Field attributed a 95% level of certainty that the body was that of Paul Mitchell. In SIS speak that was irrefutable evidence. It wouldn’t have been from checking dental records, the sure-fire way of confirming a body, as SIS staff weren’t trained to carry out such a postmortem[RJ32]. In Mitchell’s case, Jane reckoned that Field would have seen the corpse, probably by then in some state of decay due to the heat. And he was able to attach that level of certainty having seen associated documentation - Mitchell’s driving licence, or maybe a passport. If she had been responsible for the operation, that would have been good enough for her.
Jane remembered the case’s outcome from a weekly sitrep that all SIS staff were sent (and were obliged to read). Outcome: Mitchell had been murdered by his captors. His body had been confirmed by an SIS case officer. Operation failed because the family didn’t pay the ransom in time and/or his captors believed they were close to being compromised.
Jane’s notetaking was interrupted. Her door opened and Claire popped in.
‘I’ve got what I can on Victoria Mitchell. Do you want me to leave it on the cloud, or email it to you?’
Jane looked up from her pad and smiled. She had asked Claire to do a Level 2 search on Victoria Mitchell: background history from late teens until the present day; intelligence services, police and Interpol records; and police records on the subject’s parents.
‘Thanks Claire. Leave it on the cloud. What are the headlines?’
Claire was now fully in the room, standing directly in front of Jane’s desk.
‘How are you doing today?’ Claire’s tone was motherly.
Jane couldn’t stifle a yawn. She put her hand in front of her open mouth a little too late to be wholly polite.
‘Sorry. I’m fine. It’s just, well, my conversation with Sam yesterday. She, you know … gets to me. I always feel that she’s one step ahead.’ Jane waved her hands about absently. ‘She’s never been wrong about anything …’, after which she quickly added, ‘... but, she doesn’t always make the right judgement call with the facts that she has. She’s ..?’
She searched for an appropriate word.
‘Maverick?’ Claire finished Jane’s sentence for her.
‘Yes, possibly.’
Jane stood and stretched her back.
‘To be fair, her judgement is excellent. It’s just ... it’s not always in tune with the best interests of SIS. And, as a result, the government.’
Claire didn’t say anything. It was clear that she was letting Jane get this out of her system.
After a short pause Jane nodded to Claire, as if to say, ‘give me all you’ve got.’
‘Victoria Mitchell has no intelligence, nor police record. Nothing - it’s completely clean. Not even a speeding ticket. Her parents were both pillars of a small Oxford village; they’re both now deceased. One was an ex-GP, the other an ex-magistrate. They’re clean.’
‘Anything else of interest in her background, other than being married to the erstwhile owner of the highly successful e-dollar business venture?’ Jane asked.
‘No. not really. A first from Cambridge in computer science. Thirty percent owner of e-dollar at the point of sale. An MBA from Aston University. She’s a keen sailor and now runs a successful web-based horticultural business in mid-Norfolk.’ Claire paused. It was a playful pause; her accompanying smile was tight lipped.
Jane sensed there was something more.
‘And?’
‘Her sister is Judy Strand, the Shakespearean cum EastEnders actress.’
‘No! Really? Well I never.’
‘And, probably not relevant, but interesting, Victoria almost followed her sister onto the stage. She was in the thick of the Footlights crew during her time at Cambridge. She was given a lead role in their Edinburgh Festival show in the early 80s.’
‘But she stuck to the more profitable computer programming route?’ Jane added, not expecting an answer.
‘Or, Plan C, which is more like a “B plus”: she married a man who went on to become a multimillionaire entrepreneur.’ Claire smiled again.
‘Indeed. Thanks, Claire.’ Jane went to sit down.
As she did, Claire asked, ‘Tea?’
‘No thanks.’ She motioned to a mug on her desk. ‘It’s lukewarm. I promise to finish it.’
Claire raised both hands, smiled again and left.
By the time the door closed Jane was already typing into the ‘search’ box on SIS’s secure database.
Steven Field.
