Bolt Action

by Charlie Charters

  “Ullo?’ Despite his new-found airs and graces, she knew Malham would speak Geordie to those from the city. A defence mechanism.

  Tristie took a deep breath, glanced one last time at the Internet print-off. It said that a woman called Kayleigh Brook had joined First Jet Private’s Newcastle operation six weeks before. A photo off the company website showed her to be a dyed blonde and smiley. And big boned from the look of things. Size fourteen. Tristie launched into her best Geordie. ‘Sir Dale Malham?’ The inflection rising at the end. ‘Is that you, Sir Dale?’ She was as good as she was because the British Army had made her so.

  ‘Wey aye.’ Very slightly sozzled, but still with the politician’s touch. ‘This is he.’

  Tristie continued, gushing, like a schoolgirl. ‘My name is Kayleigh. You used to know my uncle. Long time back. He lived in Harydene. Perhaps you don’t remember. Anyway, that was a way ago. I work in finance, at First Jet Private. You know . . . Them . . . You know . . . Those . . .’ She stumbles here, a little bit breathy. Trying to sound flustered, talking to her first ever knight of the realm. Golly gee.

  ‘I don’t know you, pet, but it’s all right. I know First Jet. You’re calling from Newcastle.’ In her other ear Ferret whispers. ‘He’s smiling. He’s with you.’

  ‘I gotta be canny here, Sir Dale. I don’t want no trouble ‘cos it’s all very embarrassing. I’m going to get an awful rocket from your missus if she finds me out.’

  ‘What is it, pet?’ Malham sounding intrigued.

  ‘Your birthday. This coming Tuesday . . . Happy birthday, by the way, Sir Dale . . . Well. The wifie has booked a surprise flight for ya birthday and all. Private jet, like a surprise, and a big tour round France and Venice. Three nights in some very posh places. You’re not supposed to know, like.’ Ferret in her left ear. ‘He’s nodding. Big smile. Whatever you’re saying is making sense to him.’

  ‘We took her credit card to confirm the hotels and things. Only we didn’t run all the charges, not until this afternoon ‘cos you know the fuel surcharges are always last-minute, like. But her card won’t work now. You know the end of the month is Sunday, so there’s nothing left on her card, like. No juice.’

  ‘Frowning now. Not a happy bunny. Going a bit red round the neck.’

  ‘Anyways. I dunno what to do, like. It’s right doing my head in, this. ‘Cos I don’t want to spoil your party, like, but I don’t want to get a rocket from your missus if we lose all them takeoff and landing slots.’ Breath. Pause. Breath. ‘And it’s Friday night, Sir Dale. And I want to go get me dancing boots on, have a bit of a boogie. And I know this thing is going to be messing with my head, like, all weekend. So I thought I’d give you a bell and all.’

  Ferret speaking softly. ‘He’s got a big shit-eater’s grin on his face.’

  Malham sounded leery when he spoke. ‘So. Miss Kayleigh. What exactly do you want me to do?’

  Tristie gave a little breathless giggle. ‘Well, you could just tell me ya card number. And ya PIN, of course. And trust me to be a good girl with it over the weekend.’ Now a little bit saucy. ‘But I’ve never done very well at being a good girl . . . if you know what I mean . . .’

  ‘God’s honest truth, he’s playing with his balls right in front of me. Taking a drink of his whisky with one hand and playing with his fucking balls with the other.’

  Malham’s voice sounds a little slurry. ‘Pet. Good girl or not, as much as I want to you give you my credit card . . . I’m sure you realise that’s not the wisest thing. So how’s about we try another way.’

  Amused resignation in Tristie’s voice. ‘I thought you might say that . . . so I guess I’m going to have to give you the company bank account. Do things the old-fashioned way.’ She looked down at the invoice she had had faxed from the offices of First Jet Private, having spoken to the real Kayleigh Brook. It was genuine, with the correct sort code and bank address. Ferret’s voice was full of excitement. ‘He’s getting out a pen and paper. He’s going to do it.’

  ‘Go ahead, Kayleigh. Read me the account details. So I can pay for me own bloody birthday surprise, and keep a pretty girl like you out of trouble on a Friday night. Read it out to me. I’ll check with the bank. Squirt the money through.’

