Red Station ht-1

by Adrian Magson

  ‘What do they look like?’ Harry decided to keep it as calm as possible. If he really had spotted a team of watchers, it meant they’d undoubtedly now added his face to the collection of spooks in this building. Interesting, but not unusual. The Russians had already accused British Council staff of fomenting trouble among local minority groups. Other local intelligence organizations probably held similar views.

  ‘Youngish, about thirty… fit-looking, jeans and street clothes — and shaven heads, although that’s pretty much par for the course around here.’ He grinned quickly. ‘A short back and sides in this town is short all over.’

  The description fitted half the men Harry had seen so far. Including the watcher at the airport.

  ‘No special characteristics?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed. Sorry.’ He looked at Harry as if weighing up whether he’d been believed or not.

  Harry put down his mug. ‘Come on. Time for a cup of real coffee.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going walkabout, see if we can spot one of these Clones.’ He wasn’t sure why he should care, but it was better than doing nothing.

  He led the way downstairs. On the way out, he picked up a large brown envelope and handed it to Rik, with instructions to make his way to the railway station. ‘Walk normally. If you clock one, don’t do anything, just keep going as if you’re on a boring errand. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘Closer than you think.’

  He waited for Rik to clear the end of the street, then slipped outside and followed at a discreet distance.

  He picked up the first watcher a hundred yards out.

  Heavy rain clouds had closed in on the town overnight, dumping a blanket of cold drizzle on the streets and filling the paper-choked gullies. Potholes were invisible under a covering of water, and Harry hugged the buildings to avoid a drenching from passing trucks.

  The first man he saw fitted Rik’s description to the letter: young, lean, anonymous, bristle-cut hair and nothing to mark him out. He wore a scruffy denim jacket, patched jeans and trainers, and hunched against the cold rain; he would have been invisible in any crowd.

  He was also good at following a target.

  Five minutes later Harry spotted another likely contender. This one appeared out of a shop doorway across the street. He sloped along, keeping Rik in his sights without losing pace. If there were any signals exchanged between him and his colleague, they kept them discreet.

  The railway station was a heavy concrete structure with no pretensions of style, a plain, arched entrance and few windows. Like a brick shithouse with trains, thought Harry. He walked on by, allowing the first Clone to follow Rik inside. The other man had disappeared, and Harry guessed he had gone to cover the other exits. If there were any more on the job, they were keeping well back.

  Once out of sight of the station entrance, Harry stopped and counted to fifty before doubling back. He passed a cheap clothes shop on a corner and ducked inside. When he came out he was wearing a waterproof ski hat pulled down over his ears.

  The inside of the station was noisy, damp and unwelcoming, with a cold wind cutting through the concourse and tugging at a row of pennants strung across the front of the ticket office. Stalls selling hot drinks and snacks were doing a good trade, and he stopped at the nearest to buy a coffee and get his bearings.

  He spotted Rik hovering by a stall selling nuts and dried fruit. He was holding the envelope and digging in his pocket for some coins. He looked at ease, a man on a minor errand, and Harry was impressed; from his earlier display of nerves, Rik was coping well with being thrown into the role of a decoy.

  Clone One was loitering nearby, nibbling on an apple while reading the timetables, but rarely taking his eyes off Rik for more than a few moments. It was a few seconds before Harry realized that the man was speaking into a thumb-microphone.

  Clone Two must be close.

  Harry stayed where he was, using the other customers as cover. He had no chance of blending into the background; his clothes, although fairly nondescript, were still sufficiently different in cut and style to make him stand out if anyone looked at him carefully enough. And if he went walkabout in such a confined area, he’d be spotted immediately.

  It wasn’t long before he realized that the other Clone hadn’t put in an appearance. He soon saw why: the man was behind him, in the shelter of a doorway. He could feel his eyes on the back of his neck.

  Harry finished his coffee and dumped the mug in a rubbish bin. He’d slipped up; the man had spotted him as a newcomer, and therefore an oddity. Or maybe they had pictures and had picked him out the moment he showed up.

  He nodded a thank you to the stallholder and walked away, taking him on a course which would pass close by Rik’s position. As he drew level, he raised his hand close to his chest and pointed towards the exit.

  Rik blinked once to show he understood.

  Twenty minutes later, after taking a circuitous route through the town, Harry arrived back at the office to find Rik already there nursing a cup of coffee. He looked unsettled, and Harry guessed he probably hadn’t done this kind of thing since basic training.

  ‘Did I do OK?’ asked Rik nervously. ‘I don’t think they clocked you, did they?’

  ‘You did fine.’ Harry wasn’t about to tell him that he had been made, or that identifying two of the Clones wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great. Somewhere in the background, unless they were resting, the other Clones had been operating unseen. If so, they would have identified him, but he had no idea what they looked like.

  For now, though, he had other things to think about. On the way back, he had passed an alleyway with an army truck parked in the entrance. Near the rear of the truck stood three men. Two were in uniform, although he couldn’t see any insignia. The other man was in civilian clothes, and handing out cigarettes, chatting amiably. It was an everyday scene, even given the military presence.

  The only anomaly was the civilian.

