Tracers

‘Well, there’s no pleasing some people.’

The attempt at humour didn’t carry. Joanne said angrily, ‘It was like he wanted to build a wall around the country and turn it in on itself. And after everything we’d done to help. Oh, I know the arguments. . that we shouldn’t have been there, anyway. But still.’ She stopped, breathing heavily.

Harry said, ‘Why are you so angry?’

It was as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Then he spun the whole thing and said he was just describing an old Iraqi dream. But it wasn’t his dream, he said. It was the people’s dream. And the people had a right to have what was theirs. He only wanted a peaceful country again.’

Harry wondered where this was going. Where the change in tune was coming from. She seemed to be rambling, as if seeing Rafa’i once more had revived an old discussion, ripped open old sores. But which ones?

‘Everybody wants peace out there,’ he said coolly, trying to figure her out. ‘But if Dog gets his way, Rafa’i won’t live to see it.’

She made a noise but said nothing.

‘Still, at least,’ Harry continued, ‘we know what he looks like. . unlike his two mates.’

Her eyes flickered. ‘What?’

‘He’s got help. Two men. Word is, they’re on their way here. Unfortunately, we don’t know what they look like.’ He was about to add that she, on the other hand, might do, having been on the same training course, but decided against it. It wasn’t the time or the place.

‘You don’t know much of anything, do you?’

‘Sorry?’ It was a coldly dismissive comment, uttered in a dull, flat tone. But she shook her head and chose not to elaborate, so he let it go.

All the same, he felt a stir of unease.

FIFTY-FOUR

‘What’s his problem?’ Joanne was staring hard at Rik, her expression hostile. She had been watching him intently for a few minutes now, as if suddenly troubled by his lack of warmth towards her.

‘Rik? He trusts people. . takes them at face value. It’s something I’m trying to cure him of.’ When Harry looked across at him, Rik turned away. Rafa’i was beyond him, waiting in the background.

‘He’s too close to Rafa’i,’ she said. ‘He should move away.’

‘He’s fine where he is.’ Harry couldn’t see the problem, and put her attitude down to last-minute nerves. For some reason, she and Rik were rubbing each other up the wrong way.

But she wouldn’t let it go. ‘Rafa’i won’t come if he sees him standing there. He needs to move to one side.’

Harry sighed and signalled to Rik to move aside a few feet, which he did with reluctance, the old woman tagging along. ‘That do you?’

‘Yes. You have to wait here.’ She walked away without waiting for a reply, clutching her rucksack to her chest.

Harry wanted to go after her and demand to know what was on her mind, but he didn’t. Rafa’i still hadn’t moved from his position by the trees. In fact, he’d retreated a few feet and was now in dappled shadow, casting around him like a startled deer ready to bolt. Something about the situation must have spooked him.

Rik prised himself away from the old woman and joined Harry, watching as Joanne moved into an empty space where Rafa’i would be able to see her.

‘What did she have to say?’ he muttered darkly.

‘Not much.’ Harry’s phone rang. ‘Keep an eye on her.’ He took it out and thumbed the button.

‘Harry?’ It was Ballatyne. ‘Is Archer with you?’

‘She’s close by. Why?’

‘Where are you?’

He hadn’t told Ballatyne where they would be this morning. The intelligence man’s instinct would have been to swamp the area with men in boots and jumpsuits. Rafa’i would have spotted them immediately and disappeared.

‘We’re waiting for Rafa’i,’ he replied enigmatically. ‘Problems?’ He checked there was nobody nearby and switched his phone to loudspeaker so Rik could hear.

‘You could say that.’ Ballatyne’s voice sounded tinny in the morning air. ‘We’ve had a call from the Met. We asked them to alert us if anything out of the ordinary happened. A former Special Forces man, Gary Pellew, has been found shot dead in a hostel near Victoria.’

Dog.

‘They say he’s been dead several hours — sometime between eleven last night and five this morning. Difficult to tell without forensic results, but we won’t get those for a while. It was a single shot to the chest, that’s all we know. His room was clean apart from a change of clothes, a knife and a semi-automatic with a full load and a spare mag.’

Fighting kit. Harry glanced across at Rafa’i, still hovering beneath the trees, then at Joanne, who was checking the immediate area, her head swivelling constantly like a lioness on the prowl. Most of the time, he noted, she was watching him and Rik.

The threat had been three-fold. With Dog down, that left two to be accounted for. So who the hell had shot him?

‘Do they know what calibre weapon?’ Harry asked.

‘No. Small, I’m told. Why?’

‘Jennings was shot with a small calibre.’

Rik muttered and flicked open his jacket. Harry could just see the butt of his semi-automatic.

‘Noted,’ said Ballatyne. Then in a bleaker tone, ‘We’ve also had more info from the Ops room in Baghdad. The comms corporal who was on the log the day Humphries was killed has come back.’

‘Go on.’

‘When we asked for the original check, we were only concerned with outgoing calls, to check on any arrangement Humphries had made. They were all normal business, all checked and cleared. But the corporal confirmed that the call Humphries received that day was on a secured line. That means it was an agency or military source. Humphries left the office immediately. Forty minutes later, he was dead.’

‘Somebody drew him out.’ Harry glanced at Rik, who was shaking his head in silent disgust. He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to. ‘Do we know who?’

‘It was a woman. She used the code name Pamper.’

Harry sighed, feeling the blood rushing in his head. He didn’t need Ballatyne to finish driving in the final nail.

‘The call originated from the sat phone issued to Joanne Archer.’

FIFTY-FIVE

Harry looked up to find Joanne watching him. Her eyes were empty of expression, her face set. He thought she looked tired, resigned. But there was something else, too.

She knew.

He tried telling himself that the comms corporal had misread the log; that Joanne’s sat phone might have been stolen and used by someone else. But he recalled asking her what she’d done with it, down by the pier at Westminster Bridge. Her answer had been unequivocal.

‘I dumped it the day I flew out.’

So it was true.

Beyond Joanne, Rafa’i was stepping out tentatively from the trees, a bundle of nerves, his head snapping