‘The situation’s changed,’ Ballatyne said, before Harry could pick up the photo. ‘Paulton’s moved on.’
Harry was disappointed but not surprised. He’d been hoping Ballatyne was better than this, though.
‘Handy.’
Ballatyne blinked at the cynical tone ‘No, I’m serious. I meant what I said: you take Rafa’i to Baghdad and I’d tell where the photo was taken. It was Brussels, in case you’re still interested. Just off Avenue Louise. He’s not there now, though.’
‘But you know where he is.’ It was a statement.
‘Not exactly. He was seen two days ago by an embassy security staffer, leaving Frankfurt airport. Unfortunately, he lost him in the crowd. He could be anywhere by now.’
Harry watched the MI6 man’s face, trying to determine what was true and what was misdirection. There was something there, under the skin. A glint in his eyes which showed that this wasn’t all he had to say.
‘But you have an idea?’
‘Yes. A slim one, but it sounds plausible.’ He cleared his throat and took another sip of coffee. ‘As you probably know, the British army has anything up to two thousand personnel listed as absent without leave at any one time. Most of those are short-term, through illness, family problems, drink, drugs, fights, arrests and so forth. And trauma. A few are long-term, meaning they don’t intend reporting back. Most are from infantry regiments with a few scattered among other units. It’s a problem, but manageable. However, there’s a core group who have gone absent and can’t be found. They’re spread as far as Australia, Canada, South Africa, Thailand. . and lots of other places where we can’t get at them. Within that core group are a few personnel of particular concern.’ He flicked at a sugar grain on the tablecloth and gave a wintry smile. ‘They’re listed as SDPs, or Strategic Displaced Personnel, would you believe?’
‘Meaning what?’ Harry couldn’t quite see where this was going, but it had to involve him somehow; whatever Ballatyne was leading up to, he wasn’t going to leave here without exerting some kind of official pressure to do a job of work. ‘Does this involve Paulton or not?’
‘Yes.’ No room for doubt.
‘How? He’s not on this list, is he?’
‘Hardly. But we believe he’s got something to do with it.’
‘In what way?’
‘Of the maybe two dozen names on the SDP list, there’s a handful who are too important to let go.’
Harry felt his spirits sink. ‘You want me chasing down a bunch of squaddies? I don’t think so.’ He made to stand, but Ballatyne put out a hand to stop him.
‘Wait. That’s not what I’m leading up to. Well, not entirely.’ He waited for Harry to relax before continuing. ‘The people I’m talking about are not your average squaddies, too pissed to find their way back to their units. All of them have tactical, planning or technical information in their heads; information that if let out, would be a disaster for our operational and strategic capability.’
‘Let out?’
‘Sold.’
Harry breathed out. He began to see where this was going.
‘In the business world,’ Ballatyne continued smoothly, ‘people like this would be head-hunted from one corporate body to another, valued and appraised for their technical skills, education and potential. Most would have been fast-tracked from university on career-management paths. Well, these specialists are no different. . only, the interested bodies involved are not our friends.’
Nice, thought Harry. Russia. Iran. North Korea. China. And a few smaller countries who’d love to get their hands on our latest weapons technology. Throw in al-Qaeda for the fun of it and the nightmare was real.
‘And you think Paulton’s involved in horse-trading military specialists?’
‘He’s got the background. And he’s got a living to make. He wasn’t like Bellingham and a few others we could name, born with the benefits of a silver spoon; he was a normal wage slave like the rest of us.’
‘He’s nothing like the rest of us.’ Harry’s words come out as sharp as tin tacks, his hackles rising. Paulton, along with Bellingham, his MI6 opposite number, had conspired to have Harry, Rik Ferris and several other security and intelligence services staff terminated. That put him well outside the pale of normal.