She pressed ‘return’ and almost immediately a drop-down box offered her options, one of which was, ‘Personnel File’.
She clicked on it.
What was presented made her push back in her chair and breathe out heavily.
Steven Field. Dishonourably discharged. 17 July 2015.
Jane was a good skim-reader. She could work a page of A4 about every 15 seconds and rarely missed much. This, however, needed her fullest attention. Almost childlike she read the second paragraph out loud:
Case officer Steven Field, at the time ‘N12’ in the Nairobi Embassy, was found guilty of severe lack of discipline[RJ33] and integrity by SIS’s ethics committee on 7 July 2015. At the time of the hearing he had been suspended on full pay and had returned to the UK. The committee’s findings are detailed in paragraph 7 of this report. By way of summary, Case officer Field was caught and pleaded guilty to various counts of receiving illicit payments (to the tune of £425,000) from Kenyan government officials. The same officials were under SIS scrutiny for election-rigging, drug-running and embezzlement. As a result, the ethics committee had no alternative than to discharge Steven Field from Secret Intelligence Service without further pay. His rights to an SIS pension have also been waived.
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Jane whispered.
She hollered at the door, ‘Claire![RJ34]’
A second later the door opened and Claire appeared.
‘The intercom was still working last time I looked.’
‘Sure.’ Jane smile was brief and workmanlike.
‘Can you check my phone records from yesterday. Pick out the number that Sam called me on, please. And can you arrange a meeting with her as soon as practical?’
Claire sensed the urgency and dropped any further attempt at humour.
‘Sure.’ And then she was out of the office.
Chapter 6
Sunrise Hospital, Las Vegas, US
Retired Command Sergeant Major Austin Rodgers was as composed as any father could be just before they were allowed to see their badly wounded son. His own military training had been severe and exacting. In his last role as a senior trainer he had demanded that his soldiers face adversity head on. ‘What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.’ Whilst he was serving that had been his personal motto. He couldn’t remember a single day when he didn’t bark that particular edict. In his final role at Camp Blanding he knew his nickname was ‘makes you stronger’. At his retirement party, as well as a very smart TAG Heuer watch which he was wearing today, the unit presented him with a baseball hat emblazoned with the same words.
He wasn’t sure if he believed in them right now. When the state trooper’s car had pulled up outside their whitewashed, clapboard house which nestled idyllically in among the pines and the dunes southwest of St Augustine Beach, his and Martha’s world had been smashed to smithereens.
At first he’d assumed the worst. He had been the bearer of the worst possible news three times before. Twice during an Iraq tour and once due to a training accident, where a young lad had been run over by an Abrams tank - as he slept. Night manoeuvres were dangerous, especially in training. He’d taken a pastor with him on all three occasions, both of them in dress uniform. The two Iraq widows and the mother of the third knew what was coming as soon as they had opened the door. For him, the experience was a more frightening and more horrible experience than any enemy he had faced.
When he spotted the trooper’s car pull up on their drive and the policem
an, having got out, check that he was smart by using the Dodge Charger’s wing mirror, he knew this wasn’t a routine call.
‘Martha. Sit Down. We’ve got company. And it don’t look good.’
Within a few minutes Austin had booked a flight from Jacksonville to Las Vegas. Martha didn’t fly - unless she had a huge pile of pills from the doctor, a procedure that they’d got used to when he was based in Germany. But there wasn’t time for any of that - one of them needed to be at Rick’s bedside as soon as possible. The trooper’s notes gave Rick a 50% chance of making it through the next 24 hours. He’d go. Martha would hold the fort.
And now here he was. Sunrise hospital. As good as any. With, according to the nurse at reception, one of the best surgeons in Nevada.
Good. Rick didn’t deserve to die. He was a good boy. Hard-working and bright. The apple of his pop’s eye.
A nurse had led him to a half-opaque glass and wood door. There was a sign at hip height. It read: Intensive Treatment Unit. Underneath was a white plastic board on which was scrawled: Rodgers. Post-op. Hemingway.
