Traitor

by Duncan Falconer

  Stratton found the coffee bitter. ‘So who did?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Who did take them into the field?’

  Binning wasn’t expecting the question. ‘I don’t think that’s for me to say, really. Shall we press on?’ He headed back through the door.

  Stratton poured the coffee down the sink, placed the cup through the hatch marked ‘plastic rubbish’ and followed the scientist. As they walked, a casually dressed man in his late fifties stepped into the corridor. ‘Hello, Phillips. This is John Stratton from the SBS,’ Binning said.

  ‘Ah. Right,’ Phillips said, offering a hand while inspecting Stratton through his glasses as if trying to bring him into focus.

  Stratton shook it. ‘Hi.’

  Binning did not hang around and moved on. Stratton caught him up. The scientist said in a low voice, ‘We’ve got a few old fogies here. Surprisingly youthful team otherwise. That’s all Jervis’s doing. You know Jervis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He takes a lot of interest. Believes technology moves so fast that only younger minds can keep up with it. I’d be inclined to agree but I’m mindful of the fact that it probably means I’ll be turfed out before I think I’m ready.’

  They arrived alongside a large room beyond another plate-glass wall. A young woman in a slim-fitting jumpsuit and wearing protective goggles was operating a complex-looking piece of machinery.

  Binning stopped to look at her with more than polite interest. ‘Rowena Deboventurer,’ he announced, as if there were a lot more to say about her. He tapped on the glass. She looked around at him, her expression blank as though he wasn’t really there. She glanced at Stratton for less than a second before going back to her work.

  ‘Whatever your first impression of her is, you’re probably right,’ Binning said, smirking. He walked on. Stratton thought the young woman looked very cute.

  Behind yet another glass wall lay a dojo-and-gym combination: on one side of the room was a collection of weights and workout machines, on the other a judo mat. A tall blond-haired man who looked about the same age as Stratton and Binning and was wearing a karategi was conducting a kata, each move focused, strong, crisp and decisive, his arms and legs lashing out in precise arcs at an invisible foe.

  Binning watched with interest, nodding in approval occasionally as though acknowledging the accuracy of the strikes. ‘Our intrepid boss. Jason Mansfield. A third dan in karate, brilliant nuclear engineer, and handsome to boot. Quite the perfect male, don’t you think?’

  Stratton wondered if Binning seriously expected him to agree. It just wasn’t the sort of thing one bloke said about another where he came from.

  ‘Rather an extraordinary fellow. Flunked his first degree at Oxford because according to him it was boring and failed to stimulate him. That was when we first met. People put him down even though he was playing with theories that most of them couldn’t fathom. The underprivileged background didn’t help. He did impress some of the professors with his theoretical designs but generally they saw him as a flash in the pan who would amount to little. We all did. Probably what drove him forward. Einstein never completed his first degree either. When Jason left Oxford nearly everyone thought he’d disappeared down some hole in the ground, myself included. But the next time he turned up he shocked all of his contemporaries. It was at CERN, the European nuclear research institute. After a PhD in particle physics he went on to become their youngest senior engineer. That probably means nothing to you but those are the dizzy heights even young geniuses dream about. Two years ago London recruited him to head up this place. Remarkable, don’t you think?’

  ‘Amazing,’ Stratton said dryly, confirming Binning’s suspicion that it meant little to him.

  On the other side of the glass Mansfield came to a controlled finish, feet together, shoulders visibly relaxing. He stood with his eyes closed, slowing his breathing, allowing the tensile energy of his body to release itself. When he came back to normal consciousness he removed a towel from a rail and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He noticed the audience. His face cracked into a grin and he bid them enter.

  Binning pushed the door open. ‘That looked pretty crisp,’ he said. ‘I still think you need to turn your hips out a little more on the second thrust.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Jason replied, twisting his body suddenly and swinging the sole of his foot towards Binning. Mansfield’s subordinate stepped to the side, tapping the foot down with practised ease. But Jason countered with his other leg, followed by an arm, striking repeatedly. Binning defended coolly, stepping back, to the sides, always under control. Jason’s final punch stopped a fraction of an inch in front of Binning’s nose, the arm not fully extended. ‘Strike!’ he shouted nevertheless.

