by Chris Ryan
‘And I had these nightmares. Endlessly. In which I saw Joey Delaney. I saw him in crowds, I saw him in shops, I saw him in bars, I even saw him on television. Just standing there in that oversized coat with half his face shot away and those nine-year-old’s eyes looking at me, not understanding what was happening to him, or why. And I’d try to run away but he’d always be there, following me, as if I was the only one who could help him rather than the one who was half-way through killing him. And I’d have my weapon with me – the HK53 – and I’d threaten him, tell him to leave me alone or I’d shoot him again, and eventually I would shoot him again, and I’d go on shooting him, endlessly, but . . .’
Slater fell silent. No one moved. Ridley studied his signet ring.
‘And then I actually saw Joey Delaney in real life, when I was wide awake, walking down Bridge Street in Hereford. Same expression, same shot-away face, right there in front of me. I ended up running all the way back to the camp at Sterling Lines. Told the head-shed I was having hallucinations and flashbacks, that I couldn’t carry on, and that I wanted an immediate discharge.’
Slater emptied his glass, and shook his head when Ridley mimed a refill.
‘And they gave me one. They’d seen people in my condition too often to doubt that I meant what I said. First, though, they sent me to the psychiatric unit at the tri-service hospital. The shrinks did the usual stuff, got me to talk the incident through and so on – got me to put what I felt into words – and the nightmares started coming less often.’
‘Do you still get them?’ asked Eve sympathetically.
‘Occasionally. They came back for a time after the incident at Bolingbroke’s School. I know the signs and symptoms now, though, and I know that I just have to ride the whole thing out. That in the end it’ll go away.’
‘And after the hospital?’
‘I did a coaching course – athletics and rugby. I’d got it into my mind that school life might suit me. That I might be able to teach young lads something about themselves on the games field.’
‘And did it? Suit you, I mean?’
‘In the end, no. Or not life at that particular school, anyway. But I’m sure you know most of this already. You’re not going to tell me you haven’t vetted me pretty thoroughly.’
Ridley smiled. ‘We would have been foolish not to, I think you’ll agree.’
Slater turned to him. ‘Can you fill in a historical detail for me?’
‘I can try to.’
‘The shooter at Forkhill. I know they had to release him, but did they ever find out anything about him? Was he an American, for example, as I thought?’
Ridley steepled his fingers. ‘His name was John McGirk, and he had dual citizenship. He grew up in a Catholic family in Belfast and he and his parents moved to New York State in the mid-eighties. I seem to remember they were both research chemists; anyway, they ended up doing very well for themselves. The young McGirk enjoyed the best education that the city of Buffalo had to offer and studied . . . oh, literature I think. Something to do with James Joyce, or am I imagining that? Anyway, he chucked it in after a couple of years, dropped out of the University of Buffalo, and joined the Marine Corps.’
‘Quite a jump,’ said Slater.
‘Indeed. He ended up going to Saudi with Desert Storm as a sniper, and after that we think he went back to Belfast to look up some of his old pals. Now up to that point, as far as anyone knows, he had no particular Republican sympathies. He was a Catholic, like I said, but the middle-class suburb he grew up in was a world away from the Falls Road.
‘Somehow, though, he made PIRA connections. One theory is that one of his schoolfriends had become a member of the Army Council. And obviously it was felt that a man with his skills who was completely unknown to the security services was too good to waste. And unknown he remained – the PIRA made sure of that. Until Cropspray we didn’t have a name or a face for him, just a reputation and a whole lot of conflicting rumours.
‘When the RUC pulled him in they discovered he was in the Province on a false passport. The man he was claiming to be was a quadraplegic living on Rhode Island who hadn’t left the States for fifteen years. And so all the agencies started digging.’ Ridley spread his hands. ‘And we identified Greenfly as McGirk. If Cropspray accomplished nothing else, it accomplished that. He hasn’t been back since, and I’d guess that that means that lives have been saved.’
‘So what’s he up to now?’ asked Slater.
