by Greg Coppin
‘Thanks.’
‘You walk away from every woman you’ve ever known. You are lost. You are searching for something.’
‘Very profound. I’m amazed.’
‘Joke all you want, you know it’s true.’
‘And you have the answer?’
‘You’ve been looking for us, just as we’ve been looking for you.’
I laughed. Almost. ‘So who are you?’ I asked.
‘I work for a small department within Whitehall.’
I straightened up and my eyes narrowed a little. ‘Sounds shadowy. You’re not going to tell me you’re a spy or something, are you?’
‘An unpleasant term. Our work is primarily to accumulate intelligence for our masters.’
‘Good god, you are a spy.’ I stared at him. ‘So what’s your secondary role?’ I asked.
He smiled and pulled a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. It was blank apart from a single word.
Vercingetorix.
The man held up a hand to halt any questions from me.
‘If you are interested, take that card to the British Consulate in Supreme Court Road. Ask for a Stephen Douglas. Tell him your name and that you spoke to me.’
***
That night I kicked seven shades out of the bin in my hotel room.
I admit, I did it because the man had got to me. And he had got to me because he was right. What the hell was I doing with my life?
I was thirty years old. I had no permanent job. No permanent girlfriend. No permanent life.
I was searching for something.
But was I searching for what his ‘small department within Whitehall’ could offer?
The next morning I had made up my mind.
I boarded the Star Ferry again and took a red taxi to Supreme Court Road and stepped inside the massive British Consulate. Any lingering doubts that this was all made up, some loony in the street, was quickly dispelled when I eventually found myself in a meeting with the Consul General herself.
It all happened quickly then. The next morning I was on a plane back to London. While on board I signed the Official Secrets Act, a document handed to me by a slim, efficient woman in her thirties, who looked at me commandingly over her glasses. I was driven from Heathrow airport into Westminster and we parked in a small, square courtyard on Whitehall. I was taken through narrow corridors and up a winding, uneven staircase and shown into a small, cluttered office that smelled of centuries-old dust and parchment.
A man was there to greet me. His name, he said, was Baxter. A thin, navy blue-suited, bespectacled gentleman who revealed his intelligence in little asides, but who nevertheless asked me the oddest questions.
He also asked me about the card I had been given.
‘You remember there was a word on that card?’ he asked.
We were sitting on opposite sides of a mahogany desk. Fraying, old, black leather books stood inside glass-covered book cases all around us.
‘A name,’ I said. ‘Yes. Vercingetorix.’
‘You know who he was?’
‘A warrior. A chief of the Averni tribe. He united the Gauls against the invading Romans.’
‘Well done. You know your history,’ he said, almost superciliously.
I shook my head. ‘There’s a statue of him in the town I grew up in. Which I presume is why it’s on my card.’
‘Sort of. Actually, it’s the inscription on that statue that we’re more interested in.’
I glanced up to the left to recall it. ‘J’ai pris les armes pour la liberte de tous.’ I said. ‘I took up arms for the liberty of all.’
He nodded.
He continued to stare at me.
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Do you?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Sort of the ethos around here, I take it.’
He didn’t answer that, just smiled a little.
‘And where is here?’ I asked. ‘I presume we’re something like MI5? MI6? Nobody’s actually told me.’
I wouldn’t be certain that I’ve ever heard anyone actually harrumph before. But at that moment, in that office, Baxter came very close.
‘They wouldn’t,’ he said, the smile disappearing from his face. ‘We are neither of the misnamed organisations you have just trotted out. For a start we go back a little further.
‘Our department was formed in 1854 shortly after the Battle of Balaclava. Naturally, our masters at the time were none too happy that we had lost our best supply road in the region. Not to mention the cock-up that led to the slaying of forty percent of the Light Brigade. Something needed to be done.’ He straightened his back.
‘The Secretary of State for War, the Duke of Newcastle, certainly thought so. He envisaged a group of well-trained men, and as it turned out, women, who could get into a country well ahead of the army and take on the enemy covertly.
‘Our role handed to us was quite clear: defend and promote the interests of this island nation acta non verba - through deeds not words. To do that we needed men and women who were not afraid to tell some lies, steal some treasure or spill some blood.
‘Lad, this department has a long and glorious history. One day you may even get to hear about it.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘And what is this department known as?’ I asked, genuinely absorbed.
‘We have been known for a century and a half to a few people by a single word. One day you may even get to know about that as well.
‘Listen, lad,’ he said again, his eyes narrowing. ‘This department is not hewn from modern sensibilities. When we were formed a twenty-year-old could be expected to travel halfway around the world and take charge of a company of men or an entire plantation. Spotty urchins barely out of school were treated as grown-ups and thus usually walked like men. Today…’ A pained expression appeared on his face. It seemed to be too much for him to contemplate any longer. He changed the subject.
‘You mentioned Vauxhall Cross.’ MI6. Secret Intelligence Service. ‘We’re a different kettle of fish. In this department we’re expected to get our hands a little more dirty,’ he said. ‘That the sort of ethos you can live with?’
