The UN convoy was faced with an unenviable choice: back down or make a fight of it to prove their credentials. The senior officer had urged caution, ordering his men to turn back. The alternative route would add hours to their journey, but it was better than a fire-fight and serious casualties.
But Tate had seen something none of the others had noticed: three small Albanian girls were huddled behind the APC, their clothes torn and dirty. It was clear they didn’t want to be there but were too traumatized to ask for help.
Tate had argued that the men had taken the girls prisoner, and that they should investigate further. The senior officer — a Dutch Major — had declined, fearing escalation, whereupon Tate had jumped down from his vehicle and walked over to the APC. Ignoring the Serb soldiers, he had clambered up the side, knocked the gunner cold and turned the gun towards the watching Serbs.
They had handed over the three girls without argument.
Rudmann pursed her lips. So, she reflected, a good and loyal servant with an occasional spark about him. But that had been years ago.
Pray God he kept it bottled up.
She sat back and stared at the ceiling. Part of her brief was to make sure that there were no ‘own goals’ in security operations which could come back to haunt the government later. Like the Essex operation. Getting him out of the way had been an instinctive move, and Paulton had obviously foreseen the need. But her brief gave her considerable power and responsibility — far more than men like George Paulton were even aware of — and she took the work seriously. For that reason, she had sent for Harry Tate’s personnel file, just to be sure he wasn’t a rogue male who might bring disaster on them, no matter what Paulton’s opinion of the man might be.
She closed the file and summoned her secretary to return it. Harry Tate had once shown a spark of something, but that was all. Sparks didn’t always translate to flame. Even so, he was better off out of the way. For all their sakes.
‘Get this back without fuss,’ she told the young woman who entered the room. ‘Remember, no signatures and no record.’
NINE
The inside of the Odeon Restaurant was dark and cluttered, a sombre cavern with lots of rough-sawn wood, wall-hangings of indeterminate origin or purpose and smoke-stained varnish. Ethnic, Harry decided, and more bar than restaurant. Maybe it said something about Stuart Mace, the Head of Station, if this was his local watering hole.
A single figure was sitting at the rear of the room, facing the door and reading a newspaper. A cup of coffee sat by his elbow. He looked up as Harry approached, studied him for a moment, then shouted towards a doorway in the back wall.
‘Found us, then.’ Stuart Mace was in his late fifties, with a fleshy face and the tired eyes of a bureaucrat. His hair was silvery grey and swept back in elegant wings. Had it not been for his present location, he could have been a prosperous, if worn-down GP, looking towards retirement and some time on the golf course.
‘Thanks to Rik Ferris.’ Harry sat down just as a cup of thick coffee was set before him by an elderly woman in a black apron and a dress covered in small, blue flowers. She left without making eye contact.
Mace nudged a small jug of cream towards him. ‘Help yourself. Stuff’ll melt your teeth, otherwise. No trouble getting here?’ Mace spoke in economical bursts, as though unnecessary words might spin off and be overheard. Harry had met others with the same habit. Spooks and career criminals, mostly.
‘The landing was interesting. And I just got stopped in the street by the military.’
Mace nodded. He didn’t seem unduly concerned. ‘What did they want?’
‘Money. Is that normal?’
‘Nothing’s normal around here. They’ve got lots on their minds at the moment — separatist stuff to the north, mostly. They think anyone new in town is out to get them. They’re probably not wrong. You met any of the crew apart from young Rik?’
Harry poured cream and tasted his coffee. It was muddy and strong enough to float a brick. Sugar made no noticeable difference. He debated mentioning meeting Higgins, but decided to leave it for later. ‘Jardine and Fitzgerald. Unless the watcher at the airport was yours.’
Mace lifted an eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
‘Probably security police. Never mind; gives ’em something to do, watching new arrivals. There are four of us puppies here, now you make five. Enid Blyton would be ecstatic.’ He toyed with a teaspoon for a moment, drumming on the tabletop, then said, ‘I heard about your trouble. Sorry business. Sounds like over-reaction, shoving you out here.’
‘You could say that.’ Harry couldn’t help a touch of bitterness; he was still trying to get to grips with what had happened and the speed with which he’d been shuffled out of London.
‘Or was it that you didn’t play the game and relied on the wrong people?’
‘Say again?’ He was only half listening, trying to work out whether sitting here with this man was part of his punishment. He was also surprised to hear Mace talking so openly about who they were. There might not be any other customers but it was sloppy tradecraft for a man of his seniority.
Mace read his mind. He flapped a hand to indicate the four walls around them. ‘You gonna tell me this is breaching rules and regulations? Walls have ears and all that bollocks?’ He sniffed. ‘One, the walls don’t speak English; two the old woman’s as deaf as a dead dog — she relies on picking up vibrations like a bat. Anyway, Fitzgerald regularly gives the place a going-over with his electronic sweepers. It’s clean.’
Harry shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do. As I was saying, you telling me you never got dumped on in the army? That they don’t have self-serving shits in uniform who’ll shaft you soon as look at you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Bloody right. I’m surprised a man your age hasn’t learned life’s most valuable lesson: make sure you’ve always got an exit strategy — even if that means dumping on someone else before they do it to you. Never mind, you’ll get over it.’