‘Forgive me. Clumsy comparison.’ Ballatyne looked genuinely sorry. ‘But I think you know what I mean. There’s a lot of money swilling about out there looking for the right information. Paulton’s got contacts built over a lifetime in the business, he has a first class brain and knows his way around every kind of negotiating situation. He dealt with the IRA for years, he’s mixed it with numerous other terror groups and their front men, and he’s very good at keeping people onside. He’s also an expert at disappearing. As you’d expect, he has numerous passports in a variety of names.’ He held up a hand and began to count off his fingers. ‘Some MI5 personnel knew him as Henry. Others knew him as George. To his neighbours in the block of flats where he lived, he was George Henry, civil servant. Other names we’ve discovered are Patrick Towen, George Bartholomew and Paul McHenry. There’s a John Arthur Millar and a Colin Bracewell out there, too, although documents in both those names have turned up recently, so he’s probably ditched them by now. He seems to have made an art out of playing identity games with everyone he ever came in contact with, just for the hell of it.’
‘And nobody picked this up?’
Ballatyne shrugged. ‘Apparently not. Shows how good he was. His life was carefully compartmentalized, so one group never met the others. Classic undercover technique. Only he took it several stages further.’ He smiled coldly. ‘If it happened and two separates did meet, he probably had a good explanation for it. Having two names is not uncommon. I’m still known by my family as Paul — my middle name. Apparently I never liked Richard as a kid. Once I started work, though, Richard was on my records, so Richard I became. In a perfect world, a psych evaluation should have seen Paulton’s budding paranoia, but he appears to have avoided close examination for years.’
Harry felt himself being hemmed in, dragged slowly against his will into a separate kind of chase, one not of his choosing. Hunting down Paulton was all he’d been thinking about for months. But he’d been planning on doing it on his own terms. Having got this close to a possible location, he was now recognizing a carrot being dangled before him; a carrot intended to get him to do a job of work in exchange for knowledge about Paulton’s whereabouts.
He tried one last method of stepping sideways. ‘You’ve got people who can do this. You don’t need me.’
‘Sure we have. But this is delicate. And we’ll pay you for your time, sub-contract rates. Ferris, too, if you need him.’ Ballatyne sighed. ‘Look, the MOD has a squad of recovery officers chasing down overdue squaddies and persuading them to come in. But they have limited skills and authority. Redcaps are good, too, there’s no denying, but they go best where they’re pointed.’
‘So?’
‘I want you to do the pointing. You’re good at finding people — you’ve already proved that. We want you to follow the trails. Find the SDPs and you’ll find Paulton.’
‘And when I find them — and him?’ He’d been down this route before.
‘Sit on him and call it in. You’ll have twenty-four-hour backup.’ Ballatyne fixed him with a cool stare. ‘Just so there’s no mistake, we really would like him back to answer for what he did.’ He reached into an inside pocket and placed a five-by-three photo and a folded slip of paper on the table. ‘This is the first name we want brought in — and the nearest. He disappeared while in transit overseas three months ago, was spotted in Sydney, then again in Thailand. He just surfaced out of the blue in London. He was either daft or desperate enough to use his credit card in Stockwell and got lit up. Where he’s been since Thailand, we have no idea. He might be waiting for a contact. . or is on the point of running. We’d like to get him before he does.’
Harry glanced at the photo. It was a head and shoul
ders shot of a lean man in his thirties, smiling into the camera. He looked relaxed and tanned. He scanned the brief details. Cpl Neville John Pike, age 36. 251 Signals Squadron. Specialties include ECM (electronic countermeasures) and IT systems design. Service in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. Unmarried, no family. It was followed by Pike’s eight-digit service number and an address in Clapham, south-west London.
‘Is this all?’
‘How much do you need? There’ll be full backgrounds on the others, mainly because they’re out in who the hell knows where. But this one’s probably the simplest.’ He flicked a hand at the suit, who stood up and carried a black nylon bag across the room and placed it by Harry’s side. ‘Taser and cuffs,’ Ballatyne explained. ‘Just in case. We don’t need any more shooting for a while. I’m sure you’ll be able to use them if you have to.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Harry. He’d done a two-hour course once, part of a new equipment training module. It hadn’t been a great success. He’d forgotten to switch the Taser on and got stamped on by an instructor posing as a rioter. ‘This is all a bit personal for someone on your level, isn’t it?’