The nurse blocked the door with her arm. It was a gentle, not a malicious act.
‘Doctor Hemingway is in the room with your son at the moment. The anaesthetist finished an hour ago. There was some discussion, I believe, as to whether he should be kept in an induced coma, but I think the doctor decided against that.’
Austin hovered a bit too close to the door than was necessary. He wanted to go in. To ask the doctor a hundred questions. But the nurse held him steady and he worked hard to control his frustration. He wasn’t used to not getting his own way. He was a command sergeant major - with that rank came power and respect, not that he ever misused it.
‘Thank you. Can I see him now?’
The nurse smiled. It was the first time that Austin had noticed how pretty she was. She was short, Hispanic and had a smile that would stop a 30-ton Bradley fighting-vehicle at 100 feet.
‘Let me go in and see the doctor. I’ll be right out.’
Austin bit his lip. He wanted to see his son now.
The nurse took a couple of minutes, coming back out of the room with another tank-stopping smile.
‘Please go in. The doctor will see you.’
‘Thank you.’ He had to stop himself from barging past her.
Austin didn’t make out the doctor’s, ‘Hello Mr Rodgers, I’m Doctor Hemingway’. Nor did he see the man’s outstretched hand. He was too overcome by the mummy-like state of his son. There were wires and drips everywhere. And more machines than in the cockpit of the space shuttle he’d looked over at the Kennedy Space Centre a couple of months ago. And there was more bandage than flesh.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ Austin’s voice crackled.
The doctor, who was standing at the end of the bed and still had his hand out, extended it further and placed it on Austin’s forearm.
Austin shot him a glance. He knew he must look like a coyote in the headlights.
‘It’s going to be touch and go, sir. Your son, I’m assuming he’s your son?’
Austin nodded, his head flitting between the doctor and Rick.
‘He’s suffered two major traumas. His liver was badly perforated as was one of his lungs. Thankfully no major arteries were severed, but he lost a lot of blood. Surgery took almost 12 hours. I have removed half a lung and a chunk of liver. Fixed a lot of other stuff inside and sewn him up. He’s in good shape, which is going to help. But the body doesn’t like being torn apart and then having bits of itself removed. The next 12 hours will be crucial.’
‘Thanks. Can I?’ Austin pointed to Rick’s bedside.
The doctor nodded with a half-smile.
‘I’d like you to put on a mask please.’ He was pointing to a box on a shelf to the right of the bed.
‘Sure.’ Austin picked up a mask and, not taking his eyes off his son, he moved to his bedside. A few seconds later he looked for a chair, found one a few feet away, pulled it up and sat down.
Without looking away from Rick, he pleaded, ‘Will he wake up?’
The doctor hadn’t moved from the end of the bed.
‘He will be coming round from the operation in a couple of hours. He’s heavily sedated. I’d like to have a chat with him when he comes to. When I’m happy, the police have asked that I give them a call - they’d like to talk to him as well. But that’s not going to be until at least …’
Austin didn’t allow the doctor to finish his sentence.
‘Does anyone know what happened?’
‘No, sorry. The ambulance found him by chance - within probably a minute of the shooting. Any longer and he wouldn’t have made it. He was downtown. He still had his wallet on him, so it wasn’t a mugging. Probably drive-by.’ There was a pause and then, ‘Was he into gangs? Drugs?’
What?
‘What are you saying?’ Austin had to stop himself from shouting at the man.
The doctor wasn’t fazed.
‘Sorry, it just seems such an odd thing to have happened in broad daylight in that particular part of the town. I saw his military ID. Maybe it was terrorist-related[RJ35]?’
Austin was confused. He was getting on for mid-sixties but he had all his faculties. Terrorism? In Vegas?
Maybe it wasn’t so off-the-scale? His son was a Reaper pilot. Killing the enemy from afar. Easier to kill a drone pilot in downtown Vegas than an armed soldier in Kabul.
Was he a prime target?
‘I don’t know. Has anyone told his base? Creech?’