  ‘Aw. Thanks a bunch.’ And so Tristie did, reading out all the information Malham would need. She had rung up First Jet Private that morning saying she wanted to put down a deposit on a package they were offering to next year’s Monte Carlo Grand Prix. Asked that they fax through the invoice for payment. So it was the company’s genuine details that were being read down the phone. The details would match payments Malham had made to the same company for similar trips. First Jet Private’s own quarterly glossy circulars had boasted that Malham travelled with them to Moscow and Rome for the final of the Champions League, to Milan for some opera and a whole range of trips to Germany. To see happy pension fund managers.

  The First Law of the Great Con: if your mark can’t see your point of profit, all defences will be down and you can get him for anything. ‘He’s writing it all down.’ And he did, even reading it back to make sure.

  Tristie’s final words. ‘Please, pretty please, can you make sure they start the payment thing rolling tonight. Please.’ And that was the last time she heard Sir Dale Malham’s voice.

  Five minutes later Tristie was out of the hotel room and in her rental car when the email from Ferret arrived. It was a high-resolution video clip lasting just over three minutes, taken from the secure digital card recording off his camera lens. Malham calling his Jersey bank.

  One of the things Tristie had had to learn when she was in the various care homes of her childhood was lip-reading. It was a survival thing. The need to communicate about their ‘carers’, to mock or ridicule, or warn others, but always fearing their wrath if they were caught speaking. Silence indeed golden.

  Watching him on screen, it didn’t take Tristie long to read off Malham’s sort code and account number. He was making no effort to be discreet. He explained on his mobile that the account he wanted to tap was his call deposit account. Instant access. Funds in excess of £50,000 required. She scribbled all of this down, her heart beating a little too fast. They were still a long way from victory. Fewer than forty per cent of word sounds are distinguishable by sight alone.

  He spoke the amount he wished to transfer to First Jet Private, and confirmed it once again. The numbers were easy because the visemes, or visual units of speech, were simple to pick. Answered a random but fairly obvious-to-anticipate security question. Then Malham gave the first line of his address, and postcode. Next, his authorisation code, or password. That was when the fun started.

  It took Tristie a couple of minutes of playing it back and forth before she could even take a guess. No, she told herself. Can’t be. She went back over it again and again and again, and the pinprick of emotion that started as anxiety somewhere in her stomach had spread. Becoming anger. Then her whole body tightened with fury. Money For Old Rope. His password was Money For Old Rope. She could have been wrong, of course. Money and Many lip-read the same. It helped that so many of even the Jersey call centres were using East European staff, so Malham had had to enunciate it carefully. It kept coming back to the same thing. Money For Old Rope. Perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps this was a book title or obscure Dire Straits album he could have been referring to? Or was this really what he thought of his armed forces connections, and the millions he had accrued? Money For Old Rope.

  Quickly Tristie checked the airport website. The flight to Newcastle was showing Closed. Pushed back from the gate. He’d be out of contact for the next seventy-five minutes at least. So she dialled up Ferret, told him carefully what she knew, and asked him to get to work. He would be the male voice that rang the bank, no point her trying. Only he could be Sir Dale Malham: transferring out chunks of £50,000. They’d agreed, keep ringing back until you exhaust the daily, weekly or monthly limit, or he simply runs out of cash. Allow two minutes between each c
all and you would be assured of a different person answering each time. All transfers to the Ward 13 account in the bank’s sister branch in Grand Cayman.

  Good luck, Ferret, she said, feeling guilty, hoping he understood that she had done everything possible to minimise the risk, short of making the calls herself. The pre-pay mobile he used was brand new. No history. Possibly, they could back-triangulate the calls to within fifty yards of where he was in Terminal 5, which gave them a pool of about five thousand suspects. There was much more of a trail leading to Tristie, but that didn’t stop her worrying that Ferret was carrying too much of the risk.

