by Matthew Dunn
“Dojo. The place of the way.” Sign drummed his fingers. “I wonder what Japanese martial art you study. Karate? Aikido? Judo? Wrestling?” He stared at Knutsen. “The problem with those disciplines is they’re street–fighting arts. I don’t think a man like you – undercover for most of his adult life – would wind down by doing something so eminently useful in his line of work. I think you’d want something more romantic, noble, disciplined. You’d want the counterbalance to the grimy life you’ve led. You study kenjutsu.”
“We call it kendo. Yes. You’re right.”
“Bravo, Mr. Knutsen. You are therefore a noble warrior.”
Knutsen laughed. “Does everyone in MI6 talk like this? You sound…”
“Old fashioned?”
“Something like that.”
“I can sound like many things, depending on the circumstances. You of all people know we adapt.”
“Chameleons.”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Sign broke the silence. “You’re educated.”
“How do you know?”
“Your eyes and your self–confidence.”
Knutsen nodded. “I gained a first at Exeter.”
“So why join the police, unless you wished to be on track to being a chief constable?”
Knutsen didn’t reply.
“I posit that you wanted to escape something and join a gang; the gang being the police. But when you joined, you realized something – you were always destined to be a loner. Uniforms and allegiance were not for you. Destiny and reality is a cruel fate. Unhappy childhood?”
Knutsen shrugged. “Unlike you, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My father died when I was young. My mother turned to drink and had barely a penny to her name.”
Sign took a sip of his wine. “My father was a merchant navy sailor. He joined the navy age fourteen after being flip–flopped between different foster carers. He came from a very poor family. His mother died when he was seven. He never knew his father. As a child, my father suffered problems in his legs. Doctors put his legs in irons for a year. They were different days back then. He failed entry into the army, when conscription was still around. His feet were too flat. So, he travelled the world on a boat. My mother was brought up in London’s east end. She had a big working class family. They’re all dead now. They had very little money. But they were brilliant people and stuck together. My mother educated herself and became a scientist.” Sign pushed his wine away. “I am not as I seem.”
“You most certainly are not.” Knutsen felt like he was in the presence of a huge force of kinetic energy. “Undercover work is shit.”
“It is, and yet we chose that life.”
“For a reason.”
“Indeed.” Sign wondered how far he should deploy his mental prowess. He liked Knutsen. But, he had to test his metal. “Did you want her to be your real wife?”
Knutsen bristled. “That’s none of your damn business!”
“Correct response.” Sign looked at the other dinners. None of them had done what Knutsen and Sign had done. They were establishment, never having sacrificed their souls. Quietly, he said, “Dear fellow. You did the right thing. I did the right thing. The trouble is, the right thing eats us.” He returned his gaze to Knutsen. “You are an expert shot, a warrior, a loner, a thinker.”
Knutsen’s chest puffed up with anger. “And I assume you have a healthy pension and a wife and kids to go home to somewhere near here.”
“Actually, my wife was killed in Latin America. I have no children. I have very little money.”
Knutsen’s anger evaporated. “What is the job?”
“We become specialist detectives, operating in London.”
“If you’ve got no money, how will you pay me?”
“By results.” Sign leaned forward. “People want strange expertise that they don’t like.”
Knutsen smiled. “I’d never thought of it that way.”
“Nor had I until now.” Sign added, “It would be a fifty/fifty partnership. I’m too old for the dojo. You’re not. But, as you know, on the dojo it’s not about the fighting, it’s about the analysis of the opponent. Together, we can do that analysis. But, if there’s heavy lifting to be done, I’m not that man. You are.”
“Where are your offices?”
Sign sighed. “I’ve looked around London. They’re all too expensive. For now, we’d work from my home.”
“Whereabouts in London?”
“West Square, Kennington. I recently bought the place off a superb former MI6 agent. He now lives in the States and is happily retired. Will Cochrane sold me his home for half its value.”
