Home Front: A James Marshal Thriller Omnibus

by Thomas Waugh

  “Morning Henry.”

  Violet duly greeted Simon effusively. The boy bent down and stroked the affectionate dog. She rolled over and let him tickle her tummy. Troughton looked down his nose at the mutt and sneered a little. Porter wasn’t quite sure if he disliked dogs in general, on just mongrels. Troughton no doubt preferred creatures with a pedigree.

  “So, what do you think about the school’s latest proposed policy, of offering more bursaries to pupils? It’s all trendy, tokenistic codswallop from our new deputy head, no? Don’t fix what isn’t broke. We should be conscious of retaining our traditions and base,” Troughton exclaimed, as if campaigning on the stump. He was keen to secure Porter’s support to block the policy.

  “A change can be as good as a rest,” the influential governor replied, shrugging, knowing that it would vex Troughton to adopt a blasé attitude towards the issue.

  “But may I ask how you are intending to vote?”

  Porter sighed, internally. He wanted to be on his way back home. Victoria would have a bacon sandwich waiting for him. She would butter him up, as well as the bread, so he would then attend to the onerous task of finding a driver for her niece. He sat on the horns of a dilemma, albeit of the minor kind. Porter didn’t want to say he would vote against the policy (God only knew how shallow the gene pool was at the school). But at the same time, if he stated that he was voting for an increase in bursaries, to allow admissions for students with less affluent parents, Troughton would chew his ear off for the next half hour. When, really, Porter just wanted to be chewing on some thick-cut bacon.

  The pause grew more pronounced. Even Violet looked his way, waiting for his response.

  His phone chimed.

  Saved by the bell.

  Porter pulled the device out of his pocket and raised an eyebrow at the caller ID displayed on the screen.

  James Marshal.

  His initial thought was that it was a misdial. He hadn’t heard from the ex-Para for several years. Porter pulled out a mental file on his former employee.

  James Marshal. From a military family. Served with distinction in Afghanistan with 3 Para. Passed SAS selection, but wounded in Helmand before he could transfer to the Regiment. A cool, or cold, character. A likely depressive, but he hid it well. A misanthrope, but Porter wasn’t about to think less of the man for that. A drinker, but a happy one who remained in control of his emotions. Intelligent and sarcastic. Marshal could get himself into trouble and out of it. Unmarried. Womaniser. After leaving the army he had served as a PMC in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the most part, he had been employed as a personal security operative for UK diplomats and government officials. He had also worked a stint for shipping companies, combating Somali pirates. He returned home and was introduced to Porter through a mutual acquaintance. He employed the ex-soldier as a close personal protection officer. He was good at his job. The clients liked him. A couple of female clients liked him a little too much, but at least Marshal was professional enough to screw the women after his contract had ended with them.

  After a year of working for him, Porter decided to flirt with the idea of offering Marshal more lucrative work. He could make a killing. Marshal flirted back.

  “How much does it pay?”

  “You will never have to order the house wine again. I will send some figures over. Each contract is different though… This work is not for everyone. Should you be too overly keen to do it, I will have my doubts about your suitability. But you have killed before in Helmand. You know what it’s like to pull the trigger. How did it make you feel?”

  “Better I killed them than they killed me or my friends. I didn’t lose any sleep over their deaths. Other people got to live, because they died.”

  “You don’t particularly like people, do you James?”

  “I can’t believe anyone can much like people, after getting to know them. Life is a sexually transmitted disease.”

  “Life may still be sacred, however. You’re a Catholic are you not?”

  “I’m lapsed.”

  Their conversation progressed no further as, shortly after their lunch, Marshal informed his employer that he needed to take an indefinite leave of absence. His grandfather had suffered a stroke and he wanted to take care of him. The last Porter heard was that the grandfather died, and Marshal inherited a chunk of money. Yet perhaps, given his call, Marshal had drunk or gambled away his bequest. Easy come, easy go. Or perhaps the ex-soldier was getting in touch because he had an itch he wanted to scratch. He needed to experience an adrenaline rush again, to help fill the vacuum of civilian life. Lastly, he thought of how James Marshal possessed the same thousand-yard stare as Michael Devlin.

