by Matthew Dunn
Knutsen looked up and smiled. “I guess it’s because I can’t get it out of my head that the Falklands are the other side of the world.”
“Then, do a mind trick on yourself. Imagine they’re the Scottish Highlands. Stanley is Inverness. Everything west is mountainous bandit country.”
Knutsen laughed. “Yeah. When you put it that way it works.” He sipped his drink. “I’m not like you. I worked a patch. I didn’t travel the world undercover.”
“Stick with me and you may well do. You are eminently well equipped to do so.” Sign had achieved what he needed. “Now, Mr. Knutsen, tomorrow we must visit the homes of Wilson, Taylor, Green, and Jackson. At some point we will also need to speak to their families. But tonight we are housebound. I note there’s a stack of DVDs next to the television. I wonder if we might watch The Imitation Game. It is historically flawed but nevertheless is a fine drama with near-perfect characterisation.”
Knutsen looked at the stack. “I’d prefer Goodfellas.”
“Heaven forbid. What about When Harry Met Sally?”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course not. I have my eye on The English Patient.”
“Nah. Too maudlin.” Knutsen now felt fully relaxed. “I tell you what, why don’t we just sit here and swap war stories.”
Sign smiled. “That would take us one or two steps back in the past. I believe a man should always step forward. The solution to this evening’s entertainment, on such a dreadfully inclement night, is I believe to play a board game. There is a tiny selection on the mantelpiece. Would you prefer Monopoly, Scrabble, or Trivial Pursuit?”
“You’ll beat me in Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble. And I know you – you’ll cheat in Monopoly.” Knutsen drained the rest of his drink. “Monopoly it is. But no way am I letting your conniving ass be banker.”
CHAPTER 8
Major Casero arrived in Mount Pleasant via a direct flight from Santiago, Chile. If any official at the airport asked him why a ‘British’ man had flown to the islands from South America, he’d say he’d been on British government business in Panama. Then he’d keep his mouth shut. But, he wasn’t challenged at the airport. Rojo was already on the islands, having taken the earlier flight from Santiago. Fontonia and Sosa were due to arrive in an hour, having flown up to Heathrow, and taken a coach and taxi to Brize Norton, before boarding a flight back down south. It would have been an exhausting journey, but the women were used to such hardships.
As Casero exited the airport he checked his watch. He had time to book in to the Southernwind hotel in Stanley, shower, and get changed. He picked up his hire car and drove into the tiny capital. Rojo was staying in a bed and breakfast, one mile outside of Stanley. Fontonia and Sosa would be staying in cottages. It would have been easy for the team to covertly infiltrate the islands via boats or scuba gear, once they’d been offloaded by a fake fishing vessel or a military submarine. But they needed to look the part, if ever challenged on the islands by police or the army. Possession of air tickets was vital. So too possession of fake passports that matched the Anglo-Saxon names on the air tickets. Thankfully, Casero, Rojo, Fontonia, and Sosa could bluff the rest in their sleep.
Casero was a British government official who was on top secret business.
Rojo was a white South African insurance official.
Fontonia was a Kiwi investigative journalist.
Sosa was a pregnant Australian who divided her time between Melbourne and the South Pole. She was to pose as an engineer who’d visited the Falklands and had a fling with one of the drowned men.
All of them were allegedly here to work out what happened on that tragic night.
In truth, their agenda was the same – find the fifth man and kill him.
After Casero had checked into his hotel and washed and changed, he laid on his bed and slept for two hours. The rendezvous was not until 1000hrs. He had time to re-charge his batteries. At 0900hrs, he exited the hotel and drove northwest. The ground was still thick with snow, but thankfully the air was clear. He spotted three vehicles adjacent to the bleak coast, stopped by them, and got out. The occupants of the other vehicles also got out – Rojo, Fontonia, Sosa.
Casero walked up to them. In perfect English, he asked, “Any problems?”
They shook their heads.
“The cache?”
Sosa replied, also with pitch-perfect English. “We’ve dug it up, got what we needed, and re-sealed the cache.”
