘And run it past Alan?’
•••
The outer office on the eighteenth floor was empty, with Donna’s work space clear except for a red coffee mug, fresh lilies in a vase and a photograph of her two smiling nieces in their school uniforms. Half-hidden beside her chair was a tan leather shoulder bag. Bill Ritchie’s PA and gatekeeper had just returned from a fortnight in Jamaica, catching up with her family, and Kerr guessed she must have popped out to the sandwich bar. Resisting the urge to sneak a check of her computer, he knocked and entered the main office before Ritchie could give his customary yell of welcome.
The commander of the SO15 intelligence unit occupied a spacious carpeted corner office diagonally opposite Room 1830 with panoramic views of St James’s Park and London’s northern reaches as far as Kite Hill, the highest point on Hampstead Heath. The room was a rectangle extending six windows by four, allowing plenty of space to accommodate the dark wood conference table with its eight chairs and, alongside the inner wall, a grey safe towering over a round occasional table with two threadbare easy chairs. The man himself stood half concealed behind the open safe door, popping tablets from two blister packs. He beckoned Kerr inside as he drained a glass of water.
The two men went back a long time, since Kerr’s lengthy undercover operation, when Ritchie had acted as mentor, protector and cover officer. For five years he had been the voice of reason and sole authority figure in the double life of Kerr the extremist, and these days, whenever Kerr played the maverick, Ritchie would complain that little had changed. In private their relationship still transcended rank, except when Kerr stepped seriously out of line. Kerr slid a chair from the conference table and sat down without being asked. ‘How did it go?’