  ‘You’re an animal,’ Binning retorted. ‘I wasn’t ready.’

  ‘You should always be prepared. Isn’t that right, Stratton? You’re the fighting professional here.’

  Stratton forced a polite smile.

  The man held out his hand. ‘Jason Mansfield. I’ve heard a lot about you. Even Jervis hints highly of you, and he says nothing about anyone, and when he does it’s never polite. So what do you say? Shouldn’t a man be prepared at all times?’

  ‘Sounds pretty exhausting to me,’ Stratton said.

  Jason saw the funny side. ‘Which is your preferred martial art?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘You mean, no specific one?’

  ‘I mean none.’

  ‘What do you people practise down in Poole? A hybrid, I imagine. Mixture of various techniques. Ju-jitsu?’

  Stratton shook his head. ‘No.’

  Jason looked unconvinced. ‘Come on. You must do some kind of self-defence. How do you defend against someone coming at you - with a knife, for instance?’ he asked, adding a mocking jab without actually touching Stratton.

  ‘I’d shoot them.’

  Jason grinned. ‘What if you don’t have a gun?’

  ‘I’d probably run.’

  ‘Oh. A dry one, he is, Binning. You’ll get on well here.’ Jason looked Stratton in the eye as though examining his very soul for something. ‘Well. Has Binning shown you around?’

  ‘Not really,’ Binning said, jumping in. ‘Thought we’d meet the boss first.’

  ‘Let’s head down to my office, then,’ Jason said, rubbing his face and neck with the towel. ‘We’ll sound out one or two things. Then we’ll show you the rest of the place.’

  They headed further into the underground complex, reaching a four-way junction. Another glass wall revealed a conference room. Inside, two men were examining a complicated mathematical calculation on a whiteboard that included diagrams of some kind of device.

  Jason put his head round the door. ‘How’s it coming?’

  ‘We’ve broken it down into a couple of options,’ one of the men replied.

  ‘Okay. Once you’re certain, bring it back into the theory room and we’ll pick those options to bits.’

  ‘Will do,’ the man said and went back to the board.

  They continued along the corridor. ‘How’s that retractor demonstration coming along?’ Mansfield asked Binning, businesslike. ‘We need that to go without any hitches.’

  ‘We’re all ready apart from the power plant. I’m told it’ll be here at least a couple of days prior.’

  ‘I need a guarantee on that. I don’t want to see it plugged into a battery box. We must have the right power units. Otherwise it looks bloody amateurish.’

  ‘Of course.’

  At a door, Jason slipped his index finger inside a scan tube by the handle and the locking mechanism gently clicked open. They went into a rectangular open-plan room, the walls lined on three sides by whiteboards and computer monitors. It had been subtly divided, using movable partitions, into small clusters of tables and chairs, a couple of which were occupied by a handful of staff who were sitting in circles discussing something.

  ‘This is the theory room,�
� Jason said in a quieter voice. ‘Each new project has its own stance, its own position in the room, but also in an open forum that allows anyone with an idea they wish to contribute to do so. One person oversees what we call the subject but other than that it’s a free-for-all.’

  Stratton looked at the various ‘stances’, the boards and screens containing mathematical data and diagrams. It was all Greek to him.

  When he looked back at Jason the MI16 director was watching him, an expression in his eyes like that of a master examining an uncomprehending child. ‘Bit daunting for you, I expect . . . Let’s go to my office,’ he said, gesturing towards a smaller glass-partitioned space at the far end. ‘Take a seat,’ Jason said as they walked into the office. He sat in a comfortable leather chair behind the desk, a large portion of whose surface was a computer screen.

  The warmth was beginning to make Stratton feel uncomfortable and he removed his leather jacket before sitting down.