The cache was one of many planted by Argentina in the remote parts of the Falklands. All of them contained items of use to special operatives. The one Sosa dug up was no different. She placed her small rucksack on the bonnet of her car and withdrew items. “Four cell phones and chargers.”
“Use the word ‘mobile’” snapped Casero. “We are not Americans.”
Sosa was unperturbed. “Four Sig Sauer handguns with extra magazines. Maps. Ten thousand British pounds each. Thermal binoculars. Bullet proof vests. And these,” she picked up one of four identical items, each the size of a packet of cigarettes. “Cameras. They have a far greater range than mobile phone cameras, and images can be uploaded onto our phones and shared.” She leaned against her car. “The vests are merely damage limitation. If you get shot in the upper body with anything as powerful as these,” she lifted one of the handguns, “you’ll most likely end up with a cracked sternum or broken ribs. The vests are too thin to fully protect us from military or police weapons. But, they give us a chance to escape or take down the enemy.”
Casero asked, “Have the phones been programmed?”
Sosa nodded. “There are five contacts in each phone. Four of them are identified by letters. Casero is ‘A’. Rojo is ‘B’. Fontonia is ‘C’. I’m ‘D’.” She’d put different coloured stickers on each phone in order to remember which phone belonged to whom. She handed the phones out. “The fifth contact is our way to get out of here. It’s listed as ‘Travel Agent’.”
The team collected every other item.
Casero was pleased. Everything was on track. “Work the angles. And remember – other people might be looking for the fifth man. If you establish who those people are, identify them, take photos of them, share the images with the rest of us, follow them, and neutralise them once they’ve led us to the target. Hopefully it won’t come to that. Let’s hope we can find the fifth man before anyone else does.”
Fontonia said, “Maybe the fifth man has given himself up and is under heavy protection in Mount Pleasant or has been taken off the islands by the Brits to another secure location.”
Casero checked the workings of his handgun. “I very much doubt that. At best what happened when our ship was attacked would prompt a major diplomatic incident between Britain and Argentina. At worst we’d now be at war. The fact that nothing’s happened means the fifth man’s gone to ground.” He placed his pistol in a pocket. “We find the fifth man. We kill him and anyone around him. Whoever makes the kills summons the rest of the team. We dispose of bodies. We exit via the trawler, codename ‘Travel Agent’.
The trawler was an Argentine boat that belonged to FIA. It was anchored thirty miles off the islands. It would come to shore once the assassination was done. Casero, Rojo, Fontonia, and Sosa would swim a few hundred yards to the boat and get on board. The swim would be agony, but they could do it. Then, they’d go back to Argentina.
Casero looked at his team. “Let’s hope the next time we see each other is when we’re mopping up and getting out of here.” He stowed his equipment in his car and drove back to Stanley.
Over the next four hours, Sign and Knutsen searched the homes of Taylor, Green, and Jackson. There was no need to force entry into the properties – Colonel Richards had given them keys. They found nothing of interest.
The last property to investigate belonged to Wilson. His home was a small house near the Stanley quay. They entered. It was clear there was no woman’s touch in the place. The tiny kitchen’s sink was crammed with dirty dishes. On the adjacent su
rface were empty foil ready-meal containers and pint glasses. Half-drunk bottles of cider and ale were on the floor. There was one upstairs bedroom. The bed’s duvet was twisted and looked like it hadn’t been washed in an age. The room smelled of fish and musk. The bathroom toilet was dirty. The sink contained whiskers from Wilson’s shaving. By the taps were one toothbrush and toothpaste, a razor, and shaving foam; nothing else. The adjacent shower only contained one bottle of shower gel. The downstairs lounge had a sofa, a TV positioned on top of a chest of drawers, lobster pots hanging from meat hooks attached to the wall, rolled up maps of the Falklands’ coastline, an overflowing ashtray, a rack that had dank-smelling cloths on them, and a mantelpiece that had a framed photo of four men huddled together, arms on shoulders, smiling, on board Wilson’s boat.
Sign picked up the photo. “Wilson, Taylor, Green, and Jackson.” He turned the picture around. There was a label on the back. Handwritten on the label was ‘Feb 2017. Beers and fishing day’.” Sign opened the frame and withdrew the photo. There was no inscription of any kind on the front or back.
