Silent kill, p.10
Silent Kill, page 10
part #1 of Extreme Series
‘I’ve still got it,’ he said to himself.
He was conscious of footsteps pounding towards him. Voices frantically shouting. He looked up. Saw one of the other instructors on the course diving at him. The instructor was on top of Bald before he had a chance to react. Moments later a second instructor joined in the fun, tearing the Browning from Bald’s grasp. The two men wrestled the ex-Blade to the ground, pinning him down on his front with his hands clasped behind his back. He kept up the struggle until he realized that a third figure had arrived. A grey-haired man, wiry and mean and shrivelled. Talisman’s local director.
‘You bloody maniac.’ The director, another Brit, almost sprayed the words through his nostrils, his teeth so tightly clenched he looked like someone was waxing his crack. He saw Mohican with his pair of bullet-studded kneecaps and looked aghast. Spray-Tan was still out for the count. Blood was spattered on the wall either side of the doorway. The potent smell of burnt gunpowder filled the air.
‘The crazy bastard tried to kill us.’ Mohican hissed the words out, sweating with the pain. ‘He fucking lost it. Chrissakes, get him away from us!’
The director scowled at Bald. ‘Is this true, John?’
‘Is it fuck,’ Bald spat. ‘They started it. I was defending myself.’
‘By shooting an unarmed candidate in the kneecaps – twice?’ The director’s arched eyebrows said it all.
Mohican spat out blood. Playing the victim now. ‘This mad fucker has been threatening us all week. Ask any of the other lads. They’ll back us up.’
The director stared at Bald with such hatred that the Scot felt a cold chill clamp around his neck and shiver down his spine. ‘I’m a bloody idiot,’ he said. ‘The boys at Hereford warned me. They said you were damaged goods. A bloody fool I was, to ignore them. You’re going to pay for this. I’ll make sure of that.’
The director nodded briskly at the two instructors pinning Bald to the ground.
‘Whatever you do, don’t let him out of your sight. I’m calling the police.’
Four officers from the local police arrested Bald. They arrived at the compound twelve minutes after the first shot had been fired. Handcuffed Bald and bundled him into the back of an Alfa Romeo decked out in police livery. Then they ferried him to the police station in downtown Legnica. On arrival he was stripped of his keys, cash, wallet, belt and shoelaces and taken to a holding cell with half a dozen neo-Nazis and drunks for company. It wasn’t quite the evening’s entertainment he’d had in mind.
Three hours later he was hauled to an interrogation room where an immaculately dressed man whose eyes were too far apart introduced himself as Detective Inspector Piotr Kaminski of the Policja Kryminalna. Kaminski spoke English in broken little phrases. But he spoke enough for Bald to grasp the fundamentals. He was in the shit. Up to his neck in the stuff. Facing two counts of grievous bodily harm and a further one of attempted murder for kneecapping Mohican, a charge that could lead to a minimum ten-year sentence.
Kaminski had done his homework on Bald. The guy produced a copy of his medical record and read a few excerpts aloud. He read out the bits about the debilitating migraines Bald had suffered. The repeat prescriptions for amitriptyline to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The signed doctor’s note recommending Bald for psychiatric evaluation. Kaminski laid out his theory: a traumatized ex-SAS operator goes into meltdown and nearly murders two of his trainees in a psychotic rage. Bald himself had to admit, it was a good fit. Then Kaminski looked him in the eye and told him he was finished and that the best thing for him to do was to make a full confession now and avoid the pain and cost of a trial.
Bald told Kaminski to go fuck himself.
He spent the evening getting comfortable with his new family in the holding cell. He was allowed to make one phone call. Was surprised to find he couldn’t think of anyone to call except Danuta, his Polish bit. He tried her number. Got her voicemail. Thought about leaving a message. Decided no.
He couldn’t sleep. He was furious at himself for how things had turned out. Three years ago he’d been the hero of the Regiment, the toast of Hereford. He’d been all set for a money-spinning career on the Circuit, as a director for one of the prestigious PMCs, perhaps setting up his own outfit. Sell it on to the Yanks for a few million, pocket the proceeds and retire to a beach house in South America. Supermodel girlfriend, beer on tap, live like a king. Now his plans lay in tatters and the only thing he was looking at was a long stretch in a Polish prison.
