The Watchman (41 page)

Pausing for a moment at the club portals, Alex took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers stored in its memory. After a moment's hesitation he selected one.

"Yep?"

"It's Alex.

There was a long silence. In the background he could hear the sound of female voices, shrieks, laughter. In the foreground, her breathing.

"Sophie?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

"I'm still here."

POSTSCRIPT.

London.

By 4 p.m. it was already dark and the rain-slicked pavements of Mayfair gleamed beneath the streetlights. As the driver nosed the big Jaguar into the electric glare of Piccadilly, Angela Fenwick turned to the HarperCollins publicity girl for a final confirmation that she was looking presentable, that everything was in place. Swivelling her head so that both sides of her face could be assessed, she received the publicity girl's smiling confirmation. Presentation, Angela knew, was everything at these affairs. Photographers would do anything to catch celebrities off guard even a new-born celebrity like herself, who had only emerged blinking into the flashlight of public regard a week earlier.

The launch at the club last night had gone wonderfully well, she mused, but then it wasn't every day that a senior member of MI-5 went public with her memoirs. Everyone had come: Tony and Cherie - Cherie looking lovely, as usual Gordon and Sarah of course, Patrick Mayhew, Mo Mowlam looking like something out of the Arabian Nights, Salman Rushdie (and boy, did that man owe her a favour), Tony Parsons .. . And Peter of course dear Peter with head held high since his vindication in the Hinduja passport business. The evening had been a triumph, with the only sour note struck by a scuffle between the security people and a rather tiresome group of civil rights demonstrators. In a way even that little embarrassment had worked in their favour. A paparazzo had been at hand to photograph the incident and the picture had made the cover of the Evening Standard.

The publishers had been marvelous, all in all, pulling out all the stops, footing the not inconsiderable bill without a murmur.

"We can only sell your memoirs once, Angela," they'd told her.

"So let's go for broke!"

And they had. Naturally she hadn't put in any of the really top-secret stuW that went completely against the grain. But there had been plenty of colour, plenty of telling detail and plenty of human touches. She'd even managed to include a couple of David Trimble's famous 'knock, knock' jokes, a good Martin McGuinness fishing story and the account of how, on April Fool's day 2000, Jack Straw had officially requested that she tap Ali G's phone.

On a more serious note she'd well and truly stuck it to those bastards over at Vauxhall Cross. That had been the real pleasure kicking MI6 in the teeth. Without ever saying so directly, she'd managed to paint a picture of smug, pin-striped, public-school, all-male arrogance an arrogance that spilt over with wearying regularity into reckless free booting on the international stage. Bosnia, Russia, Serbia, Iraq .. . What the sacked MI6 whistle-blower Richard Tomlinson had started with his expos of Britain's overseas Intelligence Service, Angela Fenwick had finished.

The career-ending deal had been presented to her shortly after Downing Street had been presented with the facts concerning the violent deaths of four Service employees. Her failure to protect her people, she had been told, indicated a dangerously cavalier attitude. Resign, she had been told. Go now, honourably and with a full pension. Jump before you're pushed.

It wasn't just the murders, she'd guessed. The Home Office had wanted one of their own sort at the helm at Thames House it was as simple as that. A white, heterosexual, privately educated male. Someone who spoke their language. Someone they could do business with. Someone who'd behave in a civilised manner concerning Security Services budget deals rather than fighting tooth and nail for every penny. It wasn't to do with the Watchman murders, ultimately. The murders were just an excuse.

So she'd jumped. They'd won. And she had started collecting up all the notes she'd made over the years. And A Career Less Ordinary had been born.

Annabel, the HarperCollins publicity girl, had been particularly sweet and in the run-up to publication the two of them had become quite close. Not quite close enough to fill the aching void left by Dawn, of course eighteen months after Dawn's death Angela still thought of her prot~g& every day -but close enough for Angela to look forward to the upcoming publicity tour, and the nights c~ deux in the big provincial hotels.

The tour itself would start tomorrow; today was the big London signing.

