by Andy McNab
Lieutenant Colonel Lynn's office was off to one side of the larger area. When the clerk knocked on the door, there was a crisp and immediate call of "Come in!" The boy turned the handle and ushered me past him.
Lynn was standing behind his desk. In his early forties, he was of average build, height, and looks but had that aura about him that singled him out as a high achiever. The only thing he didn't have, I was always pleased to note, was plenty of hair. I'd known him on and off for about ten years; for the last two years his job had been liaison between the Ministry of Defense and SIS.
It was only as I walked farther into the room that I realized he wasn't alone. Sitting to one side of the desk, obscured until now by the half-open door, was Simmonds. I hadn't seen him since Gibraltar. What a professional he'd turned out to be, sorting out the inquest and basically making sure that Euan and I didn't exist. I felt a mixture of surprise and relief to see him here. He'd had nothing to do with the Kurd job. We might be getting the coffee after all.
Simmonds stood up. Six feet tall, late forties, rather distinguished-looking, a very polite man, I thought, as he ex tended his hand. He was dressed in corduroy trousers the color of Gulden's mustard, and a shirt that looked as if he'd slept in it.
"Delighted to see you again. Nick."
We shook hands and Lynn said, "Would you like some coffee?"
Things were looking up.
"Thanks milk, no sugar."
We all sat down. I took a wooden chair that was on the other side of the desk and had a quick look around the office while Lynn pressed the intercom on his desk and passed the order on to the clerk. His office was at the rear of the building and overlooked the Thames. It was a very plain, very functional, very impersonal room save for a framed photograph on the desk of a group I presumed were his wife and two children. There were two Easter eggs and wrapping paper on the windowsill. Mounted on a wall bracket in one corner was a television; the screen was scrolling through world news headlines. Under the TV was the obligatory officers' squash racquet and his jacket on a coatrack.
Without further formalities Lynn leaned over and said, "We've got a fastball for you."
I looked at Simmonds.
Lynn continued, "Nick, you're in deep shit over the last job, and that's just tough. But you can rectify that by going on this one. I'm not saying it'll help, but at least you're still working. Take it or leave it."
I said, "I'll do it."
He'd known what I was going to say. He was already reaching for a small stack of files containing photographs and bits of paper. As a margin note on one of the sheets I could see a scribble in green ink. It could have been written only by the head of the Firm. Simmonds still hadn't said a word.
Lynn handed me a photograph.
"Who are they?"
"Michael Kerr and Morgan McGear. They're on their way to Shannon as we speak, then flying to Heathrow for a flight to Washington. They've booked a return flight with Virgin, and they're running on forged Southern Irish passports. I want you to take them from Shannon to Heathrow and then on to Washington. See what they're up to and who they're meeting there."
I'd followed players out of the Irish Republic before and could anticipate a problem. I said, "What happens if they don't follow the plan? If they're on forged passports, they might go through the motions just to get through the security check then use their other passports to board another flight and fuck off to Amsterdam. It wouldn't be the first time."
Simmonds smiled.
"I understand your concern, and it is noted. But they will go."
Lynn passed me a sheet of paper.
"These are the flight de tails. They booked yesterday in Belfast."
There was a knock on the door. Three coffees arrived, one in a mug showing the Tasmanian Devil, one with a vintage car on it, and a plain white one. I got the impression Lynn and Simmonds were on their second round.
Simmonds picked up the plain one, Lynn picked up the car, and I was left with the Tasmanian Devil running up a hill.
"Who's taking them from Belfast to Shannon?"
Simmonds said, "Actually, it's Euan. He has them at the moment. He'll hand over to you at Shannon."
I smiled to myself at the mention of Euan's name. I was now out of the system and basically just used as a K on deniable operations. The only reason I did it was to finance the other things I wanted to do. What they were I didn't know yet;
I was a thirty-seven-year-old man with a lot on his mind, but not too much in it. Euan, however, still felt very much part of the system. He still had that sense of moral responsibility to fight the good fight whatever that meant and he'd be there until the day he was kicked out.
Simmonds handed me the folder.
"Check that off," he said.
"There are thirteen pages. I want you to sign for it now and hand it over to the air crew when you've finished. Good luck," he added, not meaning it at all.
"Am I going now?" I said.
"I don't have my passport with me -fastball isn't the word."
Lynn said, "Your passport's in there. Have you got your other docs?"
I looked at him as if I'd been insulted.
Passport, driver's license, credit cards are the basic requirements for giving depth to a cover story. From there the K builds up his own cover by using the credit cards to buy things, or maybe make direct payments for magazine subscriptions or club memberships. I had my cards with me as al ways, but not my passport. The one Simmonds handed me had probably been specially produced that morning, correct even down to visas and the right degree of aging.
I didn't have time to finish my coffee. The clerk reappeared and took me downstairs. I signed for the documents in the outer office before I left; thirteen pieces of paper with the in formation on them, and I had to sign each sheet. Then I had to sign for the folder it was in. Fucking bureaucracy.