Kaminski returned for him shortly after midnight. The detective looked bitter about something. It was the look of a man who had been on the cusp of winning a long-odds accumulator at the bookies, only to see it snatched from his grasp.
‘Your lawyer,’ Kaminski said. ‘Is here.’
But I don’t have a lawyer, Bald thought.
He managed to keep a straight face as he followed Inspector Kaminski out of the cell. But inside he felt all the pent-up heaviness and weariness of the past twelve hours sliding off his shoulders. Talisman must have sent their lawyer to bail him out. That was it. The company execs back in Hereford had seen sense, realized what a valuable instructor he was and ponied up the cash to get him out of jail.
There was a spring to Bald’s step as he arrived at the interrogation room. Kaminski opened the door and gestured for him to enter.
A woman was sitting at a table opposite the door, her head bowed and her long, elegant hands resting either side of a substantial case file open in front of her. She had hair the colour of wet sand, cropped short with not a strand out of place. The sleeves of her immaculate white blouse were neatly turned up. She wore a dark blazer and sharply cut trousers. Yes, Bald thought. A lawyer all right.
Then she looked up at Bald and his stomach went hollow. He said nothing for a long beat. Kaminski slammed the door shut, breaking the silence. Then the woman slid out of her chair and smiled sadly.
‘Hello, John,’ said Avery Chance.
Fourteen
0013 hours.
Chance gestured to a chair at the opposite side of the table.
‘Please,’ she said. She sounded like a therapist inviting Bald to lie on her couch. ‘Inspector Kaminski will be along shortly with some refreshments. This could take a while.’
Bald just stood there, his mouth suddenly dry, a strange sensation pulsing behind his eyes. He blinked at Chance, as if not believing she was really here. Her left foot tapped nervously. Her shoes caught his eye – white stilettos with high heels – and then the pulsing in his head exploded into a searing memory, rushing back at him from twenty years ago. Of a pair of mud-spattered high heels lying in a ditch in Northern Ireland a stone’s throw from the border with the Republic. They had belonged to Avery Chance. The memories came flooding back then. Of the farm south of the border, the barn where Chance had been held by a bunch of Provos. The putrid stench of burnt flesh. The blood splashed sickeningly across the hay-strewn floor. He remembered the awful rage that had seized him when he’d crashed into the barn to rescue Chance. The blowtorch. The shocking burns to her genitals. The mechanical shriek of the meat-grinding machine as Bald fed her torturers into it.
A long time ago, he thought.
But now, with Chance here next to him, suddenly it didn’t seem so long. And the memory of Northern Ireland snapped his current crisis into sharp focus. Bald recalled that his problems in the Regiment had begun shortly after the Northern Ireland op. He had come close to being RTU’d by the top brass for crossing the border and nearly triggering a diplomatic incident. He’d hung onto his career by a thread, but things were never quite the same afterwards. The other Blades treated him as a liability. The ruperts kept him at arm’s length. In despair Bald had turned to the bottle.
That was when he’d lost his way.
An acute pain sank its teeth into Bald. A piercing sound rang in his ears, like a fingernail scraping across the inside of his skull. He touched a hand to his right temple, clamped his eyes shut and slumped into the chair. Chance tilted her head at Bald. Considered him for a couple of seconds.
‘What happened to your face?’ There was a touch of sympathy in her voice.
‘Me and a couple of Geordies had a disagreement,’ Bald said.
‘Inspector Kaminski told me it was a little more than that,’ Chance persisted.
Bald shrugged.
Chance said, ‘He told me you almost beat two men to death. One of them is in a coma in hospital. The other one is under the knife. The surgeons are doing what they can to repair his shattered kneecaps. They say he might not walk again. If that’s what you call a disagreement I’d hate to see your idea of a heated argument.’
‘Save the preaching for the converted, Avery. Why are you here?’
‘I came to help you.’
A warm feeling swept through Bald. She had come to repay the favour of rescuing her twenty years ago. ‘Thank fuck,’ he said. ‘What’s the plan for getting me out? You’ll have to do some serious twisting of Kaminski’s arm. That guy is more tightly wound up than a bulldog trying to shit a peach stone.’
