Circle of Death - Strike Back Series 05 (2020)

by Ryan, Chris

  He said, ‘Any idea what this is about?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, mate. You know what them suits are like. Never tell you a thing you don’t need to know.’

  ‘They didn’t say anything?’

  Bald scratched his stubbly jaw and shrugged. ‘Just that Maddy wanted to brief us on an op. They told us it was a five-man job.’

  ‘Five?’ Porter repeated.

  Bald nodded. ‘Me, you, and three foreigners. Ex-SF blokes. Americans, they said. I’m guessing either Navy SEALs or some of the lads from Delta.’

  Porter creased his brow. ‘Why would Six recruit a few Yanks for an op?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t want anything official.’

  ‘You think this is off the books?’

  ‘We’re meeting off-site, away from anyone who might identify us. They’ve recruited three foreign blokes with no formal links to Vauxhall. And Madeleine specifically asked for us.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We’re politically convenient. A pair of retired Blades with nothing to tie us to the establishment. Something goes wrong and we get captured, Whitehall can put their hands up and claim they had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I don’t think Strickland is that cynical.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Bald. ‘Maddy is sound. But if the Yanks are involved, there’s a chance they’re the ones running the show. And I trust them even less than those tossers at Six.’

  Porter cocked an eyebrow. ‘You’re calling her Maddy, these days?’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘It’s not like you to say anything nice about anyone.’

  ‘She’s a good Scottish lass. Not like the rest of those English toff bastards running the place.’

  ‘You sure that isn’t your manhood talking?’

  ‘She’s not my type. Too old,’ said Bald. ‘Ten years ago, I might have given it a shot. Like you once did.’

  Porter nodded, fondly recalling the night he’d spent bottled up in a besieged hotel in Sierra Leone, sharing a bed with an agent from Six. ‘That was a long time ago, mate.’

  ‘Probably the last time you had a shag, too.’

  Bald grabbed a biscuit and chewed noisily on it. Porter checked his phone again. Still no signal.

  He wondered if he should message Sandy after the briefing. Think of some way of making it up to her. Then again, maybe not. Maybe she was right, and she just needed some time alone to figure things out. He looked up from his phone. Nodded at Bald.

  ‘Why did you agree to come down?’ he asked. ‘I thought you couldn’t wait to get away from Six.’

  ‘Too fucking right.’

  ‘So why take up their offer? You’re not connected to Vauxhall anymore. You could have told them to do one.’

  ‘Cash-flow problems,’ Bald replied tersely. ‘Temporary issue. I’m only down here for the sake of the business. I’ll do this one job and get myself back on an even keel. Then I’m done with this mob.’

  ‘That’s what you said last time.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Bald grabbed another biscuit and popped it into his mouth. ‘This time I fucking mean it.’

  Thirty seconds later, the door unlocked and swung open again.

  The crew-cutted flunky stood in the doorway, nodded stiffly at Bald and Porter.

  ‘This way, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘They’re ready for you now.’

  EIGHT

  Bald and Porter followed the flunky back down the corridor until they stopped outside a door on the left. The guy went through the same routine, placing his thumb against the scanner until the LED light on the plate turned luminous green.

  ‘Inside,’ he ordered.

  They swept into a low-ceilinged briefing room, long and narrow, like a Tube carriage. The floor was some sort of dark-tiled carpet. A large conference table occupied the middle of the room, with a dozen executive leather chairs arranged around it. Half a dozen figures were seated around the far end of the table. Four men and a couple of women.

  The woman at the head of the table looked to be forty or thereabouts, with short dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were the colour of emeralds and her lips were crimson-red against her pale cheeks. She was dressed in a belted wool coat and a cream-coloured shirt. A shiny ID card dangled from a lanyard around her neck, resting on her sizeable bosom.

  Bald recognised her instantly.

  Madeleine Strickland. His old handler at MI6. The rising star of the service. Fast-tracked through the ranks. A straight-talking Glaswegian whose friendly demeanour masked an icy ruthless streak. Now running the General Support Branch. Bald had little doubt that she was one day destined for the very top. Deputy Director, perhaps, or even Chief.

