1 Things Left Undone
It had been three days and two nights since Lieutenant Graham Jones had been dropped off in the middle of the night in the border county of Armagh, Northern Ireland. He had kept out of sight and fended for himself, living off the land and the meagre rations he had brought along with him.
It was a game of patience, he knew that. It was impossible to force the situation, at least to his advantage. In Bandit Country, it was he who was the bandit and it was he who had to keep his head down and wait. Assurances had been given. This was going to take place. The meeting was arranged. It was a one-time chance to make the connection. He had been told that it was due to take place at the village church at midday. The only problem was, no one was able to say which midday on which day, only that it was sometime during the coming week; sometime during the coming week in an April that seemed to be forever full of showers and turned the landscape to mud.
He should have listened to his father and gone into the carpet business. Nine to five, five days a week, a decent wage and a dry, warm office. He was glad he hadn’t listened. How awful. The idea that anyone could spend thirty minutes in an office, let alone thirty years, appalled him. He would rather take a bullet than a gold watch. As soon as he was old enough he had fled, straight into the arms of the army and then, with determination and patience, into the SAS. Even on days like this, when every element was against you and you thought that your body couldn’t take the cold and the wetness and the discomfort any more, he knew that he was better off than he would ever have been behind a desk. This mattered; ten square feet of Axminster in the dining room did not.
He looked at his watch. Five minutes. He lifted his binoculars and looked at the aged wooden church door. There was nothing. This was going to be another wasted day. At twelve fifteen he would remove himself from the scene and skulk away to his hiding place in the woods and wait for tomorrow. That was what irritated him more than the rain and the mud, the wasted time, the things left undone.
On the first night he had planted a mic inside the church and in the outside porch. Every moment that he had spent exposed unnerved him. Everything in the church either creaked or echoed and it had taken five long minutes to get a mic to stay in the porch roof. It was worth it. Every word, snatched from the ether by the system that turned on automatically to sound, would be caught on a tape recorder tucked away in the vestry. As he had scurried away from the church, he had had to dive behind a headstone while two young lovers had attained ecstasy on a tombstone. That was one ticked off the bucket list for them anyway. He had made it back into the woods without a problem. They might have up to a week’s recordings to go through when the job was done, but that was a small price to pay for such first-class surveillance.
With him now he had a shotgun mic with sniper site which he held levelled at the building like a sharpshooter in the event that the infernal meeting should take place.
Three minutes later, the church door opened. A man in brown trousers and a thick green jumper poked his head out, looked about and then beckoned another outside. It was Joyce. Bloody hell! thought Jones. It’s on. It’s actually on. He wriggled his body in the soft ground and got comfortable, put the butt of the adapted mic into his shoulder and looked through the site. Yes. It was as clear as day and in the distance he could hear the sound of a car approaching the centre of the village.
The car, a blood red Ford Granada, stopped outside the church. The driver got out, checked furtively and efficiently around, then opened the back door. The man who got out walked quickly towards the porch of the church, his arm outstretched in greeting and shook hands vigorously with the two men. Jones squinted as he tried to pick up the conversation. The newcomer was a yank, no doubt. He was fresh-faced and intent and he was dressed like an all-American, in a blue cardigan and big-winged white shirt, worn loose at the neck, along with pressed grey slacks. ‘Face me, dammit! Jones cursed as the visitor refused to turn his way. Joyce opened the heavy church door and made a motion for them to go in. Once, pleaded Jones with the gods. Just let him turn around once.
At that moment, the man turned and Jones caught the shot from the small powerful camera built into the lens of the site. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be enough. It would be enough, along with any transcript they got from the recordings, to show the world, splashed across every newspaper and news programme from Norfolk to California. He had them. He had them both.
Something landed next to him in the long grass. He tutted at it for breaking his concentration, then noticed it glint metallically in the wetness. He recognised it as the mic from inside the church. What the hell?
‘Stand up,’ said a voice behind him in an unmistakable Belfast accent. ‘Turn around and stand up.’
Jones turned and saw the large nostrils of a double-barrelled shotgun facing him. Beyond that was a man in a balaclava, only his brown eyes and his thin lips visible through the holes in the material.