They'd decided to do just the one, at Waterstones in Piccadilly. The event had been well advertised and according to Annabel, who'd phoned ahead to the shop, there was a good crowd building.

The driver swung the Jaguar across the traffic in a swashbuckling U-turn, pulled up outside Waterstones, and hurried round to open the passenger door.

Dismounting, Angela noticed a tramp in a grease-shined windcheater lounging by the bookshop's main entrance. As she passed him the stub bled wild-eyed figure raised a can of Special Brew to her in ironic celebration. To add insult to injury he was sitting immediately beneath a poster of herself and her book. The former civil servant averted her gaze in displeasure. The PM hated the sight of derelicts in upscale shopping areas he'd told her so himself and yet one still saw sights like this. Weren't Waterstones responsible for their own stretch of pavement? she wondered irritably. She'd get Annabel to have a word with the manager.

Inside the shop Angela was shown to a staff room where she left her coat, shook hands with the Waterstones floor manager, declined a cup of coffee and greeted Dave Holland, the exRMP officer responsible for her personal security.

"Your fans look docile enough," said Holland, who had just returned from a recce of the shop floor.

"I'm happy if you are.

"OK, David, let's do it," said Angela, briefly unsnapping her handbag to check that she had a pen. She had an old MIS-issue Pentel.

The signing desk had been arranged at the centre of the shop floor, facing the Jermyn Street exit. It was flanked on one side by dump bins of A Career Less Ordinary and on the other by an array of photo floodlights. Behind a rope barrier a dozen photographers waited with Nikons primed. The big photo opportunity involved a handshake withJudi Dench, who played "M' in the James Bond films.

There was a new picture upcoming, and even though "M' was actually supposed to be the director of the hated Six, Angela was forced to admit to herself that the showbiz association was a flattering one. There was Judi now, approaching from the opposite side of the shop. They'd met once before, at a small dinner at the Ivy.

As the actress approached the desk, and John Barry's Goldfinger theme played over the shop's PA system, Angela's heart quickened. This was fun!

The two women greeted each other and sustained a long handshake for the cameras. Angela ritually presented the actress with a signed copy of A Career Less Ordinary and told her -truthfully, as it happened that she'd always been a big James Bond fan.

At the photographers' request there were more posed shots. Then Judi Dench took her leave of the event with an actressy twinkle and a flutter of her fingers, Angela sat down and the signing session began.

Soon she was into the routine of it. Smile, ask the name, sign, hand the book over. Smile, ask the name, sign, hand the book over. Smile... Angela was enjoying herself, enjoying the attention and the curiosity of the public. There were old-school types in Royal Artillery ties, purple-haired goths, spook-watching journalists, hygiene-deficient conspiracy theorists, radical feminist academics and a host of other London types. One by one, beneath the watchful gaze of Dave Holland, who stood to one side of the desk, they moved forward with their copies of the book.

At the author's side Annabel beamed proprietorially, keeping an eye on the Daily Telegraph profilist who was due to interview Angela after the signing. With the exception of a single freelancer the photographers had departed.

Smile, ask the name, sign, hand the book over. Smile, ask the name A pair of Waterstones assistants kept the pyramids of books around the desk stocked from packing cases.

"Geoffrey!" Angela murmured to a particularly well-connected political commentator.

"How sweet of you. How are Sally and the children?"

The writer replied courteously and moved away. His place was taken by a horsy woman in a Puffa jacket.

"What name?" Angela asked mechanically. In the queue behind the horsy woman she caught sight of the stub bled face of the tramp she had seen outside the shop. To her surprise, despite his wild appearence, he was carrying a copy of the book. The horsy woman's lips moved soundlessly.

"I'm sorry?" said Angela, "I didn't quite .

The woman repeated a name her husband's, she explained and Angela signed and then abruptly stopped. Where the hell did she know that face from? The features were wind-roughened and the clothes dirty but there had been a time, she was sure, when this man had been somebody.

But then so many people had been somebody once.

The horsy woman retired and the man handed Angela his copy of A Career Less Ordinary. He was smiling, he smelt of beer and the streets, and there was something both intimate and expectant in his smile.