  She waited in the hotel car park. Laptop fired up, and the website set to www.openatc.com so she could watch the slow progress of Malham’s BA flight to Newcastle as it pushed north through England’s congested skies. The assumption would be that he’d make a call or get a message on his mobile as soon as the flight landed. Perhaps he would harangue his partner about her spending, discover in fact there was no birthday trip planned, maybe get a call from a supervisor at the bank, worried that an account had been flushed clean of cash. Seventy-five minutes was their time frame.

  The only thing to do was sit back. Look through her rain-spattered windscreen. Try and remain calm. The longer she waited, the more her mind grew accustomed to the idea of getting caught. At least they had a good shot at some publicity: the British love the idea of a noble failure. The girl with no parents, attractive, single, exciting but deeply classified army career, tilting at windmills. Maybe she could make some sort of celebrity D-list, surviving as a rent-a-quote security expert on TV and radio. She felt her nails dig into her palms at the thought . . . an awful reality.

  ‘Captain?’

  Huh? She jumped. It felt like only seconds later but Ferret was back in Tristie’s ear. Panicky, she glanced down at the laptop and gulped. Steady. Openatc.com showed Malham’s flight over the North Sea making its turn towards Newcastle airport. Take it easy. Deep breath.

  ‘Yes?’ She cleared her throat. ‘Things OK?’

  Ferret sounded way down. ‘He’s run out of money already.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Instantly, Tristie was thinking about Plan B, how to keep Ward 13 alive, how much would she have to borrow. And where from. ‘How much?’

  Ferret sighed. And in her cold, boxy little rental car, she could feel his gloom wrap around her. How small was the amount they’d managed to scavenge? she wondered. Tell me it’s not too embarrassingly small . . .

  ‘A one and four zeros.’ Ten thousand pounds.

  Ferret’s disappointment was obvious. Yet a tiny, sneaky part of her was relieved. Look on the bright side, she felt herself wanting to say. It was a small amount, not what they needed as seed money, but at the same time not enough to set off an international manhunt. Perhaps, she had the words ready to say, she’d over-egged the opportunity. ‘I’m sorry, Ferret. I really am.’

  Quiet followed. And in that silence she searched for conversation, a female instinct, some meaningless words to soothe the sharp edge of male disappointment . . .

  Which was when Ferret erupted in a gale of laughter. Almost maniacal. Then the quietest whisper. ‘One point two five million.’ He gurgled with delight, saying it again, softly. ‘A one, a two, a five and four frigging zeros.’

  Tristie’s first panicked reaction had been, Put the Money Back.

  ‘Put it back??! Tristie, excuse my English, but are you fucking crazy? This guy calls us Money For Old Rope, and you want to give it back?!’

  And, of course, Ferret was right. They didn’t. And in the Caymans, Piglet picked up the banker’s cheque ninety minutes later: £1.25 million. An hour after that, he was off, on a scheduled flight to the Bahamas. (Army humour . . . the guy is Piglet because he is the scion of a wealthy family of Jewish traders. Reubens. His father allowed him to use one of the family’s long-dormant and untraceable Cayman Island accounts, have it renamed Ward 13 Operating Funds.) Piglet then banked the cheque in a brand-new Bahamas account, and suddenly the whole thing was in business. Ward 13. This half-crazy, half-stupid idea had become reality.

  Operation Macchar, minus eighteen days

  US Embassy

  Diplomatic Enclave

  Islamabad, Pakistan

  First impressions: the CIA station chief in Islamabad is bald, shiny bald. And even with a nose-guard’s broad frame, he looks seriously overweight. And when William Lamayette frowns somehow the whole of his scalp and fleshy neckline frowns with him, folding into ridges and gulleys that speak of anxiety and tension. There is something about his intensity, the way he sucks up the pressure of the job, that reminds people of Colonel Kurtz, the Brando character in Apocalypse Now. Then there is the unusual get-up. For tonight’s cross-examination with Washington he’s wearing a specially tailored black cotton salwar kameez. Not typical Agency office-wear, but damned comfortable nonetheless.

  Some whisper that, like Colonel Kurtz, he is already insane. Only forty-eight years old, they tut, as if real CIA people couldn’t be losing their marbles until they were at least fifty-five. As to Lamayette himself, it’s soul destroying to feel that he is the only person taking all this seriously.