A car was waiting for me outside. I jumped in the front;
when I was a kid I'd look at people being chauffeured and think. Who the fuck do they think they are? I talked shit with the driver, probably bored him silly; he didn't really want to talk, but it made me feel better.
A civilian Squirrel was waiting on the pad at Battersea heliport, rotors slowly turning. I had one last job to do before boarding; from a pay phone I called up the family who covered for me, people who'd vouch for me if I was ever up against it. They'd never take any action on my behalf, but if I got lifted I could say to the police, "That's where I live-phone them, ask them."
A male voice answered the phone.
"James, it's Nick. I've just been given a chance to go to the States and visit friends. I might be a week or two. If it's more, I'll call" James understood.
"The Wilmots next door had a break-in two days ago and we're going to see Bob in Dorset over the Easter weekend."
I needed to know these things because I would if I lived there all the time. They even sent the local paper to my accommodation address each week.
"Cheers, mate. When you see that son of yours next weekend, tell him he still owes me a night out."
"I will... Have a nice holiday."
As we skimmed over the Irish Sea I opened the briefing pack and thumbed through the material. I needn't have bothered.
All they knew for certain was that two boys had booked tickets to Washington, D.C." and they wanted to find out why.
They wanted to know who they were meeting and what was happening once they met. I knew from experience that the chances of failure were great. Even if they kept to the script and landed in D.C." how was I going to follow them around?
There were two of them and one of me; as a basic anti surveillance drill they were sure to split up at some point. But hey, the Firm had me by the balls.
Judging from one of the documents, it seemed that we'd reached the time of the year when all good PIRA fund raisers headed for the dinner circuit in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C.--even down as far as Tucson, Arizona, to catch Irish American sympathizers who'd reti
red to the sun. It seemed that the seizure often tons of explosives and weapons during the search of a warehouse in north London last September had produced a financial crisis. PIRA wasn't exactly asking its bank for an overdraft yet, but the increase in legitimate fund-raising in Northern Ireland was an indication that they were sweating. There were also other, less public, ways of raising cash. I was sure my new friends were part of that.
Apart from that, I was still none the wiser about the job. I had no information on the players' cover stories, or where they might be going, inside or outside D.C. All I knew was who they were and what they looked like. I read that Michael Kerr had been a member of the South Armagh ASU (Active Service Unit). He'd taken part in four mortar attacks on Special Forces bases and in dozens of shootings against the security forces and Protestants. He'd even gotten wounded once but escaped into the South. A tough nut.
The same could be said for Morgan McGear. After a career as a shooter in the border area of South Armagh, the thirty-one-year-old subcontractor had been promoted to PIRA's security team, where his job was to find and question informers.
His favored method of interrogation was a Black & Decker power drill. The helicopter was operated by a civilian front company, so the arrival procedure at Shannon, the Irish Republic's premier airport, was no different than if I'd been a horse breeder coming to check the assets at his stud farm in Tipperary, or a businessman flying in from London to fill his briefcase with European Union subsidies. I walked across the tarmac into the arrivals terminal, went through Customs, and followed the exit signs, heading for the taxi stand. At the last minute I doubled back into departures.
At the Aer Lingus ticket desk I picked up my ticket for Heathrow, which had been booked in the name of Nick Stamford. When choosing a cover name it's always best to keep your own first name--that way you react naturally to it. It also helps if your last name begins with the real initial because the signature flows better. I'd picked Stamford after the battle of Stamford Bridge. I loved medieval history.
I headed straight to the shop to buy myself a bag. Everybody has hand luggage; I'd stick out like the balls on a bulldog if I boarded the aircraft with nothing but a can of Coke. I never traveled with luggage that had to be checked in because then you're in the hands of whoever it is who decides to take bags marked Tokyo and send them to Buenos Aires instead. Even if your baggage does arrive safely, if it reaches the carousel five minutes after the target's, you're fucked.
I bought some toothpaste and other odds and ends, all the time keeping an eye out for Euan. I knew that he'd be glued to Kerr and McGear, unless they'd already gone through the security gates.
The departures lounge seemed full of Irish families who were going to find the Easter sun, and newly retired Americans who'd come to find their roots, wandering around with their brand-new Guinness sweatshirts, umbrellas, and baseball caps, and leprechauns in tins and little pots of grow-your-own shamrock.
It was busy, and the bars were doing good business. I spotted Euan at the far end of the terminal, sitting at a table in a coffee shop, having a large frothy coffee and reading a paper. I'd always found "Euan" a strange name for him. It always made me think of a guy with a kilt on running up and down a hill somewhere, tossing a caber. In fact, he was born in Oxford, and his parents came from Surrey.
They must have watched some Scottish movie and liked the name.
To the left was a bar. Judging by where Euan was sitting I guessed that was where the players were. I didn't bother looking; I knew Euan would point them out. There was no rush.
As I came out of the pharmacy, I looked toward the coffee shop and got eye-to-eye. I started walking toward him, big grin all over my face as if I'd just spotted a long-lost pal, but didn't say anything yet. If somebody was watching him, knowing he was on his own, it wouldn't look natural for me just to come up and sit next to him and start talking. It had to look like a chance meeting, yet not such a noisy one that people noticed it. They wouldn't think. Oh, look, there's two spies meeting, but it registers. It might not mean anything at the time, but it could cost you later.
