The Vengeance Man (13 page)

I considered the option.  It sounded good.  "What precisely do I have to do?"

"Don't you worry about that now.  All will be revealed if you're interested in doing the job.  Are you?"

"What about field work?"

Mallalieu blew out his cheeks.  "You really haven't got the message, have you?"  He stopped and considered.  "I'll tell you what I'll do.  To keep your self respect  and to give us a little reserve, I'll earmark you as an emergency reinforcement to our Bull Pen. That's what we call our response team.   If they ever get stretched, or we need a specialist back up, you'll be dragged out from behind your desk.  So you'd better carry on getting fit.  I'm sure I can use you. OK?  Any other questions?"  He sat  abruptly upright.  I was a little overwhelmed and confused.

"Yes, one.  What if I don't like Ops Coordinator?

"Ah." Mallalieu's tone was deceptively gentle.  "We're very choosy.  I did say
acting
Coordinator of Operations; if you're not up to the  standard required, then..."  He chopped his hand.

I was astonished.  "What?  Sacked? Resign?"

"Unless you want a job as a messenger or a driver for one of the teams." He looked  at me sharply.  "But somehow, I don't think that's your style. " He was right.

I hesitated.

"Look, Ops Coord is a good job.  You'll have more money and be doing a more interesting job. You'll even get a little run out occasionally to keep your hand in at doing what you done up to now.  Nothing like this though," he added hastily, tapping the file on the coffee table. " But I think I can use your talents."

I suppose, with hindsight, I wasn't exactly grateful.  "Yes," I said bitterly "Once a month; milk rounds and stake outs. I know the score. "

"Do you?  I wonder.  Look, you're tired and still not fully one hundred percent.  You're being given the chance to stay on in the business for another twenty years.  With more money, a bloody important job, and, if you can take this on board, with some dignity.  I'd say that to a man whose just effectively been kicked out of the Army that's not a bad deal,  is it?  What more do you want, for God's sake?"  He stared at me.

I gave in.  He was right. "OK, Colonel, you're right.  It's a good offer and I accept.   I'll try
O
ps
C
oord. "

He didn't look pleased -- affronted, more like.  "I should bloody well think so too!"   He rose sharply, gathered up his file and began to head for the door.  He stopped alongside me and put his hand on my shoulder.  "Look.  I know how you feel. " The face, mobile and calculating, peered too closely at mine.  "You go and have a long weekend, and come into our office next Tuesday.” He handed me his business card. “Report to Bill Luxton on the second floor. That'll  be your resettlement and training course and you can even bank two salaries for the next eight months.  Now do we have an agreement?"

I swallowed.  It had been a big day.

"Yes, Colonel." I echoed him. "We have an agreement."  Mallalieu's face relaxed,  but he kept looking at me.

"Good. I'll keep our contract just between us." He smiled a surprisingly youthful smile.  "It's better that way. More secure.  Good.  Well, I'll see you next week.  When you've cleared out of all this."  As he went down the corridor, he called back, "I'm glad you had the sense to listen to reason.  You can grow out of all this nonsense, you know. Special Ops. If you stay too long, it eventually affects you."   He tapped his head.  "So I'm glad for all kinds of reasons.  Do you understand?"

I must have looked surprised.  "Oh yes," he nodded.  "We were all worried about you for a bit. And you really can't go on being a boy scout for ever, can you?   If you do too much of this kind of work, you can end up as a nut case.  You know; you've seen them, the burnt-out fanatics, the head cases, haven't you?"   Again, he tapped  the side of his forehead.

"Oh yes, Colonel, I've seen them.  The head cases. "

"Well, you don't want to end up like that, do you?  A head case."  And with that Colonel Tom Mallalieu, Chief Executive of Specialist Insurance Services, Public Limited Company of London, England, disappeared down the stairs.  My new boss.

I'd got a job.

Specialist Insurance services, L
ondon

I had never thought about becoming a civilian.

