by Leigh Barker
Shaun leaned forward, caught a whiff of her breath, and leaned back. “Look, I don’t give a shit about what you were doing in a warehouse full of dead Yardies, what I want to know is where is O’Conner?”
Curly glanced at Betty for a response, locked eyes, and played faces at each other. Shaun looked around, but there was no bucket. “Look, you just say an address, and we’ll forget everything we know about twenty K’s of H and a sack of money.”
If he’d intended to shock them, he succeeded. They stopped playing coo-coo faces and glared at him. Curly tried to smile, but it collapsed like a soufflé in a stiff breeze.
“How did you…” She squinted at Tweetie Pie, who now looked like a turkey seeing December on the calendar. “There’ll be words to be had with your good self, Tweetie,” she promised.
“Look,” Danny said, “you say a place, and we walk out of here.”
They were considering it — or at least something was happening in Curly’s head from the pain on her face. Big Betty just looked… well, vacant.
“Problem is,” Curly Sue said, “if we tell you where Mr O’Conner is and then he finds out it was us give it to you, then our reputation will be besmirched.”
Besmirched? He could shoot one of them, Shaun thought, and that would scare the other. No, that wouldn’t work, they couldn’t shoot Big Betty because they hadn’t brought an elephant gun. “Look,” he said, “Danny and—”
“Danny? That’s a nice name,” Curly Sue said, looking him up and down slowly. “I like the dark ones.”
Danny’s face said “help!”
“Hands off, sweetie,” Shaun said sharply. “He’s taken.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sure,” Curly said with a shrug. “Too skinny for my taste anyway. I prefer a girl I can get hold of.” She smiled up at Big Betty.
God, it’s a madhouse! Shaun wanted to run away. Here he was having a quiet chat with two screaming queens and a sobbing wuss, and had just said his partner was his special friend. “Nobody will know you told us,” he said, trying to stop his mind running away and hiding. “You give us his address, and that’s the end of it.” There was an “or else” in there somewhere. “What do you say?”
Curly Sue was the brains, which spoke volumes. She thought about it with that pained expression and then nodded. “You’re sure nobody will know we talked to your good selves?”
Shaun raised a hand. “Scout’s honour.” Oh, okay, that should swing it.
“Oooh, you were a boy scout?” Curly’s eyes lit up.
He mentions my woggle, I’ll… besmirch him, so help me. He took a shot in the dark. “I suspect you’re no stranger to uniforms yourself.” He raised an eyebrow.
Curly squeaked. “Oh, you are clever.” God save us. “I was a soldier-boy.” She brought her fists together in excitement. “Before I let the real me out into the light.” She smiled and underlined it with her red lipstick teeth. “Oh, they were exciting times.”
“I can imagine,” Danny said with a shake of his head, but then caught Betty’s eye. “All that soldiering and charging and stuff,” he added quickly.
“I was in recon, like that nice Clint Eastwood. I like him,” Curly said to stunned silence. “Would you believe that? Me, trained to sneak up on people and shoot them? Apparently I’m a natural, it’s a gift.”
Shaun had no trouble at all believing this dog’s breakfast of a person was capable of killing people. He’d seen the bodies in the warehouse. The female of the species is the most ruthless, except for the pissed-off female stuck in a man’s body.
Curly was going to expand on her soldier days, Shaun could see it and stood up quickly. “Look, we’ve got to go,” he said, “we’ve people to shoot. We don’t show up, who’s going to shoot them?”
Curly seemed to understand the demands of business and nodded. “I would really like to help you,” she said with another ghastly smile, “but I don’t know exactly where the gentleman in question is at this moment.” She raised a painted finger before Shaun could speak. “But I know a man who does.”
Shaun wanted to slap her, but instead waited with a patience born out of the knowledge that he could empty his gun into Big Betty and he would still break him in half.
“The person who hired us on behalf of Mr O’Conner, so to speak, was an individual name of Junior Brown.” She pulled a face. “Nasty little—” she glanced at Danny, “Jamaican.”
