Tracers

privileged few, would merely rub salt into the wound. Rik wouldn’t understand. The truth was, they had offered the situation to him and he’d taken it. Not right away — he’d made them sweat a bit first. Childish, maybe, but it felt right at the time. A sort of acknowledgement that they’d screwed up over the way they’d treated him. But eventually, he’d said yes. They couldn’t afford to lose good people, they’d said, the situation being what it was. Ballatyne had echoed the same words.

‘And you agreed — after all they did to us?’

‘I thought it might be useful, a way of keeping in touch. But it’s not without strings; they get to call on me whenever they feel like it.’

‘You’ve done this before?’

‘No. This was the first.’ Not that I knew it, he wanted to add. Not until it was too late, by which time we were both in it up to our necks.

‘Did you know all about this Rafa’i stuff?’

‘Of course I bloody didn’t. No more than you did. According to Ballatyne, once they discovered who I was, they let us run with it.’

Rik laughed bitterly. ‘So why not say? Didn’t you trust me?’

Harry turned and walked towards the Mall, then stopped and came back. He couldn’t let it go like this. There was too much riding on it. Friendship, for one. And Rik, for all his casual attitude, was bullish enough to gnaw at it like a dog on a bone. It would eat away at the bond they had formed since Red Station. And Harry couldn’t let that happen. ‘I never thought they’d call on me,’ he said, ‘and they didn’t. Christ, it’s not as if there’s a national shortage of manpower.’

Rik lost the angry look. ‘How many others are carded?’

‘I don’t know. Not many. Special Forces, mostly. . a few specialists. I figured that as time passed, my name would slide down the list and eventually fall off the end.’ He shrugged. ‘As it happened, they didn’t need to call because I was already in the middle of it.’ He gestured towards the covered shapes on the ground. ‘I haven’t said thank you — for back there. I owe you. I’m sorry you had to do that.’ He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound mawkish, so he started walking.

‘Wait!’ Rik hurried after him. ‘Hang on. I’m stupid for getting out of shape about it, but hear me out, all right? In Five, you were operational, I was in support — I get that. There’s a big difference. I shouldn’t be surprised they’d want to retain you. The others in Red Station — Mace, Clare, Fitzgerald — they talked about you, did you know that?’

Harry said nothing. He was sure they had, out of curiosity if nothing else. But he was trying to forget about them. . trying not to forget about Paulton. Wouldn’t be able to, even if he’d wanted. Not now he knew the man was out there. And reachable.

‘First off,’ continued Rik, ‘you clearly didn’t give a monkey’s for the party line. Second, Clare admired you because you made everything look so easy. You knew exactly what you were doing and you had instincts. We all wanted to be able to think like that.’

‘Good for you,’ Harry countered. ‘So?’

‘So why wasn’t I carded?’

Harry stared at him. He’d expected Rik to be annoyed because of the secrecy, of not confiding in him about the card. But not this. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘You just found out why not! You get the authority to carry a gun — big deal. You want a normal life? Forget it. You want to be on edge every time there’s a terrorist incident, waiting for the phone to ring? To be dragged out of the cupboard whenever someone like Ballatyne feels like it because they’ve run out of options? You want to get pushed into the firing line when they don’t have anyone else handy? Ferris is young, unattached and expendable — nobody will miss him if he screws up. Believe me, you really don’t want that. Stick with computers — it’s what you’re good at.’

‘You came out OK.’

‘She didn’t.’ Harry nodded across the grass at Joanne’s body, his throat tight. ‘Neither did you, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ He let that sink in, knowing the shock of the shooting still hadn’t registered fully on the younger man. That would come in the hours and days ahead, when the sudden overload of adrenalin had worked its way out of his system. For now, he was coping, ready to believe a bullet wound was an easy trade-off for what they had gone through. But Harry had seen what Rik hadn’t: the gunshot wounds on Joanne’s body. There were two wounds to her left side, where Harry’s shots had hit home, and one to her right shoulder. Rik’s shot, going high. Shock from a wound and the adrenalin rush would do that: make the body wobble just enough to throw off the best of aims. But seeing the target react and fall would still make it look like you’d got a centre hit.

Rik was thinking he’d got off easy, that he’d taken Joanne down in exchange for a relatively minor wound. The fact was, he really had got off easy: he hadn’t killed Joanne at all — Harry had. It was something he would need to know before very long. Before he dismissed it as something you did, then moved on.

Ballistics would confirm it.

Harry took out his wallet and extracted the card he’d shown Ballatyne. ‘This is what they give us. Allows us to do what we do.’ He dug his thumbnail along one edge and tore off the outer layer, exposing another layer underneath. It bore his photograph and a short paragraph addressed to all law enforcement and military agencies, ending with a signature and a telephone number. His stay-out-of-jail card. He thrust it into Rik’s hand. ‘Here — you want one, take it.’

Rik said nothing, confused by Harry’s response.

‘It didn’t do me any good.’ Harry felt the beginnings of something like relief, now it was out in the open. ‘And in the end it cost too much,’ he finished quietly.

Rik nodded and winced as the movement translated down his shoulder. ‘Shit, that hurts. Look, I’m sorry about. . Joanne. I know how you felt.’

‘You don’t know anything,’ Harry growled.

‘OK. But hear me out. Didn’t you get a real buzz out of the last few days?’

‘What?’

‘Come on, I know you did. All the rummaging around and secret squirrel stuff. . you love it. It’s what you were trained for. That’s why you said yes to the card in the first place, isn’t it?’

Harry stopped and glared at his friend, trying to find the words. But they wouldn’t come.

Rik was right: he had felt a buzz. The investigation, the tracking, the questions — all that. But it had nothing to do with the card, the state’s authority allowing him to carry a lethal weapon and use it in extremis. Nor would it ever. Right now, though, he was tired and angry and wanted to get away from this place and sit down with a very strong drink. Maybe if he asked him nicely, Ballatyne would pass the Rafa’i ball to someone else. But even as he thought it, he knew that wouldn’t happen.

He found himself thinking about the days ahead. The headache-inducing drone of the C-130 flight to Baghdad, the hours of boredom followed by the sudden belly-lurching drop to the hot tarmac; the sights and smells, the alien atmosphere, the operational briefings, the smell of military gear, the waiting. The outcome of flying into a hornets’ nest with the reluctant Rafa’i in tow.

The possibility that things might not go as planned.

Yet somehow, perversely, he was looking forward to it and to coming out the other side. To being able to deal with some unfinished business.

That was what it was all about. His problem was, he didn’t trust Ballatyne to keep his word about the photo. Not that it mattered.

‘How long would it take to track down details from a foreign car registration?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Rik frowned, distracted by the abstract. ‘It would depend on the country. Some databases are high-tech and easy to access, others are so primitive they’re virtually impossible. A lot of them still use data-card entry methods-’

‘How long?’ If he let him, Rik could go on all day like this.

‘Can you narrow it down to a country?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I’d need to work on it, maybe feed it out to the community. Someone should be able to recognize the format and get back to me. After that, it’d just be a matter of searching. What’s that got to do with anything?’