A Delicate Truth (6 page)

‘Over here, Paul’ – Jeb.

Jeb has dropped into a squat at Don’s
side. Crouching behind them, he peers between their two heads, unable to make out at
first which light he’s supposed to be seeing. Lights were dancing in the
ground-floor windows, but they were reflections from the anchored fleet. Removing his
goggles and stretching his eyes as wide as they’ll go, he watches the replay of
the ground-floor window of house number seven in close-up.

A spectral pin-light, pointed upward like a
candle, moves across the room. It is held by a ghostly white forearm. The inland cameras
take up the story. Yes, there’s the light again. And the ghostly forearm is tinged
orange by the sodium lamps along the slip road.

‘He’s inside there then,
isn’t he?’ – Don, the first to speak. ‘House seven. Ground floor.
Flashing a fucking torch because there’s no electric.’ But he sounds oddly
unconvinced.

‘It’s Ophelia’ – Shorty, the
scholar. ‘In her fucking nightshirt. Going to throw herself into the
Med.’

Jeb is standing as upright as the roof of
the hide allows. He pulls back his balaclava, making a scarf of it. In the spectral
green light, his paint-smeared face is suddenly a generation older.

‘Yes, Elliot, we saw it, too. All
right, agreed, a human presence. Whose presence, that’s another question, I
suppose.’

Is the augmented sound system really on the
blink? Over a single earpiece he hears Elliot’s voice in belligerent mode:

‘Jeb? Jeb, I need you. Are you
there?’

‘Listening, Elliot.’

The South African accent very strong now,
very didactic:

‘My orders are, as of one minute ago,
precisely, to place my team on red alert for immediate embarkation. I am further
instructed to pull my surveillance resources out of the town centre and concentrate them
on
Alpha
. Approaches to
Alpha
will be covered by static vans. Your
detachment will descend and deploy accordingly.’

‘Who says we will, Elliot?’

‘That is the battle plan. Land and sea
units converge. Jesus fuck, Jeb, have you forgotten your fucking orders?’

‘You know very well what my orders
are, Elliot. They’re what they were from the start. Find, fix and finish. We
haven’t found
Punter
, we’ve seen a light. We can’t fix him
till we’ve found him and we’ve no PID worth a damn.’

PID? Though he detests initials,
enlightenment comes: Positive Identification.

‘So there’s no finishing and
there’s no convergence,’ Jeb is insisting to Elliot in the same steady tone.
‘Not till I agree, there isn’t. We’re not shooting at each other in
the dark, thank you. Confirm you copy me, please. Elliot, did you hear what I just
said?’

Still no answer, as Quinn returns in a
flurry.

‘Paul? That light inside house seven. You
saw it? You had
eyes-on
?’

‘I did. Yes. Eyes-on.’

‘Once?’

‘I believe I saw it twice, but
indistinctly.’

‘It’s
Punter
.
Punter
’s in there. At this minute. In house seven. That was
Punter
holding a hand torch, crossing the room. You saw his arm. Well,
didn’t you? You saw it, for Christ’s sake. A human arm. We all
did.’

‘We saw an arm, but the arm is subject
to identification, Nine. We’re still waiting for
Aladdin
to turn up.
He’s lost, and there’s no indication that he’s on his way here.’
And catching Jeb’s eye: ‘We’re also waiting for proof that
Punter
is on the premises.’

‘Paul?’

‘Still here, Nine.’

‘We’re re-planning. Your job is
to keep the houses in plain sight. House seven particularly. That’s an order.
While we re-plan. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘You see anything out of the ordinary
with the naked eye that the cameras may have missed, I need to know instantly.’
Fades and returns. ‘You’re doing an excellent job, Paul. It will not go
unnoticed. Tell Jeb. That’s an order.’

They’re becalmed, but he feels no
calm.
Aladdin
’s vanishing act has cast its spell over the hide. Elliot
may be repositioning his aerial cameras but they’re still scanning the town,
homing at random on stray cars and abandoning them. His ground cameras are still
offering now the marina, now the entrance to the tunnel, now stretches of empty coast
road.

‘Come on, you ugly bastard,
show
!’ – Don, to the absent
Aladdin
.

‘Too busy having it away, randy
sod’ – Andy, to himself.