“Where do we find this Jamaican?” Danny asked, letting the nationality error slip by.
“It’s cool,” Shaun said, “I know him.” He stood up and nodded at Curly. “Thanks.” He turned to go, but turned and looked back. “Like your hair.”
Curly Sue fiddled with her straight black hair appreciatively. “Oh, really? I did it myself.”
Really? Well, there you go, another surprise.
Danny followed Shaun to the door, and Tweetie stood up to follow, but Curly put a hand on his arm. “Can we keep him, Boy Scout?”
Shaun shrugged. “Yeah, we’re done with him.”
“We’re not,” Curly said with an edge.
“Wait! Wait!” Tweetie was desperate. “You can’t leave me… I’m, err… in custody!”
Shaun shrugged and pushed open the door with his foot so he didn’t have to touch anything.
Danny caught up with him on the pavement outside. “You’re not really going to leave him with those two, are you?”
Shaun looked both ways down the street littered with food wrappers and old vomit. “Why not?”
“They’ll kill him, that’s why not.”
“And?”
Danny seemed genuinely agitated. “I signed all that paperwork!”
Shaun smiled. “They won’t kill him. They’ll smack him around a bit, but they won’t kill him. It’s too messy.”
Danny looked back at the door with just a hint of guilt.
“He had a machine gun to shoot some guys he’d never met,” Shaun reminded him and walked to the car. “If he’d found the safety.” He shook his head in despair. “He deserves a little slap.”
Danny pulled the car keys from his pocket and turned sharply as a piecing scream came from the club. He looked at Shaun, who seemed more concerned by the dust on the car’s roof.
Another scream came from behind the closed door, and Shaun shrugged. Screaming was good; at least Tweetie wasn’t dead. Yet.
31
Harry had progressed from the elbow crutch to a regular walking cane, one with a big hooked handle like they have in the old movies, truly classy. He rolled it slowly between his fingers and watched the oak door across the marble reception area. There were magazines, there was coffee, and there was a very efficient and snooty receptionist. What there wasn’t, was any sign of Sir Richard for the past — he looked at this watch — two hours. Not very respectful, except respect you have to earn. Well, what about getting killed for Queen and country? Two things, Harry boy. One, you weren’t killed. Two, you don’t have to be anybody special to get yourself shot; any grunt can do that. And three — well, there’s always a three — you aren’t rich or famous, so you don’t count for squat. And amen to that.
He looked at the coffee station. What the hell was that all about? A coffee station — that being a steamer, a bunch of sachets of freeze-dried, taste-extracted dust and coffee grounds left over from the bottling plant. And anyway, if he was bothered to limp over there, he’d have to get the coffee back without spilling it, because that’s so uncool, and then he’d have to sit. Well, then he’d probably need to go to the bathroom, because coffee is one of those diuretic things. Bit like anything good to drink—
“Sir Richard will see you now,” the snooty receptionist said snootily.
Harry got up slowly, his leg having stiffened from all that sitting. He should really have got up and moved about a bit — perhaps got a coffee from the coffee station.
The snooty receptionist watched him limp slowly across in front of her desk to Sir Richard’s door and wondered if he’d manage i
t with the stick. She could have got up and opened it for him, but why would she do that? That’s a job for a porter, who had taken the day off, again. Just because he was old he just assumed… well, we would see about that.
Harry pushed down the silver handle of the heavy oak door and managed to shoulder it open without pitching head first into the office, though it was a close call.
Sir Richard was sitting behind an appropriately huge desk, reading something important. Harry could tell that because he didn’t look up. He sat down in the Queen Anne winged armchair — having first made sure there were no hair-oil stains on the lace headrest cover, because this was just the kind of chair favoured by people with oily hair.
He would have crossed his legs, but Harvey Thorne’s first born was not stupid… well, okay, he’d joined the marines, gone to a war zone, got blown up and shot, and gone back and got his two friends killed, along with two Americans, and nearly got himself waxed in a grubby little village in the middle of nowhere. But that didn’t count.