Am I meant to know him?

"What name?" she ventured.

"You don't remember?" he said quietly.

"Angela, I'm disappointed! It's Joe, Joe Meehan."

Beyond thought, but not yet connected to terror, she started to take the book, to open it to the title-page. And then, gasping, she saw its starched covers close over her hand. She had lost control of her fingers. It was as if they were frost-bitten.

Her whole body was frozen.

It had been she Angela who had ordered Dawn to take a foot soldier and eliminate Temple when he had called in to say that he had captured Meehan on Pen-y-Fan. The chances that the former agent had told the SAS officer the truth about Operation Watchman were just too great.

And then, just hours later, Dawn and her back-up man had been found dead. Of Temple and Meehan there had been no sign. Well, she'd found out Temple's whereabouts soon enough but Meehan Joseph Meehan was dead and buried.

He had to be.

She'd believed it and not believed it. When she left the Sewice she'd been stripped of the close protection team that had surrounded her for so many years. And, now here was the irony there was no one she could go to and say: this man may be alive. And ~f he is alive he will try and kill me.

The weeks had become months and the months had become a year, and still there had been no sign of Meehan, and finally she had begun to relax. Her official security had been stepped down to just one officer and she had begun to tell her seW that the Watchman was indeed dead.

Dave Holland, recognising at some unconscious level that things were wrong, that the moment was horribly out of joint stared at the desk. His eyes narrowed as the bearded man held his principal's gaze. What the fuck was going down?

Angela Fenwick, he belatedly realised, was terrified. Paralysed with terror, like a bird faced by a cobra. She couldn't even move.

At Holland's side the photographer had realised something was up too. The big F3 Nikon was already moving up towards his face. Beside the desk the Daily Telegraph writer stared in puzzlement at the motionless tableau. Then Meehan pulled out a Browning automatic and jammed the point of the barrel beneath Angela Fenwick's chin.

Mayhem. Dave Holland was aware of a distorted screaming, of panicked bodies falling in slow motion to the floor, of the languid chakka-chakkachakka of the Nikon's motor-drive.

He dived for the gun, but impeded by the press of bodies around him fell disastrously short. A shot, meanwhile, rang out simultaneously with the Nikon's final exposure. This image, which British newspaper picture desks would suppress but which would be syndicated worldwide, showed Meehan in profile. He looked almost courteous. Angela Fenwick's expression, by contrast, was one of in comprehending terror as a spectral tiara of skull fragments and other matter leapt from her head.

The moment after the shot rang out although no one would remember this afterwards Joseph Meehan turned to a man in a battered leather jacket who was standing at the back of the crowd. A long look passed between the two men, a look identical to that which had once passed between them in St. Martin's churchyard, Hereford. Then Meehan placed the barrel of the Browning automatic into his mouth, pulled the trigger for a second time and blew his brains into the fiction shelves.

No one noticed the man in the battered leatherjacket slip out through the heavy glass exit doors into Jermyn Street. In his hand was the edition of the Evening Standard in which the signing session had been detailed. Climbing into the passenger seat of a silver Audi TT convertible which was idling at the kerb, he reached out and, after a moment's hesitation, touched the chestnut-brown hair of the girl behind the wheel. She, in her turn, fractionally inclined her head towards him. A close observer might have detected a certain wariness between the two of them.

But there was no observer. The car pulled quietly away and by the time the first police sirens were audible, the couple had vanished.

Chris Ryan was born near Newcastle in 1961 and joined the SAS in 1984. During his ten years~ service he was involved in both overt and covert operations and was also Sniper team commander of the anti-terrorist team. During the Gulf War, Chris was the only member of an eight-man team to escape from Iraq, the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS. For this he was awarded the Military Medal.

Chris Ryan wrote about his experiences in the bestseller The One That Got Away (1995) which was also adapted for screen.

He is also the author of the bestsellers Stand By, Stand By (1996), Zero Option (1997), The Kremlin Device (1998), Tenth Man Down (1999) and The Hit List (2000).

ISBN 0712684166

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