  ‘Gentlemen, thank you for waiting,’ she said in her broad Scottish accent. Her eyes lingered on Bald for a beat and she smiled admiringly. ‘It’s good to see you, John.’

  ‘Hello, Madeleine,’ said Bald.

  ‘How’s life up on Islay?’

  ‘Same as ever. Too many fucking English. You know how it is.’

  Strickland smiled at that. ‘It’s been a wee while since I had chance to visit the islands. More of a city lass, myself.’

  ‘You should visit next time you’re up that way. Get out of Glasgow for a change. See the real Scotland.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that.’ Strickland waved at the empty chairs. ‘Please.’

  The flunky left the room, closing the door behind him. Bald and Porter took up the nearest chairs and made themselves comfortable. Strickland cleared her throat and said, ‘Before we begin, allow me to introduce my colleagues.’

  She pointed to the man immediately to her right. A plump guy in his late fifties, dressed in a crumpled shirt and jacket. His wrinkled face had more lines in it than a Shakespeare play. A pair of rimless glasses sat on the bridge of his nose. His grey hair was perched like a bird’s nest atop his shiny pate.

  Strickland said, ‘This is Hugo Merrick. He’s my number two at the Branch. An old hand at Six.’

  ‘Looking forward to working with you both,’ Merrick said in a cut-glass accent.

  Bald smiled to himself. Strickland was a smart one. She had evidently appointed one of Vauxhall’s old guard as her 2iC. A shrewd political move, and a good way of keeping an eye on someone who could threaten her position. Bald guessed that a guy like Hugo Merrick, at his age, would have expected to take the top job at the Branch. Instead he found himself answering directly to Strickland. If he was bitter about the outcome, he wasn’t showing it.

  Strickland indicated the man sitting beside Merrick. A serious-looking guy in an expensive-looking suit, with a pointed chin and prominent mole on his left cheek. He was sipping from a coffee cup with the logo of Aston Villa football club down the side.

  ‘Simon Carter,’ she said. ‘From the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.’

  Carter nodded a greeting. Strickland then pointed out a third man sitting at the end of the table. He looked older than the others. Early sixties or thereabouts, Bald reckoned, but the guy wore his age well. He had feathery white hair, thin slanted eyebrows and a strong jawline. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the guy. His body was taut and lean and he flashed a smooth smile at Bald and Porter as they turned to him.

  Strickland said, ‘I assume you both know Roderick Iverson, former Director Special Forces.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Bald.

  ‘Roderick is a friend of the service. Some of your old colleagues from Hereford work for his private company, GreyWatch International.’

  ‘Always good to meet a couple of guys from the other ranks,’ Iverson said.

  Bald simmered. For a former SAS man, ‘other ranks’ was one of the most hated terms in the military lexicon. It was used by Ruperts to describe the men below them in the pecking order: the troopers and NCOs. A way for the officers to assert their authority over the guys who went out and did the business.

  ‘I’m ex-Hereford myself, you know,’ Iverson added.

 
; ‘You spent time in the Regiment?’ asked Porter.

  ‘Oh, yes. Did two years with G Squadron as Troop Commander. This was back in the early eighties.’

  ‘Before our time,’ Bald murmured. Strickland waved a hand at the two figures seated directly to her left. A man and a woman. Bald turned to look at them. The guy was morbidly obese, with a salt-and-pepper beard and narrowed eyes. He wore a velvet waistcoat under a charcoal suit the size of a circus tent.

  Next to him sat a stern-looking woman in a grey trouser suit, with skin like worn leather. She had shoulder-length wavy hair and wore a necklace with pearls as big as ping-pong balls. Her smile was so thin it looked like it had been carved onto her face with a knife.

  ‘Allow me to introduce our American cousins,’ Strickland said. ‘Bill and Mary. They’re from Langley.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ Bill said gruffly.

  Mary said nothing and looked blank.

