The Vengeance Man (14 page)

Bill hesitated before speaking and contemplated the ebbing tide of his pint glass with a kind of furrowed  concentration. "I don't know. I've never really been able to pin down the real shareholders in this company. Not just the ones in the company annual accounts, 'available for a fee from Companies House, folks', he added in a  Neddy Seagoon  voice.." He looked  at me squarely, judging my reaction.  "Don't laugh.  But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't something very fishy."

I burst out laughing, "Oh come on, Bill.  That's taking things too far. Fishy? How?  Why? What's the point?"

Bill was serious, tracing a middle finger round the edge of his glass.  "Think about it.  SIS has been blown for years. The
y
've put up that monstrosity of a Port Said brothel down on the river. Legoland is known in all the local pubs and watering holes down there. Six is even reduced to  putting adverts in the Guardian for diverse, ethnically-challenged recruits, like the BBC and the Security Service, and claiming to be an equal opportunities employer nowadays.  OK, that's taking it to a bit far, but you know what I mean.  Now, how do you, in government mind, start a secure operation that's as crooked as you need?  Something that'll do all the dirty jobs but without attracting attention?" He eyed me with owlish concentration. I didn't answer.

"Well, you
privatis
e
; that's what you do. You outsource. You put up a credible front.  You do precisely what old mother Thatcher wanted us all to do, years ago.  You de-nationalize, you put it out to whatever passes for competitive tender in this insane business.  Just like the railways and the gas.  And the telephones. You privatize.  Call it an Agency. Save money, make a profit and push responsibility outwards.  Isn't it obvious? We’re a private finance
initiative
, a bloody PFI. Off the balance sheet."

I scoffed.  "Oh, come on, Bill.  I'm as great on conspiracy theory as the next bloke, but how do you keep control and security if things go wrong? You don't really believe that any government would put its Secret Service out to private contract ? Or even part of it?
Come on
! They're never going to privatise the spook business. A Private Finance Initiative? And, how the hell do you get competitive tenders for it? Advertise?"

"I agree.  It's not easy.  So, what you do is you get a nice old Guards general, with good connections in the City, mind, and you set him up as a respectable, profit making, rather discreet, insurance services company. The sort of firm that does high risk insurance, where hiring his ex-Army chums won't be noticed, to do the overseas security advice. Expected really. Then you make bloody sure he's solvent and profitable, and use the profits to cover up those rather messy and embarrassing aspects of the real Firm's work that can't be done by  the Secret Vote. Things that Ministers don't like taking decisions on. Let alone having to make statements to the House about. "

I winced at that, and he grinned and went on.   "Bit like you really, eh? Out in Kurdistan? Questions to ministers in The House. You realize that you’re the only bloke in this company with his own mention in Hansard?” He guffawed happily.  "No, it's self-funding, totally deniable, and above all it doesn't leave egg on Whitehall faces.  Or ministers, either."   He took a mouthful of beer and grinned to himself.  "It's got to be like that.  It's the perfect area for privatisation:  brilliant, really. I should have asked  for participating equity shares at the start. Why didn't
I
think of  that...?"

"You just did, Bill. If what you say was true, then you'd never have got your shares in the company."

"I know.  I've done well out of the company.  And I certainly can't complain about the share bonus option. "

"There you are then; you've got shares in the Firm.  Doesn't that disprove your theory?"

"I don't know," admitted Bill.  "Except I've sometimes thought that this company's is too good to be true.” He emptied his glass and looked  around again, deflated, sobered by his thoughts. "Anyway, it's all over now:  we'll  never really know how it all began.  Maybe I'm just being paranoiac."

I humoured him.  After all, it was his retirement party.  "Everything you've said could make sense. But can you prove it?"

"No. Not really. Except that if it's bent, it can't last for ever.  Sooner  or later any operation gets compromised.  You've learned that, these last few months.  If it's us,
then we'll be compromised too. I
t's inevitable.  And, when -- sorry, if -- the company is ever compromised doing dirty work for the government, then there'll be hell to pay.  We’ll be dropped like a red hot brick.  And they'll have to think of something completely new and start all over again. Unless they do a Mafia job, start up with funny money and then become legit...  maybe that's what happened." He shrugged.

"Anyway, Bill, we'll never know now."

A thought struck me.  "How long till Sellers retires?"