  Normally, Porter would have ignored the call. He was retired. If it was important Marshal would call back. But, in order to extricate himself from his exchange with his trying neighbour, he answered the phone.

  “I’m terribly sorry Henry, but I have to take this. I am sure I will bump into you again soon,” he said warmly, hoping to God that he wouldn’t. “If not, I will see you at the next board meeting… Porter speaking.”

  “Morning Oliver. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “No. It’s fine to talk,” he replied, after sighing with relief on seeing Troughton walk away. He wasn’t the worst Tory he knew, but that wasn’t saying much.

  “I need to ask a favour,” Marshal posited, straightforward yet polite.

  “As long as you will be okay if I say no, ask away.”

  Marshal proceeded to describe, without fanfare or fuss, his altercation with the Albanians the day before. Porter listened. Whether it was with sympathy or disinterest, Marshal couldn’t rightly tell. Occasionally he would interject and ask a point of enquiry.

  “Do they know where you live, or were they able to take your picture?”

  “No.”

  After hearing Marshal’s succinct report, Porter thought him either brave or stupid for challenging the Albanians. Or brave and stupid. He could well have dug a hole for himself. Yet he was prepared to keep on digging, given the favour he was asking. Marshal wanted information on the gang who were looking to move into the neighbourhood. Did Porter’s associates still have access to the NCA and other relevant databases? Marshal had a name to put into the system. He would happily pay the required rate for any services rendered.

  “I will not charge you a fee for any information James, but I would ask a favour from you in return.”

  Not only did Porter not want to receive any money for his labour (as he was retired, and a fee would turn him into a professional “fixer” again), but he would no longer have to suffer the onerous duty of searching for a driver for his wife’s niece.

  Problem solved.

  6.

  God had his hand on the dimmer switch, and he was turning it. Cars began to turn on their bulbous headlights. Pedestrians began to regret wearing their summer wardrobes. The sickly green Thames undulated, its eddies causing the surface to seemingly resemble reptilian scales. Tufts of foam spotted the river, like the white spittle or scum which can accrue in the corner of a mouth.

  Marshal walked over Westminster Bridge, on his way to meet Oliver Porter at the National Liberal Club, just off Whitehall. He had received a text a couple of hours after their phone call. Porter would be able to obtain the information he asked for. He would come into London and give it to him personally, as well as discuss the favour Marshal would grant him in return.

  Buses juddered, as if shivering from the cold. Taxi drivers moaned about Uber. Horns blared, rippling the air. The bridge was thick with Yahoos and Morlocks – and, worse, cyclists, Marshal mused. There were too many wrap-around sunglasses on display. Too many Birkenstocks. Not enough paperback books were poking out of handbags or jacket pockets. Marshal lit another cigarette and worked his way through the forest of selfie-sticks and inane, giggling tourists. Negotiating the obstacle course on SAS selection was easier – and less irritating – he fancied.

  Marshal decided to walk f
rom his home in order to smoke more and collect his thoughts. Perhaps Porter was right. He advised taking a holiday. Disappear. Allow things to blow over. But, be it through pride or not, the soldier had no intention of retreating. He couldn’t let the Albanians win, like the Taliban. It would stick in his craw too much. He hoped that the intelligence Porter was gathering could give him a tactical advantage. He didn’t just want to evade the enemy, like a fox staying ahead of the hounds. He wanted to take the fight to them.

  After finishing his conversation with Marshal earlier in the day, Porter contacted one of his old associates, Mariner. A hacker. There were few systems he couldn’t access, foreign or domestic. MI6 sometimes employed him, as it was better the hacker worked for them rather than their rivals. Mariner was still an enigma to Porter. He suspected he had mild Asperger’s. He still lived with his mother in the basement of her house. All he knew for sure, which was the only thing worth knowing, was that Mariner always delivered. There would be an additional charge for prioritising the job, but the hacker could complete the task by the end of the afternoon. Mariner made good on his word. Porter checked the draft folder on old email account they shared – so there was no actual emailing of material – to find a wealth of intelligence on Vasil Bisha and the organisation he was affiliated with. Porter then sent Marshal a text to confirm their meeting.