Chance bit her lip. ‘I’m here on official business.’ Her tone had suddenly shifted: clipped and curt, professional. Bald didn’t like it.
She went on, ‘We’ve been keeping tabs on you for the past few weeks. Early this afternoon your name was flagged up by Interpol. As soon as we confirmed you were being detained on criminal charges, I caught the first available flight from Heathrow to Wroclaw via Munich. Then I took a cab to this wretched little town. Start to finish, the journey took me just over six hours.’ She paused, folded her hands. ‘Do you know why I came here as soon as I could?’
Bald shrugged. ‘You missed my rugged good looks?’
Chance lifted her eyes to him. They were a faded blue, like ink stains. Almost grey, Bald thought. ‘I came here to make you, not so much an offer, more like a lifeline. Six needs you, John.’
The Firm.
Bald had worked as an asset for MI6, reporting to a corrupt agent called Leo Land. Dark thoughts filled his mind. He clenched his fists in rage. ‘I should have known,’ he growled. ‘Should have seen this coming.’
Chance smiled. It was pained and just a little forced. ‘As it happens, I’m taking a big risk meeting with you. My boss at Vauxhall would rather feed you to the wolves. It’s not the first time I’ve put my neck on the line to help you.’
Bald frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Chance rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me it never crossed your mind as to why you weren’t RTU’d. Christ, John! You were damaged goods after Northern Ireland. No one wanted anything to do with you. But I campaigned to keep you in the Regiment. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d have spent the rest of your military career sweeping barracks and polishing boots.’
For a beat, Bald was too stunned to reply. The migraine flared, the bruises on his knuckles burned. He wondered briefly why she had done it: put her neck on the line for him. But of course, he really knew the answer: because he had saved her. And however badly he had fucked up, that single fact had motivated Chance to stop the top brass hanging him out to dry.
Bald nodded his appreciation. ‘Thanks, Avery. But that doesn’t change a thing. Six ruined me. I’m not going back.’
‘Things are different now. Transparency’s the new watchword.’
Bald grunted. ‘Pull away the cover and I bet it’s still rotten underneath.’
‘It’s the truth, John. We’ve cleared out the dross. I was brought in as part of the new order.’ There was a note of pride in her voice now. ‘I transferred after 7/7. We’d crushed the IRA. There was nothing left for me to achieve at Five. And anyway I was already spending a lot of time on secondment. I served eighteen months in Karachi, living in a secure compound, running and recruiting agents in the Tehrik-i-Taliban. Then they sent me to Oman. Ever been to Muscat? Fifty-degree heat, not a drop of rainfall the whole year. It’s like living in an armpit. Then I was appointed to lead the team overseeing counter-terrorism operations in East Africa.’ She winked at Bald. ‘Which brings me to my offer.’
Bald nodded. The room was stuffy, there were no windows or air con, and Bald was sweating like a middle-aged tourist on a Delhi bus. He laid his hands flat on the table, ready to listen. He admired Chance’s toughness, her willingness to put old loyalties ahead of corporate line-toeing. He watched her reach into her designer handbag and pull out a sealed manila envelope. The agent placed the envelope on the table and slid it towards Bald.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Christ, Avery. If you wanted to give me a Valentine’s Day card you could have just popped it in the post.’
Chance smiled. ‘In here is a letter from the Polish attorney general, authorizing your immediate release from custody and dropping all charges against you. This letter means you’ll be a free man, John.’
Bald stared at the envelope. His lips clamped shut. He needed a way out of his situation, would do anything to avoid going down for a ten-year stretch in the pan. But there was an if coming. He could see it forming on her lips.
‘I understand you’re not happy with how Six treated you in the past’, Chance continued. ‘I get it. Really, I do. So here’s the thing. You can accept the offer, and I show this letter to our friend Inspector Kaminski.’
‘What’s the alternative?’
Chance took back the envelope and tucked it under the file in front of her. After a deep breath, she lowered her gaze and opened the file at the first page.