Aladdin
is waterproof, Paul
, Elliot
is insisting across his desk in
Paddington.
We do not lay one
single finger on
Aladdin. Aladdin
is fireproof, he is bulletproof. That is
the solemn deal that Mr Crispin has cut with his highly valuable informant, and Mr
Crispin’s word to an informant is sacred
.

‘Skipper’ – Don again, this time
with both arms up.

A motorcyclist is weaving his way along the
metalled service track, flashing his headlight from side to side. No helmet, just a
black-and-white keffiyeh flapping round his neck. With his right hand he is steering the
bike, while his left holds what appears to be a bag by its throat. Swinging the bag as
he goes along, displaying it, showing it off, look at me. Slender, wasp-waisted. The
keffiyeh masking the lower part of his face. As he draws level with the centre of the
terrace his right hand leaves the handlebars and rises in a revolutionist’s
salute.

Reaching the end of the service track, he
seems all set to join the coast road, heading south. Abruptly he turns north, head
thrust forward over the handlebars, keffiyeh streaming behind him and, accelerating,
races towards the Spanish border.

But who cares about a hell-bent motorcyclist
in a keffiyeh when his black bag sits like a plum pudding in the middle of the metalled
track, directly in front of the doorway leading to house number seven?

The camera has closed on it. The camera
enlarges it. Enlarges it again.

It’s a common-or-garden black plastic
bag, bound at the throat with twine or raffia. It’s a bin bag. It’s a bin
bag with a football or a human head or a bomb in it. It’s the kind of suspicious
object which, if you saw it lying around untended at a railway station, you either told
someone or you didn’t, depending how shy you were.

The cameras were vying with each other to
get at it. Aerial
shots followed ground-level close-ups and wide-angle
shots of the terrace at giddying speed. Out to sea, the helicopter had dropped low over
the mother ship in protection. In the hide, Jeb was urging sweet reason:

‘It’s a
bag
, Elliot, is
what it is’ – his Welsh voice at its gentlest and most persistent.
‘That’s all we know, see. We don’t know what’s in it, we
can’t hear it, we can’t smell it, can we? There’s no green smoke
coming out of it, no external wires or aerials that we can see, and I’m sure you
can’t either. Maybe it’s just a kid doing a bit of fly-tipping for his
mum … No, Elliot, I don’t think we’ll do that, thank you. I think
we’ll leave it where it is and let it do whatever it was brought here to do, if
you don’t mind, and we’ll go on waiting till it does it, same as we’re
waiting for
Aladdin
.’

Is this an electronic silence or a human
one?

‘It’s his weekly washing,’
Shorty suggested under his breath.

‘No, Elliot, we’re not doing
that,’ said Jeb, his voice much sharper. ‘We emphatically are
not
going down to take a closer look inside that bag. We’re not going to interfere
with that bag in any way, Elliot. That could be exactly what they’re waiting for
us to do: they want to flush us out in case we’re on the premises. Well,
we’re not on the premises, are we? Not for a teaser like that we’re not.
Which is another good reason for leaving it put.’

Another fade-out, a longer one.

‘We have an
arrangement
,
Elliot,’ Jeb continued with superhuman patience. ‘Maybe you’ve
forgotten that. Once the land team has fixed the target, and not before, we’ll
come down the hill. And your sea team, you’ll come in from the sea, and together
we’ll finish the job. That was the arrangement. You own the sea, we own the land.
Well, the bag’s on the land, isn’t it? And we haven’t fixed the
target, and I’m not about to see our respective teams going into a dark building
from opposite sides,
and nobody knowing who’s waiting there for
us, or isn’t. Do I have to repeat that, Elliot?’

‘Paul?’

‘Yes, Nine.’

‘What’s your personal take on
that bag? Advise me immediately. Do you buy Jeb’s arguments or not?’

‘Unless you have a better one, Nine,
yes I do’ – firm but respectful, taking his tone from Jeb’s.

‘Could be a warning to
Punter
to do a runner. How about that, then? Has anyone thought of that your end?’

‘I’m sure they’ve thought
about that very deeply, as I have. However, the bag could equally well be a signal to
Aladdin
to say it’s safe, so come on in. Or it could be a signal to
stay away. It seems to me pure speculation at best. Too many possibilities altogether,
in my view,’ he ended boldly, even adding: ‘In the circumstances,
Jeb’s position strikes me as eminently reasonable, I have to say.’

