We peeled off our balaclavas. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” said Oz, pistol ready.
“I’m not a complete mug, Oz,” grunted the ex-SAS man. “Can I sit up?”
“Sure.”
Bishop nodded at my pistol. “Is that a 1911 TACOPS?”
“Yeah.”
“Hairdresser’s gun.”
Oz guffawed.
“How long have you been watching?” Bishop asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. “In fact, there’s every chance you’ll be off for your morning run to Slapton Sands at oh-six-hundred. Then breakfast in the garden with that young blonde who comes twice a week.”
Bishop winked. “She comes more than that, but I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down. “All I’m after is information.”
“Such as?” said Bishop coolly.
“I’ve been away for a while,” I said, “just me and a mountain of The Firm’s records. Despite that, there’s a gap in my knowledge I think you can fill.”
Bishop grimaced. “I’m just going to put on some strides and make a brew, OK?”
The kitchen was surgically-modern. Bishop brewed up in the half-light, arranging three identical mugs in a precise row. I saw him eyeing a collection of Japanese sushi knives on a magnetic board.
“We’re all thinking the same thing, Craig,” Oz warned, glancing at the blades. “Don’t do it.”
“Muscle-memory,” said the ex-SAS man, a smile on his craggy face. He poured milk and spooned sugar. Picking up his mug, he swaggered to a window overlooking the sea. “The funny thing is, even now I’m fighting the impulse to attack. I reckon I might even win. You know the feeling, Oz, dontchya? Special Forces thing, I s’pose…”
My pistol hissed. The bullet blew a chunk of meat from Bishop’s calf. He staggered, tea-mug spinning crazily on the floor. He clamped a hand over the gunshot wound, eyes wide.
“This is an interrogation, not a reunion,” I said.
Oz gave me a look and laughed, balaclava perched atop his head. “You’ve gotta get over the whole failing Selection thing, Cal. Seriously.”
I shrugged and aimed the pistol at Bishop’s other leg. “That’s for my sentence on The Firm. Now tell me, where’s Harry the Saint?”
“Harry might be on our side,” said Oz. “He gave Cal information about The Firm. We need to talk to him.”
I pulled a morphine syrette and a field dressing from my pocket. “Answer our question and you can have these.”
“The Firm certainly cast you in its own image,” Bishop replied through gritted teeth. “I only know Harry because he’s ex-SAS. In the old days, way before my time. I took my orders over the phone, just like you.”
“Do you still work for them?”
“Hardly ever. The Firm went tits-up.”
I allowed myself a sip of tea, hot and sweet. Bishop’s eyes followed my hands. Yes, Bishop. We’re leaving our DNA on your crockery. Maybe we intend on letting you live. “Tits-up?”
“The big players dropped off the map. Their replacements are a different breed. More Americans. I’d look for certain skill-sets in candidates, but they’re using recruits I’d never touch with a bargepole, or people I wouldn’t source in the first place.”
“Such as?” said Oz.
“Technical specialists,” he replied. “Nerds - I told them to ask someone who’d worked at GCHQ, not an ex-SF man.”
“Sign of the times,” I replied. “You can’t go to war without a hacker nowadays. What did you do?”
Bishop studied the bullet wound. It was clean, an in-and-out. “I wiped my mouth and walked, but you don’t poke a sleeping pit-bull, do you? I left the door open, if they wanted the sort of people I know.”
“Tell me Harry’s true identity,” I said. “That way, you won’t need to convert this drum for wheelchair access.”
Bishop frowned. “If Harry already gave you the inside track on The Firm, why bother? He’s a dead man.”
Oz drained his tea. “Due diligence.”
“Maybe. But you’re still mad,” Bishop replied. Blood dripped through the fingers clamped around his calf.
I tossed the morphine to him. The ex-SAS man pulled the cap off with his teeth and slid the needle into his thigh. “It’s been a while since I used one of these.”
Morphine, opium, Brown: I felt an almost sexual twitch for the needle.
Bishop let his head fall back, voice raspy. Morphine seguing with blood. “Harry’s real name is Henry St. John. The Saint. He left The Regiment under a cloud in ’85.” He pronounced the surname St. John the posh way, Singeon.