Knutsen was rummaging through the chest of drawers. “Bills. More bills! Phone charger leads. A bottle of aerosol deodorant. Passport in Wilson’s name. Bank statements. Loose coins. Cream for cracked heels. First aid kit. Packet of condoms – unopened. Tea towels. Nothing else.”
Sign said, “Take the bills and the bank statements.” He looked at the photo. “I wonder who took this shot.” He carefully rolled the photo up and placed it in his fleece pocket. Leaning against the wall in the corner of the room was a shotgun. Sign examined the weapon. “This hasn’t been fired for a long time.” He put the shotgun back against the wall. “There’s mothing more we can do here.”
Knutsen placed Wilson’s paperwork in his backpack. “If only we had the murdered men’s mobile phones. We’d be able to find the fifth man in seconds.”
Sign shared his frustration. “Navy divers searched the seabed underneath Wilson’s boat. It was a futile task. Tides and currents could have taken the mobile phones anywhere, if they were thrown overboard after Wilson and his men were killed. There are two other possibilities: the Argentinians took the phones back to their country; or the fifth man took them because he didn’t want the police to know he’d been roped into the mad escapade that night.”
“The police analyse the phones. They identify the man who supplied the men with military weapons.”
“Yes, but would he have had time to get their phones, with the spy boat so close? His priority was to escape.” Sign moved to the centre of the room, staring at nothing while deep in thought. “It remains a hypothesis. And by definition, a hypothesis is an idea that can only be proved or disproved by evidence. We need more than evidence. We need fact. My hypothesis is that the fifth man is a loner and a survivalist. He is an islander; not an ex-military foreigner. He is fit. I posit that he may be in his thirties or forties, no younger, though folk around here are hardy so it could be he’s in his fifties or sixties. I will tag another label to my imaginary profile of our quarry: he knows seamanship. Getting an emergency craft off deck and into the sea while under gunfire, boarding the vessel, and rowing it to shore, is no mean feat.”
“So, he’s a fisherman.” Knutsen wanted to leave the house. There was no heating on. It was at least minus ten degrees.
“Maybe he’s a fisherman. Certainly he knows the sea.” He nodded his head, his voice quieter as he said, “What bothers me are the missing phones. If the Argentinians have them why haven’t they done something about the fifth man?”
“Killed him. In which case the police would be aware that there’s been another murder of an islander.”
“Precisely. It would have been impossible for the spy ship not to have spotted the fifth man on Wilson’s vessel. And it would have been impossible for the spy ship crew not to have seen him escape. But they had work to do. They had to cleanse Wilson’s boat, dump the bodies into the sea, and get back to Argentina. They couldn’t risk chasing the fifth man to shore.” Sign frowned. “Why isn’t the fifth man dead? It’s because he hasn’t been identified. If the Argentinians knew who he was he’d be shot by them in a nanosecond, so to speak. They absolutely must cover their tracks about what they did that night. The consequences for them if they didn’t would be awful. The mobile phones may have been tossed overboard by the Argentinians, or they may - by some miracle - have been grabbed by the fifth man while bullets were raining down on him. Most likely they were taken by the Argentinians.” Sign looked at Knutsen. “Maybe the evidence never made it to Argentina. Maybe the boat was damaged in the gun fight. The spy ship sunk somewhere between the Falklands and Buenos Aires. Argentina doesn’t have the phones. The fifth man doesn’t have the phones. They are forever lost.” He looked grave as he said, “But Argentina will want the fifth man as much as we want him.”
“Maybe they don’t know about the fifth man.”
Sign shook his head. “With the technology on their boat, the Argentinian spies wouldn’t have missed a thing. They’d have seen the fifth man rowing to shore.” He ran fingers through his hair. “This is so terribly annoying and dangerous.”
Knutsen was puzzled. “Dangerous.”
Sign snapped, “Idiot Richards and his idiot boss, the chief of defence staff, are gunning for a fight with Argentina. In turn, Argentina will pull out the stops to prevent that from happening. We and the fifth man are in the middle.”