  Harry wondered how Carl Higgins of Ohio had become so fluent in the local language.

  SEVENTEEN

  Harry spent several days getting to know the town, its layout, the road network, the general infrastructure and its people. While what he could see was simple enough to commit to memory, the people, although genial enough when faced with a foreigner who didn’t speak their language, proved an odd nut to crack. Some were immediately friendly, in spite of the language problem, while others showed open distrust, as if he had ‘MI5 Officer’ emblazoned across his chest.

  The town itself was an odd hotchpotch of tired, shabby buildings interspersed with newly constructed offices and shops. In among the clearly care-worn structures of the older shops, with tin roofs and crumbling brickwork, were occasional signs of coming prosperity, international brand names jostling for space with local products.

  By way of contrast, each intersection had its huddle of traders dealing in everything from cheap watches, jeans and mobile phones, to vodka and even petrol. In between, men argued and smoked with zeal, while elsewhere, rounded women swathed in heavy coats and headscarves carried giant sports bags or cloth bundles tied with string, on a never-ending journey from one part of town to another.

  The outer boulevards were wide yet deserted, mainly residential, while the inner streets were narrow and congested with vehicles and pedestrians, their surfaces deeply potted and crumbling. It was as if the inhabitants found it safer or even comforting to stick to this tight, worn network of thoroughfares rather than the open spaces. Yet there was something else; and the more he moved around, the more he began to feel that something in the air. He wondered if it had anything to do with the growing numbers of soldiers in the town, and the accompanying aura of threat hovering around them, even when they were not on duty and unarmed. They were everywhere, yet somehow disconnected from the hustle and bustle around them, like onlookers who had no place being there.

  Two days after his first sighting of the
Clones, Harry spotted another watcher.

  Coming out of a small fruit store, where he had bought some apples, he saw a man across the street. He was checking his watch as if waiting for a lift.

  It was the watcher from the airport.

  Twenty minutes later, he saw him again. This time he was getting out of a car, which pulled away and sped out of sight.

  Harry ignored him; if he was local security police, he’d have to make sure he did nothing they could pick him up for. But the idea that he might be another MI5 watcher made him feel increasingly edgy.

  Each time he was in the office, Harry checked out the news channels on one of the PCs for news about the shooting in Essex. Paulton had made it clear that the last thing they could afford was for his name to come out. If that happened, it could compromise other ongoing operations. And if the press were able to identify one member of MI5 to the public, others might follow. The chain-reaction, aided by disaffected former officers or whistleblowers, could be devastating.

  Harry soon began to feel he was being observed too closely, and on one of his forays through the town, he mapped out a number of internet cafes. Most were little more than a basement bar with a couple of computers on rickety tables. But they might prove his only alternative link with the outside world. And keeping an eye on the news which might affect him and his future was uppermost in his mind.

  The first time he used one of the internet bars, he took a random route around town, stopping occasionally and doubling back. Twice he saw faces which didn’t seem right, and he concluded that there was more than one man on him. Coming out of a store, he deliberately fumbled with change, and while stooping to pick up a fallen coin, checked his surroundings. Two more faces, although too distant to be sure if they were the Clones he’d seen before.

  The bar he had selected was close by the town’s market. The streets here were jumbled together like a child’s toy-town, and the shops, although drab and unsophisticated, were small and busy. The bar was called ZOLA and located under a shoe mender, accessed by a short flight of stone steps.

  Harry walked in and waved to the barman, then pointed to one of the two vacant computers at the back of the room. The barman nodded and said something in return, by which Harry presumed he was giving him the rate it would cost. When he looked blank, the man pointed to a blackboard over the bar with the minutes and hourly rates, then held up a glass.

  Harry pointed to the nearest beer pump. When the glass was full, he took it and sat down at the computer.

  The shooting was still in the news. As he scrolled down the BBC’s main news page, his spirits sank. He checked the commercial television channels, which told him nothing more, then flicked through the websites of the British nationals. Some of the speculation was wildly off-target, but the guesswork contained a disturbing amount of accurate detail. One report even spoke with relish of an official cover-up, claiming in knowing tones that ‘according to unnamed sources within the police, the name of an unknown security agent who was present at the shooting has been withheld by the Home Office pending internal enquiries.’ The report went on to say that the name of this ‘agent’ would soon be a matter of public record, and that the Home Secretary, who was facing calls to bring in an outside senior police officer to take over, could not delay in replying for much longer.

  As he read this, Harry wondered how much of the speculation was a result of unofficial briefings carefully leaked to keep the public temporarily satisfied until a coherent strategy could be decided on. He noted the name of the report’s author, and hoped sourly that Shaun Whelan, whoever he was, would trip over and break his neck.

  Tired of staring at the screen, he switched off the machine and paid the barman. He’d check again tomorrow. Maybe London would flood and they’d forget all about it.

  Half an hour later, he turned a corner and stopped. He’d managed to lose his bearings, and instead of arriving back at the office, he’d somehow veered off course and arrived across from the Palace Hotel.

  He entered the main doors and crossed a large, tiled foyer scattered with potted palms and comfortable chairs. A sign pointed to a bar, from where he could hear the sound of laughter and the clink of glasses.

