The Hit List (13 page)

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'Basically that we'd like you to join the department.'

'Why? There must be scores of ex-Regiment blokes like me doing the rounds. And who are you people, anyway?'

'In answer to your first question let's just say for the moment that you come highly recommended. As to who we are, well. . .' She thought for a moment. 'How's your modern history?'

'Uneven,' admitted Slater.

She smiled. 'OK. Basically we're a department of MI6, based at Vauxhall Cross. Our official title is the Operational Research Cadre, but we're usually just known as the Cad^fe. Like all such departments we've had several identity crises over the years. We started life during the Second World War as a subsection of the escape and evasion unit known as MI9, whose role was to set up ratlines for agents and POWs in occupied Europe.'

Slater nodded. He'd been introduced to a couple of wartime agents at the Special Forces Club behind Harrods. They'd been watchful, belligerent men, he remembered, unsoftened by the passing of the years.

'When the war ended,' Eve continued, 'the unit's infrastructure remained in place but its role changed. Until the early fifties its principal activity was the tracing and processing of former Nazis. And then, at the time of the Korean War, with the Cadre reduced to a single office at SIS headquarters, a decision was taken to run a major network of covert operatives in South East Asia. So new faces, new money, and a new role.'

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forking alongside the CIA and the US Special Slater hazarded. 'The Vientiane connection?' at sort of thing. Those were the Cadre's Dark I guess. You hardly ever meet anyone from that ; most of them just kind of, I don't know, vanished. ithe jungle, I suppose.'

ange days!' said Andreas, swirling his Cognac in loon glass.

id now?' asked Slater.

Jow the Cadre is an autonomous, fully-funded rch unit within Six.' Lesearch?'

re shrugged. 'It's as good a name for what we do ptything. Basically we're problem-solvers. People departments, other services - come to us with ;ry intractable problems. And we solve them.' I'm not sure that I like the kind of problem-solving ['re talking about,' said Slater. 'I'm sure we ildn't be having this conversation if you hadn't your homework, so I assume you've seen my vice record.' Bve nodded.

jTThen you know about the circumstances founding my leaving the army?' She nodded again.

'Then you'll know that I don't do that sort of work more. I don't like it. And I don't need the itmares.'

I'Andreas leant forward. 'Neil, like you said - and like : both know - there are scores of ex-Regiment guys

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like us doing the rounds. But most of them left the Army for a damn good reason - they were burnt out, they'd screwed up, they'd lost their nerve. That or they were so overwound that they wanted to put a bullet through everyone who so much as looked at them. But you're not in that boat. You had a bad time, you got lost in the old Darklands for a while, but you pulled through. You must have pulled through to have done that stuff af^fHe^ school. And for all that line you fed me in the New Year about getting shot of the system, I could tell straight away that you hadn't really changed. Not deep down. Deep down you were the same old green-eyed boy I used to know in B Squadron.'

'I'm not sure that I am that person any more, Andreas.' Slater drained his coffee. 'I'm really not.'

Eve leaned forward. 'Look,' she said. 'Can I make a suggestion? Why doesn't Andreas drive all your shopping home for you? And why don't you come back to Vauxhall Cross with me? Just for an hour. There's something I want to show you.'

If Andreas was irritated at being relegated to the role of bag-man he didn't show it, merely leant back in his armchair with the remains of his Cognac.

For several moments Slater avoided Eve's gaze. The fact that he was very obviously being flattered didn't detract from the fact that the department's offer had real temptations -- the most immediate of which was the chance to stop agonising about the outcome of the Bolingbroke's inquiry. And he'd never been inside the

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16 headquarters. He felt a crawl of curiosity.

'No strings?'

She shook her head. 'No strings whatsoever.' i Slater felt in his pocket for his keys. There was jthing revealing or incriminating at the flat.

'I doubt I need to give you the address,' he said drily. j Eve and Andreas smiled.

ic MI6 building towered over Albert Embankment the Thames with a kind of colossal arrogance.

Jere we are, it said, in plain sight. Make of us what

ju will.

