A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  In the back office of the police station, where local priorities were listed on a poster as combating anti-social driving and curbing speeding on the Llanwrtyd Wells road beyond Beulah, the staff had all gone home. They did the debrief and the pictures were downloaded on to a laptop and . . .

  ‘There was a message for you, Badger.’ The team was run by a an officer from the Box and he’d looked pleased to have the clear-cut portraits of the guy in the rimless glasses. The tails were waiting to track them back into Luton where the van had been hired. ‘A call for you.’

  He was looking for a shower, and a meal to warm his guts, and his bed in the small hotel where they were billeted – and where they were thought to be from a flood-prevention unit. He took the piece of paper from the hand offering it and shoved it into his smock’s inner pocket.

  ‘I’d read it if I were you, Badger, and I’d call them.’

  He hadn’t taken it out again. ‘Actually, boss, I’ve done a bloody long stag – and a pretty good one for results. A wash, food and bed are my priorities. Who called?’

  ‘I’m not your fucking answer-phone, young man. A guy from Six, actually. From the dirty-raincoat crowd south of the river. Maybe he wants to take you off our hands. I’d say that work from Six would suit anyone with as high an opinion of themselves as you, because it would be exacting and likely tax a genius. We’ll miss you. Do me a favour? Just ring him.’

  He called the number, and it was answered. He said who he was and that he was replying to the call. He’d expected to be told why he’d been singled out, but heard a monotonously flat voice tell him where he should be and when. There were no plaudits, just brusque business. He said, into the phone, ‘If it’s a job for croppies, I like to work with my mate as oppo. He’s Ged . . .’ The suggestion was ignored. The voice repeated where he should be the next day, and at what time.

  Others around him drank gin, but Joe Foulkes stayed with the tonic. He had been invited to spend a full day with the battalion’s Recce Troop, then stay the night in the officers’ mess. He always enjoyed time spent with any of the Parachute Regiment’s specialist units, found them receptive to the experience he had accumulated in a career of covert surveillance in UK conditions, through the four seasons, in rural and urban locations. They’d enjoyed his anecdotes over the meal . . . it had been a good day.

  The man who called him gave no name but instead offered the Box’s poste restante number, a code good enough to tell him the Secret Intelligence Service had sought him out. After a surprisingly brief exchange of pleasantries – barely civil – he was told he should be at Northolt main gate, the guardroom, no later than 07.30 hours. He had started to explain that the call had reached him at the mess of the Parachute Regiment, 2nd Battalion, which was – didn’t the man know? – in Colchester, a hell of hike from the other side of London that would mean a bloody awful early rising, but his destination was repeated and the time at which he was expected. Then the call was terminated. He had not taken offence, and was more than interested that Six wanted his knowledge first hand.

  He thought of himself, at fifty-one, as a bit of a legend in the field. Joe Foulkes had been a policeman since the age of eighteen, and a surveillance expert for more than twenty-five years; he had a good command of one of the more impenetrable languages on the planet and had, therefore, many seams of information ready for mining and extraction. That day he had been back to his first love. He seldom used it for real, these days, but he kept his veteran gillie suit in the boot of his car and always brought it out when he gave lectures and supervised field exercises. He had worn it when he had lectured Recce Troop, and his audience of young soldiers had been rapt.

  He’d said, out in the rain and scrub beside the shooting ranges, that the basics should always be observed, and he’d used the buzz words that anyone attempting rural surveillance, in Iraq, Afghanistan or Northern Ireland, should have at the forefront of their mind. The outline of the human body was so distinctive that its shape must always be broken. Shadows were an aid, and should be hugged. The biggest giveaway, unprofessional and unforgivable, was the silhouette. Any kit surface, the bulk of binoculars or the length of a spotter ’scope, must be broken up. When a team moved, spacing was critical. The last of his six bullet points was smell: he’d talked of how long it lingered on open ground if there was no wind, and not just fags, toothpaste and weapons oil but the insect repellent you needed to keep man-eating Iraqi mosquitoes at bay. They were terrific, those young fellows, and they gave him respect.