  “Would you like the good news or the bad news?” he said to his wife.

  “The bad news.”

  “I’ve got to head into London, for a meeting.”

  “And the good news?”

  “It looks like I may have found a driver for Grace.”

  “That’s great news. Thank you, darling. Occasionally you still remind me of why I stay married to you,” she jested, flashing a smile that still made Porter’s day, even after decades of being wed. “The children are staying with friends for a few days. Will you be coming back home for dinner later, or staying the night in town?”

  “What’s on the menu? Salad or something else?”

  “Roast pork, with chestnut stuffing and goose fat potatoes.”

  “I’ll be home for dinner. Sometimes you remind me why I remain married to you too.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere. You may even get lucky tonight.”

  “In that case, I’ll try to get the earlier train,” Porter replied, smiling – feeling lucky already.

  “I’ve said to Grace that she can stay with us for a few days. I did not want her staying in some hotel, alone.”

  “That’s fine. I may be able to arrange for her prospective driver to stay in the guesthouse, so he will be on hand for her.”

  Porter, having glanced over the material from Mariner, considered that Marshal could now have a target on his back, whether the weapon of choice would be a blade or bullet. If they chose to, the Albanians had the manpower to reconnoitre the neighbour. Once they found out his name or address, Marshal would suffer a severe beating, at best. The Albanians believed in blood for blood. An honour code amongst thieves.

  He further studied the intelligence on the train to London and was further convinced that it was best Marshal vacate his home for a week or so. He also called the National Liberal Club to reserve a table, enjoying having a first class carriage to himself.

  He hailed a cab when he got to Paddington station and reached the club in good time. The journey had taken less than two hours, door to door. But still, London felt distant, like it was another world. Sparkling. Unpleasant. Righteous. Irreligious. Ignoble. Yes, more than anything else, ignoble. He could feel the selfishness and ignorance clogging up the air, choking him like the diesel fumes from the traffic.

  Porter walked up the curving, marble staircase and through the opulent clubrooms, full of burnished mahogany furniture and deep-pile carpets. He told himself that the portraits of Rosebery and Churchill no longer gazed at him with such disapproval, now he was retired.

  The National Liberal Club was established by William Gladstone in 1882. The neo-Gothic building sat close to the river, between Embankment tube and Whitehall. The club was meant to furnish members with “a home for democracy, devoid of class.” Marshal would have been sceptical whether it had done so in the nineteenth century. He was even more doubtful it met the criteria in the twenty-first. Winston Churchill and G. K. Chesterton had been members, but so had, unfortunately, Nick Clegg and George Bernard Shaw. Shockingly, the club did not admit women members until the 1970s. Depressingly, it was the first of the major London clubs to do so.

  Marshal entered the dining room and surveyed the scene. He had been a member of similar gentleman’s clubs over the years – and felt half at home. Although he felt more at home now in a local pub. The white linen table cloths gleamed, matching the mainly white faces occupying the chamber. Some of the tables were empty, and some full. Glasses were chinked together in various toasts. Cutlery clinked against plates. A burst of laughter exploded from a party of half a dozen fifty-somethings in the corner, who were rounding off their lunch with some ruby port. The smell of wine and roasted meat livened up his nostrils. Marshal recalled a dinner his father had arranged at the club, many years ago. The room had been a fug of tobacco smoke back then (from cigarettes, cigars and even one pipe), before people became miserable and a new puritanism set in. Ostensibly the evening was just a friendly, informal get together. But shortly before the young officer took his seat around the long table his father mentioned how he had organised the meal in order for his son to network and further his career. “Make it a successful night.” It was, in so far as a lissom Polish waitress, with a love of Chopin and halter tops, gave him her number by the close of the dinner. Marshal was unsure as to whether his career had progressed or not.

