by Ryan, Chris
‘What are you doing? We can’t stop now. We need to be on the road.’
‘This ride’s no good,’ Bald said. ‘Tyres are shot to bits. Run-flats are only good for fifty miles. We’ll need to switch vehicles. Besides, we can’t drive this thing across the country. Bullet holes all over the fucking shop. We’ll stand out like a dog-lover in China. Come on.’
He jumped down from the Tahoe, gripping his M4, and moved round to the rear door. Grabbed his rucksack containing the water bottles, L2 grenades and spare clips from the back seat. Hastened over to the Land Cruiser and dived behind the wheel while Fuller clambered into the passenger seat.
Bald fired up the engine and K-turned in the path. Then he sped back towards the main road, slung a hard right and rocketed east. Past the blacked-out town of Los Altos, towards the distant mountains.
Every so often he glanced at the rear-view, watching for headlights, but he saw nothing. Just a dense empty blackness. Understandable. The soldiers might have broken out of the barracks by now. The Americans were most likely too busy making their own escape from the stronghold. They wouldn’t have time to focus on hunting down Bald and Fuller. Not at the moment. Besides, Bald reminded himself, We ditched that phone the CIA gave us. Those fuckers won’t have any way of tracking us.
We’re safe.
For now.
They raced on for four miles and then Bald eased off the gas and kept the Land Cruiser ticking along at ten miles below the speed limit. He wasn’t worried about drawing attention from the local cops. They would have their hands full for a while, dealing with the effects of the blackout. There would be panic in the streets. Looters plundering shops and offices. Criminals roaming free.
He glanced over at Fuller. She sat in tense silence, staring at the phone she had snatched from the dead guard. She looked a little shaken up, but otherwise seemed to be okay. He got the distinct impression this wasn’t the first firefight she had been involved in.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
Bald said, ‘We’re thirty miles from the coast. We’ll head in that direction, lie up in one of the fishing villages and bribe someone to take us out to sea. Get to one of them islands. Aruba or Curacao. Then we’ll find a way to contact Vauxhall. Tell them what’s happened.’
She looked up from the screen with wide eyes. ‘That’s your big plan?’
‘Better than nothing. Their president has just been capped. We need to get out of this country, before we have every soldier and police officer in the land looking for us.’
‘We can’t go to the villages. It’s high risk. They might shop us to the authorities.’
‘It’s Venezuela,’ Bald said. ‘Inflation’s running at a million per cent. People haven’t got two pennies to rub together. They’ll take the fucking money, if it’s on offer.’
Fuller shook her head. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘We need to speak to Six. They’ll find a way of getting us out of here.’
‘Power’s out.’ Bald nodded at the pitch-black landscape. ‘Most of the immediate area is in the dark ages. We’ve got no way of contacting your bosses.’
‘The grid won’t be down for long,’ Fuller said confidently. ‘Another half hour or so. The people behind the hack are under orders not to cause unnecessary damage to the infrastructure.’
Bald glanced at her again. ‘How the fuck do you know that?’
‘It’s part of their plan. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘Bollocks. Those pricks just tried to kill me. I deserve answers.’
‘This is an intelligence matter. Need-to-know only. You’re not security cleared. I’m not authorised to discuss this with you.’
‘I don’t give a fuck. I just saw my oldest mate get blown away.’
Fuller gave him a funny look. ‘You didn’t seem too cut up about his death, as I recall.’
‘Had to make it look like I didn’t give a shit,’ Bald replied dismissively. ‘Play along with Hulk.’
Fuller stared at him, as if trying to decide whether he was telling the truth.
‘I’m taking a big risk here,’ Bald went on. ‘If it wasn’t for me, we’d both be dead. Now tell me what the fuck is going on.’
She fell silent for a beat. Bald glanced over at the digital clock on the Land Cruiser’s multimedia display: 04.43. Almost first light. The faintest bluish glow was visible on the horizon, beyond the rugged dark slopes. The road flowed river-like through the valley floor, twisting past blacked-out villages and small towns. To the north, several miles away, Bald could see a far steeper row of mountains. Somewhere beyond those peaks, he knew, was the Caribbean coast.
‘Six sent me out here to establish contact with a colleague,’ Fuller said at last.
‘Another spy?’
Fuller shook her head. ‘An American. From the CIA. Chris Keeble. He said he had information he wanted to share with me and he couldn’t risk discussing it via electronic communications. He insisted on a face-to-face meeting.’
‘Why would this bloke reach out to you, rather than his own people?’
‘He’d gone rogue. The Company was looking for him. He didn’t know where else to go.’
‘So he turned to you?’
‘I’d worked with him in the past. We had a good rapport. I guess he felt I was someone who wouldn’t sell him out. Six decided to send me over here to meet with him. Find out what he had uncovered. That’s what I was doing when the security forces showed up at my hotel and arrested me.’
‘All that stuff about you being an academic . . . that was a load of crap?’
‘Not exactly. It’s a cover identity I was using. A legend. It’s becoming standard practice now at Six. The days when SIS officers could operate clandestinely abroad are over. Facial recognition software means you’re picked up and identified as soon as you step off the plane these days. So they train up people like me instead.’