  He’d ended the outside session with a popular theme: how useless the Americans were – and the story of the FBI agent in the hunt for a red-neck abortion-clinic bomber in the mountains of North Carolina. The agent was supposed to be on a covert lie-up and had freaked out because he couldn’t take the darkness or the silence. Another, from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, had started to shriek because he wasn’t permitted, in his hide, to smoke his daily ration of Marlboro Lite . . . And a sheriff’s deputy, gone for a week’s duty in a forest, had broken his spectacles on the first day out: he hadn’t brought a spare pair and could barely see his hand in front of him for the rest of the stag. If Foulkes had been talking to an American audience, then FBI, ATF and the deputy would have become British, and if it had been Germans, the miscreants would have been Poles. It had been a good dinner and he had felt valued. At the table, they called him by the name he’d been given a couple of decades earlier: he was ‘Foxy’ Foulkes.

  He’d wandered away from the group, had faced a fading print of paras in the heat of Aden, snapped more than forty-five years earlier before any of his hosts were born. He’d taken the call and felt perplexed by its brevity, the lack of information, but elated. The mood had stayed with him during the rest of the evening, but there was an early start and he needed some sleep before the wake-up call and the long drive. Now he thanked them, grimaced, and said something about an old dog needing its rest. A major asked him for his card: ‘Difficult to get hold of you, Foxy, through the proper channels. Prevarication and obfuscation at every corner. We’ve really benefited from your time and would like you back. The boys enjoyed it hugely, and learned a great deal.’

  ‘Delighted to.’ He took out his wallet. He fingered in the pouches for his card and a photograph floated down to the carpet. A lad crouched, picked it up and glanced at it. There was an admiring nod as it was handed back to him. ‘That your daughter, Foxy? Pretty girl.’

  He flushed, then pride caught him. ‘My wife, actually.’

  ‘Lucky you. Congratulations.’

  Foxy Foulkes warmed. ‘Yes, we’ve been together seven years – second time round for me and the same for her. Frankly, we make a good pair. She works in navy Procurement in Bath. I think we can say, no hesitation, we’re both happier than we’ve ever been. I’ve felt blessed every day since I met Ellie. We complement each other. As you say, I’m lucky to be with her. Anyway, time for bed, if you don’t mind.’

  He wouldn’t call her that night – she didn’t like to be disturbed late if he was away. He would call her in the morning. Truth was, he yearned to call her and drop a hint that it was secret business he was wanted for, but she’d be sharp with him at this time. She would have been impressed, of course, if he’d called her with his news, but it was too late. He couldn’t imagine why he was wanted by Six at short notice and at an airfield. What for? Where?

  Chapter 2

  A man with an angular face and a weary voice had greeted him. He seemed to have the organisation in hand and had told him, ‘I understand people call you ‘Badger’. If you have no particular hostility to the name then that’s what we’ll use. If you don’t know somebody’s name and title – and you don’t know mine – what would you call them?’

  He’d said that if he didn’t know the name of a man who ran a show he’d refer to him as ‘boss’.

  ‘Oh, I’d like that . . . and over there, that’s Foxy. I don’t think anyone else will need identifying. Foxy and Badger. Very good. We’ll tal
k a bit when we get there, but in the mean time I’d be grateful for your patience.’

  They had been led by ground crew towards the Lear jet, its engines ticking over and the steps down. All bizarre, but Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter was not one to be fazed by lack of information. The flight was smooth, they were above the clouds and. . . .

  He had shown his documentation at the gate, and the RAF police hadn’t jotted down any of the details listed on his Box ID. He’d been told to park his wheels in a space outside the perimeter fence, like no one wanted to acknowledge that he had ever been here. Then he’d been taken in a minibus to a prefabricated departure annex. He was half dead on his feet, had left Builth before five, reached the airbase a half-hour before dawn and hadn’t spoken to either of the other men waiting for the flight call. He had almost been asleep when the boss had spoken to him.

