by Andy McNab
I could imagine that. The colonel never asked anyone to do something he wasn’t prepared to do himself, but being his son couldn’t have been easy. ‘You served with him, didn’t you, Ken?’
‘Sure I did. Sierra Leone, Iraq, Bosnia, you name it. Top man.’
I’d first bumped into Chastain in Northern Ireland. We were never going to be best mates, but that was one of the things I liked about him. Being everybody’s friend wasn’t a CO’s job. Standing by his men was, and he never let us down. It didn’t matter where – under fire, undercover, back at base, in a hospital bed: whenever the shit hit the fan, he was there for us. And he didn’t mind who he pissed off in Whitehall, which must have been the reason he never climbed any further up the greasy pole.
He also knew more about classic and asymmetrical strategy than anyone else I’ve met. And it didn’t matter which theatre you picked, from the Battle of Hastings onwards, it turned out to be Chastain’s special subject on Mastermind. I guessed that must have made things even more difficult for Guy. He didn’t just have the shadow of his father’s achievements hanging over him but a thousand years of military history as well.
It seemed like a good moment to pay a visit to the CQB Rooms. I fixed Fred in my sights. ‘Mate, is it possible Scott’s death had anything to do with what happened at Kajaki? I mean, did Sam take his eye off the ball? I’m getting the impression that he was a bit of a mess …’
Fred ran his fingers through his very shiny hair. ‘The truth is we were all pretty shaken. I still hear Chris’s cries in the night. I try and block my ears, but it makes no difference. I guess Sam and the Amigos felt that to the power of ten. It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself, if you’re that close, the same questions keep rattling around in your head. Could I have saved my friend? What if I’d reacted quicker? Maybe got to him before the Taliban did?
‘But if you’re asking me if Sam had lost the plot so badly that he shot one of his best mates during training, the answer is absolutely not. They were so close they were almost telepathic.
‘And, by the way, Sam never had negligent discharge in his life.’
‘Were you in the room when it happened?’
‘No.’ His jaw clenched. ‘But I’m pretty sure Sam wasn’t either.’
6
Fred was i/c Red Team, rehearsing a heli insertion – four of them fast roping from a Eurocopter above the CQB Rooms. Sam was Blue Team’s commander, coming in via the rear. Scott was part of the crew already inside; some were playing the hostage role, some were kidnappers.
The whole of B Squadron were completely mystified about what happened next. Even the squadron sergeant major running the exercise couldn’t make any sense of it. The only thing they knew for certain was that Scott had taken a round in the back of the head.
‘Where did they find his body?’
‘Nobody seems to know that either. But one of the rumours is that he was tied to a chair.’
‘What did the SSM say?’
‘Jack Grant? I know he was gutted. But apparently no wiser than anyone else.’
I’d never met Jack, but I knew he was old school. The word was that he’d keep flying the flag long after the flagpole had been blown to matchwood.
‘Do you think he’d fill in some of the gaps, if he was asked the right questions? Or is he keeping his mouth zipped now, like everyone else?’
Fred lifted his hands, palms upwards. ‘He’s one of DSF’s blue-eyed boys, so I wouldn’t count on it. And, anyway, he’s back in Afghan.’
‘Was that always the plan?’
‘No. He’s on the same rotation as the rest of us. Something came up.’
I bet it did. ‘Bastion?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘Have Sam’s defence team done the rounds yet?’
Fred shook his head. ‘You know how long these things take.’
I did. Especially when no one at the top of the shit heap really wanted to hear the answers to some pretty basic questions. And the ones who knew the answers were prepared to go to any lengths to stop those questions being asked.
Before leaving, I asked him if he’d been present at the action for which Guy Chastain was awarded his VC. He hadn’t. He’d taken a round in the leg a couple of days after the Kajaki incident. It had become badly infected, and he’d been casevaced back to the UK. He rubbed it again now. It still gave him shit when the atmospheric pressure changed.
Ken saw me to the front door and gave me another man-hug.
I waved a hand back in the direction of the garden room. ‘He’s a good lad, Fred is. No wonder you’re proud.’
‘The best, eh?’
‘Seeing you together makes me wonder why you guys never had any kids of your own …’ As soon as I’d said it, I wished that I hadn’t.
His walnut face crinkled into that familiar grin. ‘Who says I didn’t, eh? You know us Fijian boys …’ Then a faraway look came into his eyes. ‘I’d have loved a whole rugby team, man. But I loved Jill more. And … well, sometimes these things don’t work out the way you planned, eh?’
We stood on the threshold, slightly awkwardly, for a moment longer.
‘How about you, Nick?’
I shrugged. ‘Like you said, Ken, sometimes these things don’t work out the way you planned.’
7
Fleet Services, Hampshire
Saturday, 28 January
13.03 hrs
I thought that taking the scenic route out of Salisbury would probably be an error, even before pointing the 911 north up the A360, but sometimes you just had to put these things to the test. And I wanted to check out the lie of the land around Larkhill and Barford. Time spent on reconnaissance was seldom wasted.