I was convinced that I wouldn't enjoy the job, especially as a I couldn't see myself as a suit. I mean – me? An insurance man?

I couldn't have been more wrong.

It was fascinating; certainly at first, anyway.  When I had been in the service, I had always sided with the anti paper-pusher brigade.  Not for me the despised job of a staff officer, shuffling paper and agonizing about whether I'd ever get a place at the Staff College.  After all, I'd joined to do something really interesting, not sit in an office: to avoid the dreary trap of sitting at a desk in a gloomy barracks in some pine infested hole in Germany dreaming of a posting in the sun. Staff types were fat cats, and lazy incompetents, or ambitious ones at that.  Like most generalizations and opinions held by outsiders, I had been wrong.

Bill Luxton, who I was being groomed to succeed, was a cheerful fifty nine year old, addicted to pints of Real English beer and an amazing old tweed jacket  that was his trade mark. A tatty Royal Navy tie proclaimed his past allegiances, and, like as not, half his breakfast too.  Bill didn't give a damn; he had genuine traces of good old-fashioned English eccentricity.  In a way he reminded me of my grandfather.  Bill was an authority on Greece and was going to join his twin brother in Cyprus on the second of January next year, despite the appeals of both the Managing Director and the Chief of Staff.

I once found him having his ear bent in the basement bar by Tom Mallalieu.  Just as I arrived, Bill let the persistent Chief have his best broadside.

"Sod off, Mallalieu!"  He boomed cheerfully.  "I won't stay a day over my contract, and that's final.  I've buried my wife, I've long left the Navy, and I've no kids to bother about.  I'm going to spend my declining years looking at the sun set over Paphos and pottering about in my yacht. You can stuff commuting from Islington to  manage a shifty bunch of cut throats who don't know whether they're doing it for Queen and country, or pleasure and profit."

He saw me and waved his  glass, slopping beer everywhere. "Young Achilles  here can pluck the torch from my faltering  fingers, and carry it forward in life's race, while I drink myself senseless by the wine-dark sea!" His horn rimmed losses were slightly askew and his red face shiny and flushed.  He beamed at me. "Now, dear boy, the Chief of Staff is going to buy us both a drink, to celeb
rate my forthcoming retirement.
" Lips compressed, Mallalieu bought drinks, while Bill winked at me over  his irritated boss's shoulder.

Bill was a marvelous teacher.  He could plan and manage an operation from beginning to end faultlessly, think of all the things that could go wrong and cover for those too.  He could draft clear orders and instructions, arrange travel anywhere in the World at any time, fix tickets, finance, run a radio, internet and telephone system single handed, while at the same time, keeping up a dry and witty commentary on what was likely to go wrong and what
actually
was going wrong, and precisely why the two were different. Watching Bill do his stuff under pressure was like a masterclass in how to manage disaster, with a witty running commentary thrown in.

Bill treated everyone the same way, from the Managing Director to the cleaners in the front office.  He was also an extremely good judge of character.  He knew better than anyone which of our people were totally sound, which were impulsive,  and which were explosive lunatics: and we did have a couple of those.  Once, during that autumn, he had counselled against organising any rescue for two of our 'Protective Services' people who had the misfortune to be passengers on an airliner that was hijacked flying out of Colombia.

"Leave Martin O'Toole alone," he'd said in the sweaty council of war at 10 o'clock one evening. "Leave him alone, and he'll come home...
dragging some poor bastard's body behind him."  Single-handed he argued away all the pleas to intervene. And he was right.  Mallalieu had looked dubiously across at the 'Protective Services' chief, a smooth ex-Home Office type who'd shrugged and said, "It's your funeral, Bill."

Bill had snorted derisively.  "Look, those stupid buggers don't realise they've gone and hijacked a pair of live hand grenades: and O'Toole's always had a loose pin. Let Martin surprise them."

