‘Good of you to make the time to see me, Jonathan,’ the PM said, taking a sip from his cup of coffee.
‘My pleasure, Prime Minister,’ Daniels muttered.
‘A week to go until the President’s visit,’ the PM noted. ‘I thought it might be beneficial for you and me to have a little sit-down and discuss the arrangements. Make sure we’ve all got our ducks in a row, eh?’
‘My people have been keeping the Joint Intelligence Committee up to speed . . .’
‘Oh, of course,’ the PM smiled. ‘Of course, of course. Wouldn’t do any harm for us to have a little chat, though. Jolly important event for us, this. Sure I don’t need to tell you that. The President’s approval ratings are sky-high, and not just in the US. No harm in him scattering a little of his stardust. I’m, ah, just a
little
concerned about the terrorism-threat-level status, Jonathan. Critical, you know. Wondering if there’s something we can do about that, eh?’
Daniels remained impassive. ‘The terrorism-threat-level status, Prime Minister, reflects the threat of terrorism.’
A look of annoyance crossed the PM’s face, but he quickly mastered it. ‘Of course. Of course, of course. I’d just like your assurance that everything is being done to minimise the possibility of any . . .’ He waved one hand in the air. ‘Any unpleasantness.’
Daniels took a deep breath. ‘Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘It’s no secret that I’m unhappy with the timing of the President’s visit. I consider it to be ill-judged and provocative. The anniversary of the July seventh attacks generates mayhem. Always does. We have every crank in the country tipping us off to bogus threats; and there isn’t a single genuine terrorist cell that wouldn’t love to pull off a spectacular a week from now.’ He could see the skin around the PM’s eyes tightening. This clearly wasn’t what he wanted to hear. ‘That said, I can assure you that the Security Service is working at full efficiency. I’ve cancelled all leave and we have our eyes firmly on the ball.’
The DG breathed deeply again. He’d gone a bit further than he’d intended, but perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. The PM appeared momentarily lost for words, so Daniels continued. ‘As you know, the President’s visit is not yet public knowledge and we will not be announcing it until the sixth. We are in touch with the Secret Service regarding their requirements for the day. In addition, my people are liaising with our special forces to ensure that the security arrangements are as they should be. As regards the threat-level status, we raised it in response to a particular threat, and I expect to hear of some developments about that threat in the next twenty-four hours.’
He settled one hand on top of the other, and waited for the PM to speak.
It didn’t take much for the semblance of civility to slip from the Prime Minister’s manner. That made sense, Daniels thought. You didn’t get to a position like that without a ruthless streak – he couldn’t be quite the bumbling idiot he appeared to be.
‘Director General,’ the PM said quietly. ‘A strong relationship with the United States is of course crucial to our ongoing security. The last conversation I had with the White House was distinctly frosty, thanks to a monumental cock-up in Helmand Province by our special forces. That’s not something I intend to repeat, and it’s my full intention, a week from now, on the anniversary of 7/7, to show the President that we are fully on top of the terrorism threat, and that we stand shoulder to shoulder with him in strength.’
He sounded for all the world like he was on the hustings.
‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the role of Director General is quite within my gift,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be most disheartened if I am unable to tell the President that this threat you have identified has not been comprehensively dealt with. Am I clear?’
Daniels sniffed. ‘Quite clear, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘Will there be anything else?’
‘Nothing else, thank you, Jonathan.’ The smile returned to his face. ‘Thanks once again for coming to see me. Now I’m sure you must be terribly busy, so be so good as to close the door on your way out, will you?’
Daniels stood. The button on his suit jacket had come undone as he was sitting, so he did it up, nodded at the PM, then turned and left.
In Jack Harker’s dream, his friend Red died a thousand times over. Like a phoenix, he came back from the grave only to burn another time in the furnace of Jack’s mind. And each time he burned, Jack imagined a four-fingered man watching in satisfaction. Smiling as his friend screamed and Jack himself stood by, desperate to help, but unable to do a thing.