‘He’s back in the States, where as far as we know he hasn’t raised his head above the parapet. I’m sure we’ll hear from him one of these days, though.’
‘I’d very much like to,’ said Slater with feeling.
Ridley smiled. ‘I’ll see what we can do to bring you together. I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad time – it’s the occupational risk of our calling.’
‘I’ll survive,’ said Slater, aware of Eve’s thoughtful gaze.
‘I’m sure you will. And I’d like to say how glad I am you’re joining us. We’re a small team, but the work we do is vitally important. As, right now, is refilling these glasses. Eve, would you be so good?’
He turned back to Slater. ‘As I said before, that was a splendid fish you caught this afternoon. Very few of my guests have managed one of that size on their first visit. By, er, whatever method!’
Slater smiled in acceptance of the compliment.
‘And without wishing to talk shop on such a beautiful evening, it looks as if we might be able to put your improvisational skills to work on behalf of the Cadre rather sooner than anticipated – assuming, that is, that you agree to join us.’
‘Can you tell me in specific rather than general terms what it is that you do?’ Slater asked. He wanted to hear it put into words.
Ridley smiled, a benign amusement lighting up every weathered crease of his features. He would make, thought Slater, a very good Father Christmas.
‘We assassinate enemies of the State,’ he twinkled.
Slater nodded slowly. He could hardly ask for plainer speaking than that. He realised that on some level he’d already known it. But was that really what he wanted to be – a political assassin? Did he, ultimately, have any choice? Wasn’t he an assassin already?
‘I’m informed,’ said Ridley, taking Slater’s silence for assent, ‘that we have the beginnings of a situation.’
EIGHT
Over the course of the next week, things moved fast. Slater did not return to the Highbury flat – instead a van collected his furniture and possessions and he was re-installed in a similar-sized place in Primrose Place, hard by Waterloo Station.
The new flat, he discovered, had been vacated by his predecessor a fortnight before, and although nondescript-looking from the outside was fitted with state-of-the-art alarms and anti-intruder devices. There was also a scrambled landline phone to the office at Vauxhall Cross. The place was in good decorative order, and although he had nothing to hang on the walls, Slater soon had it looking cheerful enough. There was a market nearby, he discovered, where exotic fruit and vegetables could be bought, and he determined to expand his cooking repertoire to include a few curries.
Most days he walked along Lambeth Palace Road and Albert Embankment to Vauxhall Cross. Mainline trains from Waterloo stopped there, but the rail-journey took almost as long as travelling on foot. At the MI6 headquarters he had been provided with passes, entry codes and swipe-cards. He had also inherited a Liverpool FC coffee mug from his unknown predecessor, and had been formally introduced to Ray and Debbie, the Cadre’s support team. For reasons of security, Slater discovered, Cadre members were only ever referred to by their first names. To keep things simple – especially vis-à-vis radio and communications procedures – they used the same names when operational, adding false surnames where necessary.
Ray and Debbie were both computer experts, and much of Slater’s first week was spent learning secure communications procedures from one or other of them. Ray’s passion, apart from obscure
Arabic-language websites, was the cinema of the Cold War, and he wore heavy black-framed glasses and knitted silk ties in homage to Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Being just over five feet feet tall and prematurely balding he resembled Michael Caine in no other respect, but this deterred him not one whit. His dream, he told Slater, was to wake up one morning and discover that henceforth life was to be lived in black and white.
Debbie was the spiky-haired young woman Slater had met on his first visit to the office. Like Ray she undercut the serious and stressful nature of her work by affecting to play the clown. Some days she would report for work wearing corpse-white make-up, on others she would remove her motorcycle helmet in the atrium to reveal purple gothic hair-extensions. Debbie had been recruited after hacking into the MI6 database while at university and planting a job application amongst the Balkan desk’s top-secret files. Hearing about this audacious approach, and needing a replacement for her predecessor, who had left to marry a diplomat, the Cadre’s director of operations had snapped her up immediately.
