Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2) (23 page)

H
arry Tyler wasn’t fazed when the request came through from the intelligence services. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the call. Harry had worked for the NSA – the Yanks had fed him into the London end of a Camorra drug importation sting in 1995. It made world news. The Camorra had been infiltrated by anarchists and were blackmailing Billy Swagg, a leading US politician who had been caught in a highly compromising position with two other men. Unsurprisingly the pair had been part of an ingenious set-up designed to entrap Swagg, a high-ranking Democratic senator whose status depended entirely on the strident support of a passionate but easily shockable Southern Baptist electorate. The Camorra used his access to the diplomatic pouch to walk top-quality cocaine through Customs. There was a bonus. The senator’s wife was the PA to an intelligence director, and so Swagg had also been squeezed into spilling military secrets that she was feeding him unwittingly during their pillow talk. It had been Harry who artfully substituted the real bag for a substitute, beginning a process that blew the game out of the water.

The messy saga resulted in resignations at the highest level, thirteen anarchists being murdered in Corsica, a handful of busts for possession of large quantities of Bolivian white gold and the striking if inaccurate
Sun
headline: ‘Swagg Skag-Bag Blag’.

Harry’s British link to American intelligence had been a shadowy and horsy MI5 agent known as Bernadette, or behind her back as Bernie the Colt. Bernadette was a plump, very ordinary-looking Northern Irish girl with a first-class history degree from Cambridge. She was forty-something and described herself privately as ‘a Catholic Paisley-ite’. Through her work she was well connected to Irish dissident groups, Spanish ETA members, the Italians and the Italian-American ‘businessmen’. Bernadette made it plain that she had little time for the police, whom she considered blundering, stupid and corrupt. In fact, Harry suspected she had little time for men, full stop. But somehow he had developed a strong working relationship with her in their brief time together and she had been impressed with his operational skills. So it was the icing on the cake when Barry Green told him that not only had MI5 requested his assistance with a little Irish problem but that also he would be liaising with the newly promoted field chief, an agent code-named Bernadette. One and the same. The only other information Green could give him was that an Irish group had linked in with al-Qaeda and that the Irish were known to be sourcing a route for an unknown commodity into the UK.

Bernadette had arranged to meet Harry in Belgrade. The reason was never made clear. He had spent the morning looking round the shops of the Serbian capital – you could get Italian designer gear here for about a third of the price in the West, so he had stocked up. Now Harry was sitting outside a pavement café in New Belgrade with his back to the Danube eating Kajmak cheese and reading Cass Pennant’s book on West Ham hooligans:
Congratulations: You Have Just Met The ICF
. Bernadette turned up half an hour late, but that didn’t surprise him. She was seldom on time. She strolled up looking like a tourist with her flash digital camera around her neck and a ready smile.

‘Harry, love, how is it with you?’ She gave him the standard two-cheek Euro kiss and sat down opposite him. ‘Sorry I’m late, I’ve got some simply marvellous shots of the St Sava cathedral and the cobbled streets of the old nineteenth-century Skadarlija Bohemian quarter. It’s amazing. They have an Irish bar here too, can you imagine? And a band called the Orthodox Celts who plays Dubliners songs so well you could never tell ’em apart. I can’t wait to hit the Tram bar tonight.’

‘Order the Alan Bradley cocktail, I hear it’ll knock you dead.’

‘Oh, but you’re coming with me, Harry. We’ll make a night of it. Come on, dear boy, let’s stroll back to Knez Mihailova Street and do some serious shopping.’

Harry waved his hand for the bill. The waitress stood on his shoulder waiting for a tip, which he gladly gave.

Bernadette took him by the arm. ‘All still very reasonable for grub here, love. Unless you go on the restaurant boats, where food and prices vary enormously. We’ll try the Dacha tonight, they do some of the most organically pure food in Europe and we’ll drink all we want and be in and out for twenty pounds.’

Harry chuckled. ‘Like you’re paying for it out of your own pocket, Bernie.’

‘That’s the point, in a place like this I wouldn’t mind if I was.’

She pulled him over and pointed to a café very similar to the one she had just made him leave. ‘Let’s sit here, Harry, and you can buy me a nice organic apple juice from the bottomless pit you call your expenses fund.’ They sat on a corner table, far from prying eyes.