‘Level?’ Ballatyne blinked.
‘Well, you’re, what — Ops Director at least? Handing over bits of paper and bags of equipment is below your pay grade, I’d have thought.’
‘I suppose so. But I owed you the first couple of meetings at least. Later on you’ll be dealing with a man named Cullum. He’s currently putting together the file for you, along with personal data and background on the absentees. He’ll provide you with whatever other information you need. I’ll need a secure code for the data — something you’ve never used before.’
Harry thought about it and gave him the six-digit number from the back of his watch. Ballatyne wrote it down. ‘What’s that — your mangled birth date?’
‘No. The model number of my iPad.’ It wasn’t, but he didn’t think Ballatyne would check. He picked up the slip of paper. ‘What makes this so important to Six? You don’t normally go chasing deserters.’
‘You’re right. It shouldn’t be our problem, but things have changed in the last few years. People like Pike are highly trained and educated; they carry enormous detail in their heads about new developments in equipment and tactics, systems and strategies. And Two-Five-One Signals Squadron takes the best. Even their average member these days is a mine of saleable information to the right people. What we’d like to do is find out who’s doing the buying.’
‘That doesn’t explain why Six and not Five.’
‘It’s the way it is.’ Ballatyne tapped the table before standing up. His minder moved to the door and checked the street. ‘Two military cops are keeping watch on the house where Pike’s gone to ground. They’ll assist you in collecting Pike, and take him to Colchester. Before they do, however, we’d like you to question him and find out where he’s been for the last three months. It’s a little outside the standard procedure, but if you can get anything out of him it might help. Good luck.’ With a brief nod he walked out on the heels of his minder, leaving Harry alone with the black bag.
FOUR
The house where Corporal Neville Pike had gone to ground was a tired-looking Victorian pile near Clapham Common, south London. Yet to be swept up by developers and gentrified, it seemed to be resisting change, unlike many of its neighbours which were proudly displaying radical facelifts and makeovers. Pike was in number 11 on the third floor, according to Ballatyne’s watchers, where he’d been holed up for three days living off pizza deliveries from a shop on the corner.
Harry buzzed the array of buttons until someone let him in, then climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. The floorboards squeaked as his balance shifted, but there was no answering shift from inside. He knocked again, waited, then slid a card underneath the door and walked back downstairs, trying not to breath in the sour atmosphere of damp walls, ancient carpets and stale cigarette smoke. He was deliberately making enough noise for Pike to hear him, and the card said he’d be waiting outside and why. He was hoping the soldier was going to come down without any drama.
If he didn’t, he and the MPs — military police — would have to go in and get him.
Fifteen minutes passed, during which a cat wandered across the unkempt rear garden, jumped over a rusting metal wheelbarrow and disappeared through a ground floor window propped open with a saucepan. Traffic noises sounded out in the street, kids laughing, the distant rattle of road mending machinery. A woman’s head popped up from behind a fence two gardens down and stared hard at him before disappearing again. Life was going on as normal.
Then Pike appeared.
He had a holdall in one hand and was wearing a denim jacket and jeans, with a baseball cap mashed down over his eyes. He was tall and lean, sporting the remains of a tan from his last tour in Helmand, or maybe his stay in Thailand. But underneath it he looked soft and pasty, and wobbly on his feet. Too long spent indoors behind curtains, waiting for the sound of footsteps. Instead of looking for Harry’s offer of a chat, though, he came out of the back door and down the garden path as if the place was on fire.
Harry let him come. He guessed he was heading for a green left-hand drive BMW 5 Series in the service alley at the rear. Four years old, good condition and a bit flash, the left-hander had been a sure giveaway, a cheap pick from the vast backstreet car market of south London.
Something silver glinted in Pike’s free hand.