Like Ray, Debbie was a highly competent computer engineer, and the two of them ran a small repair workshop in an annexe of the office. As she explained to Slater, none of Nine’s computers, once used, could ever be repaired, serviced or disposed of outside the department. Even a completely smashed-up terminal dumped on a skip could yield important information to a good forensic engineer. When Slater had ruefully confessed to her that computers made him nervous, Debbie had smiled. ‘We’ll get you up to speed,’ she had promised him. ‘And all you really have to remember is not to lose your fucking laptop!’
The director of operations was the smooth-jowled man Slater had encountered at his last interview with Lark. Named Manderson — as a regular, non-operational MI6 officer seconded to the Cadre, he kept his real surname – he was a clubbable old school type who at first sight looked the exact opposite of a switched-on intelligence operator. With his pink cheeks, raked-back hair and foxy smile, he looked like a wealthy stockbroker who had done a short-service commission in the guards. There was a hardness about his eyes, however, which belied this genial impression. Slater met him on his second morning, when Manderson hurried into the office to collect some reconnaissance photographs. Introduced by Debbie, Manderson shook Slater’s hand, held up the photographs – ‘Ingushetiya. Fucking awful place!’ – and raced out. He returned in time to take Slater out for a pint and a sandwich at a cheerless pub near the Oval cricket ground. He apologised for the fact that Slater had not yet been introduced to the rest of the Cadre, but explained that they had all been tied up with the aftermath of a long surveillance operation relating to Eastern European money-laundering. He should, however, be meeting them all in a day or two, as there was ‘something biggish bumping down the pipeline’.
In the meanwhile, Manderson suggested, he should spend a day on the range and in the killing house down at Warlingham, in Surrey. When they were not operational he usually suggested that Cadre members spend at least a half-day a week at Warlingham working on their sniping and close-quarter battle skills.
Slater heard him out expressionlessly. He knew the smooth, power-hungry Manderson type only too well from the army. Secure in the knowledge that they would never have to face such horrors themselves, they invariably made liberal use of gung-ho phrases like ‘hard contact’ and ‘close-quarter battle’. He was certainly a clever man – no fool could have advanced to Manderson’s level of seniority – but Slater suspected that his greatest skills were those he deployed on behalf of his own career.
Returning to the office, and with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, Slater booked himself in for a session at Warlingham the following morning.
He arrived on the range to find a face that he knew: a wiry old ex-Scots Guards armourer named Jock MacLennan who’d been seconded to the Regiment for several years. MacLennan watched in silence as Slater put himself through his paces on the range. He re-acclimatised himself with a variety of weapons, and discovered to his relief that he was not quite as rusty as he had feared he might be. With hand-arms, in particular, his accuracy and reaction times were pretty much as good as ever.
The two men had a bite of lunch at the South London Aero Club, and then returned to the killing house, where they were joined by a Cadre membre named Terry. Terry was a pale, doughy-featured Essex-boy with a straggly goatee, and to Slater’s eye looked seriously unfit. For the purpose of the firearms exercise he was dressed in a pair of blue garage-worker’s overalls.
MacLennan loaded up the Heckler and Koch MP5s and Slater set up the killing room. The weapons had been rigged to fire paint-rounds, but in every other respect behaved like normal MP5s. Slater and Terry stalked each other through various set-ups for a couple of hours, and Slater’s fears were swiftly confirmed: the lad was no combat soldier. He was slow on his feet, and looked awkward behind a weapon. Slater, on the other hand, had not enjoyed himself so much for ages. The old instincts were still in place, and the blood sang in his veins as he went to work. Needless to say he splattered his overweight opponent every time.
‘I’m sorry, guys,’ Terry said eventually, his overalls dripping with yellow marker-paint. ‘I’m crap with guns – they’re just not my thing.’ He turned exhaustedly to Slater. ‘Any advice you can give us, mate . . .’
Slater nodded and smiled encouragingly. Inwardly he was wondering what the hell kind of outfit he’d committed himself to. This fat lad was a waste of space, for a kick-off.
At 7.30 on the fifth morning, Ray called Slater on the scrambled landline. There would be an important departmental briefing in one hour, and his presence was required.