‘Don’t lecture me. All wait till
I return.’

‘Of course.’

‘And no fucking
of
course
!’

The line goes stone dead. No shuffle of
breath, no background atmospherics. Just a long silence over the cellphone pressed
harder and harder to his ear.

‘Jesus
fuck
!’ – Don, at
full force.

Again they are all five huddled at the
arrow-slit as a high-sided car with full headlights shoots out of the tunnel and speeds
towards the terraces. It’s
Aladdin
, in his people carrier, late for his
appointment. It’s not. It’s the blue Toyota four-by-four without its
CONFERENCE
sign. Veering off the coast road, bumping on to the
metalled service track and heading straight for the black bag.

As it approaches, the side door slides back
to reveal the
bespectacled Hansi bowed at the wheel and a second
figure, undefined but could be Kirsty, stooped in the open doorway, one hand clutching
the grab handle for dear life and the other outstretched for the bag. The Toyota’s
door bangs shut again. Regaining speed, the four-by-four continues north and out of
sight. The plum-pudding bag has gone.

First to speak is Jeb, calmer than ever.

‘Was that your people I saw just now,
Elliot? Picking up the bag at all? Elliot, I need to speak to you, please. Elliot, I
think you’re hearing me. I need an explanation, please. Elliot?’

‘Nine?’

‘Yes, Paul.’

‘It seems that Elliot’s people
just picked up the bag’ – doing his best to sound as rational as Jeb –
‘Nine? Are you there?’

Belatedly, Nine comes back, and he’s
strident:

‘We took the executive decision, for
fuck’s sake. Someone had to take it, right? Kindly inform Jeb. Now. The decision
is set. Taken.’

He is gone again. But Elliot is back at full
strength, talking to an off-stage female voice with an Australian accent and
triumphantly relating its message to the wider audience:

‘The bag contains
provisions
?
Thank you, Kirsty. The bag contains
smoked fish
– hear that, Jeb?
Bread
.
Arab
bread. Thank you, Kirsty. What else do we have in that
bag? We have
water
.
Sparkling water
.
Punter
likes
sparkling
. We have
chocolate
.
Milk chocolate
. Hold it
there, thank you, Kirsty. Did you happen to catch that, Jeb? The bastard’s been in
there all the time, and his mates have been feeding him. We’re going in, Jeb. I
have my orders here in front of me, confirmed.’

‘Paul?’

But this is not Minister Quinn alias Nine
speaking. This is Jeb’s half-blacked face, his eyes whitened like a
collier’s, except they’re palest green. And Jeb’s voice, steady as
before, appealing to him:

‘We shouldn’t be doing this, Paul.
We’ll be shooting at ghosts in the dark. Elliot doesn’t know the half of it.
I think you agree with me.’

‘Nine?’

‘What the hell is it now?
They’re going in! What’s the problem now, man?’

Jeb staring at him. Shorty staring at him
over Jeb’s shoulder:

‘Nine?’

‘What?’

‘You asked me to be your eyes and
ears, Nine. I can only agree with Jeb. Nothing I’ve seen or heard warrants going
in at this stage.’

Is the silence deliberate or technical? From
Jeb, a crisp nod. From Shorty, a twisted smile of derision, whether for Quinn, or
Elliot, or just all of it. And from the minister, a delayed blurt:

‘The man’s in there, for
fuck’s sake!’ Gone again. Comes back. ‘Paul, listen to me closely.
That’s an order. We’ve seen the man in full Arab garb. So’ve you.
Punter
. In there. He’s got an Arab boy bringing him his food and
water. What the hell more does Jeb want?’

‘He wants proof, Nine. He says there
isn’t enough. I have to say, I feel very much the same.’

Another nod from Jeb, more vigorous than the
first, again backed by Shorty, then by their remaining comrades. The white eyes of all
four men watching him through their balaclavas.

‘Nine?’

‘Doesn’t anybody listen to
orders over there?’

‘May I speak?’

‘Hurry up then!’

He is speaking for the record. He is
weighing every word before he speaks it:

‘Nine, it’s my judgement that by
any reasonable standard of analysis we’re dealing with a string of unproven
assumptions.
Jeb and his men here have great experience. Their view is
that nothing makes hard sense as it stands. As your eyes and ears on the ground, I have
to tell you I share that view.’