Street Soldier (23 page)

And then he remembered – he had never really forgotten – holding Clarky’s mutilated, barely alive body in his arms. Anger – sheer violent, homicidal rage – flooded through his veins. No, he had no choice, because passing up on this chance to get back at the
fuckers
who had done that to his mate wasn’t an option.

‘This isn’t what I trained for,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do.’

‘Be yourself, Private,’ the woman told him. ‘You’ve a criminal history, you’ve been inside, so you have at least some understanding of the people you will meet. And
you’re a trained soldier. You’re smart. You’re streetwise. You know how to read a situation. You can handle yourself with and without a weapon. You’re physically fit. In many ways, you’re perfect already.’ She laughed, then added, ‘And that’s not flattery. It’s just a simple fact.’

‘Now,’ the man said, ‘show me your phone.’

Sean frowned, but shrugged and pulled his phone out. The man studied it, then pulled a briefcase from under his seat and fingered through a selection of different models until he had one that looked similar. He popped the casing and inserted a SIM card, then handed it back.

‘It’s pay-as-you-go,’ he said, ‘and it has only one number programmed in, which goes through to Sergeant Adams. From now on, he is your contact. He’s been briefed.’

‘The sergeant?’ Sean exclaimed.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

He had no more problem with that than he did with the entire mess he had managed to make of his entire life. In fact, it was pretty trivial in the big scheme of things.

‘Just don’t see Sergeant Adams as a spook . . .’ He couldn’t see Adams as anything less than one hundred per cent straight up. And he couldn’t see the man who had believed in him enough to get him into the army wanting to have anything more to do with him.

‘So what do I do, then?’ he asked.

‘Exactly what you have been doing,’ said the driver. ‘Work with Heaton and whoever he is involved with—’

‘Work with Heaton?’ Sean repeated in disbelief. ‘
Work
with
fucking Heaton
? After what you told me? I’ll kill him! I’ll—’

‘Manage your anger or go to jail,’ the man snapped. It was like a slap, just enough to bring Sean back to his senses. ‘Find out everything you can, without drawing attention to yourself. And report everything back to Sergeant Adams.’

‘And you two?’

‘There is no “us two”,’ the man said simply. He checked the clock on the dashboard. ‘Now, what did you tell your muckers you were off to do?’

‘Said I was going to get a present for my mum.’

‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’

He closed the windows and switched on the engine, reversing out of the space.

In the supermarket, the only thing Sean was really aware of was the new phone in his pocket.
That
was all he was getting as preparation for going undercover? It didn’t seem much. What if things went wrong? What if he was discovered? What if Heaton found out and shopped him to Rich? What if he ended up being on the receiving end of one of the SA80s? Or one of Heaton’s IEDs?

Too many what-ifs. Sean found a cheap box of chocolates and went back out to the taxi.

‘You need to understand,’ said the spook as they headed back towards the barracks, ‘that this is highly secret. And dangerous. If anyone suspects anything, I – indeed anyone else involved in this investigation – will be unable to help you. And if the ones we are trying to catch get even a whiff of something amiss, then I wouldn’t count on them being forgiving.’

‘Makes me feel so much better,’ Sean muttered. ‘So what exactly am I looking for and how will I know when it’s all over?’

‘The answer to both those question is that we don’t know. We desperately need grass roots intelligence, just to understand what we’re up against. We want to stop Rich, to prosecute him – but we don’t yet know how. We know what kind of person he is, but what makes him tick, what he wants – that’s another matter. So, feed us everything you learn, and we’ll do the rest. The more we know, the better.’

The barracks were up ahead now. Although the hangover was gone, Sean was feeling sick again. Frying pan and fire sprang to mind. He needed to lie down. To sleep. To forget about all this, wake up and find that it was all a dream. Except that wasn’t going to happen, was it?

‘You, Private,’ the man added, ‘are our best lead in months, if not years.’

‘How much danger am I in?’ Sean asked as the Prius pulled in to the kerb.

The driver turned round, stared hard at Sean, the engine on idle. ‘You are a soldier,’ he said, voice flat, no emotion. ‘You are trained for dangerous situations. It’s not all about humanitarian aid and rescuing children from burning houses. So you will be in danger, yes. But that’s what you signed up for, isn’t it? You made your choices.’