Harry nodded. Mace was right. It didn’t make him feel any better — or bring him any closer to what his purpose was in being sent here, other than getting him out of the way. But placing him on garden leave in Brighton or Harrogate could have done that. Unless they knew something he didn’t.
‘So what exactly am I here for?’
Mace blinked. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I know why… I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
‘You’re here because you screwed up. Same as the rest of the security services’ fuckwits out here.’ He flapped a hand. ‘I mean, look at the place. Who’d volunteer for this?’
‘Nice to be appreciated.’
‘No need to get touchy; I’m the biggest fuck-up of all. Difference is, they don’t want me back in London and I don’t want to be there. Place is a snake pit. You’d think they might forgive once the dust has settled. It’s not as though officers with your kind of experience are thick on the ground.’
Harry let that go, but his curiosity was aroused. So Mace had tripped up, too, along with the others. Christ, what was this place — a penal colony for spooks?
‘How long will I be here?’
‘Didn’t you ask — what’s his name… that self-serving little shite, Paulton? He’s the one sent you.’
‘I would have, but considering the speed I got bounced with, we weren’t really on normal speaking terms.’
Mace chuckled. ‘Not too surprised, are you? They don’t want to get tainted, see. Better to get you out of the way where you can’t do their pension entitlement any harm. Bastards. A few years ago, a couple of incidental deaths wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, not in the grand scheme of things. Things’re different now, though; risk assessments, health and safety, rules of engagement — we’re all accountable. It’s like working in a glass case. Still, at least you got a travel slip to foreign climes, such as they are.’
‘So how long?’
‘E
asy. You stay here until they decide you can go home… or a public enquiry is convened and you get dragged in front of the cameras as the sacrificial idiot.’
‘Is that likely?’ Right now he was dust under the carpet. The only question was, how long could he stay that way?
‘Who knows? Until then, you pretend you’re attached to the British Council and promote British interests, culture, language and way of life and generally act like a boring and bored administrative wonk. In actual fact, you’ll do what you’ve been trained to do: keep your eyes open, your ears pinned back and report back on whatever looks interesting.’
‘So suddenly I’m a spy? I thought that was Six’s job.’
‘Don’t get precious; you know the score. We’re all in this together. It’s called multitasking.’ He paused, then said, ‘They mention the no-communications rule?’
‘Yes.’ Paulton had made it clear that where Harry was going would be a dead zone. No communication in or out except via his head of station, which was Mace. It included everyone: friends, family, past loves, present colleagues, the press… most especially the press. For the foreseeable future, Harry Tate would be deemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.
‘Make sure you stick to it. Any breach and you’ll be hauled out of here fast.’
‘You man there’s a worse posting than this?’
‘Better believe it. I suggest you take a few days to get acquainted with the town. There’s not a lot on at the moment, so we can spare you for that. The others’ll help.’
‘So what’s special about this place?’ Harry had been trying to think why here, so far from just about everywhere and every conceivable operation MI5 might be involved in. His colleagues were constantly working the drug routes across Europe in their attempt to monitor and identify the traffickers who used various points of entry and arranged staging-posts for their illegal trade. But this seemed an odd place to be watching.
Mace pushed out his chin. ‘There’s nothing special about it. Last bloody thing you could call it. Even the flies feel underprivileged. There’s a saying among the locals that this place was made up of God’s leftovers. Not far wrong, either, although I’ve seen worse.’
‘That still doesn’t tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for.’
Mace grinned. ‘They said you could be a bit churlish.’ He placed his hand flat on the table. ‘There are rumours going around town — well, all over, really — that are causing a bit of bother in political circles. If they’re correct, then we’re all about to be dumped in the kaka.’
Harry resisted the desire to reach across and yank Mace’s shirt collar tightly around his throat. ‘What rumours?’
‘The Russians are coming.’
TEN
Mace refused to elaborate further. ‘It’s early days yet,’ was all he would say. ‘No point in going off half-cocked. Let’s just keep our ears and eyes open, shall we?’
Harry left him to his newspaper and walked back to the office. Whatever the rumours, Russian involvement was no surprise — not this close to Moscow’s ragged borders. But he was shocked that London hadn’t briefed him before he came out here.
Unless they hadn’t known.
He was greeted in the office by Fitzgerald. The briefing began with a demonstration of the layout of the building from ground to top floor, using a coloured map showing exits, stairways and a schematic of the alarm system, and the codes to use for out-of-hours working. Before they left the main office, he looked at Harry with a serious expression.
‘Outside of this room, we only talk British Council business. Nothing else. I run regular sweeps, and so far we’ve never found anything. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find a way in. Right?’
‘Sure.’ Harry was accustomed to the paranoia of security people in foreign postings. They had learnt from others’ mistakes over the decades, and nobody took the matter lightly.
Fitzgerald led the way downstairs, talking mundane matters and showing Harry a selection of rooms in the basement for odds and ends of furniture, stacks of leaflets and boxes of promotional literature in several languages. The air smelled of dust and printing ink, and damp cardboard.