“What sort of cloud?” I asked.
Bishop stared down the barrel of my gun. “Harry was on ops in Northern Ireland. One day he books out a fast car and a Walther, drives to a boozer in Newry and double-taps three locals. South Armagh PIRA, the ASU that bombed an army recruiting office in Hull. The bloke who died in the bombing was a Para sergeant. Unluckily for Paddy, the Para had been Best Man at Harry’s wedding. Harry disappeared before the RUC got involved. Eventually he was picked up by The Firm as a triggerman, just like you two were.”
“Then the poacher-gamekeeper switch,” said Oz, “Harry became a handler?”
“Yeah, The Saint was a natural, one of the most hard-core bastards ever to hatch out of Stirling Lines. He fought with the Muj in the ‘Stan against the Soviets. He was on the balcony at the Iranian Embassy. Harry spent 1982 in Buenos Aires, nutting French Exocet salesmen.”
“Funny, I’ve met about fifty ex-SAS men who were on the balcony at the Iranian Embassy,” Oz chuckled, “it couldn’t have been that fucking big.”
“The Saint’s no bullshitter.”
“Where do we find him?” I said.
Bishop sniffed. “I’ll make a few calls and see if he’ll contact you.”
I shot him in the other leg. “Not good enough.”
The ex-SAS man rolled into a ball, fists hammering the flag-stoned floor. Treble-glazing absorbed the howling.
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“Details on my laptop. In my office,” Bishop screeched. “For fuck’s sake, stop fucking shooting me.”
“Password?”
Bishop parroted an alphanumeric code. It consisted, predictably, of the last three of his army number and the name of a football team. Bishop’s office was along the corridor, overlooking lush, tree-studded hills. The sun split the horizon. Like vampires, we were running out of time.
The laptop lay on a desk. I entered the password and pulled an external hard drive from my field suit. Jacking it into the computer, I activated a program and mirrored the machine’s data. I ran a search and found a listing for ‘The Saint’ in another password protected file. Sloppily, it was the same password Bishop had already given me. This opened a document containing a telephone number and a London address. I scrolled through his emails. One drew my eye. It had been sent by Monty, a month previously:
We are proceeding with a revised personnel strategy. This will coincide with a (long overdue) hosing-out of the stables and an URGENT increase in contractors to backfill vacancies. A proportion will be sourced in the US. We require former SF-attached comms specialists, military online specialists and, if possible, ex-GCHQ staff. These are lucrative short-term contracts. Reply with initial feasibility by the end of this month.
I slid the drive in my pocket and activated a wiping program. Before I left, I found Bishop’s safe. It had the same password as his computer. I rifled through the contents, helping myself to several shrink-wrapped packets of money. His medals I left alone. Even creatures like me have limits.
Then, at the bottom, was the dirt.
My decade-old confession to Justin Powell’s murder, along with a microcassette in a sealed plastic bag. So were a dozen other hard-copy files, each with a name neatly printed on it. I didn’t look in any of them.
Now I was the better man.
I stuffed the lot in my assault pack and lock
ed the safe. In the kitchen, Bishop sat with his back to the fridge, bloody towels knotted into crude tourniquets. His face was grey and sweat-sheened. “I’m going into shock. I need an ambulance.”
“You received an email from Monty, something about hosing out the stables. What’s the plan?”
He shrugged. “You’re fine. Monty said you’d been put on gardening leave. You’re almost time-served.”
“Bollocks,” I replied. “What about stuff changing on The Firm? Hiring geeks?”
“That part was true,” Bishop replied.
I looked out at the sea. Early morning light glinted on the waves. “You’re still part of the GROUNDSMAN network.”
Bishop nodded. “Since I left the army. Harry got me into it. Can I get some water?”
“Sure.”
Bishop slid to one side and opened the fridge door. He rolled suddenly. Instinctively, I punched out my pistol and fired. I saw the muzzle flash from Bishop’s weapon before I heard the gunshot. The ex-SAS man’s first bullet hit me in the centre of my Kevlar-plated chest, punching me backwards as oxygen hammered out of my lungs. The second whistled past my skull.