  He checked the room before walking in. Four men and a woman, all westerners, were gathered around a table. Two of the men were working at laptops, while the others had their heads together in discussion. They did not spare Harry more than a cursory glance.

  There was no sign of Higgins. Harry went to the bar and ordered a beer, then found a comfortable chair in one corner, in line-of-sight of the door, but set back from anyone walking by.

  The other customers were a mix of German and Swedish, and appeared to be part of a news team gearing up to head north. There was talk of local guides, ‘road’ rations and where to stay if they got bogged down anywhere remote.

  Ten minutes later, Carl Higgins walked in.

  He gave the group a friendly wave, then bellied up to the bar, flicking a finger at a lager pump. Moments later, he was joined by one of the newsmen. They spoke in soft tones for five minutes. The other journalists ignored them.

  When three more men walked in, the journalist with Higgins returned to the table and the talk continued as if he had never left.

  The three newcomers, all dressed in suits, scanned the bar, eyes passing over Harry without a flicker. They were all in their late thirties or early forties, with smooth shaves and the well-fed look of diplomats who believe in keeping trim. They joined Higgins at the bar, and the man from Ohio ordered more drinks, then led them through a glass-panelled doorway into a restaurant. The last man in dragged a heavy CLOSED sign across the floor and shut the door behind him.

  Harry felt the beer turn sour in his mouth. Could they be any more bloody obvious? He got up and left. He had seen enough.

  Higgins was a spook.

  EIGHTEEN

  Journalist Shaun Whelan was feeling his age, if not his weaknesses. He stepped out of the lights and echoes of Clapham South underground station, and headed towards a nearby stretch of open parkland. It was just before ten at night and a chill was in the air. But in spite of the temptation to turn for home and curl up with a glass of Chablis, he was feeling the pull of another, far stronger temptation; one which he knew would not easily fade.

  A thin-faced wisp of a man with fair hair and soft skin, he had long ago become accustomed to the twin attractions in his life: the pursuit of a good story on one hand, with all the stresses, frustrations and disappointments that brought, and on the other, the desire for something he thought of as affection… even love. Which, he conceded with a nod to irony, was as stressful and disappointing as the day job… and just as frustrating on a different level.

  He pushed the thought away and pulled up his collar, distancing himself from a group of youths loitering on the pavement. He was hoping the brief eye contact and the slip of paper exchanged in the pub near Westminster at lunchtime had not been an elaborately cruel tease. Some of the young set were like that, building up older men for a fall, mindless of the damage they were doing to frail egos and frailer bodies. As if it were not wounding enough to be getting on in years, having the salt of unkindness rubbed in was an injury he could do without. And after losing Jamie, his companion of the past decade, he needed all the warmth — however fleeting — he could find.

  He tried to take his mind off the darkness and its potential perils by focussing on the story he was currently chasing around the cubby-holes of Whitehall. It remained tantalizingly short on detail and would probably stay that way unless he got spectacularly lucky, but what was certain was that a combined security services and Met police drugs snatch had gone disastrously wrong, leaving four dead in a hail of gunfire. Two were rumoured to be a courting couple, while a third had been a policeman from an armed response unit. The fourth was unknown, but possibly one of the drugs gang.

  During his digging, Whelan had heard a name mentioned by one of his police contacts, although it was still unconfirmed.
All he had been able to ascertain was that an MI5 officer named Tate had been transferred to ‘other’ operations shortly after the shooting. He felt certain it was no coincidence.

  His initial research had revealed that a Harry Tate had started out in the army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps with service in Central Europe, before subsequently disappearing off the map. He knew what that signified: the man had most likely been scooped up by one of the security agencies, possibly MI5 or SIS (MI6), and his whereabouts and current role had been sanitized. The two agencies were always on the trawl for good people with useful backgrounds. Candidacy as a spy or counter-spy wasn’t always judged by possession of a good degree and being ‘spotted’ by a friendly Oxford or Cambridge don; they needed their fair share of older people with solid experience in place of a creative CV — especially with the current focus on the war against terror. And Tate sounded just the right type.

  If Whelan’s sources were correct, Tate had been the man running the operation. He didn’t have all the details yet, but the story was out there, waiting. The very idea was nearly enough to make him turn and go home, where he could continue trawling through the files for more sources.

  But not quite. As he crossed the pavement and on to a path stretching across the park, he saw a figure ahead of him in the gloom. The build looked familiar and he felt a knot of excitement in his chest.

  Whelan hopped over a short fence and entered the shadows close to a public convenience. The air was heavy with the aroma of damp earth, rotten vegetation… and toilets. His nose twitched, the Whitehall story suddenly pushed into the background. No way was he going in there; it was a death-trap waiting to happen. Instead, he veered towards a line of trees on the far side, where the back-glow of street lights cast at least an element of warmth and normalcy.

  He increased his pace, eyeing the bushes to one side. The figure he’d seen earlier had disappeared. The darkness here was virtually impenetrable, but he saw something out of the corner of his eye, a flash of movement against a lighter background. Friend or foe? Warmth or chill? His breathing increased and his blood began to race, buoyed by the thrill of the chase.