Jack woke suddenly. There was a banging noise. ‘RPG,’ he muttered to himself as he sat up quickly. But then he realised it was nothing of the sort. Just the coughing of a car engine outside. He blinked, confused as to where he was. Not the Stan, that was for sure. After he’d let fly at Willoughby they couldn’t get him off the base quick enough. Fly and Dunc Forsyth, the two cousins from his unit, had been sent along to chaperone him and they had been pretty sheepish about it. The transit to Kandahar had taken forty-five minutes, and a TriStar back to RAF Lyneham had been waiting on the runway, transporting green-army troops back to the UK for their two weeks R & R. Jack’s own R & R, he knew, was going to be substantially longer. A seven-hour flight back to the UK, and a wordless MoD driver had been waiting to take them to Hereford in the small hours, dropping Jack back at the one-bedroom flat he called home. He was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.
Now it was 3 p.m., and as he lay there quietly for a moment he thought he could still hear Red’s screams. Talk about the sleep of the dead.
The phone rang. He grabbed the handset from his bedside table immediately. ‘Yeah?’ His voice sounded fucked.
‘Jack, it’s Bill Parker.’
Jack closed his eyes. Bill Parker was the adjutant’s clerk at base – a well-liked, softly spoken man, but he obviously wasn’t calling for a friendly chat.
‘What is it, Bill?’
‘Look, Jack. This is from the horse’s mouth, not me, all right? You’re to stay away from camp for the time being. The adjutant’s in Washington for meetings but he’ll be back in on the morning of the third and he wants to see you at 10.00 hrs.’
‘Roger that,’ Jack said without enthusiasm.
There was an awkward pause before the adjutant’s clerk spoke again. ‘Listen, Jack. I shouldn’t be saying this so keep it to yourself. This has gone all the way to the top and the CO’s feeling the heat. It’s not looking good. They’re after sacking you.’
Jack felt like throwing the phone across the room. More than twenty years in the Regiment and now this. He kept his cool though. ‘Thanks for the tip-off, Bill,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at 10.00 hrs on the third.’ With that he hung up and hauled his arse out of bed.
Home, he thought to himself as he looked around. Hardly that. Just a place to keep his answer machine. He saw the little white box blinking at him. Three messages. Not exactly a whole lot, given that he’d been away for five months, but he couldn’t face listening to them anyway. He padded into the tiny kitchen, made a brew, then plonked himself down on the sofa in front of the TV. For a while, there was something pleasurable about allowing the mindless babble of daytime TV wash over him. A hell of a sight less stressful than taking incoming. But after half an hour boredom set in. He flicked the channels from game show to cookery programme, before settling finally on a news bulletin. A dark-skinned man with a neat beard and round glasses spoke to the camera.
‘. . . and it is for these reasons that I will be travelling alone to Mogadishu, to speak to the terrorists and to demonstrate to the Islamic community at large that it is only when we ourselves stand up to the rogue elements in our society that . . .
’
‘Fucking psycho,’ Jack muttered to himself as he switched the TV off. Mogadishu was one of the few war zones he’d managed to avoid during his time in the Regiment and from everything he’d heard he would be perfectly happy to keep it that way. If some do-gooding civvy wanted to risk his life out there, he deserved everything that was coming to him.
Jack still couldn’t shake the dream. It was like Red was haunting him. Back in Helmand everyone was shook up about the Stingers. But now that he was back home, Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that the weapons were just a distraction.
Too many things didn’t make sense.
Red’s death, and the death of the others, had
not
been an accident. They’d been ambushed, plain and simple. If Jack hadn’t made the call on the ground to send half the unit back to Bastion with Stenton and the flight case, the casualties would have been twice as bad. And you didn’t have to be Napoleon to realise that you couldn’t ambush someone unless you
knew where they were going to be
. So just
how
, exactly, did Haq and his Taliban cronies
know
that they were going to be right there, right then?