I heard Oz’s supressed Browning… tak-tak-tak. Spent brass rolled across the floor.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I wheezed, pushing myself into a sitting position. “Jesus he was fast.” My torso ached and tingled simultaneously.
Bishop was lying on his side, lit by the fridge’s interior light. Oz had put three shots into his forehead, making a gooey Jackson Pollock across the kitchen wall. “I’m paranoid, but even I’ve never kept a gun in the fridge,” he said.
“Let’s go. Someone might have heard that.”
“Sure, as soon as we sprinkle some Oz magic over the place.”
Oz passed me a small plastic bag. Inside was tub. It contained a mixture of sand from the beach outside blended with dirt, taken from a farm near County Monaghan. It was tainted with smuggled red diesel, big business in bandit country. The farm belonged to a member of a diehard IRA splinter group, as any forensic analysis of the soil would prove. I scattered it near the French windows, like someone stamped their feet on the way in.
“And the piece de resistance?” said Oz, glancing at his watch.
“Here,” I replied, pulling a plastic pouch from my pocket. I pulled out a cigarette butt and placed it in a nearby bush. The butt had been taken from a pub ashtray in Ballybay. It had the DNA of the bastard who owned the farm all over it. I’d spent a week drinking in his local, waiting for him to stub out a smuggled Spanish Ducados. Back inside, I carefully cleaned the tea mugs we’d used and put them back in the cupboard.
Oz, meanwhile, was spray-painting REMEMBER DERRYNOOSE across the kitchen wall. Derrynoose, in County Armagh, was the site of a skirmish in the late eighties. In that part of the world, they’ve got long memories. Any detective accessing army records would discover two Provisional IRA volunteers had been shot dead by a British infantry patrol in 1988. One of the soldiers who’d fired a kill-shot was a rifleman called Craig Bishop.
“I think we’ve given Old Bill the sketch,” Oz nodded, admiring his handiwork.
It wasn’t subtle, but sometimes you need to throw the dog a bone. The IRA men we were fitting-up had got away with many murders. A thirty-stretch in a high-security prison seemed poetic.
I took a last look at Bishop’s corpse. He was lucky.
I doubted the rest would die so cleanly.
Chapter four
We parked in woodland, twenty miles along the coast. I found a burnt-out campfire, unloaded the papers from Bishop’s safe and lit them with my Zippo. It was a good smell, familiar. Petrol, smoke and tree sap.
“Was my file in there?” said Oz.
“Yeah.”
Oz watched flames eat paper. “Did you read it?”
“No.”
We waited in silence. Secrets burned. I raked the ashes with my boot, then got back in the wagon.
Oz turned the ignition key. “What did you lift off Bishop’s computer?”
“An address for Harry. London.”
“Why not find Monty first?”
“Harry’s the priority. I want to know why he gave us the STREGA file.”
Oz pulled a face. He used to view working for The Firm as something you endured. If you followed orders and kept your head down, they’d release you with a sack-load of cash. Then, in Africa, he discovered The Firm’s idea of damage limitation was unleashing Hellfire missiles on your head.
Monty had been the architect of that. Oz took it personally.
We changed into casual clothes, field suits stuffed in a bag for incineration. The sun was up, watery light burning off mist. “Let’s go,” I said, rummaging in my pack for sandwiches and a flask.
We ate in silence, listening to the radio for news of murder in an isolated Devon house. Oz finished his sandwich. “You gonna sit there and brood for the entire journey?”
“What if Harry hasn’t left The Firm?” I replied. “What if he gave me the files as part of a wider agenda?”
“Once you start playing that game you’re screwed,” Oz shrugged. “Paranoia is how they keep us in line. Follow the information we’ve got, not stuff we don’t.”
“You’re like Yoda,” I said.
“Yoda’s got more hair. I trust your plan, but keep it simple. Slot the people at the top of The Firm. Get the pay we’re owed, exfil somewhere sunny. ENDEX.”
We reached London by late afternoon, dark cloud scudding in from the East. Oz drove us to a dingy parade of lock-ups near Heathrow. Inside was the BMW. I loaded my kit in the boot and changed into a dark suit and tie. Oz settled for his usual uniform of football-casual chic, an 80’s-era Kappa tracksuit top, faded 501s and vintage Adidas sneakers.