  As he was shown to Porter’s table, Marshal noticed a rare sight – a Liberal Democrat MP. They were a veritable endangered species. But ultimately, they were cockroaches. They could survive a nuclear holocaust, a fate second only to Brexit, the member for Eastbourne might argue. He overheard a few words of conversation as he passed by the MP and his guests: “Plebs… arbitrage… pension… House of Lords.”

  Porter rose to his feet on seeing his guest. At first, Marshal did not quite recognise him, given the weight he had lost. The ex-Guards officer was wearing a creaseless tan coloured suit, from Brooke’s Brothers. His shoes, from Foster & Son, were polished to parade ground standard, as was his silver tie pin. Marshal had never seen his former employer dressed anything but immaculately. Porter once admitted to owning a pair of jeans, but he may have said so for effect. Marshal couldn’t say he was ever particularly close to the fixer – or could wholly trust him. If Porter was a book then he was one with some of the pages deliberately torn out or redacted, to obscure the story. His family life was private, in relation to his business contacts. Doubtless, his wife was ignorant, as to how he earned his living. He had ruined the lives of innocent and guilty people alike, arranging honeytraps, financial scandals and contract killings. Yet he was the soul of civility, whilst committing all manner of ignominious acts. Porter paid his employees on time, always picked up the tab, gave generously to charity (autonomous of tax breaks), quoted Trollope, hummed Elgar and, to Marshal’s knowledge, he had never been unfaithful to his wife. Porter was always entertaining company, but Marshal judged that his life had not suffered for being out of contact with the fixer. But he needed his help now, even at the expense of owing the man, who he had once nicknamed “Talleyrand”, a favour.

  Needs must.

  “James, it’s good to see you again. I wish it could be under more felicitous circumstances,” Porter remarked, shaking Marshal’s hand, offering him a smile which was as attractive as his suit.

  “We are where we are,” the ex-Para replied, quoting a familiar phrase from his time in the army.

  Porter took in his dinner companion, his eyes briefly narrowing in scrutiny, like two pill-box slits. Marshal was wearing a charcoal grey suit and black tie. He could have been on his way to a funeral. His own, if the Albanians had
anything to do with things, Porter half-joked. He was cleanshaven and still in good shape. A couple of the waitresses – and one of the waiters – had already gazed at him with more than a modicum of interest and appreciation. Porter noted a lack of a wedding ring and slightly bloodshot eyes. He could smell smoke on his breath, but his fingers were free from nicotine stains.

  “Mr Porter, it’s good to see you again,” Alessio, one of the long-serving waiters at the club, remarked, as he approached the table. The grey-haired, amiable Florentine seemed genuinely pleased to see the member – and not just because, whether he ordered a coffee or three-course meal, Porter always left a £50 tip for the staff. “We haven’t seen you for some time, I believe.”

  “I no longer venture to town so regularly. I’m retired. As much as I might miss your cutlets and selection of whiskies, I don’t miss the commute.”

  Alessio’s camp, cherubic face broke into an obliging smile and he raised his pen and notepad.

  “Can I interest you in a glass of wine?”

  “No, but you can interest us in a bottle,” Porter replied.

  7.

  Porter handed over the flash drive containing the intelligence Mariner had mined from an array of sources. He spoke calmly, discreetly, with an amenable expression – as if he were discussing his plans for Christmas, or a recent trip to Lord’s cricket ground.

  “The information is comprehensive, but that may be part of the problem. The organisation is formidable and vicious. I am not usually given to quoting Donald Trump, but you have got yourself mixed up with some “bad hombres” James. The gang, which took over the drug and prostitution trades of over half of Glasgow, are now intent on establishing themselves in South London. Their krye is one Luka Rugova. He is not known for his clemency. He may view that you attacked a member of his family, and therefore committed an act of war. You may need to worry about his lieutenant, Viktor Baruti, even more, however. He’s as intelligent as he is ruthless. Read the files. Baruti seems to be an adherent of Stalin’s philosophy, given the number of murders his name has been attributed to. “Death is the solution to all problems. No man. No problem.” If it seems like I’m trying to scare you, it’s because I am. I would not think less of you – and nor should you think less of yourself – if you chose to disappear, before Baruti causes you to disappear.”