How, unless someone had told them?
He felt his stomach churning. What if the intention had been for them all to die once they’d completed the raid? It wouldn’t be the first time the Regiment had been privy to secrets someone didn’t want revealing. Wouldn’t be the last, either. But if that was the case, it would mean someone had been feeding information to Farzad Haq.
Haq. Again he imagined the bastard’s face, cruelly gloating, telling him how stupid he was.
‘
Fuck you
,’ Jack muttered. Back in his bedroom he rummaged around in his drawers for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, before putting on running shoes and heading out the door to pound the streets of Hereford.
He ran further than he intended – the afternoon sun was bright, but without the heat of the Afghan day to sap his energy he felt as though he could have gone on forever. It was good to clear his head and to push his body. To get his thoughts straight. When he did arrive back home, he was covered in sweat, and in a weird way that felt kind of normal.
Having showered and changed, he returned to his bedroom where the answer machine was still blinking at him. With a sigh he pressed play. The first message was nothing – just somebody hanging up once they realised they’d got an answer machine. Same for the second. But the third message made him turn sharply to the machine. He recognised the voice instantly, of course, even though he hadn’t heard it for months.
‘Jack. It’s Siobhan. I don’t know where you are but . . . I just have to speak to you, all right? Just call me . . .’
Her voice was on the edge. Jack closed his eyes. God knows what she wanted but it sure as hell didn’t sound like she was calling for an affectionate little catch-up. She sounded stressed out, and a stressed-out Siobhan wasn’t what you wanted when it felt like the world and his wife had just given you the mother of all bollockings.
No, Jack thought. To hell with that. She could wait. For now he had other things on his mind. He wanted to know why Red and the rest of his men had died. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be to find out. He only had one lead, so he had to follow it.
The Bergan he’d carried all the way back from Bastion was propped in the corner of his room. He picked it up and a little shower of sand fell to the bedroom floor. Jack ignored that. He opened the bag and upturned the contents on to his bed. Dirty boots, old clothes, a couple of MREs that he’d cadged off some American troops but hadn’t got round to eating. And, of course, more of the thick, dusty sand that got everywhere out there. He rummaged through his stuff until he found what he wanted. It wasn’t much. Just a small card with a name on it – Professor Caroline Stenton – and a number. Moments later he was dialling it.
‘Stenton.’ Her voice was abrupt. Unfriendly almost.
‘Afternoon, Professor.’
‘Who is this?’
‘A friend of yours from Helmand.’
A pause. When Caroline spoke again, her voice had softened.
‘Jack?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Hereford,’ he said flatly.
‘Hereford? You’re home rather sooner than I expected.’ She was almost purring now, and Jack could tell it had been a good idea to call.
‘When
did
you expect me home?’ he asked.
Caroline ignored the question. ‘If this is about what happened in Helmand, Jack, you have to know that I can’t talk about it.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that.’
‘Then I can’t imagine why you’re calling.’
‘You can’t?’
‘Well . . .’ He could imagine a faint smile on her face. ‘Maybe.’
‘Where are
you
?’ Jack asked.
‘At home,’ she replied. ‘London. Kensington.’
‘Any plans for tonight?’
‘Nothing I can’t put off . . .’
It took ten minutes for Jack to shower, change and jump into the BMW convertible on which he lavished a lot more care than he did the flat. He burned through the streets of Hereford, heading towards Gloucester where he could get on the dual carriageway to the M4.
At the back of his brain there was the nagging worry that the adjutant was going to give him his marching orders. He didn’t let it worry him for long.
Fuck them all
, he said under his breath as the speedo tipped ninety. They might be preparing to shit on him but someone, somewhere wasn’t telling him the truth. Who knew if he’d ever get to the bottom of it, but if they thought he was going to sit quiet and take it, they had another thing coming.