‘I’m not sure. We’d need to talk to reception. The police obviously found you. So, I guess they’ve be in touch with the CO there?’
Austin shook his head. Not in dismay, just in bewilderment. It was all mad. His son shot in the street. Possibly terrorist-related[RJ36]? What was the world coming to?
The doctor had allowed him to stay at Rick’s bedside. He checked his watch. It was 8.17 pm. He’d been in the hospital for over three hours. And hadn’t moved from his chair.
Austin wasn’t a demonstrative man. It was a military thing. Touching and telling people what you thought about them - unless it was a chastisement - wasn’t his way. But he had held Rick’s hand since the doctor had left the room. He had spoken to his son, things he had never said to him before. Stuff from his heart. Things he should have said a long time ago.
He prayed as well, which was a long time coming. He hadn’t prayed since Baghdad. Since that fateful November day when he’d been in the forward command post. Mike-Three-Zero-Charlie. A small brick-and-mud house, six of them, a couple of radios and a map. Controlling reconnaissance teams on the ground.
The flash, the noise - and then the gunfire. Smoke and cordite. He’d struggled to reach his helmet, which he’d taken off to get some fresh air to his head. He’d been hit in the leg by a piece of shrapnel, the Russian RGP rocket-launched grenade smashing the glass in the window and exploding against the back wall killing his friend, Luke, in an instant. The firefight that followed lasted an hour.
An hour.
An hour before backup came. One radio had been destroyed in the initial blast. The second took a bullet ten minutes later. He had just managed to make a call to the Forward Operating Base (FOB). But the attack had been part of a simultaneous assault by local militia. Everyone was penned in.
‘Do you want air support?’, was the return call from HQ, the radio operator’s voice difficult to hear above the sound of gunfire at their location.
He didn’t have time to reply before the radio took a round, the green metal box flung across the room, the handset ripped from his grasp as its wire obediently followed its master.
If he had been a few seconds quicker they could have had an Apache overhead - maybe in a couple of minutes. But, and he’d asked himself this question a thousand times since, would it have made a difference? The area was heavily built-up. There was mayhem all around them. A pilot wouldn’t have been able to make out red from blue. His five other teammates would have ju
st[RJ37] as likely been ripped to pieces by the chopper’s M230 chain gun as by the continuous fusillade of enemy rounds that eventually had turned their two-storey building into a one-storey pile of rubble.
An hour in hell. With, by the end, five dead teammates.
No. he hadn’t been able to pray since that November day.
But he had prayed today. Offered his own life for his son’s. Told The Lord to take anything he wanted. But Rick.
He closed his eyes.
And prayed some more.
‘I didn’t think you prayed?’ The voice was weak and stuttery.
With his eyes closed and his mind in a dark place, he thought maybe God was admonishing him.
But it wasn’t God.
He opened his eyes and found Rick looking back at him.
‘Rick!’
The darkness evaporated. He had his boy back.
Rick coughed, a shallow cough which was immediately accompanied by a yelp of pain. The coughing seemed to bring on more coughing. His chest rose and fell, and his shoulders shuddered. More cries. And then blood rose from his chest with the coughing, splattering the pristine sheets and running down the side of his mouth. It was something from a horror movie.
The machines made noises that indicated alarm and, before Austin had a chance to shout ‘nurse’, one he hadn’t seen before ran into the room.
The next five minutes were crazy. His son coughed. More blood came. The nurse ordered Austin away from the bed; he moved to the only window, its blind shut since he’d come into the room. The nurse took Rick by the shoulders and pushed him against the bed whilst issuing calm words. She played with the machines and fiddled with the drips. She offered some more calming words, wiping the blood from his chin with a cloth. Eventually the chaos was subsumed in calm.
Rick looked out of it, but the machines made reassuring pings, and green LED screens seemed to show signs of life.
‘I’ve increased your sedative slightly.’ The nurse was talking to Rick. ‘Everything will be fine now. Try and suppress any cough you may have.’
For Good Men to Do Nothing Page 11