by Andy McNab
As the meeting broke up she remained seated. She caught Woolf’s eye and, with a tiny movement of her forefinger, gestured for him to sit back down.
10
Woolf sat motionless, mentally checking his body language, trying to look composed, not defensive. Inside he was in turmoil.
‘Either you know something and aren’t saying or you genuinely haven’t a clue.’
Garvey’s eyes bored into his. She could practically see the cogs in his brain frantically spinning. Clearly, he hadn’t bargained for this. The DG had probably only sent him along because he happened to be standing outside his office trying to get his attention. Just be there – say nothing to the room. Those would have been Mandler’s instructions.
‘Come on, man. We’re both on the same side here. Spit it out.’
Halford had been easy: his hubris and defensiveness made him vulnerable. But Woolf looked like a more complex creature, harder to read: junior, dishevelled, very bright, yet seemingly unambitious. She suspected that was just a cover. She had noted the care he had taken not to rile Halford, while subtly distancing himself from the commissioner’s harebrained theories about gangsters. He was an operator, all right.
Woolf passed a hand over his chin; he had forgotten to shave. ‘It’s early days, and a lot of it is conjecture.’
‘Well, it can’t be any worse than Halford’s effort. Keep going.’
He checked his tie again. ‘I’m going out on a limb here.’
‘Do I hear the sound of distant chainsaws?’
‘Even the Service is divided.’
Ah, she thought. Does this mean he’s actually got something worth hearing?
He looked at her properly for the first time since they had been alone. ‘The Muslim extremist cells – those we know of – they’re still our main focus, but – well, they don’t want this.’
She reached over to a jug and poured herself some water. She didn’t offer him any. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Anything that brings the police out in big numbers, any step-up in surveillance, makes their lives harder.’
‘What about Clements’s point – the returnees from Syria? One of them could have the capability.’
‘But it still comes back to motive. Why would they?’ He clamped his hands together in front of him. ‘Since Seven/Seven, MI5 has been all about the Islamist threat. We’ve put so much effort into recruiting from the Muslim community, turning informers, the surveillance of would-be jihadis, there’s not been much left over for anything else. We’ve become obsessed with them. There’s a few of us who think we need to look elsewhere.’
Garvey guessed what was coming and launched a preemptive strike. ‘If this is about resources, forget it. We’re all running on empty, so don’t even think of asking.’
Woolf shook his head. ‘Elsewhere – by which I mean other disgruntled groups who are pissed off with the status quo and have a reason to make trouble and embarrass the government.’
‘Such as who? You’re not making sense.’
He reddened, but had no option other than to continue. ‘Your party’s in danger of losing the next election, but the opposition aren’t exactly electable, given their leadership. There’s a gap in the market, if you will.’
‘The far right’s become a disorganized joke.’
‘Exactly. But I’m not talking about a political party, more a groundswell of collective discontent. Which other groups out on the streets have reason to be disgruntled?’
She couldn’t see where this was going, but he didn’t seem to need prompting. She sat back and let him talk.
‘Former members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. In the last three years we’ve put another four thousand of them out of a job, one that most of them loved, that they thought was theirs for life. They view the withdrawal from Afghanistan very much as a retreat – they think we’ve thrown in the towel.’
‘Well, the government is committed to spending cuts. There’s no going back on that.’
‘They don’t see it that way. They feel their lives are being cut from under them. And they see we’re not winning the war on terror. And one thing they’ve all got in common – they’re trained to fight. Plus you’ve taken out a layer of police, who also didn’t expect to be looking for work. It’s a smaller number, but one that could be significant.’
She hadn’t heard this one before, though now he mentioned it, her inbox was full of complaints from ex-service constituents with one grievance or another.
Woolf took a breath. ‘The shooting: Halford’s in a hole because he knows it was a professional hit. And what he hasn’t told you is that they’ve confirmed the bullets were from a police firearm. But not one that was being carried by any of his team that night.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Someone with access to specialist police kit. Are you ready to point the finger at anyone?’
‘We think we may have found the shooter.’
‘Do the police know?’
‘Not yet, and we want to keep it that way for now. We don’t think he’s acting alone, so if we bring him in it’ll tip off the group who’s running him.’
‘So if it’s not resources you’re after, what is it?’
Woolf sat back, bit his bottom lip. ‘Time.’
‘It’s virtual civil war out there. And you want time?’
‘To bring in a recruit, someone credible we can put in with them. He’s got to be completely kosher, an ex-serviceman who’s been fucked over.’
‘Ask the MoD. They probably know hundreds.’
He leaned closer and knitted his fingers together. ‘We don’t want them in on this.’
She started to laugh. ‘You really are going out on a limb if you think the MoD are involved.’
He showed no sign of sharing her mirth, which alarmed her.
‘Is your DG across this?’
Once more, she imagined Mandler’s instructions to him. Here’s some rope: try not to hang us with it, there’s a good chap. She could see he was struggling to find the right words. ‘We’ve been looking for the right man.’
‘And have you found him yet?’
‘I think we have.’