‘Like you?’
‘Deep-cover officers, with legitimate careers and carefully constructed backstories who can travel around and operate with a degree of freedom. We’re spies, but we have professional careers with the appropriate qualifications and backgrounds. Six populates our online profiles and make sure nothing slips through the net that might give us away. Tagged photographs on someone else’s social media feed, that sort of thing. Some of us work in the sciences, others in business or at universities. Typically, jobs that require international travel and meeting a lot of new people. I’ve got a legitimate paid position, I pay rent on a flat in Bethnal Green and have a circle of friends that don’t know anything about my career with Six. I’ve even had academic papers published. As far as my parents and family are concerned, I was going to Venezuela to do research. No one was supposed to suspect a thing. Then it all went wrong.’
Bald said, ‘What happened?’
‘Someone at the CIA must have realised Keeble was going to spill his guts. They lifted him, but not before our meeting.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘He said he’d been working closely with his colleagues in Bogotá. A top-secret operation. He’d been briefed about it and wasn’t happy about what they were planning to do. Said the Company was plotting to murder Vasquez and put a new guy in charge. Someone more amenable to American interests. Someone who wouldn’t be so welcoming to the Iranians and Russians. He said they were going to make sure it was done cleanly, with nothing to link the killing to Langley.’
‘Who else is involved?’
‘Keeble’s bosses. And people above them, he said. He didn’t have names. But his gut feeling was that it went right to the very top.’
‘The US President?’
‘He didn’t have proof, but he thinks so. It’s hard to imagine anyone at Langley signing off on this without presidential approval.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘At first, I wasn’t sure whether to believe Keeble,’ Fuller said. ‘I mean, it sounded outlandish. But t
wo days later, he disappeared. That’s when I knew he must be on to something.’
‘Why did he go to you, though? Why not go to the press? They’d have a fucking field day with this stuff.’
‘He didn’t have concrete proof. And he was afraid that his superiors would try to silence him if he went public. He wanted to cut a deal with us instead. Information about the conspiracy, in exchange for a new identity. He figured we could sit down with our friends at Langley and tell them what we knew. Threaten to leak everything unless they backed down. That was the plan we discussed, anyway. I was preparing to notify Vauxhall when the security forces broke into my room.’
‘How did they find you?’ asked Bald.
‘The Venezuelans had been watching Keeble. Must have followed him to our meeting. So they knew I was involved. I tried to flee the country but they caught up with me before I could escape. Before the CIA could get to me.’
Bald looked at her. ‘All this time, the Company knew you were working for Six?’
‘Yes. My guess is that’s why they hijacked the rescue op. They could kill Vasquez and get rid of me at the same time. Two birds, one stone.’
‘Does Six know about any of this?’
Fuller shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, no. It was a CIA-led operation, under directive from the White House. Vauxhall didn’t know anything about a plan to assassinate Vasquez.’
‘Or maybe they just didn’t want to admit it.’
Fuller considered this, then shook her head. ‘No. That’s not Strickland’s style.’
‘You people are capable of some evil shit. I’ve done my fair share of dirty work for you lot down the years.’
‘Point taken. But generally speaking, we don’t go around murdering heads of state. Not even as favours to Washington.’
Bald said, ‘Why would the Yanks bother trying to frame me and Porter for the hit? Why not just kill the president themselves?’
‘Plausible deniability. The Americans didn’t want to look like they were involved in an assassination attempt. That would be a bad look for them, obviously. There would be an international outcry. And it would completely undermine the new man’s credibility if it looked as if he was a US-sponsored puppet. They needed a scapegoat. Someone to carry the can, so it didn’t look like an inside job.’
‘So they decided to pin the blame on us?’
‘That wasn’t the original plan. According to Keeble, they were going to carry out the attack using four disgraced ex-SEALs. Real mavericks. They’d go in, execute the president and melt away again.’
‘What happened?’
‘The plan changed. My guess is that they heard about the team being prepared to rescue me and decided to hijack the operation. They could kill Vasquez, murder you and your friend and claim that a pair of British mercenaries were behind the attack.’
‘And they’d have the security footage to back it up.’
‘Exactly.’
She fell silent again and stared out of the windscreen, lost in her thoughts. Then she swallowed and said, ‘Keeble told me something else, too. Before he went missing.’
Bald glanced at her. ‘What’s that?’
‘He said the Americans weren’t the only ones involved in the plot to kill Vasquez. He believed they had outside help. The cyber-attacks were being handled by a third party.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone who’s worked with Six before. No one you’ve ever heard of.’
‘Try me, lass.’
Fuller stared out the window at the dense blackness beyond. ‘A political fixer,’ she said. ‘From London. A former friend of mine, actually. Julian Cantwell.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Bald tightened his grip on the wheel. His muscles tensed with rage. The pounding between his temples flared up again. Like knuckles rapping against wood. Fuller evidently saw the dark look flash across his face and crinkled her brow.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I know that name,’ Bald replied through gritted teeth.