Euan started to stand and returned my smile.
"Hello, dickhead, what are you doing here?" He gestured for me to join him.
We sat down, and since Euan was sponsoring the RV (rendezvous), he came up with the cover story.
"I've just come to see you from Belfast before you fly back to London. Old friends from schooldays." It helps to know you both have the same story.
"Where are they?" I said, as if asking after the family.
"My half left and you've got the bar. Go right of the TV They're sitting--one's got a jean jacket on, one a black three-quarter-length suede coat. Ken is on the right-hand side. He's now called Michael Lindsay. McGear is Morgan Ashdown."
"Have they checked in?"
"Yes. Hand luggage only."
"For two weeks in Washington?"
"They've got suit bags."
"And they haven't gone to any other check-in?"
"No, it looks like they're going to Heathrow."
I walked over to the counter and bought two coffees.
They were the only Irishmen at the bar, because everybody else was wearing a Guinness polo shirt and drinking pints of the black stuff. These two had Budweisers by the neck and were watching soccer. Both had cigarettes and were smoking like ten men; if I'd been watching them in a bar in Derry, I'd have taken it as nervousness, but Aer Lingus has a no-smoking policy on its flights; it looked as if these boys were getting their big hit before boarding.
Both were looking very much the tourist, clean-shaven, clean hair, not overdressed as businessmen, not underdressed as slobs. Basically they were so nondescript you wouldn't give them a second glance, which indicated that they were quite switched on--and that was a problem for me. If they'd been looking like a bag of shit or at all nervous, I'd have known I was up against second or third-string players--easy job. But these boys were Major League, a long way from hanging around the docks on kneecapping duty.
There were kids everywhere, chasing and shouting, mothers screaming after two-year-olds who'd found their feet and were skimming across the terminal. For us, the more noise and activity the better. I sat down with the drinks. I wanted to get as much information as I could from Euan before they went through security.
On cue, he said, "I picked McGear up from Deny. He went to the Sinn Fein office on Cable Street and presumably got briefed. Then to Belfast. The spooks tried to use the listening device but didn't have any luck. Nothing else to report, really.
They spent the night getting drunk, then came down here.
Been here about two hours. They booked the flight by credit card, using their cover names. Their cover's good. They've even got their Virgin luggage tags on; they don't want anything to go wrong."
"Where are they staying?"
"I don't know. It's all very last-minute and Easter's a busy time. There're about ten Virgin-affiliated hotels in D.C.; it's probably one of them--we haven't had time to check."
I didn't write anything down. If you write stuff down, you can lose it. I'd have to remember it.
"Is that all?" I asked.
"That's your lot. I don't know how they're going to transfer from the airport, but it looks like they're off to D.C." big boy."
Subject closed, as far as Euan was concerned. It was now time to talk shit.
"You still see a lot ofKev?"
I took a sip of coffee and nodded.
"Yeah, he's in Washington now, doing all right. The kids and Marsha are fine. I saw them about four months ago. He's been promoted, and they've just bought the biggest house in suburbia. It's what you'd call executive housing." Euan grinned, looking like Santa Claus with white froth on his top lip. His own place was a stone-walled sheep farmer's cottage in the middle of nowhere in the Black Mountains of Wales. His nearest neighbor was two miles away on the other side of the valley.
I said, "Marsha loves it in D.C.--no one trying to shoot holes
in the car."
Marsha, an American, was Kev's second wife. After leaving the Regiment he'd moved to the States with her and had joined the Drug Enforcement Administration. They had two young kids, Kelly and Aida.
"Is Slack Pat still over there?"
"I think so, but you know what he's like--one minute he's going to learn how to build houses, and the next minute he's going to take up tree hugging and crocheting. Fuck knows what he's doing now."
Pat had had a job for two years looking after the family of an Arab diplomat in D.C. It worked out really well--he even got an apartment thrown in--but eventually the children he was minding grew too old to be looked after. They went back to Saudi, so he blew off his job and started bumming around.
The fact was, he'd made so much money during those two years he wasn't in a hurry.
We carried on chatting and joking, but all the time Euan's eyes flickered toward the targets.
The players ordered another drink, so it looked as if we were going to be sitting here for a while. We carried on spinning the social shit.
"How's year ten of the house building program?" I grinned.
"I'm still having problems with the boiler."
He'd decided that he was going to put the central heating in himself, but it was a total screw up. He'd ended up spending twice as much money as he would have, had he paid someone to do it.
"Apart from that, it's all squared away. You should come down some time. I can't wait to finish this fucking tour; then I've got about two more years and that's it."
"What are you going to do?"
"As long as it's not what you're doing, I don't care. I thought I'd become a garbageman. I don't give a fuck, really." I laughed.
"You do! You'll be itching to stay in; you're a party man. You'll stay in forever. You moan about it all the time, but actually you love it."
Euan checked the players, then looked back at me. I knew exactly what he was thinking.
I said, "You're right. Don't do this job; it's shit."