For all its visibility, and for all the supposed new enness and accountability demanded of the security wees, Slater knew that the building housed one of

|ie least transparent organisations in the world. The

ablic were given the impression of inside knowledge the same way that audiences were let into a

agician's act -- for no other purpose than to distract

jem from the main order of business. Even the

indows were opaque.

'Welcome to Ceausescu Towers!' Eve said drily, and ter followed her through the tall glass doors into the ium, where he filled in a security form and was ided a visitor's pass to clip to the lapel of his jacket. The lift door opened with a sigh on to a bare air

Dnditioned corridor with small, high-set, triple zed windows. At the far end was a door marked S>RC (9). Swiping a card and punching a code into the

eypad, Eve gestured that Slater precede her into a

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small, open-plan office containing several computer terminals. At one of these a man in heavy black spectacles was listening to a head-set and making notes. At another a woman with a spiky punk hairdo was scrolling through aerial photographs. Each raised a hand in silent greeting as the pair entered.

'Has anything come in for me?' Eve asked, hanging her coat on a stand by the door.

The spike-haired woman nodded. 'Couple of things. Nothing urgent. And I've got those pictures you asked for.' She handed Eve a black envelope.

'Thanks.' Eve turned to Slater. 'Let's go into the briefing room.'

The room was windowless and spotlit. Haifa dozen chairs stood at a rectangular mahogany table.

'Have a look at these.'

She took two colour photographs from the black packet. One showed a clean-shaven young man in a sheepskin jerkin and military fatigues, the other was a blurred portrait of a lightly bearded figure in a Mujahidin cap.

'You may or may not recognise these men - they're the ones who tried to kidnap Masoud al-Jubrin. The one on the left is All Akbar Dilshah, and this one is Riza Talibi. They were council members of the Hizb al Makhfi, a Saudi-based terror group which has carried out actions in several countries; most recently, of course, in the UK. Six has been watching these men for some time now. They were both trained at camps in the Dasht-i Lut desert in Iran, and both spent several years

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alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. There's ipn Algerian connection. These were not amateurs.' (.was pretty sure they weren't,' said Slater. j'm sure. But just in case you've got the slightest ; about what you did to them, I'd like you to look je other pictures. They show the specific acts of ence for which these men and their group were >nsible.'

;r went through the pile. It was as bad as ig he'd ever seen. The first picture showed a ig arcade in which a bomb had exploded, were several corpses, some of them barely isable as having ever been human. Other s, maimed but not yet dead, scrabbled in agony st the blood and the glass. The second jgraph showed a line of blank-eyed teenage girls red up against the dusty mud wall of a building. jjir throats had been cut from ear to ear and their were sheeted with blood.

girls went outside the house without a veil,' I Eve.

iter nodded and continued through the pile. An couple lay face down and naked at a roadside; s clear they had been whipped to death. There another bomb-scene: a screaming woman tiing a dead child, a young man staring edulously at the mess of flesh, bone and denim that once been his legs. The final photograph was of a ig woman lying on a table, her head severed from body.

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'That was Riza's sister,' said Eve, her grey eyes expressionless. 'He killed her when a rumour started that she'd been seeing a Christian male nurse attached to one of the hospitals.'

Wearily, Slater replaced the photographs in the packet. He said nothing.

'Sometimes people just have to be stopped^-said Eve. 'Their actions amount to a declaration of war, and the only rules you can apply to them are the rules of war. But I hardly need to tell you that, do I?'

'No,' said Slater. 'You don't need to tell me that.'

She got to her feet. 'Come with me.'

He followed her from the room and into a side office whose floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a dizzying view towards the north-west. Like those outside in the corridor, the windows were triple glazed and treated against laser penetration and radio frequency flooding. Far below them, its steely surface galvanised by an erratic spring wind, was the Thames. Beyond the river, their grey mass softened and illuminated in the sunshine, were the towers of Westminster, Belgravia and Whitehall. Beyond these, fainter, St James's Park, Constitution Hill and Buckingham Palace.

'There's a place for you here if you want it, Neil,' Eve said quietly. 'What more can I say? The work's hard, the company's good, the money's crap to middling and there's a not bad canteen.'

He felt his phone vibrate against his hip. 'Excuse me,' he said apologetically, and glanced downwards.