“And this Cochrane character is no longer spec ops?”
Sign smiled. “He’s done his time in the trenches. He’s at peace.” Sign tossed his napkin on the table. “We, however, are not at peace. Do you agree?”
“Yes.” Knutsen was deep in thought. “Mr. Sign…”
“Ben.”
“Ben – here’s the thing. The Met commissioner got me off the hook for executing a piece of scum. But I had to resign, with no pension. I’m looking for a job with a salary. I’m broke. What you’re offering sounds appealing, but it won’t pay my next three months’ rent.”
“And yet, you could earn ten times that rent after just one assignment. I don’t come cheap.” Sign clasped his hands together. “I understand your predicament. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Drink?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“More than the British surgeon general recommends, but never to excess.”
“Drinking is a man’s prayer time. Doctors don’t get that.” Sign added, “I’d like to offer you the position of co–director of my business. You can stay at my place until the money starts rolling in. My bedrooms have en suite bathrooms. There is a sizeable lounge where we can conduct consultations with clients.”
“Sir, I’m not…”
“Homosexual. Nor am I. This is business. You and I are out of work.”
“Holmes and Watson?”
“Something like that, if you choose to draw parallels.”
Knutsen asked, “Are you IT literate? Have you got a website? Twitter account? Facebook page? Advertising?”
Sign shook his head. “I have a black book. With your contacts in the Met, you’ll add to that black book. Business will come to us. We don’t need to prostitute ourselves by chasing petty divorce cases and the like.”
“So, what would we be chasing?”
“Mysteries. But tell me something. Why should I go into business with you?”
Knutsen looked away. “You decide.” He returned his attention to Sign. “Loyalty is key to everything, isn’t it, Mr. Sign? If I join the business, I wouldn’t do so half–hearted. As important, I don’t have your abilities, but you don’t have my abilities.”
“True indeed.” Sign held out his hand.
Knutsen shook his hand. “I can move in on Monday.”
CHAPTER 5
The forty year old Englishman rang the bell of the Edwardian house in Godalming, Surrey. He’d watched the home for three hours and knew that the occupiers were at home. He was smartly dressed, an overcoat protecting his suit. His hair was cut to precision – shorter than a civilian haircut, longer than that of a military serviceman. This morning, he’d shaved with a cutthroat razor, after which he’d dabbed eau de toilette over his immaculate skin. Yesterday, he’d had a beard and his voice was that of a Belarusian artisan; the day before he was a Finnish drunk; today he was a gentleman. His true self.
A woman answered the door.
“Mrs. Archer. I’m sorry to turn up unannounced. I work with your husband. We have a crisis.”
The wife looked uncertain. “My husband’s at home. Who should I say is calling?”
“John Smith.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”
“I’m afraid it is. M
y real name was buried a long time ago.” He checked his watch. “I don’t have much time.”
She gestured him to enter the house while calling out, “Mark, we have a visitor.”
Mark was a fifty one year old MI6 officer. He was reading a paper and was sitting next to a fire in a tastefully decorated living room.
Mark looked up as the man who called himself John Smith entered the room. “What do you want?”
Smith looked at Mrs. Archer. “I do apologise for asking this, but would you be offended if I asked you to give us some privacy?”
Mrs. Archer had been married to Mark for twenty three years. She’d accompanied him on four overseas MI6 postings. She knew what it was like to be married to a spy. She acquiesced and left the room.
The man sat opposite Mark and spoke to him for ten minutes.
Then he left.
Two days’ later, the man who called himself by the fake name of John Smith waited in a hotel room in Mayfair’s Duke’s hotel. The senior MI6 officer wasn’t wearing his suit jacket, but otherwise he was immaculately dressed. He was sitting in an armchair, two untouched glasses of beer were by his side. His fingers were interlaced while he was deep in thought.
Someone at the door knocked three times, paused for three seconds, then knocked again. It was the visitor Smith had been waiting for. He let the man in and locked the door.