  Bald exchanged a quizzical glance with Porter before turning back to Strickland. ‘Nobody said anything to us about the CIA being involved in any operation?’

  ‘I’ll explain everything in due course,’ Strickland answered patiently. ‘No doubt you’re both full of questions. Why you’re here, what you’re going to do for us.’

  ‘I’m here to listen, that’s all,’ Bald corrected. ‘I haven’t agreed to anything yet.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Strickland smiled politely, then nodded at Merrick. ‘Hugo, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Merrick reached over to a laptop on the table, adjusted his spectacles and tapped a couple of keys. A moment later an image popped up on one of the flat-screen TVs behind the table. Bald and Porter found themselves looking at a photograph of a smartly dressed woman. She was forty or thereabouts, with auburn hair and a long slender neck. A delicate smile teased out of the edges of her mouth as she posed in front of a bookcase filled with leather-bound books. She was quite attractive, thought Bald, in an unconventional way.

  Strickland said, ‘I presume you both know who this is.’

  Bald nodded. ‘She’s been all over the news. She’s the swot. The one the Venezuelans arrested. Christina something.’

  ‘Caroline Fuller,’ Strickland said. ‘How much do you know about her?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Porter. ‘Just what’s been in the press, like.’

  ‘Allow me to fill in the gaps.’ Strickland consulted a file in front of her. ‘Caroline Fuller. Born in Tring, 1977. Father was a professor who taught at UCL. Mother was a child psychologist from Cambridge. Captain of the girls’ hockey team at Haileybury. Earned a first-class degree in History and Politics at Oxford and completed an MA in Political Economy at King’s College, London. Spent two years in Buenos Aires while studying for her PhD. Returned to the UK in 2007 to take up a post as a university lecturer. Now works as a research fellow.’

  Strickland paused and looked up from the file.

  ‘Eleven days ago, the Venezuelan security forces arrested Fuller during a trip to Caracas. They’ve been holding her prisoner ever since, despite several pleas from Downing Street and a concerted media campaign calling for her release. You’ve probably seen the coverage in the press.’

  Bald said, ‘Why would the Venezuelans bother to lift some minor academic?’

  ‘They believe she’s working for us.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Fuller isn’t a spy. She’s never worked at Vauxhall and has never been employed by the security services in any capacity. Frankly, we’re shocked that the Venezuelans would think otherwise.’

  ‘So why did they arrest her?’ asked Porter.

  ‘We think it’s to do with her research. Fuller’s particular field of interest is Latin American economics. Our understanding is that she was in Venezuela to speak with fellow academics opposed to the regime.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the situation there,’ Merrick said. ‘It’s particularly grim. The country is an economic basket case. The shops are empty, there’s rampant corruption and crime. Food and medicine are in desperately short supply. Former university professors have been reduced to boiling seawater for soup and eating rats to survive.’

  ‘Sounds like Dundee, Jock,’ Porter joked.

  Bald stared at him for a moment.

  Merrick said, ‘We think someone high up heard who Fuller was talking to, assumed she must be a spy and ordered her arrest. It’s complete nonsense, of course. She’s guilty of gross naivety, but nothing more.’

  ‘There’s an additional problem,’ Strickland said.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Bald.

  ‘Fuller was working on a paper at the time. Specifically, the nexus between organised crime and the economy in Venezuela. We have reason to believe that she knows sensitive information about high-level Six operations to infiltrate the cartels.’

  Bald looked at her intently. ‘I didn’t know you were running covert ops in Venezuela. Thought that was the Yanks’ turf.’

  ‘Ordinarily, it is,’ said Bill in a Deep Southern drawl. ‘But it’s tricky for us to operate down there at the minute. Too much heat from the authorities. Brits tend to attract less attention.’

  Strickland said, ‘We’ve known for years that President Vasquez and his inner circle are closely involved with the cocaine trade. Our people have been cultivating agents inside the cartels, using them to build cases against the key players. Including the president’s own brother.’

  Porter said, ‘How much does Fuller know?’

