Jensen’s face was bearded, as it had been in the photo Siobhan had sent him, but perhaps a little leaner. The hair was longer. What had been missing from the photo was the overall impression of the man. He looked barely ten years older than Boxer. His body was taut, hard and exuded vigour even in his state of repose. He sat with his shoulders back, chest open, torso straight and chin raised. He had beautiful hands, which hung over his knees, the long fingers not quite brushing the floor. He looked heroic, like a man others would follow willingly into battle.
With a sudden intake of breath through his nose, Jensen’s eyes opened and fell immediately on Boxer. In the light of the room they weren’t as absolutely blue as Deacon had described, but rather aquamarine, which somehow rewarded the man’s face with an expression of curiosity and kindness.
‘You’ve done us a great service,’ he said.
‘I have?’
‘Bringing people out of the woodwork.’
‘People?’
‘Our erstwhile employers,’ said Jensen, cautious, accepting mint tea from Rampy, who handed a glass to Boxer as well.
‘You mean the CIA?’ said Boxer. ‘Is that what this has been all about? Some sort of industrial relations dispute?’
‘Depends how you look at it,’ said Jensen. ‘People behave in strange ways when they feel power being taken from their grasp. Nobody ever hands that over without a fight. There’s ugliness, a brutal reaction that comes from desperation. Our intention has been to arrest things before they got totally out of control.’
‘So what’s the big idea?’ asked Boxer. ‘Blow money back to the disenfranchised, force the club members of the elite to reveal all and co-operate?’
‘That’s the sideshow,’ said Jensen. ‘There always has to be some entertainment, some shock and awe, to keep the media and their catatonic population amused while we get on with the real business at hand.’
‘Which is what? Arresting some kind of movement within the CIA?’ said Boxer. ‘I suppose as an ex-contractor you’re in a good position to do that.’
‘It’s been a long time in the planning,’ said Jensen. ‘And it’s not only about the CIA. They’re just one of the instruments in the orchestra. Because we know their structure and how they work, we’re using them to send a message to the conductor.’
‘The conductor?’
‘When the richest one per cent own forty per cent of a nation’s wealth, and growing, it doesn’t happen by accident. When the Democrats get into power and yet all their policies contribute to this expanding inequality, it doesn’t happen by accident.’
‘So, a right-wing conspiracy?’
‘I don’t think it’s so much about politics.’
‘Greed … for money and power?’
‘That’s just human nature.’
‘Then what?’
Jensen looked at him, his eyes now piercing, seeking out trust and deciding Boxer wasn’t ready. He changed direction.
‘A lot of servicemen were enraged when they thought that more than a hundred thousand civilians and four and a half thousand soldiers had died in Iraq so that a handful of people could make themselves rich. In the run-up to that war, something had happened to the mind and spirit of the American administration. Nobody even stopped to think what was taking place. Not even me … until a couple of years ago.’
‘What happened then?’
‘As everybody now knows, we were already spying on the world through activity on the internet. That had been going on for ten years or more. I wrote the software. Then we started spying on our friends. With my European contacts I was asked to recruit people close to Cameron, Merkel and Hollande, install phone bugs, take copies of minutes of top-secret policy meetings. And then the killing started.’
‘The killing?’
‘People who were considered to be obstructive to American interests, or rather the interests of those orchestrating the running of the US administration, were eliminated. They might be journalists researching major US companies that had avoided paying taxes; software developers who’d found a way of tracking laundered money; engineers who were investigating the long-term dangers of fracking, tar sands extraction or even culpability in a major oil spill. I pieced together the intelligence reports and their consequences, started drawing conclusions and decided it had to stop, not just in the US, but globally. This is the conclusion of phase one.’
‘What is?’
‘The reason we’ve drawn you down here.’
‘Which is?’
‘To smoke out the sons of bitches and bring them into the killing zone.’
‘Who exactly are these sons of bitches?’