‘Our main job here,’ he continued aloud, ‘is to field cultural and educational enquiries, and send out leaflets to interested parties so they can locate contacts and partners. We encourage them to go through their trade delegates in London or the appropriate section of our embassy. There’s a list upstairs of addresses you can give them.’ He beckoned for Harry to follow and moved to a room at the rear, where the walls were lined with metal racks holding more boxes and a selection of conference and exhibition equipment.
He lifted a square of carpet to one side. Underneath was a small metal trapdoor.
Fitzgerald took a metal hook from a nearby rack and inserted it in a slot. He pulled hard and the trapdoor came up revealing a recess dug into the foundations. Reaching down, he tugged hard on something out of Tate’s line of sight. A wooden box slid into view.
Inside, nestling in foam packing, were three handguns, the light gleaming off the oiled metal, and spare clips of ammunition.
He replaced the trapdoor and carpet, then led the way back upstairs. As soon as they were in the main office with the door closed, Harry turned to him.
‘What the hell are they for?’ he demanded. He was aware of Jardine and Ferris watching in the background. They said nothing.
‘They’ve been here from the beginning,’ Fitzgerald replied calmly. ‘The boss said you should know they were there, just in case.’ He turned and beckoned Harry to follow. This room was divided into two offices with glass panelling down the middle. Stuart Mace was sitting on the other side of the glass, talking on the phone. It looked like any bureaucrat’s den, with book-lined walls and filing cabinets, and family photos on the shelves.
‘I’ll take you through our security procedure and protocols,’ said Fitzgerald, moving behind a cluttered desk. ‘Then Rik or Clare will give you a quick tour and drop you off at your digs. You might as well get to know the place.’
‘Just in case?’ said Harry.
‘You got it.’
For the next forty minutes, he listened as he was shown through a succession of procedures, including basic personal safety, building security and local maps. One town map showed buildings marked in red. Most were in the narrow streets on the edge of town to the north, where Harry hadn’t yet been.
‘What are those?’
‘Hostile or possibly hostile locations. My advice is, don’t go there.’
‘Hostiles.’
‘Yeah. This and this,’ he pointed to two buildings closer to the centre, ‘are local security police. They leave us alone most of the time. The others are bandits. Local clans. Don’t mess with them; they have a habit of not returning people who stray into their territory. The cops leave them alone because they’ve got their own private militias.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s the militias in this neck of the woods that control most of what goes on.’
‘What about this place?’ Harry indicated a large red building on the map not far from where they were standing. It was the Palace Hotel.
‘We call it spook central. It’s the only decent hotel in town. The Yanks kip down there along with journos and a few other interested groups like the French, Germans and Russians.’
‘You know any of them — Americans, I mean?’
‘Sure. A couple. Engineers, so they say, although I doubt it. Why?’
‘A man named Higgins was on the flight in. Said he was a journalist.’
‘He isn’t,’ Fitzgerald said shortly. ‘Fat, loud, self-opinionated and sweats a lot?’
‘That’s him.’
‘Yeah. Rik said he’d cadged a lift. He comes and goes, makes a lot of noise about the hard life of a news reporter. Not sure who he’s with, but it’s either CIA or National Security Agency. He might have tagged you but I wouldn’t worry about it.’ He paused. ‘You see anyone else like him?’
Harry t
hought about the young man at the airport. ‘Not yet.’
Fitzgerald smiled without humour. ‘Don’t worry — you will.’
ELEVEN
Next morning, Harry walked to the office to get a feel for the town. The air was colder, with a heavy layer of cloud hanging over the buildings and reducing the sparse colouring to shades of grey. The atmosphere bore a taste of burnt fuel, which he guessed was cheap heating oil or badly maintained vehicle engines.
He passed few people on the way. A group of soldiers standing around a makeshift brazier eyed him suspiciously but didn’t stop him. Other pedestrians steered clear of the military as if by instinct, crossing the streets with eyes down, intent on being invisible.
After leaving Fitzgerald, he’d been taken by Rik Ferris on a whistle-stop tour of the town, with the communications man pointing out local landmarks. These had been few and far between, mostly given to the town hall, the museum, the railway station… and the so-called hostile buildings referred to by Fitzgerald. Detached houses in the main, these were sheltered behind walls or railings, with security cameras trained on all sides. There had been nothing overt about them to suggest any dangerous presence, such as armed guards, but the metal shutters on the windows, the fresher paint compared with their neighbours and the heavy four-by-four vehicles parked in the alleyways alongside, indicated they were not your average residential premises.
The last stop was outside a three-storey building in a quiet back street.
‘Home sweet home,’ Rik said cheerfully. He handed Harry a key on a plastic tag. ‘Top floor, so you can make as much noise as you like, hold wild parties and stuff like that. Make sure you invite me, though. The only other tenant is a press photographer on the ground floor, named Mario. Comes from Rome. Nice bloke.’ He frowned. ‘Actually, I haven’t seen him around for a couple of days. Must have found a story to cover. I’ve stocked up your kitchen with the basics, so you won’t need to shop for a few days. Not,’ he added, ‘that you’ll find shopping much fun around here.’
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