  ‘We run a pretty loose ship here,’ Jason began. ‘No scheduled meals or work times. It’s up to the individual. We even have nap rooms,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘The emphasis is placed on freedom . . . freedom to think, to express. The primary function is creation. It’s bad enough having to live like rabbits in a warren. So we do our best to compensate with pitiful luxuries and distractions.’

  One such distraction caught Jason’s eye as he looked past Stratton.

  Rowena was heading towards the office, no longer in the one-piece laboratory suit but in a short skirt that revealed a pair of shapely legs. Her gaze lingered on Jason perhaps a moment too long as she entered the room but her expression was still void of emotion.

  ‘Rowena. Have you met John Stratton?’ Jason asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without looking at the guest and taking a seat in the other side of the room. She appeared aloof beyond rudeness as she pulled out a cigarette packet, removed a slender cigarette and lit it.

  Jason smiled thinly as she blew a long line of smoke towards him. ‘That describes Rowena to a T. Rude and rebellious. This is a no-smoking establishment. But she’s invaluable, knows it, and so she gets away with everything.’

  The young woman ignored everyone. Binning stared at her in private thought. Rowena somehow involved everyone and ignored them at the same time. She seemed to live under a cloud, contemptuous of everything.

  ‘I asked Rowena to pop in because she’s, well, a part of why you’re here,’ Jason said, looking at Stratton. ‘I can’t help feeling there’s bad feeling between you and us. I’d like to move beyond it. I think there’s been an overreaction to the hull-recording incident. It’s quite acceptable that under such hostile circumstances an operative could forget to arm the self-destruct option—’

  ‘I didn’t forget to arm it,’ Stratton said, surprised by his own sudden anger. It was a warning that his previous acceptance of the situation was a smokescreen that he’d created in self-defence. Deep down he still felt sensitive about the incident, at least where these people were concerned.

  Everyone else in the room felt the sting of Stratton’s glare although they did not appear to be unduly fazed by it.

  Jason took a moment to compose his next words. ‘The likelihood of the device failing to self-destruct after it was armed is very low. But obviously nothing is impossible.’

  ‘Total crap,’ Rowena snapped, looking at Stratton as if he was dirt. ‘I designed the self-destruct system on that device. It’s simple, functional, and the one that I prepared for the operation worked perfectly. And I’m not going to be blamed by this Neanderthal for some fictitious malfunction.’

  Stratton got to his feet, barely able to hold on to his anger. ‘I’m not taking any more of this shit.’

  ‘Oh, grow up,’ Rowena said, taking a pull on her cigarette. ‘If you prima donnas only knew how difficult it is to dumb down designs just so you can use them you wouldn’t be so damned arrogant.’

  The other scientists in the theory room outside the office had stopped talking and were looking towards them.

  ‘Easy,’ Jason said, getting up and walking around the desk as if to get between the pair.

  ‘I can see what’s going on,’ Stratton said. ‘You eggheads screwed up and as far as you’re concerned my coming here acknowledges that it was my mistake. Fine. You win. I came. Now I’ll go. That recorder didn’t work. You know it. I know it. It’ll be our little secret.’

  ‘You bloody coward,’ Rowena retorted, standing now. ‘You may have the guts to do the job but not to admit when you screw it up.’

  ‘Please! Can we stop this?’ Jason had raised his voice to match the volume of theirs and now he moved to the doorway to prevent Stratton from leaving. ‘Let’s all calm down.’ He faced Stratton. ‘There’s no underhandedness going on here. I understand your feelings, both of you,’ he added, glancing round at Rowena. ‘I think I know how difficult it was for you to come here. You’re an operative and, well, I expect that in your eyes we’re nothing more than a bunch of white coats . . . and in the eyes of some of the people here you’re no more than a mindless thug. I’m being perfectly frank because I want to be fully understood. I believe we’re wrong about each other. I would like to see closer cooperation between us than there has been in the past. For our part we need to know more about how you think, react, analyse. That goes for all operatives and for you in particular, Stratton. You have an impressive record when it comes to thinking on your feet, reacting to life-threatening situations, solving problems under pressure. Yet forgive me if I sound insulting, but . . . well, you don’t have a great education. Your IQ is average . . . don’t get me wrong, please: I’m trying not to sound condescending. What I’m saying is, you have something that isn’t easily quantifiable when it comes to IQ or physical tests. I want to know what that something is.’