I stared back at him. His blue eyes glinted. I was seeing the steel within him now and I wondered what his story was. Whether he’d been ‘out in the field’, as they all seemed to call it. It wouldn’t have surprised me.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘That is very much what I can live with.’
He nodded soberly.
A week later I was offered a job.
There then followed three months of intensive training in Wiltshire and Edinburgh.
Towards the end of the third month I was summoned back to London. I was called into Baxter’s office.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
I sat down opposite him, inhaling, once again, the history of the place.
I frowned because I was unsure what the meeting was about. ‘Everything’s been okay with my training, hasn’t it, sir?’ I asked.
Baxter leaned forward, clasping his hands on the desk. ‘Yesterday,’ he said, ignoring my question, ‘Neil Wilson was murdered on a routine assignment in Belize.’
I looked at him slightly aghast. I hadn’t expected that. Wilson had taken some of the classes in my training.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘You know by now we don’t nanny our people. We know your training is not finished, but we sometimes like to do this with new recruits.’
A fly landed on the light blue jotting pad in front of Baxter and began walking about. He made no attempt to flick it away.
‘Do what, sir?’
‘You leave for Belize tonight,’ he said. ‘Your job is to find out who murdered Wilson and why.
‘We’re throwing you in at the deep end, lad.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Giuttieri had turned slightly to walk back to his car.
Sending up spurts of dust I sprinted out of the entrance and before the gunman had time to do anything I had gra
bbed hold of Giuttieri’s fat face and got behind his massive body and thrust the crook of my right arm around his head and neck. Giuttieri smelled of sweat and some terrible cologne. I looked at the gunman. He was alone and about twenty feet away. He was belatedly swinging his gun round to point at me.
‘Drop the gun,’ I told him. ‘Or I snap his neck.’
I was right behind Giuttieri and he was shielding me perfectly. The gunman knew he couldn’t get a shot in.
‘Drop it. I’m not bluffing.’ I tightened my grip on his greasy head.
The gunman looked at Giuttieri. There was a moment when I wondered if Giuttieri would tell the gunman to shoot us both. He was that sort of psycho. But within the tight constraint of my grip he looked at the gunman and I felt him slightly nod.
The gunman lowered the gun.
‘Release the magazine,’ I said. ‘Drop them both on the ground.’
The gunman did so. And the magazine and the gun sent up little clouds of dust as they hit the ground.
‘Now turn around. And start walking.’
Two minutes later we could still see him in the far distance.
I turned Giuttieri around, jabbed my knuckles once into his throat and shoved him back onto the bonnet of his car.
Giuttieri coughed hard and tried to get his breath back. I stepped over to the side, picked up the discarded items, slotted the magazine back into the weapon and strolled over to Giuttieri.
‘That was you in that torture cell, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘It was you pretending to be Arkan Szolche. You had your little man there for the grisly stuff while you stood and watched.’
He was doubled up, coughing his lungs up. When he finally righted himself, he stood up, the backs of his legs using the car for support. His eyes streamed with tears.
‘You lost a button,’ I said.
He massaged his throat and gazed across at me.
‘And,’ he said slowly, defiantly, ‘I would like it back.’
I nodded. ‘You like to observe torture, do you? You like to observe it at close hand?’
He said nothing but looked at me with disdain.
‘I shoot you in the belly,’ I said, ‘throw you into the undergrowth. You take days to die. Plenty of time for you to observe. How does that sound for you?’
I slowly raised the gun and pointed it at his stomach.
For about twenty seconds - a long time - I did nothing but hold that stance and stare into his eyes. I wanted the fear to creep up on him. Accumulate. At first he was defiant. His eyes were cold and emotionless. But as the silence dragged on and his mind took over I began to see fear edge into his eyes.
I held the stance for ten more seconds. He was blinking now. Sweating. Imperceptibly shaking.
I then lowered the gun.
‘But I’m not sick like you,’ I said.
When he realised I was serious, the release of pent up fear was visible. His tight jaw relaxed a little and there was almost a sigh of relief. He wiped his nose. Straightened his back.
I raised the gun. Pointed it at his stomach.
‘Ahh, the hope. The hope’ll get you every time.’ I smiled.
His tiny black eyes widened. Fear surged back into him.
I held the stance for five seconds, tautening the piano wire of his nerves. Then I raised the gun to point at his head.
‘Should’ve kept with your physics, you sick little man.’
I fired one single shot.
A small black hole appeared in the middle of Giuttieri’s forehead and he was thrown backwards. The back of his head smacked onto the bonnet of the car, sending out a dull thud. He slowly slid down and crumpled to the dusty ground.
A cloud of dust was thrown up by the falling body. It took a while to settle.
I glanced down the road to see if the thug had heard the shot. He was still walking.
Then, in the distance, from the right, another man appeared, approaching the thug. He was a large figure with dark brown skin.
I tensed. More of Giuttieri’s men?
The newcomer sent a right hook into the thug’s head and the thug dropped to the ground. The newcomer started to walk up the hill, towards me.
I stood up straight, unsure what this meant. I gripped the gun tighter.
Then another figure appeared. A woman. White untucked shirt, dark trousers and a baseball cap. She briefly glanced down at the sprawled thug and followed the man up the hill.