Knutsen walked to the front door. “There’s an Argentinian special forces assassination squad here now, isn’t there?”
Sign walked past him and out of the house. “Yes there is.”
That evening Sign prepared a beef bourgeon and placed it in the oven, while Knutsen analysed Wilson’s bank statements and bills. Sign walked out of the cottage and looked at Bluff Cove. He knew the penguins would be there, huddled together. He imagined they be feeling miserable as they tried to sleep. But he couldn’t see them or anything else beyond the cottage. It was dark and the moon and stars were hidden by cloud cover; and there was no artificial light for miles around his temporary accommodation. Snow was falling fast, but Sign didn’t notice the weather. All he could think of was that somewhere out there was the fifth man. He imagined the man was lonely and frightened. The fifth man couldn’t trust anyone, least of all the police and the British military. Sign was convinced he’d not only supplied guns to Wilson and his friends, he’d also engaged the Argentinians. Post combat trauma was likely. Sign knew all about that.
He shivered in the cold, bleak weather. But he stayed for a few more minutes, collecting his thoughts. He wondered if what he and Knutsen were doing had moral purpose. There was a case to be made to let the fifth man stay off the radar in order to avoid a British assault on Argentina. Sign didn’t want war. He’d seen too much death in his career to revel at the prospect of witnessing more death, thanks to his actions. But, if his hunch was correct that there was an Argentinian death squad on the islands the fifth man was a dead man walking unless he and Knutsen could get to him first. Sign was adept at looking at the big picture, protecting the national interest of Great Britain. But, so often in the front line field of special operations in came down to protecting those around you – your foreign agents, colleagues, civilians who’d helped you. Sign didn’t know the fifth man, but he did feel a connection to his plight. On that basis, Sign and Knutsen’s job in hand had integrity and honour. What Sign didn’t yet know is what he’d do when he found the fifth man. Hand him over to Richards? Or debrief the man and tell him how he could go into permanent hiding? The latter option would involve him having to lie to Richards and his boss. Still, Sign had never been averse to lying to people in power.
He re-entered the cottage. The smell of the casserole pervaded the lounge and kitchen. Knutsen was sitting in front of the log burner, clutching Wilson’s papers.
Sign sat opposite him. “What do you make of the documents?”
Knutsen sighed. “For the most part there’s nothing that leaps out
from the invoices and bank statements. It’s all standard stuff – debit card transactions for the grocery store in Stanley, purchase of petrol, vehicle repairs, rent and utilities, bank transfers to suppliers – all of them fishing related, cash withdrawals, itemised sales of fish, tax returns, purchase of clothes, and on and on. In other words, regular stuff that a single guy would do with his cash and fishing income.”
“The cash withdrawals – what was the pattern of behaviour in terms of typical amounts withdrawn?”
Knutsen smiled. “Twenty pounds here, thirty pounds there. But you’ve spotted the one thing that has perplexed me. On the day before his death he withdrew five hundred pounds. At six PM on the evening of his death he withdrew a further five hundred pounds. I’m guessing five hundred pounds per day is his maximum withdrawal limit permitted by his bank.”
“Yes. But, he needed a thousand pounds in cash and he needed it urgently. The money won’t have been for a knees-up in Sally’s bar on the night of his murder. The amount is too exact and way beyond what four men could spend in one night in a modest coastal pub.”
“Maybe he had medical bills to pay.”
“With cash? No.”
“Purchase of illegal narcotics? Sally said she smoked cannabis between shifts. Maybe there’s an underground cottage industry on the islands. Or Wilson and his mates were smuggling in drugs and needed to pay their suppliers.”
Sign waved a hand dismissively. “One thousand pounds wouldn’t cover the costs of a covert return trip in Wilson’s boat to South America to buy drugs. And with a population of approximately three thousand, the islands simply don’t have enough people who ingest narcotics to demand such a trade. If, on the other hand, a small number of islanders are growing cannabis locally, one thousand pounds strikes me as a significant amount of money to buy – as, I believe, you cops and criminals call it – weed. Am I correct?”