Jensen stared into him again with eyes even bluer and colder. Still he wasn’t ready.
‘A CIA cell of extreme right-wing infiltrators who want to have a powerful influence on government policy.’
Boxer woke up to find that the two bars of light on the wall had shifted around the room. Rampy and Jensen were sitting cross-legged on the floor, sipping tea and looking down on his supine form as if he’d been the subject of some analysis. He must have slept for a couple of hours and had no recollection of how it had happened. He’d been exhausted after the all-night drive from Marrakesh, but not even that would have been enough to overwhelm the adrenalin in his system. Had they drugged him? Boxer checked his watch – 11.00 a.m. Rampy poured him some tea and left the room.
Jensen stroked his beard with thumb and forefinger.
‘You did well to find me,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I can take much credit for that.’
‘You followed the clues presented to you.’
‘Did Rampy tell you that Siobhan didn’t make it?’
‘Her instructions were to take full responsibility for Amy,’ said Jensen. ‘She was the one who wanted her along for the ride, said it would make her happy, and she hadn’t had much of that in her life.’
‘She introduced herself as your daughter, but she told Amy something different.’
‘Siobhan was a contractor to the CIA, who’d made rather unpleasant use of her,’ said Jensen. ‘Some marks have extreme sexual tastes and Siobhan was good at satisfying them. I suspect Amy was one of the few real people Siobhan had met in her life and she was probably … enchanted by her.’
‘As she was by you.’
‘Enchanted is too romantic a word. I just looked after her. Gave her work that wasn’t abusive, tried to help her make sense of who she was. She wanted me to be something more to her, a father, but I didn’t think that was a good idea.’
‘And Tanya Birch? Was she just a conduit into the arms of Walden Garfinkle?’
‘She’s on the team – an old MI6 agent who, like your friend Deacon, found herself complicit in extraordinary rendition. Some were able to live with it, others weren’t. She got out.’
‘You’ve done a pretty good job of extraordinary rendition yourself, complete with waterboarding and other extremes.’
‘We were far more concerned with introducing the notion of powerlessness to the consummately powerful,’ said Jensen. ‘And as you know, those who control the media take control of the minds watching it. We trust in so much of what we see. It’s an affecting but deceptive means of communication. Of course, none of those punishments really happened, but the parents’ minds were primed to believe it, so they did.’
‘And blowing up the money?’
‘A spectacular act of redistribution,’ said Jensen. ‘Have you been checking the world’s media recently? We sent a press release to the leading newspapers about the ransom demands.’
‘And you seriously think you’re going to achieve any of those demands?’
‘We’re using the media in every possible way, this time to increase the pressure of public opinion to make things change,’ said Jensen. ‘The Norwegian government holds a sovereign wealth fund from North Sea oil with a million dollars per Norwegian in it. So it’s not as if it’s impossible.’
‘But that wasn’t t
he real point of the exercise, was it?’
‘Just as kidnapping the kids and asking for money wasn’t what we were after,’ said Jensen. ‘Our aim is to smoke out as many guys from this rogue cell as we can and remove them from the game. And, as we know, when extraordinary things happen in the media, it’s to take our eye away from the really important matters that make a difference to the way we live. I enjoyed the irony of that.’
‘Was that why I was directed to Walden Garfinkle?’
‘Walden was already uneasy. You coming along with the additional information made him think that we were going to blow the whole thing open. He’s had to mobilise and act. You don’t know what’s been going on behind your back in London, Ceuta, Tétouan, Meknes and Marrakesh.’
‘Like what?’
‘These rogue players have been taking our people out of the game.’
‘Are you expecting to see Garfinkle up here?’
‘That would be a result, but an unlikely one,’ said Jensen. ‘He’s a very important figure in the control of personnel within the CIA. He recruits agents to the cause. So we need to get to him, and we will … eventually.’
‘Does that mean you’ve got support from within the CIA to do this sort of thing?’