‘Bald, John Fraser,’ she read out loud. ‘Born 20 June 1971 at Maryfield Hospital, Dundee, Scotland. Attended St John’s Roman Catholic High School in Dundee. Passed Selection to 22 SAS in 1993. May 1995, charged with two counts of assault. Acquitted. August 2000, suspected of executing three prisoners of war during Operation Barras in Sierra Leone. Charges dropped owing to lack of evidence. June 2004, brutally assaults a journalist in a hotel room in Kabul, Afghanistan. December 2009, robs a diamond merchant in Karachi, Pakistan during a counter-terrorism operation. May 2010, reputedly involved in the brutal murder of a police officer during a riot in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—’
It was like an invisible hand had reached out and slapped Bald across the face. He saw it then. No one could outrun the Firm. He was a fool for ever thinking otherwise. He couldn’t run away from the Firm any more than he could escape his own shadow.
‘I could go on,’ said Chance.
‘Don’t bother. I know where this is going.’
‘Do you, John? I’m not reading your case file for shits and giggles. This is serious. Six is looking to bury you after the fiasco with Viktor Klich.’
Bald snarled at the memory of the Russian oligarch he’d been hired to snatch. The mission had gone sideways, and Bald had turned his back on the Firm and ended up working for Klich.
‘That wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘Leo Land and Danny Cave – they’re the bastards you should be going after. Not me.’
Chance leaned across the table. ‘I have news for you. Cave lives in China now. Feeds scraps of int to the country’s security services. Has a Chinese wife, even speaks Mandarin. He’s out of our reach. As for Land, he’s off the radar. Fled the country. We think he might be in Cambodia. But you know how it is. Someone’s head has to roll. And right now, Six has got you in its sights.’
‘What about all that stuff you said about transparency and new brooms?’
‘All that is true. But we can’t turn over a new leaf without cleaning up our past mistakes. Including you.’
‘I’m innocent. Land set me up.’
Chance showed no emotion.
‘I want to help,’ she said. ‘But if you won’t agree to the mission, it’s out of my hands. Six will begin extradition proceedings against you, on multiple charges of drug trafficking, murder, conspiracy and treason. You’re looking at life in prison. No parole. They’ll crucify you, John.’
Bald hammered a fist on the table. ‘Bastards!’
Chance looked unflustered. ‘I’m on your side. Listen to my offer.’
Bald fell quiet for a moment. Rubbing the calluses on his hands. He saw it all now. Chance had come here because she remembered the John Bald of 1993, a twenty-one-year-old lad from Dundee full of idealism and a sense of duty. Before he had opened his eyes to the world, seen its horrors and its lies and been left horribly scarred. Chance had flown to Poland on a hunch that the old John Bald wasn’t dead. That she could tease the good out of him. A grim thought struck the Scot that Chance might be his last friend in the world.
She reached across the table and took his hand in hers. ‘I don’t care for the past. The only thing I care about is getting the job done. And right now I need you.’
These last words sparked a flame of curiosity in Bald. ‘Since when did the Firm need me? I’m damaged goods. You said so yourself.’
‘Times have changed. The threat of Islamic fundamentalism has changed the way we work. The people at Six are good at all the underhand stuff. Surveillance, chasing paper trails, listening to voicemails. Our brothers and sisters in the CIA indulged in the odd bit of torture, but by and large we steered clear of all that. Whenever we did need to kill somebody, the drones did the work for us. Very effective at bombing Taliban leaders taking tea in their hideaways. Consequently we are overloaded with managerial types. What we lack are old-fashioned assets. Men who can roll up their sleeves and get the job done and who don’t give a damn about accountability.’
She meant Bald, and did a thing with her eyes that clearly told him so. He felt a strange thrill crawl through his bones.
‘You’re the opposite of soft,’ Chance went on. ‘Those two Geordies you roughed up? Notorious doormen working under a Newcastle gangster called Lee Clayton. Either of them could pulverize most men in a straight fight. You dropped them both. You haven’t changed, John. For a while you were out of fashion, I guess. But now—’
Chance spoke with sincerity. Bald heard it in her voice. Felt the truth of it in his guts too. He was a relic. He didn’t fuck around on Twitter, didn’t have a Facebook account. He never wore skinny jeans or ate probiotic yoghurt, hated words like ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘human rights’. He had been sculpted for war. Still slept with a Glock 19 next to his pillow.