He kicked out at the gun. The man must have had his finger over the trigger, because it fired as it swung away from him. He felt hot pellets pepper the side of his face. As the man swung back towards him, he leapt up and barrelled into him, shoulder and head down, lifting the man’s body from the ground as he drove into him.
In the distance he heard shouting, seeming to come from everywhere. Without thinking, he snatched the shotgun from the man’s hand and drove the butt into his head. After two hits, the man fell still. Blood streamed from his shattered nose and he had clearly lost some teeth; they were embedded in his mashed lips. His breathing was laboured. There must have been blood flowing into his airway. Jones was tempted to let him suffocate but instead tugged him roughly onto his side. That done, he stood, picked up the shotgun mic and bolted for the woods. There was no point trying to hide now. The shotgun blast had given away his position. The evidence from the church was lost; if they had found one mic, they had probably found the other. If he could get what he had back to the mainland or even to one of the barracks, then that might still be enough.
The edge of the woods approached. He could hear his own stuttered breath as he ran over the uneven ground, see the steam rise from his mouth ahead of him and dissolve into his chest as he tried to keep his balance. If he could get into the trees, if he could get into his hidey-hole, then he would be safe, at least until dark, when he could make a break for it.
He heard something buzz past his ear. They were shooting at him. The distant crack of a pistol hit his ears long after the shot had passed. How bloody brazen could they be? What was this place, the Wild West? He sprinted into the woods, voices coming at him from all sides. Now he had the advantage. He had spent days out here and had made sure he knew it like the back of his hand.
They continued to chase him, but they were more distant now. He could sense them begin to drop away as soon as he had entered the trees. This was it. He was almost home and dry. The nest was only thirty yards away, invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there. He could settle, get some shut-eye until dark, have a cold snack.
Now he was alone. The shouts had diminished. He ran to the hideout and dived into it. The darkness was all-consuming, womb-like, welcoming and safe. He could smell the mulch beneath him. It was the smell of home. He fell to the ground, onto his back and breathed deeply and heavily, as quietly as he could. Soon he would be warm again. His breath alone would be enough to warm his secluded refuge. Once he was warm, he could rest, save his energy for the night-time run. He slowed his breath and felt the thudding of his heart lessen in his chest.
Then the world about him began to peel away as if someone was tearing at a canvas. Daylight broke into his darkness and rain fell in large drops after gathering on the branches of the trees above until they were too heavy to remain suspended any more.
Around him stood four men, each with a shotgun in his hands. One of them moved forward and grabbed the shotgun mic from his hands.
Now he was blown, well and truly.
The man retreated and handed the mic to John Joyce. Joyce put his gun on the ground and examined the mic with interest, then grabbed it by the muzzle and swung it against the thick trunk of an oak. It shattered.
He picked up his gun again and pointed it Jones. ‘You English bast…’ was all Lieutenant Jones heard as the shotgun blast filled the end of his world.
2 Senior Service
The rain did little to stifle the summer heat. There had been talk of a storm, something to alleviate the tension that seeped from the heavy air and proceeded by osmosis to infect the minds and bodies of the hot and bothered in their offices and cars, but it had not come. Mike Ward leaned out of his office window and breathed in deeply. He loved the petrichor of summer, the way the dry concrete drank in the rain and released the minute spores of dust into the air, the way the parched ground became engorged by the downpour and brought about that musty mulch smell which permeated everything.
‘He’ll see you now, Mr Ward.’
Ward turned to see Mrs Thornton at the door. ‘Thank you, Mrs Thornton. Mrs Thornton, why don’t you ever call me Mike? Everybody calls me Mike.’
Mrs Thornton raised her nose an inch. ‘On the day we are married, Mr Ward, I shall call you by your Christian name, but not until then. Boundaries, Mr Ward. Boundaries.’
‘You could have used the phone, you know. To tell me he was ready to see me.’
‘Yes, I could. Come on. Don’t keep him waiting. You’ll just aggravate him.’
Mrs Thornton disappeared back to her office. Ward liked to think that she had a sly smile on her face as she walked along the corridor, that she was toying with him.