‘Evan said you wanted to know why you’re here?’ said Jensen, ignoring the question.
‘It seemed perverse for Siobhan to ask me to find you when you didn’t want or need to be found.’
‘But now you know you were instrumental in joining things up.’
‘But why me? My foundation doesn’t operate on that remit. I could easily have turned you down.’
‘But you didn’t. And if you had, we’d have found another way of involving you,’ said Jensen. ‘Think about it. Why did you go and see Martin Fox?’
Something cold flowed over Boxer’s skin. He sipped his hot tea, looked at the bars of light on the wall and ceiling.
‘And I’m very sorry about Isabel,’ said Jensen, standing up, putting his hand on Boxer’s shoulder. ‘My condolences. That must have been a terrible shock.’
They looked into each other’s eyes and Boxer saw a genuine hurt there for him. And he realised that since he’d been on the road, apart from last night riding pillion with Rampy, he hadn’t thought about Isabel. She didn’t belong in this life up here in the High Atlas with these strange men and their bizarre history.
‘Thank you,’ said Boxer, ‘for taking the trouble to say that.’
‘We’re not very good at expressing our sorrow for someone’s loss,’ said Jensen, returning to his seat. ‘Even in this era of new sentimentality.’
Boxer didn’t miss the humanity and the irony. He could still feel the electricity of the man’s touch on his shoulder. He couldn’t help but be drawn to him.
‘It sounds as if you want me to do something for you,’ he said. ‘That finding you was not the real purpose of the … mission.’
‘Finding me has its importance,’ said Jensen. ‘I need people with talent that I can trust.’
‘But you don’t know me.’
‘You’ve been observed at first hand during this mission,’ said Jensen. ‘You’ve done everything expected of you without wavering for a moment, and you’ve done it under the extreme duress of loss, but then that does have an odd way of focusing the mind.’
‘Do you know why I came here, why I had to find you?’
‘Probably you were angry and wanted to kill me. That would not be unusual.’
‘Why should I believe you?’ said Boxer, baffled by the ordinariness of that statement.
‘You don’t have to. You’ll be able to talk to the hostages to verify the way they’ve been treated. You’re also going to see the showdown. We’re waiting for them to move in.’
‘Who are “they”?’
‘Ray Sutherland has access to highly sensitive intelligence in the UK, Europe and Russia. The way he’s operated throughout these kidnaps is indicative of the man he is. He was responsible for installing the tracking devices in the money and on the truck without asking the parents, and knowing full well that it would result in the death of someone’s child. He is the prime target of this exercise. We’re hoping he won’t be alone,’ said Jensen. ‘Ask Mercy how helpful Sutherland has been. Find out from your friend Simon Deacon what the CIA head of counter intelligence for the UK, Europe and Russia contributed to the meetings in Thames House.’
‘Are you expecting some surprise guest appearances?’
‘That’s what we always hope for in these things,’ said Jensen. ‘We’d be happy if they sent Ryder Forsyth up here.’
‘Ryder?’
‘That would be a coup for us,’ said Jensen. ‘We’re hoping that the lure of freeing the hostages and being the hero will be too strong for him to resist.’
‘Ryder is with them?’
‘That’s why Kinderman positioned him at the centre of the kidnaps.’
‘Did you know that I knew him from my time in the Staffords?’
‘Just one of the reasons why we wanted you involved.’
‘You avoided answering my question about the support you’re getting from within the CIA for this action …’
‘You don’t get to know that until you’re on the inside,’ said Jensen. ‘This isn’t something the agency can do themselves. They’ve had to employ trusted outside contractors. That’s all you need to know.’
‘But you can’t just want me because I knew Ryder. There must be plenty of highly trained people out there who know him better than me and can do the work you want done.’
Boxer looked up to find Jensen’s eyes on him, not just resting on the outside, but boring in.