I now easily recognised them.
Julio Falcao and Warita Aranda. I think they were smiling.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
‘Afternoon, Luc,’ Falcao said.
‘Good to see you, Mr Falcao,’ I said. ‘I’m glad they let you out.’
Julio Falcao smiled and indicated the woman approaching behind him. ‘I have Detective Aranda to thank for that,’ he said. ‘She’s been amazing.’
‘Yes she is.’
Falcao glanced down at the large round corpse, crumpled by the front of the car. ‘I see you have taken care of Mr Giuttieri. We thank you.’ He looked at the other bodies lying around. ‘You’ve been busy.’
I shook my head. ‘I took the big guy out,’ I said. ‘The others took care of themselves.’
‘Sounds like quite a party. You should know that Detective Aranda’s team followed the rest of Giuttieri’s men to the airfield. His men resisted arrest.’
‘What happened?’
Warita reached the top of the hill. ‘There was an exchange of gunfire,’ she said, standing beside Falcao. ‘They lost.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Our thoughts precisely,’ Warita said smiling. She nodded at the ground and then adjusted her baseball cap.‘You’ve been busy.’
‘Let’s not start that again.’ I grinned. ‘What’s happening about the leadership election?’ I asked.
‘To be honest, I have no idea,’ Falcao said.
‘Now the public know you were telling the truth on that TV show, you could be a shoo-in again.’
Falcao shook his head. ‘I believe Neville Dutton deserves his chance to try and continue,’ he said. ‘He made mistakes. And I’m sure he’ll acknowledge that. But there was a vicious orchestrated campaign against him. He’s young, yes, but he stood his ground throughout. And that, I respect.’
‘We should be going,’ Warita said. ‘My team will clean up here. Can we drop you anywhere?’ she asked, turning to me.
‘I did have a car,’ I said. ‘But, actually, yes, that would be great. Thanks.’
As a cooling breeze whipped up some of the dust on the road, the three of us strolled back down the hill, our shadows preceding us.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The boat was berthed at the end of the wooden jetty. I ambled along the wooden slats and a figure jumped out ahead of me. It was Lucia. She was dressed in a white blouse, tied at the front, and tiny black shorts. I don’t think she had seen me yet as she was crouching down attending to something on the side of the boat.
‘Obscene,’ I said. ‘I should look away.’
Lucia looked up and smiled on seeing me. ‘And yet you’re not,’ she said.
‘I will. Give me a few hours.’
She noticed the hamper I was holding. ‘When you said you’d bring lunch I sort of expected a couple of sandwiches and a flask.’
‘Underestimate me. People do it all the time.’
I reached her and with my free hand I pulled her close to me and kissed her magnificent full lips. ‘Well, that’s better,’ I said.
‘Jump aboard with your feast,’ she said, hopping back to whatever she was doing before.
I climbed aboard and went down below into the small cabin. I laid the hamper on the tiny sideboard. It had a couple of drawers, and I opened the first one looking for a bottle opener and immediately froze rigid and then leaped back with a far too loud whimper. Some might even say yelp.
The largest spider I have ever seen had scrambled out of the drawer and up onto the sideboard, its eight spindly cre
epy legs scuttling like some evil menace that -
‘You all right down there?’ Lucia called out.
‘Fine,’ I shouted back. My voice sounded in the upper register.
Footsteps, and a concerned Lucia descended the wooden steps. She looked at me and frowned, smiling. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said smiling back.
She looked around suspiciously.
‘It wasn’t a spider, was it?’
I laughed. ‘A spider,’ I said. ‘This is what she’s saying. Ridiculous.’
‘We do get them quite big.’
‘Do you. Do you. I hadn’t noticed.’
‘I’ll just be five more minutes,’ she said. ‘Will you be all right down here by yourself?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not waiting five minutes,’ I said. I took her hand and gently pulled her down the steps towards me. ‘Besides, you can’t leave me down here on my own with that.’ I smiled and took hold of her. ‘Its knees were brushing the ceiling.’
‘You big gyal.’
‘Yep.’ I bent down and scooped her up. Her face was beaming and I felt the electricity charge between us. I carried her over to the small bed at the far end.
‘I imagine you’re going to leave soon after, aren’t you?’ she said, not unsmilingly.
‘Tomorrow,’ I agreed. ‘I have to be in London.’ Debriefing. I dropped her down on the pearl coloured duvet. ‘But I will be back, Lucia. And you can take that as a promise. For now, we have the rest of today.’
Her golden hair spread out across the pillow. I undid the loose knot and opened up her white blouse and she looked utterly beautiful as she lay there in her pink and mauve satin bra. I leaned down and kissed her soft, warm belly button. I looked up and her eyes twinkled and she bit her lower lip coquettishly.
Definitely take it as a promise.
Afterword
Thank you for reading Luc.
I certainly enjoyed writing it.
I hope it’s clear from the novel that I bear no ill towards either Belize or Guatemala (quite the reverse, actually). Neither did I want to stoke up any old rivalries. I simply wanted to write a cracking good thriller with an absorbing backdrop.