I first noticed the gunmetal-grey Mondeo, one up, when I turned onto the A338 at Shipton Bellinger. I couldn’t get a clear picture of the driver, but got a glimpse of Boris Johnson hair. He kept his distance, three or four vehicles behind me, but made the mistake of doing so with unnatural consistency. I kept at a steady sixty along the Thruxton stretch, which must have pissed off everyone except Eddie Stobart’s boys, then put my foot down by the Andover turning.
I kept a careful lookout for unmarked police cars to begin with, then just sat back and enjoyed the power of the machine, the growl of the engine, the fact that it did everything I told it to without arguing about it.
When the Mondeo was still in sight at Popham I was pretty sure it was no coincidence. I hung a left past the Basingstoke crematorium and mooched around for a while in the Festival Place shopping centre. I wanted to carry on travelling light, so I bought myself a daysack without holes in it and a change of shirt, socks and boxers.
Back in the driving seat, I slid the Browning from my waistband and wedged it under my right thigh, grip outwards. The Mondeo popped into my rear-view again at Junction 5 on the M3. I was now absolutely certain he wasn’t simply a fellow traveller on his way to London for dinner and a show.
When I pulled off the motorway at Fleet Services, I knew it was time to return the Porsche to Father Gerard until this shit was over. I was going to miss it, but I didn’t think he’d mind: it was still ten weeks until the end of the National Hunt Season.
The Mondeo found a space on the far side of the parking area. The driver didn’t get out. I waited five minutes before heading inside to the Gents. When I emerged via Waitrose after a decent interval with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of designer water, his wagon was empty.
I wandered across to the nearest refuse bin, got the water down my neck, then threw away the bottle and the bag. Keeping eyes on the entrance to the shops, I peeled three bananas and ate one. No one seemed to be taking a special interest in me, but I didn’t expect my new best mate to be standing in the doorway with a set of binoculars.
On my way back to the 911, I bent down and rammed the other two bananas as far as I could up the Mondeo’s exhaust. It had been our favourite party trick since a bunch of us had seen Beverly Hills Cop during our early days in the Regim
ent, and it still cracked me up all these years later. Unless he was a big Eddie Murphy fan, it would take him a while to work out why the Ford’s ignition system was suddenly letting him down.
8
I made it to the Farnborough exit without my shadow reappearing, and took off cross-country, steering clear of the military choke-points clustered around Aldershot.
I took far too long to get to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, but I wanted to try to avoid leaving Father Gerard with any unwanted visitors. I also needed to find a choggy shop in a backstreet in Kingston.
I dipped into the first one I came to. The lads who ran it were big fans of flickering neon and sold everything from dodgy DVDs to Elvis costumes and previously enjoyed satnavs. I spent the rest of Sniper One’s hard-earned cash and some of my own on four second-hand unlocked Nokias.
Three were for me and one was the late Christmas present I’d promised Father Mart. I bunged fifty quid on each of the Lebara pay-as-you-go SIM cards.
The software at GCHQ had been designed to track who was contacting whom rather than the content of their messages, first off, so text traffic on these gizmos would have a good chance of staying under the radar as long as we didn’t communicate anything that set their alarm bells ringing.
9
Father G was en route from Lingfield to Saturday-evening mass, but still managed to give me the impression he had all the time in the world.
He got even more cheerful when I suggested that he swapped the 911 for his Skoda instead of hiding it away in his lock-up, and threw open the boot of his wagon so I could transfer my kit. I asked if he wanted to remove the rosary beads hanging from his rear-view. He shook his head. He had a feeling I could use the Good Lord’s help and, anyway, he had a spare.
Before we said our goodbyes I gave him one of the Nokias and asked him to get it to Father Mart ASAP. In return, he gave me the name and address of a friendly B-and-B.
On the way there I made a rare sighting of a public phone box. I didn’t want to use and bin one of my spare mobiles, so I filled the slot with coins and called Cyprus. An old mate of mine who’d retired from the Green Army had managed to swing a civvy admin job for himself at RAF Akrotiri. It was Bob’s way of living the dream.
‘Beats a wet Saturday night in Salisbury, Nick, I kid you not,’ he’d told me, the last time we’d shared a brew. ‘Sure, I’m chained to a keyboard or buried in a filing cabinet from nine to five every weekday, but the rest of the time it’s sun, sea and quite a lot of …’ He’d licked his lips. ‘If you take my meaning. You know the island’s patron is Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty?’
He’d obviously read the brochures. And since he looked like a greyer, more spiky-haired version of Barry Manilow, I reckoned he’d be like a pig in shit there.
Bob picked up on the third ring, so I guessed it was still too early in the tourist season for his escort duties to have kicked in big-time.
Troops returning from Afghan stopped by the base for four days’ decompression. Regiment lads didn’t stay as long as the rest, but I thought it might be worth asking Bob to keep an eye out for Jack Grant. I told him I’d connect from time to time and asked him to keep his mouth shut.
He knew me well enough not to ask why.
PART FIVE
1
During two separate ambushes in Al-Amarah in 2004, Private Johnson Beharry saved the lives of at least thirty comrades while being hosed down by a blizzard of incoming AK-47 rounds and RPGs, one of which detonated on the hatch cover of his Warrior, seven inches from the front of his head.