When Harry stepped out from behind the garden wall, Pike looked shocked and skidded to a halt. Up close, his eyes held an unreal light which might have been from too little sleep, too much alcohol or too many pills. Drugs were the most likely, drugs to keep him awake, alert and ready to go, as available among active service units as they were on the streets. But there was something else in there, too: the look of a man who had travelled beyond reason and couldn’t stop.
He gave a small, high-pitched moan, more child than man, and dropped the holdall. It landed with a soft thump. Spare clothes, whatever he could carry that wouldn’t slow him down. Going AWOL means travelling light.
‘Don’t,’ Pike muttered, and motioned for Harry to get out of his way.
He had a compelling argument; he was holding an SA80 British army bayonet in his hand, blade up, the light glinting off the clean metal. The edge looked razor-keen, which went a long way to explaining what Pike had been doing to pass the time in his bolthole. There was no point wondering if he knew how to use the weapon.
He would know.
Harry waited for him to make a move. There were two options for dealing with Pike: one was under Harry’s jacket on his right hip. He could simply pull out the 9mm Steyr semi-automatic and shoot him — especially now he’d seen the bayonet. Under the rules of engagement, such as they were, armed defence was permitted. But he didn’t want to do that.
He waited instead while the seconds ticked by.
Pike launched himself on six.
The second option was less fatal, but risky if it didn’t work. Since he really didn’t want to shoot a man for being desperate and traumatized, he took out the Taser and pulled the trigger.
He had forgotten to issue the required warning, but that was just a technicality.
The twin probes hit Pike in the chest, the charge of electricity to his nervous system taking his legs out from under him and dropping him like a sack of cement. He lay trembling on the path, one foot kicking uncontrollably, the bayonet clutched in frozen fingers.
‘He’d have filleted you with that.’
The voice belonged to a big Londoner named Wallace. He was one of two Royal Military Police sergeants on standby in case Pike got lucky, and responsible for taking him in when Harry gave the nod. Wallace had been playing backstop in the lane by the BMW. He looked disappointed that the fun was over before he could join in. His partner, Collins, whom Harry had automatically thought of as Gromit, was covering the front door in case Pike tried to go that way.
After he’d disengag
ed the Taser probes, Wallace bent and prised the bayonet from Pike’s grip. He flipped it twice, tested the blade and hissed sharply. ‘I could shave with this.’ He gave Harry a sideways look. ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’
His tone meant, you’ve probably shot people before, so why not now?
‘I didn’t want to start the day on a bad note.’ Harry bent and checked Pike for vital signs. It wouldn’t look good if he died on them. When he was sure the man was breathing steadily and showing signs of rallying, he gave Wallace the OK to take him to the nearest A amp;E for a check-up.
‘That’ll be King’s College,’ the MP replied. ‘Are you sure you want to bother? He looks OK to me. We’ve been told to get him to Colchester.’
‘I know. I want to take a look inside first. Wait for me at the hospital.’ He packed up the Taser and walked through to the front of the house where Gromit was lounging against a lamppost looking bored. He nodded moodily when he saw Harry and went round to join his colleague. Harry walked back up the stairs and found the door to Pike’s room open. The interior was surprisingly neat, with the bed made, blankets folded and everything in military order. Some habits died hard. A coffee table held a tidy pile of magazines and newspapers, and the only attempt at disorder was the sink drainer, which held three flattened pizza boxes and two empty soda bottles. An overhead cupboard held crockery, glasses and an unopened bottle of wine.
He took a look round, but it was clear that Pike had been on his way out and wasn’t coming back. If there had been anything of value, he wouldn’t have left the door open.
As Harry reached his car, his phone rang. It was Ballatyne.
‘Any joy?’
‘We’ve got him. The MPs are taking him to King’s College, Denmark Hill, for a check-up, then on to the Military Detention Centre, Colchester.’
‘What’s to check? Did one of the redcaps help him down the stairs?’ Ballatyne’s tone was as dry as dust.
‘I had to use the Taser.’
‘You really don’t mess, do you? OK, be at Langham Place Starbucks tomorrow at ten. Gordon Cullum will be there with the rest of the information.’ The phone went dead.
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