11
The hold of the Starlifter was almost empty, a giant aluminium airborne metal cave. Before it had finished the climb out of Afghanistan, Tom, too wired to sit or sleep, unstrapped himself and paced the length of the plane’s vast hold while the events of the last twenty-four hours replayed themselves over and over again. Oblivious of the thunder from the engines and the temperature at this altitude, he was numb.
But one thing he couldn’t shut out, couldn’t stop replaying, was Dave’s death. Wherever he looked, his face gazed back at him, the inert glassy stare in the semi-darkness where he had found him, his features frozen for ever in the moment he must have known his charmed life was about to come to an end. Had those eyes seen his assailant? The devastating slash to his throat suggested he had been killed from behind. The fact that Qazi had appeared not to be blood-spattered supported that, with just the tell-tale stain on the thigh of his fatigues where he’d wiped his bloodied hand.
So here he was on his way home. What would that mean at the other end? An inquiry, a court-martial, a quiet word? Tom realized he didn’t care. Something had snapped. The unimaginable had happened. The Army, which he had loved, which had been his second family, had turned on him.
Even the prospect of being reunited with Delphine didn’t lift his mood. He was in limbo, his world pulled from under him. Yet he’d been in dark places before. Collecting body parts of men he’d been playing poker with the previous night. Coming upon an entire house of dead – a village wedding feast, the guests lying sprawled, mixed up with the dead livestock. He needed to reach into wherever he kept the resources to deal with bad stuff – if he still had any. In the meantime, however, he needed a distraction.
On a stretcher surrounded by aeromedics was Rifleman Cliff Blakey. Tom thought he might prefer to be left alone, but Blakey tipped his
head, indicating for him to come nearer. The whites of his eyes were completely red from conjunctival haemorrhages, which gave him a vampiric appearance, but other than that he looked all right.
‘Never die a virgin.’
Tom surveyed the apparently intact frame beneath the sheet. ‘Why?’
‘Cos in Heaven they’ll make you fuck a suicide bomber.’
Blakey managed a wheezy giggle at his own joke. Tom laughed. Blakey had an audience.
‘What you call a gay suicide bomber? A poof.’ More laughing that descended into a cough.
One of the aeromedics gave him a weary look.
‘Hundreds more where that came from. Was gonna be a stand-up comic – but now … Geddit?’
Tom grinned. ‘Still got your right hand, then. That’ll be a relief.’
Blakey liked that. But as the medics finished changing his drip they rolled him onto his side, and Tom saw that his body – though visually unmarked – was, from the chest down, a lifeless sack. ‘Fuckers didn’t finish the job did they, eh? Just shattered me spine. Fuckin’ useless twats.’
The blast of the IED had pulverized several vertebrae and severed his spinal cord.
Blakey winced, a jolt of pain in the part where he could still feel.
‘Sorry, Cliff, be done in a jiffy.’
Blakey was doing his level best to put a positive steer on his situation but Tom wondered how long he would keep it up. He lifted his head to free his hand and pointed at a laptop balanced on top of his bergen. Tom picked it up, opened it and put it on Blakey’s chest as he indicated. Then he tilted the screen towards Tom and stroked the track pad. The image sprang to life: a flaming car being pushed down a half-destroyed street towards retreating mounted police.
Blakey’s expression changed and his eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s my fucking estate. How’m I gonna protect my mum from that? And they’re letting even more in! It’s totally fucked up.’
Tom tried to think of some consoling words, discarding them as they came to him. It was one thing to be facing a life in a wheelchair, another when the home you were coming back to had become a war zone. ‘It can’t go on like this. It’ll run out of steam.’
That was the line he had taken with Delphine, to no avail. With Blakey it also fell wide of the mark. He snorted, his face reddening with rage. ‘And where’s the cops? I’m like this from fighting these bastards – and now they’re fucking taking over at home. They don’t deal with them, someone else is gonna have to.’
12
Tom’s plan, as soon as he touched down at Brize, was to hire a car and get to Hereford to see Delphine. But she wasn’t picking up. Perhaps she didn’t want to talk on the phone. Soon she’d see him face to face; that would start to mend things. The Lines could wait. For the first time in his military life he had no desire to touch base. It shocked him. He also wanted to go and see Dave’s girlfriend. He would have to work out what to say to her but he owed her a visit at the very least.
But he was knackered after the flight and grimy with the Afghan dust. He’d go home first, clean up. As he walked away from the Starlifter into the gloom of the English evening he wasn’t expecting any kind of reception. Least of all to see his CO.
Ashton was leaning on the bonnet of a Range Rover, arms folded. Despite the too-young hoodie and trackies, he exuded authority, having risen quickly from squadron commander to the Regiment’s CO. They were a tribe and he was the leader, all knowing, all seeing, whose word was law. But for all Tom’s love of the Regiment, there had always been a flicker of tension between the two men. As if Ashton threatened him in a way none of the others did, or something about Tom’s background rubbed him up the wrong way. There had been an unspoken understanding between them that they would ignore it and get on with the job.
But now was different. Ashton put out his hand. Tom took it, gave it one curt shake. ‘Thought we should check in before you head home.’
‘I’ve given a full account in Bastion. If you want me to go over it all again—’
Ashton cut him off. ‘I’ve read it. A few things have come up since.’