The man was thirty six years old, wiry, of medium height, had shoulder–length black hair, and eyes that looked dead. He was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece.
Smith gestured to a spare chair and handed him one of the beers. “It’s been two years. How have you been, Karl?”
Karl Hilt took a swig of his beer. “I’ve been doing private work since I left MI6. Pay’s better.”
Hilt had been a paramilitary officer in MI6, prior to which he was an SBS operative. He was an expert in surveillance, unarmed combat, weaponry, espionage tradecraft, and deniable assassinations. But what stood him out for Smith was he had no mercy. He was a highly trained psychopath who was kept on a leash only by virtue of the organisations he’d worked for. Now, he was off the leash. But Smith still needed him to have a master. For now.
“I want you to do a job for me. I’ll pay you well. It will be UK–based.”
Hilt nodded and said in his east London accent, “I’m between work at the moment. What do you have in mind?”
Smith didn’t answer him directly. “Do you remember those guys you killed in Iraq?”
“Yeah. You were in a shit storm back then. They’d have cut your head off if I hadn’t got into the house.”
Smith nodded. “And you remember the last remaining member of that terror cell – the woman who came at you with an AK47?”
“I slit her throat.”
“And you did so without blinking.”
“She was a fanatical bitch. Wanted to put bullets in you and me.”
“You could easily have disarmed her.”
Hilt shrugged. “She could have been packing a secondary weapon, grenades, bomb vest, anything.” Hilt smiled. “The point being – she deserved to die.”
“Yes, she did.”
“So, what’s your point? Men, women, even kids who pick up RPGs and will one day soon be radicalised – I don’t care who I’ve killed. Are you in or out of MI6?”
“Still in. But the money I’m going to pay you is mine and the job is private. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No.”
“Good. There’s a Metropolitan Police case that I have a particular interest in. I don’t need to go in to details as to why the case peaks my interest. All that matters to me is that the case is open and is being investigated by a detective inspector called Katy Roberts.” Smith handed Hilt a mobile phone. “That’s deniable. It has one number stored in it. It’s your link to my deniable phone. Keep tabs on Mrs. Roberts. Let me know of any developments.”
“Where do I find her?”
“New Scotland Yard. I also have her home address.” Smith handed Hilt a slip of paper. “For now, it’s just surveillance and reporting back to me. But, if things develop in the wrong direction, I may ask you to up the ante.”
Hilt smiled.
CHAPTER 6
Knutsen stood in Kennington’s small West Square. The beautiful enclosure was surrounded by regal Edwardian terraced houses. Knutsen had a holdall slung over one shoulder. In his other hand, he held a small trolley case. Both bags contained all of his possessions. He pressed the intercom of the house containing Sign’s apartment. The house had long ago been converted into four flats. Sign’s dwelling was on the fourth floor.
The door buzzed and opened. Knutsen entered and walked up the stairs. He knocked on the door.
Sign answered and asked, “Did you bring your suit?”
Knutsen nodded.
“Good. We have a meeting this afternoon with New Scotland Yard.” Sign showed Knutsen to his bedroom. “Unpack. I’m making a pot of tea. Let’s convene in the lounge in fifteen minutes.”
The bedroom was twice the size of the one Knutsen had been sleeping in within his former residence. A spiral staircase led to the attic that had been fully converted into a bathroom. He unpacked his clothes into a wardrobe and chest of drawers and examined the bathroom. It was state of the art – spot lamps in the ceiling, extractor fans in the shower cubicle and toilet area, and a heated towel rail. He exited his room, walked past the solitary toilet room that had come with the original layout of the property, and walked past Sign’s bedroom. It too had a spiral staircase leading to a separate loft converted bathroom suite. Somebody had spent a lot of money converting this place. Sign was in the kitchen. By comparison to the other rooms in the property, it was tiny; no room even for a breakfast table. But it had an expensive gas oven and separate hob, a washing machine, dishwasher, Global knives on a wall–mounted magnetic strip, cupboards, and a wooden chopping board strewn with fresh vegetables sourced from Borough Market.