So what did the Chief want? It was like waiting to be executed. First there was the summons, the twenty-four hours’ notice, then the perception that everyone about him knew something that he didn’t, then the idea that he had done something to displease that brown-haired, thin-faced Zeus who sat atop his mountain, occasionally dropping bolts of lightning on the unsuspecting few. Editors were bad and he had had run-ins with a few of them in his time, but the Chief was in a different league.
He walked into Mrs Thornton’s outer office, she didn’t look up from her typewriter, and knocked on the Chief’s door.
‘Come.’
Ward opened the door. It was the first time he had been in the Sanctuary, as the office was known. It was really no different to his own or anybody else’s office. The desk was somewhat sturdier, made of oak with a green leather top bordered by a thin seam of gold. There were various pieces of art on the wall, only one of which Ward recognised, a print of Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, a rather sad picture he had always thought, and a drinks cabinet in the far corner. What looked like a private switchboard sat on the desk, presumably so that the Chief could carry on fifteen conversations at once. But the walls were still that dull ministry beige, the windows still fogged by dust and tobacco smoke, the ceilings nicotine-white and the green carpet thin between the desk and the door.
‘Sit down, Ward,’ said the Chief. He busily finished scribbling, reread what he had written and shoved the piece of paper aside with a grunt.
Ward sat down in the hard chair across the desk from the Chief. He crossed his legs and locked his fingers in his lap. He had decided that this was what he would do before he came in. He hated it when he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Once they started flapping about like bird’s wings you were lost. An editor had once told him it was the words that mattered, so if he could ‘stop with the bloody sign language, that would be great’. Harsh, but true.
‘How are you, Ward? Settled in?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
The Chief leaned over to a wooden box and flipped the lid. ‘Help yourself to a cigarette, Ward.’ He took one for himself and lit it. ‘Senior Service. My father smoked these. He gave me my first cigarette. He said, in that rather marbly way he had, ‘You’re going to smoke anyway, so you may as well have your first one with me’. It wasn’t my first one, of course. I’d had my first one a couple of years previous to that at school. I used to sneak out after the evening meal with some chums. We got caught, of course. Fined ten bob each, but that was part of the fun, seeing if you could avoid the prefects on the prowl. Still, it was nice of my father to do that, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Chief put on a pair of reading glasses, pulled a folder towards him and opened the thin buff cover. Ward noticed his name in the top right hand corner. He lit a cigarette and waited while the Chief scanned the pages.
‘You seem to be doing pretty well.’ The Chief ran a finger down the page as he spoke. ‘Physical - good. Psychology report - good. Load of bunkum if you ask me. Psychology! You’re either round the twist or you’re not. All that digging into dark corners never did anybody any good.’ He raised his eyes and peered over his glasses at Ward. ‘I mean, I don’t want to know if you wanted to sleep with your mother and kill your father, Ward. Don’t ever share that with me. Really. Gives me the willies.’ He returned to the page. ‘Weapons - good. Doesn’t take long to get back on the old bike, does it. Unarmed combat - good. Of course, none of that matters if you can’t do the paperwork. That’s all anybody cares about nowadays, the paperwork. How’s your paperwork, Ward?’ He ripped off the glasses, raised his grey eyes and looked intently at Ward.
‘Immaculate, sir.’
‘I should bloody well think so with your background.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No regrets?’
‘About what, sir?’
‘About jacking it all in and joining the circus.’
A million, Ward wanted to say. It invades my sleep and I want to wake up safe in the knowledge that this is all a nightmare. I can’t believe that I was stupid enough to surrender the freedom of the outside world for a stale, smoke-stained office and the tedium of a nine-to-five existence with the occasional stretch of nights thrown in for fun. He wanted to tell the Chief about the nausea that enveloped him whenever the sudden realisation of what he had done climbed upon his back and slapped him across the head.
‘No, sir. No regrets,’ he said.
‘Liar,’ said the Chief with a hard, straight face. Ward shifted uncomfortably. ‘I bet you wake up every morning wishing you could have a leisurely cup of coffee in the sun and then hide behind your typewriter for a few hours.’
Ward looked at his hands. ‘Not really, sir.’