Sean opened the door.

‘You can’t just leave,’ said the man.

‘Why?’ Sean asked.

The man pointed at the timer on the dashboard.

‘I have to pay for this?’

The man stared, said nothing, and Sean realized that of course they were in view of the guards. Everything had to be normal, and that included returning squaddies paying off the taxi driver.

He settled up. ‘Keep the change,’ he muttered, and slammed the door.

Chapter 25

If Heaton was going to tell him anything at all, Sean knew it would be at the weekend. That was when it had all gone down before – when they were off duty and could get off base with no questions asked. And so half of him wanted, more than anything, for the weekend to come, and the other half dreaded it.

And sure enough, half an hour after knocking-off time on Friday, Sean was round at the flat and wishing like hell, after what Heaton had just told him, that he wasn’t.

‘What do they need an RPG for?’

He thought his question was natural, even if he was supposed to be working undercover. Sitting in Heaton’s kitchen, he didn’t feel undercover. He felt about as above cover as it’s possible to get. How could Heaton not tell just by looking at him?

I know what you did to Clark, you fucker . . .

But after the time he’d spent with Copper, Sean had
learned to keep his feelings to himself, not letting on. And so he sat there, and kept his expression impassive, and listened to the corporal talk.

‘Who cares?’ Heaton answered. ‘Think of the money!’

The week after the interviews had gone by as if nothing had happened. On the Tuesday, the platoon was on a forced march that had most of them dead on their feet and close to throwing up. The next three days went much the same way, though instead of trying to kill them by running them into the ground, Franklin and Adams had them all going through numerous close quarter combat drills.

At those times, the theft of the SA80s was like a memory of something Sean had seen in a movie. But at night, when he could lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, it all came back. Then he was acutely aware of the two lives he was now leading. One as an ordinary soldier, the other as the bloke who, thanks to some very bad decision-making, had ended up working secretly for MI5 to find stolen weapons and terrorists.

Sean stared at the man he had once almost liked, and for the thousandth time the rage that had consumed him ever since the meeting in the cars flared up like an acetylene flame. He quickly sat on it.

‘I can’t just think of the money,’ he replied. ‘No one
needs
an RPG. Not to defend themselves – unless they’re
in the middle of a firefight, or into some seriously dodgy shit.’

Heaton pulled a couple of cans from the fridge and tossed one over.

‘So what’s he want it for?’ Sean asked him again when it became obvious that he wasn’t saying anything else.

‘Let’s just say that it’s for a cause we both care about.’

‘Well, that’s vague as fuck.’

Heaton sipped his can. ‘No it isn’t. It’s exactly what we talked about before we hit the Reservists. It’s about protecting what we value from those who would blow it all to shit.’

Sean didn’t reply.

‘Think what happened to Clark,’ Heaton said, and Sean almost threw the beer in his face. That was exactly what he had been thinking.

‘What’s this got to do with that?’

‘Everything,’ Heaton said. ‘Because Rich’s whole thing is to stop people who do stuff like that.’

The smell of bullshit in the air was growing stronger by the second.

‘You’re having a laugh, mate.’

‘You see me laughing?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Well, don’t let it bother your pretty little head,’ Heaton said. ‘I was only letting you know about the
RPG. I’ll be the one sourcing it while you’re off in London enjoying yourself.’

Sean blinked. ‘While I’m what?’

Heaton grinned and raised his can in salute. ‘Rich wants to meet you alone, golden boy. Congratulations. He’s forgiven you for the rug, by the way – says it was his wife’s and he never liked it anyway. I said you’d be in Trafalgar Square at fifteen hundred tomorrow.’

Chapter 26

‘The simple fact is, we are at war.’

Rich finished his double espresso and delicately dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘Our borders are open gates and the enemy are already here. And yet we welcome them with open arms while we grind our own people into the dirt.’ His eyes burned into Sean’s as he spoke.

Sean wasn’t sure if some response was required. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said hesitantly.

They sat on folding chairs outside a coffee van in the shadow of the National Gallery, and looked out across Trafalgar Square. Sean, Rich – and Malcolm, wearing the same hard-bastard look as he had the week before.