Sign handed him a cup of tea. “I guessed milk, no sugar.”
“You guessed right.” Knutsen followed him into the lounge. The place was twice the size of any lounge Knutsen had seen before. It was strewn with antiquities and other artefacts – a six seater oak dining table, a neo–classical era chaise longue, a sofa, gold–framed oil paintings on the walls, bookshelves crammed with out–of–print non–fiction historical and academic works, a wall–mounted Cossack sabre, Persian rugs, two nineteenth century brass miners’ lamps within which were candles, a five foot high artificial Japanese tree with a string of blue lights around it, seventeen century Scottish dirks in a glass cabinet, a laptop on a green–leather covered nine drawer mahogany writing desk, lamps, seafaring charts, and so many other objects of interest it made the mind swirl.
On one of the shelves was a silk map that had been mounted between glass. It was the type worn under the garments of operatives working behind enemy lines. On its back were eight short paragraphs – in English, Dari, Pashwari, Tajikistan, Urdu, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Persian, together with the contact numbers of six UK diplomatic missions. The paragraphs asked for food and water, promised the reader that the bearer of the map wouldn’t hurt him, and requested safe passage to British forces or its allies. On the front of the map was the title AFGHANISTAN & ENVIRONS, ESCAPE MAP.
Sign took the map out of Knutsen’s hand and placed it back on the mantelshelf above the open fire. He said, “Different days for me back then.”
The centre of the lounge was uncluttered. All it had was three armchairs facing each other, and tiny adjacent wooden coffee tables. Knutsen and Sign sat.
Knutsen looked around. The room seemed to him to either be an Aladdin’s Cave or the result of an eccentric professor’s penchants.
Sign followed his gaze. “I travelled the world. Many of these things are my purchases. But some were given to me. They remind me of good things.” He took a sip of his tea. “This is our centre of operations.”
“And we’ll meet clients here?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Knutsen stared at Sign. “You could have been chief of MI6. Do you not worry that you could have done better than scratching a living with me?”
Sign replied, “No. I’d been thinking about resigning for some time. All my adult life I’ve worked alone or in small teams. As soon as I heard I was tipped the be the next chief of MI6, I feared that if I got the job I’d have to become a corporate beast – not just managing thousands of staff, but also liaising with all the other agencies, plus Whitehall and our overseas allies. I get easily bored with playing management and politics. Operating in the shadows suits me better.”
That made sense to Knutsen. It was for similar reasons he’d gone undercover, rather than grabbing rank after rank until he headed up the Met or one of the county forces. “Tell me about the meeting with the Yard.”
“I’ll answer that indirectly and directly. Over the last few days, I’ve been making calls – to the chiefs of every police force in the UK, Interpol, the chiefs and directors of MI6, MI5, GCHQ, army, air force, and navy commanders, and twenty nine heads of foreign security and intelligence agencies. I’ve been setting out our stall; telling them that you and I are in business for any delicate work they need to outsource. Your former boss – the Met commissioner – has bitten. This afternoon he’s sending a detective inspector to talk to us.”
“What’s the name of the inspector?”
“Katy Roberts. I don’t know her. Do you?”
“No. But I do know of her. She’s more than just a detective. She’s Special Branch. And she’s a rising star. What does she want?”
“I don’t know.” Sign checked his watch. “She’ll be here in two hours. That gives us time for lunch. What say you to pan–fried guinea fowl, caramelised shallots, toasted carrots, green beans, and sautéed potatoes?”
“You’ve booked a table?”
“No, dear chap. I’m going to cook the dish myself.”
Katy Roberts arrived on time after Sign and Knutsen had eaten and changed into their suits. Knutsen took her coat and asked her to take a seat in one of the armchairs. The men sat in the other chairs.