After a few more minutes, Sir Richard put down the papers he’d been looking at just to piss Harry off and made one of those affected pyramids with his fingers. “Well, Harry, you have certainly stirred up a hornets’ nest,” he said quietly. And one thing was for certain, quiet usually meant bad. He tapped the papers with his finger.
So the papers were not just to piss Harry off, then. Strike two.
“I can explain, sir,” Harry said, leaning forward on the stupidly inappropriate chair.
Sir Richard raised his eyebrows. “That would be an interesting and somewhat challenging feat.”
Harry leaned back. Okay then, if he wasn’t even going to give him a chance, then he could go screw himself.
Sir Richard waited for the required dramatic interval and then nodded. Now, in a situation like this one, nodding can be good or it can be bad. So, not much of a giveaway, then.
“Tell me, Harry,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “This Taliban commander?”
Harry could have said, “Which Taliban commander?”, but he wasn’t stupid, as has been established, so instead, he shut up — which could have been a first.
Sir Richard picked up one of the papers and scanned it unnecessarily. “The commander who has subsequently been identified as the terrorist Mohammed Rahman Ali, and also known, though somewhat grandiosely, as Lupus.” He glanced away for a moment. “Though also known as implies we know anything at all beyond his name.”
Harry could see the life in prison and firing squad, dialling down to just a strong likelihood. At least someone believed he’d met this Taliban and had been allowed to walk away, so that was a start. “If you know about this terrorist, then the regimental CO knew about him when he was giving me all that grief in Helmand,” he said, as the truth unfolded in his mind. “Which means…” He leaned forward. “It was all bullshit!”
Sir Richard shrugged. “Perhaps, but we had to keep it quiet, and if that meant showing you in rather less than a glowing light, then que sera, I’m afraid.”
“That’s big of you,” Harry said bitterly. “You hung me out to dry and just left me there.”
Sir Richard watched him without a flicker of emotion. “This is bigger than your reputation.”
“Easy for you to say,” Harry said, a little petulantly. “It’s my reputation that says I’m a liar at best and at worst a coward who got his friends killed and ran away.”
“Oh no,” Sir Richard said, raising his hand. “It’s much worse than that.”
Worse? Shit.
Sir Richard watched him for a moment, as if weighing up the consequences of telling him versus those of not telling him. “The authorities think you are a collaborator who sold your friends out for money.” Clearly the option to tell him won out — and if that was the best option, not telling him didn’t bear thinking about.
Harry stood up angrily, but falling back into the chair in agony somewhat diminished its dramatic effect. After a few seconds he recovered his dignity. “But why?” he said through teeth gritted by anger and pain. “I’ve known you all my life, why would you let this happen?”
“Some things are bigger than patronage,” he said and sighed heavily. “But this hasn’t been easy for me.”
“Oh, poor you!” Harry snapped. “What about me? I was going to get court martialed and probably shot.”
“You may well yet.”
Harry’s jaw was hanging open. He snapped it shut. “This is nuts! You know I didn’t collaborate with this… this… Lupus.”
“Yes,” Sir Richard said. “MI6 has known about him for some years, but we have never got anywhere near him.” Now it was his turn to lean forward. “Until now, no one knew what he looks like.”
And there it was.
Harry watched the man who had remained a larger-than-life figure throughout his childhood, never changing, and always scary. “You want me to help you catch Lupus?”
Sir Richard nodded. “In a way. We need you to identify him for us, so we can eliminate him.”
“Okay,” Harry said, “bring in your artist, and I’ll draw you a picture.”
Sir Richard laughed, which threw Harry completely because he’d never even seen him smile before.
“We have a whole gallery of drawings of the man.”
“Then why do you need me? Just circulate the pictures in Afghanistan, offer a couple of dollars reward and sit back and wait.”