The lines on her brow deepened. ‘How?’
Bald told her about the briefing in London. The introduction to Julian Cantwell, the portly, red-haired dandy in the three-piece suit. The discussion about Fuller. Her panic attacks, their time at university together.
‘That sounds like Julian,’ Fuller said. ‘He always dressed like it was the 1920s, even when we were at Oxford together.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a mastermind hacker. Thought all them lot were sad bastards, like. Sitting in basements in their Y-fronts, wanking off to weird porn.’
Fuller smirked. ‘Julian doesn’t do the hacking himself. He’s not computer literate. Barely knows how to operate a mobile phone. His employees have to show him how to do everything. But he’s emotionally manipulative. Very good at getting other people to do what he wants. They’re the ones who do the actual grunt work. He just sits there and takes all the credit.’
‘He reckoned you two were good pals.’
Fuller smiled feebly. ‘We were, once. For a short while. But we’re not in touch anymore. I can’t even remember the last time we spoke. Ten, fifteen years ago? Something like that.’
‘Why would he bullshit about your relationship?’
Fuller thought for a moment while she checked her phone for a signal. ‘Someone must have sent him on a fact-finding mission. His masters would have wanted to know what Madeleine and the others knew about the conspiracy. He certainly didn’t go there out of any concern for my well-being.’
‘He reckoned you suffered from panic attacks.’
‘I used to. Six toughened me up, though. You can’t be weak-minded and survive for long at Vauxhall.’
Bald wrestled with a puzzling thought. ‘Why would the Yanks outsource the cyber-warfare stuff to Cantwell? They’ve got their own hackers, surely.’
‘Same reason they wanted to frame you. Using domestic hackers was too risky. Even if they were very careful, they’d leave digital fingerprints all over the place. It had to be someone from the outside. And Cantwell was a known entity within Washington circles. He was someone they could trust.’
‘Fuckers thought of everything.’
‘Almost,’ Fuller corrected. ‘They didn’t count on me escaping. If we make it out of the country, we can still expose what the Company has been doing.’
‘They’ll deny it,’ Bald said. ‘They always do.’
‘Probably. But we can still go after Cantwell. The Americans couldn’t have done this without his help. We can twist his arm. Get him to give up what he knows. Names, dates. Information we can corroborate. He could be a goldmine of intelligence on who else is involved.’
‘We’ve got to get out of this shithole first,’ Bald pointed out.
Fuller nodded nervously.
‘What’s the plan now?’ he asked.
She glanced at the time on the display: 04.54. ‘The grid should be back on in a few minutes. Keep driving north. I’ll reach out to Vauxhall as soon as I have a signal. We need to tell them what’s going on.’
They rolled on through the valley. Bald stuck to the main road snaking north from Los Altos, zigzagging between dark brooding hills and the outlines of coal-black towns. Heading in the direction of the mountain range fringing the coast. He didn’t have a specific destination in mind. His primary concern was to put as much distance between themselves and the Americans as possible. Every couple of minutes Fuller woke the phone up from sleep mode and checked for a signal. Frowned when she didn’t find one and put the handset back into its digital coma.
After two miles Bald spotted a few lights twinkling in the distance from a township in the foothills. A sure sign that the power was back up and running. At which point Fuller woke up the dead guard’s phone again and manually tapped in a long number. He glanced over her shoulder and caught the first three digits: 212. The area code for Caracas.
‘Who are you calling?’ he asked.
‘British embassy,’ Fuller said. ‘I’ll speak to th
e resident Six officer there. Get him to put me through to Vauxhall.’
‘Why can’t we just head straight for the embassy? Stay there for a while?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Fuller replied bluntly. ‘For a start, neither of us is supposed to be here. We’re off the books. If we show up at the embassy, it’s going to directly implicate the British government. Besides, they can’t help us. A few hours from now, we’re going to be the most wanted people in the country. We can’t risk leaving through the air or seaports. The authorities will be looking for us everywhere. Anywhere densely populated is a no-go.’
‘They could sort us out with clean passports.’
‘The Venezuelan intelligence services already know my face. They’ll know yours, too, once they take a look at the security footage. It’s a non-starter.’
‘How the fuck are your mates going to get us out of here, then?’
‘Madeleine will have a plan. She won’t let us down.’
Fuller tapped the Dial icon and clamped the handset to her ear. Bald drove on as she spent several minutes jumping through hoops on the phone. The switchboard transferred her to an emergency out-of-hours number. The duty officer who took the call seemed reluctant to disclose the private number for the cultural attaché. There was some displeasure at the thought of disturbing him at such an early hour. But Fuller was persistent. And very persuasive.
The call with the attaché, a guy called Anthony Herd, was much shorter and to the point. There was a quick back-and-forth with a groggy-sounding man. She obviously knew the guy. There was an easy familiarity in her voice as they spoke. She didn’t introduce herself, didn’t bother with any preamble. She just launched straight into it. Explained that she was in trouble, without going into too many specifics, and needed to be patched through to Vauxhall. The voice on the other end mumbled something and hung up.