The square was thick with tourists, all vying for photographs, swarming slowly around the fountains and Nelson’s Column and the four giant lions. It was a warm day – the only blessing on the Underground had been the blasts of cool air as the trains punched their way out
of their tunnels and into the stations – and the tall buildings trapped the heat and made it almost suffocating.

A couple of pairs of armed cops were on a slow patrol, bulky in body armour, with Heckler & Koch MP5s cradled casually in their arms. The amount of flesh on show in the crowd was both good and bad, depending on where Sean looked. There were some fit girls about, and on a normal day he would have enjoyed eyeing them up. And they might have eyed him back, if he hadn’t been sitting with one guy who could have been his dad, and another who looked like he hated them all.

Rich had been waiting by the coffee van, which looked more vintage vehicle than state-of-the-art café. They were served by a man wearing an expertly manicured pencil-thin moustache and a striped apron. It was all about as fake as Rich himself.

With MI5’s briefing in mind – and as he wasn’t pissed this time – Sean was seeing Rich in a different light. It was like all the smiles and posh accent and general hospitality were a thin plastic shell over something deeper and far worse. The smile was now thin and cold, and the eyes above it were hiding something. Sean didn’t want to know what, but he had to try and find out.

‘You don’t sound convinced,’ Rich observed. The smile was colder.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sean. ‘I just didn’t realize there was a war on.’

He had reported this meeting via the phone to Adams and the spooks. The answer had been simple:
Report back ASAP afterwards
. So not a lot to work with. He wanted to get Rich talking, which meant questions – but too many questions can start to sound like doubt, and he didn’t like to think what Rich might do to doubters. Was he saying the right or the wrong things? Shit, it was like walking through a minefield.

Rich looked around, and his eyes settled on someone. ‘If we weren’t at war, would there be people like
him
around?’

Sean followed the nod of his head. A homeless guy was shambling through the crowd. He was ragged and grubby, his clothes betraying a life spent on the streets. The bags he pulled behind him on a broken trolley were his only possessions. By his side a little dog trotted along, attached to him by a lead made from a piece of frayed rope.

‘Sure there would,’ Sean said, ‘because there’ll always be rich tossers who don’t give a shit.’

Rich stood up abruptly. He clicked his fingers at Malcolm, who slipped his hand inside his jacket and handed over a black wallet. Rich pulled out a thick wad of notes, twenties by the look of it, and handed them to the man with the dog. The homeless guy looked down at
them, looked up at Rich, looked back at the money. Rich stepped away deliberately, hands held out as if to disown the cash. The man shuffled off at a surprising speed, the wad magically disappearing before Malcolm could beat him up and take it back again.

Rich returned to his seat. ‘Well,’ he said softly, ‘apparently I’m a rich tosser who does.’

Nice performance
, Sean thought. He somehow couldn’t see Rich handing out money to every poor guy he passed.

He wondered if he had successfully steered between two mines, or was standing poised with one foot just resting on the trigger mechanism.

‘Uh,’ he said. He tried again. ‘Look, I hope you understand that, well, I’ve been dicked about by people in authority before. I need to really know that you’re different. And unless you’re all about free handouts to homeless dudes, I’ve no idea what you even stand for. I know what you like and what you don’t like, but I don’t know what your cause is.’

A light flickered in Rich’s eyes, like a flame in a furnace. ‘Our cause is simple, Harker,’ he said. ‘To make the public want what we want. A Britain where no decent person has any need to be afraid – but where life is intolerable for those who are not decent. In short, the exact opposite of what we have now. Does that sound so bad?’

No, Sean had to admit, it didn’t – not put like that. Not if you didn’t know exactly how Rich intended to achieve that aim – through terror and murder.

Rich stood and cast his hands wide to gesture at the whole square. ‘This place stands for everything that’s wrong with this country. Built to commemorate our greatest ever naval victory, a victory that should have made Britain secure for ever – and now look at it. A tourist trap full of people conned into thinking they are protected, when in reality they are little more than slaves for exploitation, a commodity to be bought and sold on the lies of self-serving politicians!’