  ‘Jeez. You’d think these screwy bastards might have a handle on what their frigging generals were up to.’ Lamayette blows a thick stream of cigarette smoke to the ceiling. Frazzled. His hefty back and shoulders carrying his bulk distort his body to an upright turtle shape. ‘Bit of command and control wouldn’t go amiss in a country with a goddam nuke bomb. I’ve flushed away turds . . . small pebbly turds, and each one with more smarts than some of their staff officers . . .’

  On the US end of this tirade, the Agency’s director of the National Clandestine Service, the spook arm of the CIA, interjects. Sensing this discussion needs to be brought back in hand.

  ‘Listen, Bill . . .’ The NCS director’s name is Krandall Meyers. He speaks smoothly. ‘You haven’t given us enough to put this Khan thing top of anybody’s list, let alone the president’s. No way is he picking up the phone to the Pakistani president or prime minister on this. So what, General Khan’s people might have made some silly threats. We don’t even know what he’s threatening to do. So. I’ll say it again: have you got anything on Khan? What he might be up to?’ Long pause. ‘Anything?’

  Lamayette looks aghast at the fascia of the telephone, its fancy screen, electronics, flashing lights, and riles at the smooth but very pointed, slippery-simple question from Washington. ‘What the bloody hell do you think, Krandall?’

  It would take just under three seconds for his words to process through the encryption software, bounce about through outer space and then be reassembled on Meyers’s desk.

  Let’s see what you make of that . . .

  Lamayette knows he looks a wreck of a man. Pushed to the edge by the sheer excesses of the job. And the tragedy is that after almost three years, he’s only now beginning to understand how things work here. Not that this hard-won sense of wisdom is providing any particular insight right now: General Khan was willing himself to death someplace. Like some heartbroken animal. Refusing food and water. The shrinks even had an expression for it, Passive Learned Helplessness. After ten days, Washington’s verdict was clear: not impressed. This guy’s a peon. A bag-carrier. How smart is starving yourself to death, not dealing your way out of trouble? Highly strung perhaps, but no way is he some kind of tactical genius. End of story.

  Having your judgement questioned was like . . . like losing the whole game. Lamayette understands this better than most. His stock within the top circle at the CIA was sinking fast. Too many new faces and too few who would speak for him. He’s lost the plot, Old Bill. He could almost script the chat at the water-cooler. Did some good things, like, last millennium, but a freaking headcase now.

  Lamayette fingers the outline of a long, thick slab of granite given to him by an old friend. Many lifetimes ago he had attended the frogman training centre at Aspretto on Corsica run by the French Secret Service, the Direction Génér
ale de la Sécurité Extérieure. He became fast friends with the deputy head. Both kept in contact as their careers progressed; his buddy now chief of the private office to the minister of defence. Therefore, behind the president and defence minister, he was Number Three Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey. Lamayette had sent off the appropriate Simpsons T-shirt with his own grinning face screen-printed over that of the character of Groundskeeper Willie, who’d uttered those immortal words.

  When Lamayette was posted to Islamabad, one of the first things he received, under diplomatic escort from the French embassy, was the plank of granite. Engraved into the stone and gilded were de Gaulle’s famous words: ‘You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.’ As irritatingly humorous as his friend’s gift had been, there had been moments, many moments, in the conduct of this War on Terror when he could imagine the imperious, beak-nosed de Gaulle chortling with delight.

  Back to now. And Meyers sounds like he’s about to go dyspeptic. ‘Bill. I have to say . . . I don’t think . . . I don’t think your anger is called for. Is it unprofessional for us just to want to know what’s going on? To ask a little more of your work-product than for all this anxiety you’re generating to be nothing more than random and unverifiable guesses?’

  Lamayette laces his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. ‘I just don’t have anything, Krandall . . . What do you want me to do? I could make something up. Yeah. I saw his tactical plan in my Cheerios this morning. All the little hoops came together like magic. Showed me what he was planning: Khan was going to take a stick, not any kind of stick but a conductor’s baton, and shove it up the president’s ass. At the White House correspond ents’ dinner. Watch out for him, Krandall, in the woodwind section. He’ll be the guy pretending to play bassoon. Can’t play for toffee. That’ll be your clue.’