The in-tray left for him by Gloria was empty, its contents either gone to the shredder or dumped on her desk in the outer office for filing. He had done his emails through the evening. Nothing remained for him to read except the report – The Secret Intelligence Service in 2010 (Confidential) – which made his lips curl in irritation.
It was crap.
In five years the Service would 'understand customer and partner requirements'. What was the Service? A division of the bloody London Underground?
He was old school and regarded 'jargon-mongers' with contempt… Maybe he should have gone when the knife hacked through the team responsible for the weapons-of-mass-destruction analysis. Could have gone then, on full pension as a sweetener, and joined the happy ranks of the Whitehall discards. Could have busied himself with his great love of Roman archaeology, set out his stall in a tidy guest-house, like the one at Bradford-on-Avon, and been within walking distance of the excavation, spent his days chipping with a light hammer, digging with a hand trowel, brushing at the mud and stone, letting out little whoops of pleasure as the villa gave up its secrets.
Walking away, he had realized long ago, took courage: perhaps more courage than flowed in Frederick Gaunt's veins. No wife: she'd gone with that hairy-faced beggar to a smallholding in Herefordshire to live like a Balkan peasant. No children: their mother had poisoned their minds against him and contact was lost. No friends: an officer in the Service was adept at avoiding commitment to people outside his tunnel of work. No prizes to bask in: the war went on, different enemies but the same endless threat. When he left he would be one more of the old farts who was unable under the strictures of the Official Secrets Act to say boldly from a bar stool: 'Do you know who I used to be?' He would be another senile bore, with Roman artefacts for company and a guest-house for home.
He stayed on and endured the crap of the jargon-mongers. And he waited… And he forced the pages of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010
(Confidential) into the teeth of the shredder… And around him the building was hushed. He did not know whether Wilco would come through on a secure phone line or use the encrypted teleprinter. He would not nag her. Polly 'Wilco' Wilkins was the best girl he'd ever supervised, and the most loyal, and the most unlucky in the twin fall-out of the WMD analysis and love. It would have been an unspeakable crime to pester her for news. He knew that the storm squad had gone in, had been halted in its assault, that fire had ravaged the building and nothing more.
All of it real. He doubted that the author of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010 (Confidential) – the purveyor of crap – had the smallest comprehension of real Service life. Men's lives on the line, body-to-body fighting, dying in combat as duty for their country or for their faith: real life.
He drank the final splash of coffee and grimaced.
He could see a barge progress, west to east, down the Thames and past Parliament. He was wondering if its driver was heavy on 'understanding customer and partner requirements' when the teleprinter against the wall behind him began its shrill chatter.
He read.
Gaunt,
Bloody disaster. One, repeat one, body on premises.
Body is badly burned but I believe forensics will identify Muhammad lyad. Your co-ord slipped the net early and MI bought him a start of up to 24 hours. So, no identification of co-ord and all internal DNA traces obliterated by fire (my estimate).
Will be chasing loose ends in the morning. The bastard is that BIS promised me the area had been secured. You told me once: (quote) Life's unfair, always has been and always will be (end quote). Right now, I believe you.
Love,
Wilco
He had said that to her when she had poured out to him on the phone that Dominic in Buenos Aires had ditched her. A wry, sad smile crossed Gaunt's face. It seemed to matter more to her than losing her fiance that a potential co-ordinator of al-Qaeda had been mislaid, was loose in Europe with a full day's time bought him. He signalled her.
Wilco,
If life were easy, everybody would be doing it. Sleep tight.
Gaunt
He closed down his desk, switched off the light and left darkness behind him. Frederick Gaunt, bowed by disappointment, went along the silent corridors, down in the elevator, across the hall, where he failed to notice the greetings of Night Security, and home to the loneliness of his flat. He felt himself to be in a maze of uncertainty and did not know where his path would lead or who would walk with him in similar ignorance. But Frederick Gaunt was not a quitter, and the loss of the trace on the co-ordinator would bring him to his desk early and back to the trail.
He whistled to himself as he walked across the bridge.
13 January 2004
Taking charge: that was the talent of Hamish McQueen.
As the company's senior sergeant, he ran Bravo.
'What the hell happened, Corp? What sort of shambles was that?'
The section's corporal told him. A patrol, routine. An ambush, not routine but handled. 'Actually, we did well, Sarge, really well. We had three incoming fire positions and we did good neutralizing on them, and we have at least one confirmed kill. Everything was brilliant. We did good hard target, did it at speed, didn't give the hostiles anything to hit. They took punishment and they broke off. Did you stop the ambulance?'
'We stopped the ambulance. One dead and one likely to corpse. Both males. No women or kids, which means the best fire control. I'm not criticizing the response, which I'd consider entirely appropriate, that's not the shambles.
What's the story with him?'
In front of McQueen, the corporal seemed to duck his head away, evasive, as if he did not want to answer. McQueen gestured, thumb raised, to his right, where the officer sat on one of the plastic-seated chairs outside the operations room where men from the bunker took a soft-drink break or a smoke: he was staring forward and his shoulders seemed to tremble.
Across the yard, the crews of the Warriors, the quick-reaction team, had been stood down and McQueen saw that men from the patrol were at the centre of little knots, pouring out their tale, and that all eyes were on the officer.
'I'm struggling, Sarge…'
'Well, struggle a bit bloody harder. What am I going to report to the major? No one's going to bite you. What's the story?'
T was up forward – I was trying to handle a bloody firefight'
'Say what you've got to say.'
'We did the hard-target bit at speed, then doubled round the back of the mosque and didn't stop till we were by the school. That was when we realized he wasn't with us.'
McQueen pressed without mercy: 'Spill it. You realized then that Mr Kitchen was not with you. We've got your radio call on that – it's logged. What did you do?'
'Doubled back. Went back the way we'd come… You know where we found him.'
'You got his helmet and his flak-jacket, not his personal weapon. I am not criticizing you because there's no cause for that. I'd say you did bloody well. You've got to understand there was a right panic here – that is, serious panic.
I'm moving on. Who was closest to him?'
'Baz was. Baz says he lost him when we were doing the hard-target stuff.'
'How do you rate that boy?'
'Good kid. A bit lippy, but a good kid. Their chief guy, Baz dropped him, and with him down, the rest quit. We