‘So, Harry, this is the coup. I am to meet a connection tomorrow outside the cathedral. The connection is a very well-to-do Catholic, a churchman, let’s say, with ties to the higher echelons of Roman Catholicism back home. He is also the mouthpiece for a group of, well, shall we call them businessmen? – yes, businessmen from the north and south of auld Ireland, who have been known to fund his gambling debts and to supply some very saucy young girls for him. Not the sort of young girls you like Harry, oh no. These young girls are just that: five- and six-year-old girls – from very decent foster homes, you understand.’

‘The old perv. Why can’t he stick to boys like all the other priests?’

Bernie pulled a face. ‘Yes, very droll. Well, the churchman – yes, we agreed to call him that, didn’t we – the man of God, got himself into a little difficulty recently when his usual supplier brought him a little black girl aged six and, well, Harry, would you believe it, he’s also a very racist churchman? What he did to that poor little girl is beyond sad, it’s sick, and not for telling here at this table, mind. But it’s enough to say the poor, unfortunate child will never have children of her own, God save her. It seems a sensible thing that he will become a repentant missionary while serving a penance at his new posting in East Africa. Lord, watch out for the little children and let’s pray he meets a very hungry crocodile. Do they have crocs in Africa, Harry, or are they alligators? Well, whatever, let’s hope the wretched man gets eaten by one.’

Harry smiled. He loved Bernadette’s act, and act it was. She was one of the smartest women he had ever met, razor sharp and as tough as any man.

‘So, Harry, let’s cut to the chase. To repay the debt the businessmen incurred when returning the poor creature to her foster parents our churchman has been instructed to find a safe way to take ‘something’ into England. Our friends in the South tell us that those naughty boys in the North have sent two of their number to someplace full of sand and camels and have struck up some kind of a deal with a pretty bunch of lunatics who make the boys from the North look like something out of
The Blue Lamp
. Let’s just say that Saudi money is involved and Allah is being served. What we do know is that the two boys from the North were very well acquainted with the trio who got themselves in all kinds of trouble down there in the South American jungle a couple of years ago. Are you getting the bigger picture here?’

Harry nodded.

‘So you can work out for yourself they are not a pair of dummies. We’re talking serious players. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go into Ulster and find out what the sweet Jesus is going down. This tape will self-destruct in ten seconds.’

Harry, who had taken in every word, gestured to the waitress to bring out two more coffees.

‘So, Harry, what do you think? It’s bloody dangerous, darling.’

‘He who dares wins, Bernie.’

‘Yes, I know, but putting my serious head on momentarily I should point out that this is more fraught with danger than any operation you have ever been involved with.’

‘That’s what I like about it. How do I get in?’

‘The pervert is going to reference you.’

‘Not as a fucking kiddie fiddler he’s not.’

‘No, Harry, not as a paedophile, as a very trusted source who has used his van to smuggle children from homes in the Northwest and North Wales out to Dunleary from Holyhead. And then, after he and his friends have satisfied their twisted appetites, the next day you smuggle them back. You also provide the service of developing their films by using a chum who has his own franchise of a household name one-hour developing group. You smuggle the shots back in your van too. We’ve got the photographic side sorted out by placing one of our people in a company in Liverpool, and a properly kitted-out van has been put together for you, and I have to say if you can find the space where the two little children fit, then, well, I’ll let you ‘
pogue mahone
’ as the uncouth say. We’ve arranged for you to meet one of our chemists who will show you how to administer the right chemicals and how much to knock out a child for the duration of the journey. We’ve also inserted bogus records of journeys to and from Dunleary into the Customs files and a flat in the ’Pool has been put together for you. The latest voters’ register has your name on it. Any questions?’

‘Yeah. What if I don’t fancy the bit of work?’

They both laughed. ‘Don’t even go there, Harry. We’ve already sorted you out a few return journey ferry crossings so that you can do dry runs and get the feel of the route and shortcuts. Lot to do, Harry, little time to do it.’

Harry pondered. ‘What’s my cover? On paper why am I making these little runs back and forth?’

‘Coffins.’

‘Picking them up or bringing ’em back.’

‘You pick them up from one of our outlets and take them to one of our units.’

‘Trust you lot to have your own coffin business.’