  Rowena rolled her eyes and sat back down. ‘No one ever heard of dumb luck?’ she muttered.

  Stratton realised he was grinding his teeth. Yet the woman had disengaged herself from everyone else, seemingly to concentrate on her cigarette.

  A beeper sounded at Jason’s hip. He unclipped the device and checked its screen. ‘I would appreciate it if everyone just took a deep breath and settled down,’ he said, moving back behind the desk.

  Stratton picked up his coat and headed out of the office.

  Jason frowned as he picked up a headset - a greater priority - placed it against his ear and touched the desk screen to activate a connection. ‘This is Jason . . . I understand . . . Yes, of course. That’s what we’re here for.’

  He put down the headset as Stratton reached the door. ‘Stratton. I think you’ll want to hear this. That was a call from London.’

  Stratton stopped at the word ‘London’. That probably meant the call had nothing to do with this rubbish. He looked at the scientist.

  ‘Somebody hijacked an oil platform in the North Sea early this morning. They’re holding some hundred and sixty-plus workers to ransom. An SBS team is on its way here to pick up the G43.’

  ‘When will they be here?’ Binning asked.

  ‘They’re in the air. Any time.’

  ‘Is that all they need?’ Now Binning was completely methodical - his job was to liaise with outside units who needed equipment.

  ‘That’s all they’ve asked for. But stand by for updates.’

  Stratton released the door handle. He wasn’t sure how the news directly affected him but felt he should stick around and see what developed . . . as long as that bloody bitch Rowena kept away from him.

  A gentle yet persistent buzz filled the air and a small light flashed above one of the flatscreens on the office wall. Jason used a remote to turn it on. Several split-screens displayed various parts of the compound as seen through a collection of closed-circuit television cameras. He selected one of the views, enlarging it to fill the screen. The camera moved skyward where it picked up a helicopter.

  Stratton looked at the screen. It was an SBS Chinook, unmistakable, like a thick, short sau
sage with rotors on either end. A letter and a pair of numbers flashed on the screen and moved to a corner where they continued to blink.

  A voice crackled over speakers. ‘India one-six, this is Whisky four-zero, clearance code Golf two-zero.’

  The code the pilot had given matched the one on the screen.

  ‘India one-six affirmative. You’re clear to land,’ Jason said.

  ‘Roger that. Thirty seconds.’

  Stratton suspected that Chaz and the standby team were on board, probably acting as the advanced recce team preparing surveillance for an assault team, whenever the lads could get back from Afghanistan. He wondered why he had not received a call from SBS HQ. The visit to MI16 was not a priority of any kind. They’d certainly known about this hijacking before he had arrived. Maybe Mike had been serious and they were resting him.

  He put the thoughts aside as the powerful helicopter closed in on the landing pad.

  Rowena glanced at the screen as if she was only half interested.

  ‘They’ll no doubt be in a hurry,’ Jason said. ‘Better get down to the airlock and meet them as they clear.’

  ‘You coming, Rowena?’ Binning asked as he started out of the door.

  ‘If there’s anything you can’t handle give me a shout.’ She seemed pissed off with him too.

  Binning chose not to make the half-expected answer and put her from his mind as he went out.

  The helicopter settled onto the pad and the cabin door opened. Men in black one-piece fireproof suits climbed out. Stratton recognised Chaz.

  The heavy angled sheets of steel that Stratton had seen began to slide open. A red light to the side flashed and a sign lit up stating ‘ENTER THIS WAY’. The six men filed through the opening while the pilots and the crewman remained on board the Chinook. As the last man passed through the heavy steel door it began to close.