Bill looked over to where our urbane Managing Director was entertaining the troops by the bar, a model of the polished, respon
sible senior businessman at his
successful company's Christmas do, and smiled.

"Ah, now you're thinking.  That's the right way to approach it. The great General Guy.  Pining for the knighthood that he never got.  "But picking on Sellers is a bit pessimistic."  He jerked his chin towards Mallalieu, listening attentively to Sellers, head on one side, glass of red wine in hand. "Now that's the one you should watch.  Clever and dangerous. A most devious fellow. I call him the Cardinal.  And better connected to people in the Cabinet Office than you'd believe.  If you agree that Mallalieu is  being groomed to take over from Sellers, then I reckon you've got about four years -- six if you're lucky.  Two years till Sellers retires, then Tom Mallalieu takes over, then...."

"Then what?"

"Then whatever's fishy will either be blown, quietly fold up or go totally respectable.  Unless, you really believe that its totally respectable today?" He looked to at me sardonically.  "Anyway, old lad, you're out.  People like you and me will become  terrible embarrassments to corporate accountants, one day.  We know much far too much and don't pay enough attention to the bottom line.  And we're so
messy
, aren't we?" he mimicked the perpetual wail of our finance manager.

I was depressed.  My new career, to which I only just become reconciled, was being talked out of the window.

Bill eyed my reaction with something approaching savage satisfaction.

"I'll give you a tip,  my boy."  He looked to down the bar at the Head of Personnel, a burly weekend rugby player lately recruited from Ernst and Young, roaring with laughter at some story.  "Watch him." He dropped his voice. "Watch out for when he stops recruiting. Then you'll know it's being wound up. When the business starts to flag.   Remember it's always the administrative side that compromises secret operations.  And usually it's the money or the travel or the personnel budget.  Always keep your eye on the budget.
That’ll tell you which way the wind’s blowing." 

He waved his empty glass to signal a shift in the conversation. "So, how come you know my old mate Harry Plummer, eh?"

The whole conversation depressed me. My bright new future seemed tarnished and whatever long term hopes I had were dimmed.  Bill's mention of Harry Plummer had set an old maggot gnawing in my brain, too. An image of Spicer's body, cold as a silver mummy, flashed unwanted and unwelcome into my brain. I remembered the blood on my hands. Then I remembered the fountain of blood in the little square at Hasak, and the wretched little goatherd, blood pooling out of his shattered head.

I didn't much enjoy the rest of Bill Luxton's farewell party.

But then, as Alex often used to tell me. I’m a miserable sod at times.

I always used to tell him that I just like my own company.

A Nice Quiet Office Job in London

It’s true that I like to be on my own.

I need space. Time to think.

The rush of work after Christmas hardly gave me time to think, let alone worry about Detective Sergeant  Harry Plummer.  Whatever my subconscious was saying, I didn't have time to bother about self-indulgent introspection over a guilty conscience about bloody Spicer.  Anyway, he was lucky to get away so lightly.  What's done is done and you can’t spend too much time brooding about things.  That's my philosophy, anyway.  Hepworth the psycho shrink would be proud of me. I could rationalise stuff. That’s how blokes like me survive. Don’t spend all your time thinking about it – just
do
.

True to his word, Mallalieu did give me the occasional job for the four man office they called officially the Response Team and was known throughout the building as  "The Bull Pen. " They were only short
duration backup tasks
and were clearly designed
to let
me feel that somehow I was still on the first team.

One time I had to fly to Paris and meet a man - on the steps of the
Sacre
Coeur
of
all places – and give him the key to Box 397 of the left luggage lockers at the Gare du Nord. Weird. He was late in Montmartre and I nearly ended up buying a painting so thick with paint from some hack street artist that it probably would have cost poundage on Air Freight.  Fortunately, Mallalieu's man turned up in time. He was small, obviously French, and had a little beard. Together we rode the Metro in silence and together we silently opened the locker.

I don't know quite what I expected to see, but I wasn't anticipating finding two envelopes, and only two envelopes. My silent companion grunted, took them both out and handed me one. Then he shook me by the hand, smiled briefly, gave me back the key and disappeared into the throng of pedestrians. I took the envelope back to Mallalieu in London, who received it with a sigh of relief, said, "So you met our Belgian, OK?", but, unusually, didn't enlighten me further. It was a pretty tame job by the standards of the Bull Pen and left me irritated and puzzled.