‘Now, Harry, what on earth are you suggesting?’

He shook his head. ‘So, presumably I get to meet the sex case, do I?’

‘Yes, tomorrow, and I’m reasonably sure you won’t shake his hand.’

‘Not the one he holds his dick with, no.’

‘That’s it for now then, love. I have your mobile and your room number; I’ll ring at about eleven am and send a car to collect. I’ll pick you up at eight pm tonight and we’ll paint the old town red. Fine, good. Bub-bye.’

In the event Bernadette called back and cancelled the evening’s fun, leaving Harry to bar crawl and catch a punk band in a basement club. It always amused him to watch a band playing songs in their native tongue and suddenly hear the words ‘Oi Oi’ or ‘West Ham United’ in the lyrics. In the early Eighties Oi music had been universally detested by middle-class rock critics who wrote it off as ‘jingoistic’ or ‘ultra-violent’ but their disdain had helped it spread as an underground phenomenon, from the East End of London to France, Italy, Eastern Europe, the USA, Argentina, Australia, Singapore, even Red China. Against the odds, Oi had survived as the true global voice of the universal hooligan, the roots rebel rocker, the inner-city prole.

The driver collected Harry at 11.30am, dropping him of at a small café less than a mile from the cathedral. Bernadette sat sipping coffee with a fat-faced pig-eyed porker who was stuffing his face with a custard-coloured cake, and dribbling as he ate. Bernadette nodded in the direction of the disgusting slob. ‘This is Christopher,’ she said. ‘Christopher, meet Harry.’ The paedo-priest proffered a podgy hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said in a County Antrim accent, through a mouthful of food.

I’d like to stab you, thought Harry. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

Christopher slurped his coffee like a pig at the trough.

Bernadette spoke to break the tension. ‘Harry, our friend Christopher here has been sadly posted off to darkest Africa. He leaves in a month’s time. A man there in a similar position to our Christopher has been taken very ill and is unlikely to recover. Africa’s gain is Ireland’s loss.’

Pig-boy chortled. ‘I’m sure I’ll make the most of it, Harry,’ he wheezed with a leer, running a sticky hand through his sweaty comb-over and leaving most of the crumbs in his hair.

Harry strained. ‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Now, your first visit is arranged for next Wednesday,’ said Bernadette. ‘Harry, you are to meet Christopher near his church just outside Moneymore in the North. When you get back to London tomorrow my people will meet you and give you a comprehensive briefing. So now I’ll leave you two to chat for an hour and be back with your cab to return you to your hotel, Harry.’

Harry nodded. The next sixty minutes passed with agonising slowness. Harry had to listen to the stinking pervert describing his ‘children of choice’. He had to maintain a fixed smile as Christopher informed him in great detail what he enjoyed doing to the poor little bastards. He had to know what was going on, that was true, but the temptation to flatten his companion in the middle of his confession was almost overwhelming. Christopher’s eyes lit up as he described the parties he and his noncey pals enjoyed throwing, and the way they eagerly swapped pictures in his church-supplied cottage every Sunday evening. The effect, Harry said later, felt like showering in sewerage.

Bernadette returned. ‘Happy, boys?’

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘Give us fifteen minutes. Nearly done.’ They had to get the cover story for their own connection straight.

Bernadette took a coffee outside and people-watched. Half an hour passed before Harry left, shaking his head.

‘You’d better go and rescue Landburgher Gessler,’ he said. ‘He’s back on the cakes. Any more and you won’t get him through the door.’

Bernadette beckoned Harry over with a finger and whispered in his ear. ‘I’m led to believe he gets carted off into the jungle by cannibals shortly after arriving in Africa, never to be seen again. Happy endings all round.’

Harry grinned. ‘That brings new meaning to “bashing the bishop”. He’ll keep the tribe in tucker till Christmas. I wouldn’t want to be the poor bastard who mistakes his filthy dick for a sausage.’

‘Chipolata, honey, I’ve seen the pictures.’

Twenty-four hours later Harry was in Liverpool, soaking up the feel of that great city: the pubbing, the clubbing, the natural Scouse wit. He loved it. He always felt there was an affinity between Scousers, Cockneys and Geordies; urban people seemed to share a sense of humour, and a healthy disrespect for authority.