Tom held out a slim hope that the fragment of Qazi’s fatigues had tested positive for Dave’s blood.
‘The ANA’s conducting their own investigation. Seems they’re still suspicious about the nature of Dave’s death.’
‘I bet they are.’
‘But not in the way you’d expect. They’re focused on the fact that you were the last one to see him alive.’
‘So?’
‘They found your prints on his face and neck, and one of your hairs on his MTP.’
Tom felt his chest tighten as Ashton’s words sank in. ‘Of course they did. I’m the one who found him.’
There was an uncomfortable pause.
‘What – so I’m a suspect?’
‘They want to know if you’d argued, had some kind of disagreement over something.’
‘Like he beat me at cards so I cut his throat. What planet are they on?’
Ashton held up a hand. ‘It doesn’t help that we shipped you home in double-quick time before they had a chance to talk to you.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ Tom smashed a fist on the bonnet of the Range Rover.
‘Steady. Just suck it up. There’s also the fact that you pointed the finger at one of theirs. Right now, this is the last thing the Regiment needs.’
‘So the ANA are claiming I ran amok, killed one of our own for no reason, helped defend the base against an attack and then tried to have a go at Qazi – again for no reason.’
Ashton didn’t reply. His look said it all.
‘This is so fucked up.’
‘The MoD agree with you on that one for sure.’
‘I should fucking hope they do.’
‘Not in the way you think. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. The DSF is in the midst of trying to win the argument for us to be part of the lot that stays behind to help the Afghans try to keep a lid on things, stave off the cuts that are most likely coming our way. Trouble is, the Yanks have the same agenda. They see all this kicking off and are whispering in Kabul’s ear, saying they should give the job exclusively to them.’ Ashton shrugged.
‘You’re going to be RTU’d. You go back to the Rifles as a WO2.’
Tom felt as if the ground under his boots had just turned to mush. ‘You taking the piss?’
Ashton shook his head. ‘It’s just come down from Whitehall. If I had my way it’d all be different – but you know how it is. You have a month’s leave – it’ll give you time to get the idea bedded in.’
‘Or just bin it altogether.’ Tom thought he detected a flicker of satisfaction in Ashton’s face as if a dark part of him was enjoying this. He couldn’t help but admire the CO’s toughness, his focus, how he never flinched or cracked, and the care with which he tended the camaraderie that held them all together, but now they were alone, the void between them was all too plain.
Ashton eased himself off the Range Rover. ‘Give you a lift?’
‘I’ll make my own way.’
‘Suit yourself. Oh, one more thing. Steer clear of Dave’s girl. She’s understandably … very upset.’
13
Watching this exchange from his car-pool Mondeo, parked on the other side of the apron, James Woolf bit into his cheeseburger without lowering his binoculars and smiled. Even though a fine rain blurred his view, he could tell by the body language how badly the encounter was going. As the two men parted, Ashton in his Range Rover back to the Lines, Buckingham towards the Europcar booth in the terminal, Woolf dropped the remains of the burger into the bag in his lap, screwed it up, threw it into the passenger footwell and speed-dialled Stephen Mandler.
‘Woolf, what a surprise.’
There was a familiar weariness in the boss’s voice that he had learned to ignore.
‘I just wondered if you’d had a chance to read my last briefing.’
There was a muffled exchange while Mandler shooed someone o
ut of his office. ‘I’ve got it here. Give me a minute.’
A soft clicking came down the phone: Mandler’s tongue tapping the roof of his mouth, which he often did when scanning Woolf’s latest missives. There followed a long sigh. ‘You really are rather a cunt, aren’t you, James?’
Woolf said nothing.
‘If I were Buckingham, I think I’d want to punch you very hard in the face. The man’s whole life is the SAS. His part in Eurostar was exemplary. Wouldn’t it have been more decent to just take him aside and make him an offer?’
Mandler had taken Woolf to task before for his over-elaborate schemes, but Woolf had already rehearsed his answer. ‘That would have meant involving his CO – too much of a risk. There can’t be any suspicion. This way the whole world thinks it’s all for real, including Buckingham.’
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. Woolf knew what was going on. Mandler was more than just his boss: he was his mentor and his protector, but there were limits to how far the old man would go to protect his protégé. Everyone who managed Woolf thought him a handful. Expelled from more than one school, sent down from Oxford and sacked from the BBC, he intimidated some with his intellect, while for others it was his brutal intolerance of inferiors that had dogged his career. Only MI5, his last-chance saloon, had managed to accommodate him, and then only with Mandler’s patronage. And there, as in every job before, his seemingly wilful determination to take the opposite view, which the DG could only describe as pathological, got right up the nose of the staff. That, and his lack of grace, had on more than one occasion brought aggrieved colleagues to Mandler’s door. ‘You’re playing with fire, Woolf, you know that.’
Woolf didn’t respond.
‘Let me spell it out. You are accusing British ex-servicemen of terrorism – on British soil – and you’re proposing to place an SAS sergeant with an exemplary record among them to help you join up the dots.’
Getting it wrong wouldn’t just be Woolf’s undoing: it would be Mandler’s head as well.