  ‘Enough to compromise our operations. If she tells her captors what she knows, we’ll be forced to pull out of the country overnight.’

  ‘Not to mention the damage to our global prestige,’ Carter added in his blunt Brummie accent. ‘I don’t need to remind everyone around this table that our involvement in Venezuela is a closely guarded secret, for obvious reasons. If word were to get out that our boys and girls in Six have been meddling in Latin America, the press will have a fucking field day.’

  ‘The Regiment was in Colombia for years, training up the local commandos,’ Bald reminded him. ‘Everyone knows about that. No one seems too bothered.’

  ‘Different circumstances. The Colombians were happy to have us on board. The Venezuelans don’t know we’re operating there. It’s fucking illegal. That easy enough for you thickos to understand?’

  Bald shot a vicious look at the guy. An uneasy silence hung in the air before Porter spoke up.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘We need you to head to Venezuela,’ Strickland said. ‘You’re going to find Fuller and rescue her. Then you’re going to bring her home.’

  NINE

  Strickland sat back in her chair, drumming her long fingers on the table. Carter sipped from his Villa-branded coffee cup, tore a chunk off a croissant and popped it into his mouth. Merrick wiped his glasses on his shirt. Iverson checked his watch repeatedly, as if he had somewhere more important to be. Across the table, Bill toyed with a pen in his chubby hands. Mary continued to stare impassively at the two ex-Blades.

  Porter broke the silence. ‘Why can’t you lot press the Venezuelans to let her go? Tell them she’s just some naive researcher and it’s a case of mistaken identity?’

  ‘We’ve tried that already. More than once. The Venezuelans aren’t interested. They’re convinced she must be a British spy. My people will keep plugging away, but any diplomatic efforts might take months to bear fruit. Christ knows what might have happened to her by then.’

  ‘Simon’s right,’ Strickland said. ‘Fuller is being held by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service. You might have heard of them. The president’s internal security unit.’

  ‘Nasty fuckers, I bet,’ said Bald.

  Strickland nodded. ‘They’ve got form when it comes to torturing suspects, as you might imagine. Fuller is a civilian with no resistance-to-interrogation training. It’s safe to assume that she won’t hold out for very long. Time is a luxury we simply don
’t have in this case.’

  ‘There’s also the issue of the protests,’ Carter added. ‘Her parents are kicking up a lot of fuss, demanding that the PM does whatever it takes to secure her release. We’ve got people on the streets and the press is on our backs day and bloody night. Downing Street wants this resolved swiftly.’

  ‘And I want a threesome with the Olsen twins,’ said Bald. ‘But we can’t get everything we want in life.’

  Carter stared fiercely at him. Strickland laced her hands and said, ‘There’s more than national pride at stake, John. If Fuller spills the beans to the Venezuelans, it’ll blow our existing operations against the cartels and put the lives of our agents on the ground at risk. Getting her out now is an urgent security issue.’

  Bald held up his hands. ‘I get it. You want this bird out. Fine. But it’s going to be easier said than done. Last time I checked, Venezuela isn’t exactly Butlin’s these days. I’m guessing the Venezuelans wouldn’t welcome us with open arms.’

  ‘We have ways of dealing with any issues on the ground.’

  ‘I should fucking hope so. But there’s a bigger problem than that.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Locating the researcher. She could be anywhere.’

  ‘Jock’s right,’ Porter said. ‘How are we supposed to find her?’

  Strickland looked towards Bill and Mary, and slightly inclined her head. As if giving them the floor.

  Mary said, ‘We have a source.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A senior figure in the Venezuelan Air Force. Colonel Jefferson Gallardo. He fled the country several months ago after President Vasquez accused him of being part of a failed plot to topple him. He turned himself into our embassy in Bogotá. Been working for us ever since, out of an office in Colombia.’

  Bill said, ‘Until he decided to stab the president in the back, Gallardo was a trusted member of Vasquez’s inner circle. We’re talking about a very well-connected individual, with high-level access to a lot of important people. And a respected military man. He still commands a lot of loyalty among his former subordinates.’