When he was awarded the Victoria Cross for ‘extreme gallantry and unquestioned valour’ the following year, he didn’t have a clue what it meant. Mind you, he had an excuse. He’d spent most of his life up a hill with his nan in the far north of Grenada. Bermondsey was only a stone’s throw from the Imperial War Museum, and when I was busy nicking trainers off the back of other people’s barrows down there, I’d never heard of the VC either.
Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen Zulu as a kid. It wasn’t until much later that I soaked up the story of how eleven were won during the course of one engagement at Rorke’s Drift. Maybe it was because they’ve only handed out a few more than that in total since the Second World War – Beharry was the first living recipient in nearly forty years. Whatever, although I quite fancied the idea of being saluted by the chief of the General Staff if I passed him on the square, I’d never fantasized about winning one myself.
Most other soldiers I knew felt the same way. And the few times we came across someone with VCs in their eyes, we tried to stay out of their way. Self-sacrifice is one of the boxes you have to tick, and that’s not always healthy. You don’t even get on the shortlist, these days, unless you’ve had at least a 97 per cent chance of not surviving the action, and some commentators believed that it should only be awarded posthumously.
It wasn’t always like that. When they first started awarding them during the Crimean War, Queen Vic wouldn’t pin one on your chest unless you were still around to tell the story.
The VC and GC Association looked after the interests of the winners, past and present. They nurtured the handful of survivors, making sure the old ones got to their reunions and the young ones didn’t end up folding themselves inside bits of cardboard in doorways off the Strand. They also protected the memories of the dead.
The Association didn’t always see eye to eye with the MoD, but its HQ overlooked the Horse Guards Parade ground on one side and Whitehall on the other – which was why I wasn’t about to swing by their offices on Monday morning. I never felt completely comfortable in the corridors of power at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times.
Besides, I thought I might have another way of finding out some stuff I needed to know.
2
I’d first worked with Maggie in Derry in the late eighties. I’d been press-ganged into 14th Intelligence Company – which we called the Det – and she’d been seconded from the Firm (MI5). It hadn’t been a career choice for either of us, but we both seemed to thrive in an environment where we had to be switched on 24/7.
I used to call her Moneypenny because she was a bit starchy on the outside but kind of sexy too – not that any of us lads with overly long sideburns and five days’ stubble got to put that to the test. She christened me Bag O’Shite. It wasn’t until we had a PIRA active-service unit under surveillance past dark o’clock one night that I got to see her in action.
We’d pinged a bomb factory in a dilapidated house not too far away from the Holy Child Primary School. The players had been mixing low-explosive cocktails in an industrial coffee grinder and had an arms cache in the back garden. Our job wasn’t to pile in and turn the place over: it was to keep an eye on things until we could put away as many of them as possible.
We were walking up an alleyway that ran along the back of two rows of terraces between Bogside and the Creggan with a pocketful of miniature transmitters. The plan was to secrete the devices inside the PIRA weapons and see where they ended up. Our lords and masters put ops like this under the heading of ‘technical attacks’; we called it jarking. The opposition were wising up to it, but we still got a good few results.
The rain hung in the air around us and the alleyway stank of piss. Only one street lamp in five seemed to work, but that was enough to make the garbage bags glisten and pick out the rats crawling over them. It was also enough for the shadows of the four hooded figures that suddenly appeared behind us to dance along the slimy breezeblock walls that hemmed us in. The players were checking us out.
Maggie and I both had 9mm shorts tucked into our waistbands, but that didn’t give us an edge; if we drew down, we were compromised big-time.
I ran through our options. There weren’t many, and run like fuck was shaping up to be my favourite. Maggie had other ideas. She grabbed my arm with her right hand and gripped the very greasy hair at the back of my neck with her left. She pushed herself against me.
Leaving my right arm free to draw down if her diversion didn’t work, she raised her lips to mine and kissed me long and hard.
I stopped in my tracks. Our shadows did too.
Then she turned back towards them and unleashed an Ulster-accented fusillade that can’t have been on the syllabus at Cheltenham Ladies College. ‘What the fock are youse pervs looking at? Can’t a girl have a moment to herself in this focking town?’
They spun on their heels and slouched back the way they’d come. One of them kicked a can along the path in front of him so we knew he had more important things than shagging on his mind.
I breathed out slowly and grinned. ‘So, where were we, Moneypenny?’
She brushed my arm aside and gave me a bollock-shrivelling glare. ‘Don’t get any ideas, dickhead. That was for their benefit, not yours.’
Nothing ever happened between us, either then or in the years that followed, but later the same evening she gave me the kind of smile that made me think it might still be on the cards. ‘You know what “Creggan” means, Bag O’Shite? It means “stony place”. Isn’t that fun?’
3
South London
Sunday, 29 January
12.00 hrs
Maggie binned the security services at the end of our Derry tour and joined an NGO – Save the Children or Oxfam or something like that. Then a handful of years ago she’d got a job with the secretary of the VC and GC Association. She told me she wanted to spend some time in the world as it should be: she’d got a bit tired of the way it actually was.