“That won’t work. Don’t you think we would have done that if it would?” He shrugged resignedly. Good point. “His file is full of… different pictures. He will have already changed his appearance, he is a chameleon.”
“Then what can I do? I only met him once.”
“Yes,” Sir Richard said, “and that is precisely the point.”
“What, that I have met him?”
“Yes. Sketches, photofits, even pictures won’t identify him, but you have met him. You have seen the way he moves, speaks, holds himself. You have met the man.”
Harry didn’t get it. “But if he’s changed his appear—”
“You will know him,” Sir Richard said.
And Harry knew he would. It was like reading a man through the rifle scope, knowing what he would do even before he did it. Instinct, training, and practice. He would recognise him. “Okay,” he said, knowing when an argument was lost, even with himself. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
“He’s coming here, isn’t he?”
Sir Richard watched him steadily for several seconds. “We believe he is.”
“In the village,” Harry said slowly, reluctant even to form the words, “those dead marines.” He took a moment to continue. “It wasn’t some crude chemical attack to piss off the Americans, was it?”
Sir Richard didn’t answer, and that was loud enough.
“A biological weapon?” Harry got the same response and drew the same conclusion. “But we’ve been waiting for some terrorist group to attempt a biological attack on London for years. What’s changed?”
Sir Richard still didn’t answer, wanting to see just how good the son of his best friend really was. And hoping.
Harry looked past Sir Richard, out through windows that distorted the light enough to show they were armoured. His frown deepened. “Why wasn’t Lupus afraid to enter that village if there was biowarfare material there?” The question wasn’t really expecting an answer. “It had dissipated.” He thought it through. “Those bodies, the old men, the women and the kids. They were just to draw in the marines, to get them to send a patrol to check it out.” He had it, but didn’t want to believe it, but eventually he had to. “Unless… It was doctored to only attack the Americans.” He shook his head. “But that’s just science fiction.”
Sir Richard watched him steadily for a moment. “Yes, it used to be.” He closed his eyes for a second to ready himself for the enormity of what he was about to say. “What you are describing is an ethnobomb. Do you know what an ethnobomb is?”
> “A weapon that kills a specific ethnic group, but that’s—”
“The Israel Institute for Biological Research developed one back in the nineties, to target only Arabs, but it was too crude to be used. Only twenty-five percent effective, and as such, it would have killed a whole lot of Israelis too, so it was mothballed.”
Harry closed his eyes. Oh God. “I remember reading about it. Caused a hell of a scare.”
Sir Richard sniffed. “Well, you could say that. It certainly changed international law.”
“But if Lupus has this ethnobomb, I don’t get it? You said it was designed to kill Arabs and was only marginally better than regular bioweaponry.”
“Yes,” Sir Richard said. “It was.” He looked out of the window while he collected his thoughts. “They changed it,” he said at last. “Made it more effective. And now it targets anyone but Arabs.”
Of course it did. The image of the marines dead in the market square came back to Harry as clear as a video replay. And all those villagers, just bait. He wanted to kill Lupus, and that was the first time he’d ever wanted to kill anyone.
“There is no way Lupus, or all of Al Qaeda together could do that,” he said, pushing the hate away into a corner to be used later. “It would take state-of-the-art laboratories and the best biochemists in the world to produce bacteria that reacts only with Western DNA.” He thought for a moment. “Syria? Yeah, they could afford it. But they have enough problems of their own right now. Saudi Arabia? But they have no reason.”
Sir Richard watched him eliminate all the possible sponsors, until only the impossible remained.
“Russia?” Harry said as he reached his conclusion. “But they are our allies.”
“In words, perhaps, but not in deeds. Many in Russia, even at the very top, long for the days when they were the big kids on the block. And helping Lupus indirectly helps their ambitions to that end.”
Harry shook his head. “But a weapon like this could be used against them too. They’re not Arabs, after all.”
“They believe they can control Lupus for their own ends, harness him, as it were.”
A light came on in Harry’s head with almost an audible click. “Valentin Tal,” he said, almost to himself.