And Martin had surprised them. When the airliner had next tried to take off, he had cut loose like a one man panzer division. It cost him a small calibre bullet through the  hand: it cost the hijackers their lives. In a swathe of aggression he had killed three terrorists, bounced one very seriously off the tarmac via the emergency escape hatch, given half the elderly passengers heart attacks, and left the airliner a minor wreck.

"Told you," said Bill. "Once O'Toole realised he was on his own, he'd go for it. Every time; it's his nature. Bloody mad Irishman."

The wails of the insurance syndicates just made him laugh. Ironically, the airliner had been insured on the Lloyds books, so Martin's little foray cost some of the firm's backers dear. But the newspapers had a field day with
'A New British Hero'
and pictures of Martin O'Toole beaming unshaven from beneath the wing of the wreck. As Martin was a high-strung Catholic boy from Derry, this later made him
apoplectic
, but it was a great story. In the full, uncropped pictures you could see the litre bottle of
Jameson’s
clutched in our hero's good hand, doubtless liberated from the airliner's duty free store.

Of course the papers cropped that out: but Bill chortled over it like a schoolboy, and suggested that it should form the basis of the firm's Christmas card for the year, which drew a pained look from our distinguished MD, and made Tom Mallalieu's eyebrows threaten to disappear into his hairline.

Under Bill's careful eye I learned to control the diverse and far flung activities of the Firm. Of course, I didn't handle the straight contracts and business side.  Arab sheiks or visiting VIPs
wanting bodyguards got Protective Services; straight insurance risk evaluations were dealt with by Security Surveys; and all of the underwriting and most of the accounting was a closed book. Mallalieu kept an eye on all that stuff.

But all the major plans and all of the operations had to be known to Control and coordinated by us, so I experienced the peculiar fascination of being in on the operational secrets of an organisation.  I could have made a fortune peddling inside stories to the Press, if I'd been daft enough.  I also learned how to run operations properly; planning, recruiting, arguing, controlling.  Saying yes, and saying no.  I learned new tensions, too; of sitting at four in the morning by an unresponsive radio set, with nothing but the confidence bleep, and the smell of nervous sweat for monotonous company, while the computer monitors remained blank wh
i
le I waited for a cell phone message or an e mail from one of
Mallalieu’s
people out on a limb somewhere in the world, to say that all was OK – or not.

By December I was firmly in the chair and Bill relaxed, letting me run the show under minimum supervision. At his farewell party at Christmas, he got mildly drunk, and surprised everyone by turning up in a dinner jacket almost as disreputable as his brown tweed one. Even more bizarre, he was wearing an impressive set of miniature medals.  After dinner, a red-faced Pickwick, flushed and relaxed, he sought me out to congratulate me on being confirmed as his replacement.

"Well done, my boy; you've done very well.  You're just the chap for this, you know. A very good choice. At one stage when Mallalieu said he was going to recruit you, we thought he'd gone potty,  because you were supposed to be in ‘
P’
Wing.
[3]
  In fact, they were making jokes about it.  But, it's all worked out very well, wouldn't you say?"

I was startled. "I was never in P Wing.  Where on earth did you get that from?"

Bill looked contrite.  "No offence, old thing: it's just that after the Kurdistan job the word was, well, that you'd gone over the top. You know; stress and all that stuff.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder," he enunciated carefully, as only the slightly drunk can.

I was  shocked. "I wasn't loony, if that's what you're saying." I realized that I was bristling, but Bill, sensitive as ever in his own way, reassured me.

"No, no.  You've misunderstood. They had to hide you away, the story  was, so that those greasy Whitehall creeps couldn’t get at you. No-one thought you'd gone batty permanently.  It's just that everyone knew you'd had a bad  time. And, let's face it, you've done very well since you've been here. You've taken here over far better than any one expected -- even Mallalieu.  He told me so himself. And he didn't exactly sell you short tonight." That was true. Mallalieu, after his speech about Bill, had been generous in his praise for me in taking over his job. "You've done very well."

"I owe it all to  you, Bill.  You've been a good teacher. "

"Yes, but you've been a good student as well.  It takes both sides, you know. "

"Will you miss all this?"  I asked.