Another time he came in and asked me to drop everything. In his office he briefed me that one of the Bull Pen  support team was on the fiddle. I was to watch his flat. So, for two days I was officially off sick. In reality I sat in a flat watching a TV monitor and a tape recorder with Charlie Braggins, one of Mallalieu's most trusted technicians. 

Sure enough, within two days the ex-salesman had incriminated himself up to the hilt and Mallalieu could give him the push.  It was hardly Bull Pen work, though, sneaking around watching someone scratching their balls. It all seemed a bit – well, voyeuristic, somehow.

I saw a fair bit of Harry Plummer, too, during this time. He seemed to make a point of dropping by to speak, although I was not really his primary point of contact in the firm.  He mainly dealt with the Data Support Team, which was  just a jargon way of hiding what was effectively our intelligence office. Full of clever computer nerds and IT geeks. You know the types. Bloody useless most of the time. Plummer never once mentioned Spicer or even alluded to him. Sometimes I thought I caught him looking speculatively at me, but whether that was imagination or guilty conscience, I was never sure. I was too busy to care, anyway.

I was living a curious anti-social life at that time.  Since Iran I seemed to have shunned contact away from work more than ever.  After the Vicky business, I had gone out with a couple of girls; one was a right little scrubber whom I had met on the Underground, and was a lot of fun. Surprisingly knowledgeable for one so young.  And bright for her background.  But then she started to ask too many questions, and I had to let her slide. I missed her athleticism - but not her stamina.

It was all a bit unsatisfactory and after a while I didn't bother much. After all, where would I meet women?  Special Insurance Ltd had become my life's focal point and I was totally immersed in my operations. I had a minor thing with one of the office girls, but she faded too. The office frowned on internal things like that, and women always seemed to want something I wasn't prepared to give - time, effort, emotions, marriage even. 
Commitment
, the women's magazines call it:  the ‘C word’. Well, sod that.    Frankly, I found I could live without them. Really my life revolved around my flat, the Firm, music, eating and sleeping. Strange how habit turns seemingly chance routines into a life style.

It was my sister who really brought home to me how I'd changed. We'd never been close, and when my parents died, we'd drifted further apart. Barbara was three years younger than I, and lived in Malden in a semi with her Accounts Manager husband. He was a nervous little Chartered Accountant called Eric, and I never worked out what she saw  in him.  He embarrassed the hell out of me the first time I met them after joining Special Insurance by asking all kinds of questions about finance.

My lack of knowledge had puzzled him and he clearly thought that I was another incompetent recruited to the City  on the 'old school tie' network. That description hardly fitted me, a grammar school boy from the Borders. I tended to avoid Wet Eric. Which was a shame, because I
’
ve always been fond of my little sister. With both our parents gone, she was the only family I had. We’d always got on.

I called round to see them at Easter, because she had just had her first child. I don't like babies but even I felt the over-riding call of family duty. I was a real uncle now.  Anyway, I was bored. I found her plumper than before, glowing with health and happiness but smelling faintly of babies and sick. Despite the slight blue rings below her eyes, she was absurdly pleased to see me.

After the ritual cooing over little Theo – what a name! - and over the milky tea, I heard all about their plans, and of course, the baby.  Eric, the husband, appeared and the reason for their optimism came out.   I wasn't a great admirer of Wet Eric, but, if Sis liked him and he was an accountant with prospects, who was I to be
judg
e
mental
?   Apparently they'd taken all their savings and bought copper shares or something in some Jersey firm. The Market was going well, according to Eric. It seemed that the off-shore attractions of Jersey were going to guarantee enormous profits. Frankly,
it all seemed a bit hare-brained and risky to me, but they were keen enough,
and he was a chartered accountant, even a wet one, so who was I to depress their hopes?

The conversation turned to the new house they were going to buy with all the profits and, inevitably, back to the baby. I fended off the inevitable questions about my brief appearance on the Parliamentary order paper – much to Wet Eric’s disappointment, I sensed – and left after supper, feeling that I had re-established contact with the normal world and promising to call again. I even went out for a drink that night for the first time in ages.

In the pub I caught the eye of a fresh faced little piece with dark eyes. She smiled absently at me over her boyfriend's shoulder, patting her nice brown hair and for a  moment I toyed with the idea. But then I thought, 'why bother?' It all seemed a lot of fuss, so I drank up and left, avoiding her puzzled stare.

Who needs women?