‘Of course you do. I do. Brooks does. We all do. But there’s something, isn’t there, just something, that holds you back or, in your case, draws you in.’ He narrowed his eyes and a thin smile played briefly across his thin lips. ‘I bet you thought you’d done your time once you bought yourself out, didn’t you? I bet you thought that you’d never get dirty again. Yet here you are.’ He stared at Ward, his face frozen in the almost-smile, his eyes still narrow, his mind turning at a thousand RPM. Ward could sense it. The man was never still.
‘I’m fine, sir.’ He regretted saying that immediately. It would have been better to say nothing. All he had done was sound a foghorn of denial onto an empty sea.
The Chief leaned forward and flipped the switch on his intercom. ‘Send Brooks in would you, Mrs Thornton.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The door opened and Brooks entered. ‘Morning, sir.’ He nodded at Ward, who returned the nod, then pulled up another chair and sat next to Ward. He put a folder on the desk. That meant that it was for the Chief. Had he kept it in his hands, the Chief wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Ward could tell that they had by now developed their own Morse code. For a moment he felt the pang of envy that all outsiders felt.
The Chief took the folder, opened it and perused the contents. That done, he raised his eyes to Brooks. Brooks nodded almost imperceptibly. The Chief closed the folder and slid it back towards Brooks.
‘How do you fancy going to America, Ward?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Bit of liaison work with the CIA and the FBI.’
Ward groaned inwardly. He wasn’t a fan of Americans. All the ones he had met as a journalist had been cocky loudmouths with little idea that there was another world beyond their own. He found them gauche and insensitive, much like their overseas policies. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said. ‘It’ll be good to get out of the office.’
‘Good,’ said the Chief. ‘Jolly good. I’ll let Brooks fill you in with the details. Well done. Off you go.’
Ward subbed his cigarette out in a rather fine cut-glass ashtray on the Chief’s desk. ‘If I may, sir…’
The Chief had already moved on to another older in his in-tray. ‘What is it?’
‘The woman…’
‘Woman?’ Which woman?’
‘Rose Trelawney…’
‘You should forget about her, Ward.’
‘I was just interested…’
The Chief looked up. His eyes were hard and unforgiving. ‘Physically, she’s fine. She lost the fingers on her right hand of course, but she still has a left hand, so that’s something. Unfortunately, she only had one mind and that seems to have crumbled. Not cut out for all that in the end, it would seem. Anyway, she’s done for and that’s that.’
‘I see,’ said Ward. He hesitated.
The Chief’s hard gaze remained. ‘And?’
‘I was wondering about The Chain, sir…’
The Chief rolled his eyes at Brooks with undisguised impatience. ‘I thought you two had settled this,’ he said. ‘Listen, Ward, there is no ‘The Chain’. It was all just bluff. We’ve had our best men follow up on that and they have found nothing. This…what was his name Brooks?’
‘Trask, sir. Devon Trask.’
‘Thank you. This Devon Trask, whoever he was, was most certainly not part of some big world-shaking conspiracy. He was just a lunatic with a big bank account and an overdeveloped sense of self.’ He looked at Brooks again. ‘Now I’m sounding like one of those bloody psychologists. You should drop it now, Ward. Brooks told me that you were a little too fixated on the whole thing. Forget about it. That’s an order. This isn’t one of those spy novels with that man what’s his name…’
‘B…’ began Brooks.
‘I know his bloody name, Brooks.’ The Chief turned his attention back to Ward. ‘We don’t pursue personal vendettas in the service, Ward and we don’t chase shadows. If that’s why you joined up then perhaps you should reconsider, while you still have the chance. Is all that clear? Well?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Jolly good. Now go along with Brooks and get up to speed with his American thing.’ He relaxed for a moment and his face softened. ‘You did good work on that Indian Ocean affair, Ward. My old friend Lawrence Stuart was full of praise for you. He said if it hadn’t been for you…well…’ He trailed away.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The Chief picked up his pen and returned to his paperwork. ‘Well, bugger off the both of you. I have things to do and so have you.’
Ward followed Brooks’ lead and stood, then followed him to the door.
When they had left the Chief looked up thoughtfully at the back of the door. He shook his head as if to shake away unwanted thoughts, then returned to his work.