Bill looked sadly around the cheerful group. "Yes.  Yes, I will.  It's really my last night in the wardroom, you  see." He jangled his medals. "That's why I wore these.  It's  really the end of my career. "

"Oh, come on Bill. Working for this company isn't quite the same as holding the Queen’s Commission in the Royal Navy, is it?"   He looked at me shrewdly, sober.

"I wonder.  You may have a point. But sometimes I wonder who really runs this little company of ours.  Don't you? "

I was puzzled.  "Come on, Bill.  I know we get some government contracts, but doesn't everyone?  Considering the sort of person that ends up in the company, it's inevitable that we'll get asked to do some of the sensitive stuff. After all, we are on the Defence Contractors' list: a grade A, List X company.  Licensed by the Security Service to handle classified work.  Anyway," I added.  "We can't be that involved with the government --
we
make a profit!"

"Aha!"  Bill tapped  his nose, shiny as a beacon.  "Clever, that, eh?  And where do those profits disappear?  Answer me that, Mr. New Operations Coordinator."

I was nonplussed.  "Well, the Shareholders... the owners, the syndicates.  What about the famous City Consortium that founded  the company? "

Bill guffawed,  slopping  beer and attracting the attention of the crowded bar.  "You poor  sod. Don't you know?"  Bill sobered up. "No -- you wouldn't know.  Why should you?"  He dropped his voice. "Look, boy, I've been with this push since it started. Our impressive Chairman,
General
Sellers recruited me when I left the Navy.  I used to be the Coordinator in DI 19."

I hadn't known that.  DI 19 had been
very
secret. "Well, I was in this at the start.  And I always found the great City Consortium a bit..." he paused, waggling his hand from side to side.

"Iffy?" I queried, helpfully.

Bill snorted.  "Ethereal, more like. A bloody chimera." He liked that. "A chimera.  A non-existent mythical beast of a consortium.  The Chimera Consortium. Incorporated," he added for emphasis. "Where do you think the capital came from to start an organization like this?"  I started to speak.  "No.  Not Sellers. Even our esteemed Managing Director, Major General Guy Sellers, CB,
Retired
, still looking for that elusive knighthood, late of Her Majesty's Brigade of bloody Guards couldn't attract the sort of funds necessary to run an operation like this. He was helped. He had to be," Bill added with a kind of furious intensity I hadn't seen before. It was as if he was trying to explain something to himself.  He took a pull at his beer and looked  around as if  seeing everything for the first time.

"Look," he said. "Don't you realize that an operation like this can only operate with connivance? You've dealt with Harry Plummer, haven't you?  Both in and out the service?"

I nodded. "By the way, he was asking after you," added Bill. "Anyway, who do you think says, 'OK, Sergeant Plummer, go and dump the Metropolitan Police or the NCIS Computer's printout on a Public Limited Company working for the insurance industry, eh? A
private
security company?" 

I didn't say anything.  It wasn't often that Bill talked about the early days, and  I didn't want to interrupt  him.

"I'll tell you.  It comes from the Head of Special Branch, the Assistant Commissioner of the Met, and we all know where he gets his orders from, don't we?"

"Bill, if we're a List X secure defence contractor -- which we are -- then why shouldn't we expect support to back up our government jobs?  It's no different to a university being given classified material to service a defence research contract, is it?"

Bill snorted. "Oh, yes? and which other firms get access to Defence Intelligence Staff and Special Branch on a routine basis? The NCIS national data base? Plummer helped you
when you were in Directorate, Special Forces and now he’s helping you with this company. Without Whitehall's permission? Nah...! Christ, they even have L
iaison Officers
appointed to support us. Our profits are
helped
."

"OK Bill ... I'm not going to argue the point; particularly on your last night.  I just think it's sensible for HMG to
have nominated Los to
help companies on the defence contractors' list with information that they need to carry out the contract.  So who does get the profits from Special Insurance?"