“We look like the Pet Shop Boys,” he said.
“But the scruffy one was better-looking,” I replied.
Oz smiled. “Exactly.”
We got in the Beemer and headed for central London, and the address on Bishop’s computer.
“I don’t remember this place from the file,” said Oz.
“That’s my point,” I replied, stop-starting through traffic.
The house was in a secluded mews off Marylebone High Street. From my bag I took out a day-glow tabard and a hard-hat. It’s the universal urban disguise. Even over a suit. I could walk into a pub, a church or the food hall at Harrods and nobody would take much notice. “I might be a while,” I said.
Oz tapped the steering wheel. “Want me to come?”
“Nah, what could possibly go wrong?”
The house was off-white, shrouded in wisteria. There was no visible CCTV, wooden shutters covering the windows. Wriggling my fingers into surgical gloves, I pressed the doorbell.
“Who is it?” said a voice from a rickety-looking speakerphone. Female, well-spoken.
“Universal Utilities,” I said officiously. “There’s a breach on a gas main. We need to get your supply switched off.”
“I’m afraid now isn’t a very good time,” said the voice coolly.
“Madam, this is an emergency,” I replied in a flat estuary accent. I pressed my fingers against where door met frame. There was some give. Like the doors on most houses, it opened inwards. “We’ve legal powers to enter property in these circumstances. I might have to call the police.”
“Mate, the lady is telling you to fuck off,” said another voice: gruff, male. “We’re busy.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. Aiming my size eleven just below the centre lock, I kicked the door open. The security chain popped off in a cloud of plaster dust. I ducked inside and nudged it shut with my foot. The .45 was in my hand, aiming down the corridor. I stood in a small hallway. There was a kitchen beyond. Stairs to my left. Half-open door to my right.
Movement front, near the kitchen:
… a big guy stepped into view. Armed. I squeezed off two silent shots. He spun and dropped, pistol skittering across the floor.
Movement right: peripheral vision:
… keeping low, I darted past the doorway. A suppressed round hissed by. Stepping over the guy I’d just shot, I entered the kitchen. I took my time, heeding the mantra of room-to-room combat: slow is fast.
The kitchen was a riot of varnished pine and olde worlde brass fittings. Trapped in a late eighties time-warp, typical safe-house chic. The drawers were half-open, papers spread neatly across the work surface. It looked like a methodical search, the work of trained men. There was an old-fashioned serving hatch through to the sitting room. Nudging it open with my pistol, I peered inside. A skinny, red-haired guy was trying to cover the doorway and the hatch.
When you try to defend everything, you defend nothing.
He held a woman close, hostage-style, free arm clamped across her chest. I could only see she was slim and brunette, wearing faded blue jeans and an oversized check shirt. Her body flexed in protest.
As I saw it, red-hair guy was in the middle of covering a non-compliant woman while his mate searched the house. Then I’d kicked the door in, guns blazing. “Hey,” I half-whispered.
Red-hair guy turned on a penny. Fair play, he was fast. The woman dug him in the ribs with her elbow and rolled away. I fired twice. I use a custom YHM Cobra suppressor. It’s quieter than the noise you make opening the ring pull on a beer can. The first bullet smacked into Red-hair guy’s chest. My second pierced his cheek, just below his left eye. He was dead before he hit the ground. The woman darted out of view.
“I need to speak with Harry,” I called. I crept slowly back towards the hall. I stopped, listening for a footstep or breathing.
Then I felt the scrape of something metal against the back of my head.
“Is this how the gas board usually manages difficult customers?” said a voice, throaty and well-spoken.
I dropped my gun.
I saw the pistol before the woman. Walther P-38, a wartime relic. The barrel stared at me like a gunmetal cyclops. Behind her was a concealed panel below the staircase. Somehow she’d been fast enough to scramble inside. Ushering me into the sitting room, she kicked red-hair guy’s pistol out of reach. “Now, why don’t you sit down and tell me who you are?”
The Saint Jude Rules (Cal Winter Book 3) Page 3