  When he’d left home to take up the work in Wales, locked the door of his bed-sit in the hostel the police used in Bristol, he had been wearing clothes that could either be described as rugged or vagrant’s gear, but he had clean socks and underpants that probably stifled most of the smell; he looked ragged, and felt out of sorts because of it. He’d noted that the other two had eyed him as if they expected dog-shit on his shoes and fleas in his clothing. He was unshaven and hadn’t run a comb through his hair.

  It was a black-painted American aircraft, with no markings that he’d seen. The pilot spoke with a drawl and dispensed minimal information. How long would they be up? Wasn’t told. What was the flight’s destination? Wasn’t told. Would there be in-flight coffee and a bacon sarnie? Wasn’t told. The boss sat in the front seats, and across the aisle from him there was a heavy-set guy, who also had an American twang but a more civilised one than the pilot’s. There wasn’t a girl with a coffee jug or anything to eat. The remaining passenger, Foxy, had what Baxter reckoned was a death pallor, and there were nicks on his throat, from shaving; one had transferred blood to the collar of his clean shirt. He wore a blazer, and the tie knotted at the collar might have been a military one; his hair was neatly cut and brushed, his slacks had knife creases and his shoes were polished. Badger didn’t own a blazer, had precious few shirts that were smart enough for a tie, and the only one of those easily at hand in the hostel would have been black – for funerals. The man had looked exhausted in the departure area, out on his feet, and by the time they had been up a half-hour a gentle rhythmic snoring was coming from Foxy’s den. Badger knew about foxes, had often enough lain up in hides at the edge of woodland to watch a remote house. The foxes, cubs and adults, would come close to him and scratch for worms or sniff around him. He was fond of them.

  There weren’t many that Danny Baxter was fond of. His father and mother lived in the shadow of the nuclear-warhead factory at Burghfield, near Reading, in Berkshire, had a bungalow there and a second-hand vehicle business. He reckoned the location, close to Armageddonville, meant they’d picked up a property cheap to live in and work from. He saw them no more than twice a year and there was nothing of his work he could talk about and nothing of their lives that he was much interested in.

  No one at the hostel would have cared that he was being ferried – destination unknown – in an executive jet, and probably by now his regular oppo, the faithful Ged, would be heading east to Leeds in Yorkshire where he was based. He would be thinking more about how much of his gear he could get into the washing-machine than about where Badger was going.

  No woman to care . . . There had been Fran – ‘Frances’ to her developer father who owned the harbour-side flat overlooking the water in the Bristol dockland. She’d been a third-year student, history of art, at the university and might have found him exciting, might have craved a bit of rough. They’d been together a bit more than six months but it was never going to last. No row, no flying plates: he’d left a note for her one day, propped on her pillow, which had an epic view over the water. Keep safe, have happy times, and best luck, Badger. He’d loaded up his big Bergen and a little rucksack, all he owned in the world, closed the door, locked it, put his keys through the letterbox and tripped down the stairs to the little van, nondescript, that he used, and driven out of her life to the hostel. A bloody awful exchange, but the time had arrived when she might have thought him right for moulding to her style or chucking out. He had done it in his own time and at his moment of choosing.

  About the only thing that owned Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter was the job. It ruled him. It exerted enough of a pull that he wasn’t concerned that no one had told him where they were going, when or why.

  The man in front – Foxy – still snored.

  He was woken by the steepness of the descent. They had come through the cloud, and there was a cross-wind, but the pilot flew as if he had the controls of a fighter aircraft. The lights for belt-fastening were late coming on, and Joe Foulkes was jolted forward in his seat, damn near catapulting into the back of the one immediately in front – the man sitting in it had introduced himself as Gibbons. He’d only given his name to Foxy, not to the fellow in the back who looked like a tramp waiting for a night shelter to open. He hadn’t spoken to Ellie that morning – hadn’t wanted to from the prefabricated lounge. He hadn’t had the bottle to explain he was on a magical mystery journey to God alone knew where and wouldn’t be home that night. If he had made the call, explained he would be absent again, he would have listened to the inflections in her voice, whether she seemed to regret it, whether she was indifferent or unable to disguise a riffle of anticipation because he would be away. But he had sent a text: Tied up workwise/called away/will ring when possible/luv massive Foxy. One had come back before they’d boarded: Shame – missing you. Love, Elliexxx. His phone was off now, would stay that way till whatever, wherever, whenever had been done.