‘You’re a good man who doesn’t have a problem with killing bad guys.’
He wanted to question that, not just because nobody had ever described him like that before, but because he felt certain that Jensen had left out something crucial. Rampy returned.
‘There’s somebody out there,’ he said. ‘Just turned off the tarmac.’
Jensen beckoned Boxer outside and up some steps on to a flat roof where there was a telescope set up and some binoculars on a low wall. On the floor, resting on its case, was a sniper’s rifle fully assembled with sights, bipod, suppressor and a small magazine inserted, with four others as backup. They kept their heads down. Rampy realigned the telescope and Jensen looked through it, nodding.
‘The advance party,’ he said.
‘They’re pulling up,’ said Rampy, looking though the binoculars. ‘They’ve seen the bike tracks on the dirt road. Let’s see who we’ve got here.’
All Boxer could see was an approaching vehicle in a cloud of dust maybe four kilometres away on the painfully open expanse of the wide valley. It was winter light in a merciless blue sky. The valley was grassless and relentlessly grey, with only the occasional stubborn tree. The dust died down around the stationary vehicle. The passenger got out.
‘Sutherland,’ said Jensen.
‘Who’s he brought with him?’ asked Rampy.
‘I can’t see the driver,’ said Jensen. ‘Sutherland’s wearing body armour.’
‘Not even I’d take a shot from two and a half miles away,’ said Rampy. ‘Anybody in the back seat?’
‘Too difficult to see,’ said Jensen. ‘He’s checking us out now.’
Rampy lay down on the floor, relaxed, silent.
‘He’s getting back in the vehicle. They’re turning round.’
They stood up and went back downstairs, had tea and something to eat.
‘Where are the hostages?’ asked Boxer.
Jensen nodded to Rampy, who led him out and across to another building.
‘We had to do this, you know, just so those guys didn’t lay down some mortar fire and take us out. Believe me, they wouldn’t hesitate. This way, they’ve got to come up and take us on face to face.’
Rampy unlocked the door to an anteroom with a basic kitchen where two Berbers were preparing food. He showed him into another room wh
ere the six hostages were lying and sitting around and left him there. There was no tension that the fear of the unpredictable would normally produce in a group like this. Siena Casey and Rakesh Sarkar were playing cards. Wú Gao and Karla Pfeiffer were lying on the floor next to each other, reading. Yury Yermilov and Sophie Railton-Bass were involved in some elaborate fantasy.
‘My name is Charlie Boxer,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to get you out of here.’
They all looked up, disbelieving.
‘Are any of you hurt?’
They shook their heads.
‘Have any of you been mistreated by the people who kidnapped you?’
‘We’ve been treated very well,’ said Karla Pfeiffer.
‘Better than at home,’ said Siena, and the older ones laughed.
Sophie came up to him, gave her name.
‘Have you spoken to my mum?’ she asked.
‘She’s fine,’ said Boxer. ‘She’s very worried about you, but she’s doing well.’
She hugged him around the legs. He rested his hands on her head.
‘All your parents have been doing everything they can to ensure your safety,’ he said.
‘Believe it,’ said Rakesh Sarkar.
More grunts of laughter.
‘There’s not long to go now,’ said Boxer. ‘Whatever you hear going on outside you must always stay in here.’
Rampy called him out. He left the building and they walked back to where Jensen was waiting. Rampy went up on to the roof.
‘Satisfied?’ asked Jensen.
‘Have you told them anything?’
‘It’s better they don’t know what’s going on.’
‘And now?’
‘We wait. Evan will tell us when Sutherland comes back.’
In the middle of the afternoon, Rampy came down to tell them Sutherland had returned. They watched from the roof. This time the vehicle was a covered pickup. It stopped at the same point where the graded road turned into dirt track, and turned round. Two bodies were rolled out the back and the pickup pulled away.
‘Can’t see who they are,’ said Jensen. ‘They’re hooded.’
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