It was a cold, overcast day – a promising May had become an indifferent June – and Slater made his way down Albert Embankment with a sharp prickle of anticipation.
He arrived in the office to find Eve in close conference with Andreas and a slightly built black man of about thirty in jeans and a leather jacket whom the others introduced as Leon. An air of urgency prevailed and for once even Debbie looked comparatively subdued. As the newest recruit to the outfit Slater decided to keep the lowest possible profile. Raising a quick hand in greeting to Ray and Terry he buried himself behind his terminal and went through the motions of checking for incoming messages. A new driving licence and European community passport, he saw, had been placed in his in-tray, as had a first-class Eurostar ticket. All were in the name of Neil Clissold.
Manderson arrived ten minutes later, murmured general greetings and disappeared into the briefing room with Debbie. He looked tired, strained and in no mood to suffer fools.
Eventually Debbie emerged and ushered the assembled company into the briefing room. They moved slowly – most were carrying styrofoam cups of hot tea or coffee. At the far end, trailing wires, a large, panoramic TV/DVD set stood on a wheeled stand.
Manderson raised his hands for silence and the faint murmur evaporated.
‘Good morning, everyone. I hope I haven’t interrupted too many breakfasts.’
Silence. A few taut smiles.
‘Before this briefing gets under way I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome a new member to the department. Neil is already known to some if not most of you, and I’m sure you’ll all, er, make him feel welcome and so on.’
Manderson gave Slater a peremptory nod. Around the table six faces directed polite smiles at the newcomer. Apart from Leon there was only one person present that Slater hadn’t met — a nondescript dark-haired woman whom he guessed to be in her late twenties. Catching Slater’s eye she leaned over the table with one hand extended. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Chris.’
From his place on Eve’s left hand, Andreas raised his styrofoam cup an inch or two and gave Slater a stealthy wink.
Manderson turned to Ray, who was inserting a DVD into the player. ‘When you’re done, I’d like to lock down. No calls, no visitors, no interruptions. When was the place last swept for bugs?’
‘An hour ago,’ said Debbie. ‘All clear.’
>
Manderson nodded, and Ray and Debbie withdrew from the briefing room, closing the soundproof glass door behind them.
‘Right, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Manderson, thumbing a button on the remote control, ‘I’d like you to study these images.’
A photograph from – of all things – Hello! magazine. In the foreground the portly figure of the arms-dealer Adnan Khashoggi, canapé in hand, and a dark-haired woman in a cloth-of-gold dress. Others present, Champagne flutes in hand, all dressed in black and gold.
‘This photograph is eight years old,’ said Manderson. ‘It was taken at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Now the man I want to draw your attention to’ – he took a laser-pointer from the table – ‘is this one.’
The tiny arrow showed a smiling figure in a black dinner jacket, black tie, and gold cummerbund standing in a group behind Khashoggi. Slater guessed him to be in his mid-forties. He looked tanned and prosperous; his spectacles were gold-framed, his thinning hair expensively barbered.
‘His name,’ said Manderson, ‘is Antoine Fanon-Khayat. He is an arms-dealer and fixer, Franco-Lebanese in origin, Christian by denomination, place of birth, Beirut, 1950. Educated at the French Lycée, South Kensington, and at the Sorbonne in Paris.’
Manderson flicked the remote again and a silent Super-8 home-movie played across the screen – a Middle-Eastern rooftop with parasols, sky-signs advertising BOAC, the sea blue in the distance, and a youthful Fanon-Khayat mugging for the camera in a white suit.
‘A bright young man. Bit wild as a student – drugs, protest marches and so on – and in 1972 gets a French girl pregnant. Fellow student at the Sorbonne. She has a botched abortion and nearly dies, Antoine legs it back to Beirut. In ’75 he inherits his father’s import-export empire and becomes involved in the arms business when he allows one of the F-K companies to be used as a front for sanctions-busting operations in South Africa. We wait until we’ve got enough evidence to put him out of business and then suggest that there are ways in which he can help us.’