  He assumed he was to give a lecture. What else did he know? He knew that the greeter from Six might be the man of the moment and in charge, but he was shit-scared, halfway to terrified, of flying – Foxy could see the way the fists held the arms of the seat and the face was white. He knew that his best instincts were usually the first ones, and he had formed an immediate dislike of Badger, but that could be managed: his own age and seniority would determine they were not equals. He would have rank on the younger man, whose appearance was simply inappropriate and—

  It was the sort of landing an aircraft might have made on a carrier’s deck: abrupt, short on the taxi, jerking to a stop. The big sign over a distant terminus was just recognisable as ‘Prestwick’, and a helicopter was waiting close by on an empty desert of wet concrete. Its rotors idled, then picked up speed as the Lear’s engines were shut down. The pilots came out of their cockpit door, and the main man – the one who’d have had battlefield wings over Kuwait or out of Da Nang – spoke briefly to the American passenger. He didn’t make eye contact with any of the others. Joe ‘Foxy’ Foulkes had several failings but idiocy was not among them. The helicopter, like the Lear, was black-painted, he could see no flight-designation markings, and they were a hell of a way from the tower and the Prestwick buildings, out of sight and out of mind. He reckoned this was a flight that had never taken place.

  They came on to the apron and scurried for the chopper. The rotors blew rain into their faces, and a crewman gave them a hand up into the hatch door. They strapped the harnesses into place. The military canvas bucket seats and the frames hurt Foxy’s thighs. It was years since he had been in the close confines of a helicopter’s cabin, with the noise growing until the ear baffles were passed to them – hadn’t been in a helicopter since leaving the base at Basra after a four-month tour seven years back. A shitty place, horrible and . . .

  A man who might have been Middle Eastern stared at him warily and didn’t respond to Foxy’s cautious smile: short, dark-haired, swarthy and stinking of cigarettes; the Six man, Gibbons, had tried to take the fellow’s hand but it had stayed buried in a pocket. The other, taller and pale-skinned, with curly blond hair, lolling comfortably and chewing gum, was late thirties or early fortie
s – Foxy recognised the military uniform of mufti: a double-breasted navy suit with a prominent stripe, black ankle boots and a waxed jacket that might have been useful out on a moor. The eyes seemed distant and didn’t focus on trivia, such as what Foxy wore, Badger’s messy hair or the white knuckles of the Six man. They lifted sharply.

  They were in cloud, buffeted by winds, and the pilot made no effort to get below the weather, above or round it. They rocked and shook, and Foxy wondered if the intelligence officer might throw up. He played games in his mind. A business heavy in secrecy and international flavours: it reeked of deniability. He supposed that at Six, if they planned a deniable operation, they dusted down a cardboard file that would have been written in the fifties or sixties and dictated a quiet, remote location suitable for briefings, lectures and . . . The Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash had taken the lives of police and intelligence officers from Northern Ireland who were heading for a meeting at a garrison camp close to Inverness; the various arms had needed to be brought to neutral territory if jealousies and conceits were not to stymie co-operation. Perhaps tensions and stress points were yet to be revealed. Foxy almost chuckled.

  The beast seemed to stumble through the cloud. Then – it might have been thirty minutes after take-off – light flooded through the small porthole windows, and rain distorted the view, but Foxy made out the shape of a castle keep in grey stone that matched the cloud. There was more grey from the breaking waves in a bay, and from the stones on a geometrically curved beach. Back from the sand and shingle, a field was half flooded, and behind it a grand house, on three floors, with a portico. Could they not have booked a house in south-west London – or anywhere north of the capital but closer? It spoke of delusions. They were down, but the engines were not killed.

  He was last out of the hatch and the crewman steadied him as he jumped clear. The others were ahead and hurried between the puddles towards the main entrance where the rendering was chipped.