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'FREE TONIGHT? RING ASAP.' He smiled to elf, and flicked off the display.

d news?' H think so.'

I'JEve ran her fingers through her blunt-cut fair hair, going to give you a number,' she said. 'Ring it if want to get hold of me. Any time, day or night, [? Any time.' He took the card.

jm Vauxhall to Green Park took five minutes on the

:toria Line.

'Neil,' Grace said when she saw him. 'You're not Rearing a single--'

'I came straight here,' he told her, looking down at

j jeans and desert boots. 'I haven't had a chance to ige. And by the way, I'll be paying you back for all gear.'

She slipped her arms around his neck. 'Darling, wi't even think about it. You are free tonight, aren't

3U?'

, 'Yes. But what happened? Where's your husband? I jought he was supposed to be in London tonight.'

'He rang half an hour ago,' she said, flipping open le waist-stud of Slater's Levis. 'From Frankfurt.'

When they finally lay still the light had gone from le sky. As Slater lay half asleep on the ruined bed Jrace gently raked her nails up and down his back.

'So, do you fuck any of your other ladies?' she whispered, nipping his ear between her teeth.

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'Uh-uh.' He shook his head.

'I bet you do,' she said. 'I bet you make them scream.'

He opened his eyes a fraction. 'Are you being serious?'

'Tell me about all those fat Middle-Easterners,' she breathed. 'What do you do to them? And aU those Manhattan social-register types, how do they like it best?'

'Do you seriously think that's how I spend my time?' Slater murmured.

'I wouldn't mind, necessarily. As long as you were here whenever I wanted you. And you told me about all the others. In detail.'

He raised himself on one elbow. 'Grace, there aren't any others to tell you about. There's just you. I'm . . . I'm amazed you could think I wanted to see anyone else.'

'So, what do you do all day with them?'

'I follow them about. Like I did you.'

'But they must want more, some of them.'

He let his head fall back to the pillow. 'I've got no idea.'

She climbed across him. Straddled his drowsy form. 'Neil, darling, don't be cross with me.' Slowly she began to rock her pelvis back and forth. He made a point of not responding.

'You're cross with me, aren't you?' She closed her eyes and continued the movement. 'Mmm . . . but maybe not that cross!'

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rious, he felt his body betray him. Jo on, Neil,' she gasped. 'Turn me over. Fuck me was a prostitute . . . Tell me I'm a whore. Tell I'm a filthy backstreet whore.' Ie could do the actions, but he couldn't make : say the words. For the first time, he found her achable. After a few minutes she gave up the ghost, dded next to him. Said nothing.

lat would you like to do this evening?' he asked I eventually.

ic looked at him quizzically, and he gently ched her cheek. For a moment she seemed to flinch

tenderness, and then she gave a small laugh, fell . . .' she began brightly. 'Madonna's giving a at Chinawhite. We could go to that. There it be some amusing people there.' Ie hesitated. 'With me going as what?' he asked t. 'Your bodyguard? Your lover?' ^What would you like to go as?' she asked him, ing an exquisitely shaped eyebrow. fefWell, I'd like to go as your boyfriend, but I'm ig my job if I'm seen. And I don't expect your isband will be too happy if he hears we've been out

the town together, either.'

; 'Don't worry about David. David just wants me to happy. He expects me to go out and have a good ie.'

t More fool him, thought Slater. 'But of course we shouldn't endanger your career, juld we?'

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'We'll go,' said Slater. 'We'll go to the party. With you as my lover. How's that?'

'That's nice,' she said, touching his cheek. 'As my lover, then, rather than as my bodyguard, would you go and find me something from the fridge? Fucking always makes me so hungry.'

He took the tube home to change. The flat Wis as he had left it: neat and Spartan. The bed was made-with the blankets stretched drum-tight across the mattress, as he had learnt as a seventeen-year-old squaddie.

Andreas, he discovered, had taken his designer clothes out of their bags and squared them up on the bed in their tissue paper as if for a kit inspection. The silver and crocodile belt lay where his webbing belt had once lain; the Prada shoes stood where his Northern Ireland boots had once stood. The ex NCO's message was brutally clear: you're still following the orders of your betters - the only difference is in the design of the uniform.