recruitment, but that is their problem and their difficulty, for them to sort out. We’re not a marriage-guidance council or a job centre for the unemployed and unemployable. Neither do we provide protection for an endangered species… but we might stretch to advice on personal security and push the asset in the right direction for that. God help him or her.’
As he spoke, Benjie thought of the men and women who had jumped ever higher over the hurdles he had set, and how he was always challenging them for better results – Arabs, Afghans, central Europeans on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. He even thought of young Harvey Gillot, wet behind the ears, on the quayside at Rijeka. Looking at the faces in front of him, their owners hanging on his words and showing shock at the crude certainties of his message, he could be content that none believed he had put on a show to hold their attention. A man had his hand up, wore a corduroy jacket, no tie. He probably had a fine degree from a good university. Benjie had no degree but had been awarded a commission in a well-fancied cavalry unit before switching to the Service. He pointed to the man.
‘How do you work closely with an asset for whom you have little personal respect?’
‘Easily. It’s a job, not a popularity contest. We don’t only use the good eggs. It’s what they can achieve on our behalf, within the parameters of our interests, that matters to us. I’m not about to dub as a hero a junior cipher clerk in the KGB/FSB who volunteers to help us, a major in the Iranian Air Force or a Chinese foreign-ministry stenographer. We pay a good rate – not as much as the Americans but more than the Russians – we do the flattery well and massage an overworked ego. We always tell the asset we’ll help him get clear as soon as it gets hairy on the inside, but we’re never in a hurry to fulfil that guarantee. Always one more month, one more drop, one more
… Gentlemen, ladies, I’m hoping you didn’t join the Service to be social workers with responsibilities to assets. One more.’
‘No responsibilities?’ the young man persisted.
‘None.’
From a girl in a full burqa, spoken with spirit: ‘Who decides where the national interest and the asset’s interest conflict?’
‘I do, colleagues do, and very soon you do… Look, there are always going to be little people in the way and unless they get booted sharply they may trip you up. I summarise. The asset has his moment. The moment is exploited. The asset is forgotten. It’s a hard world out there, believe it. I’ve never lost a night’s sleep over the future prospects or survival of an asset. Thank you.’
He went to the table and drank from his glass, and the director who oversaw recruitment thanked him, but there was no applause. He thought he had introduced them to a career of moral uncertainties – as there had been in so many places, in Rijeka, and with so many assets. Funny how little Harvey Gillot was lodged in his mind, grit in a boot.
So many phone calls came to the small, crowded desk of Megs Behan. It was a big day for her: she was finishing off the press release, two months in preparation, had been up half the night and ‘Yes?’ She had snatched up the phone.
‘Is that Miss Behan?’
‘It is – yes.’
‘Hello, thanks for your time, Miss Behan. I much admire the work you do. First class. I saw on the net your top-ten piece, in which Harvey Gillot was named. I’m a freelancer and I want to do a piece, hope to challenge that man. Can you help me?’
‘I’ll try – I’m really pushed right now.’
‘Have you an address for him to get me started? Then I’ll be out of your hair.’
‘Can do.’ She flicked keys, slipped in an extra password to bypass security blocks, scrolled, then let the cursor rest. ‘It’s Lulworth View, Easton. That’s on Portland but-’
‘Thanks.’
The line was cut. What had Megs Behan forgotten to ask the caller? ‘But who am I speaking to, please?’ She gulped down a lungful of air. The woman had claimed to be a freelance hack, had spoken with a London accent. Wait, wait. It had been the address of Harvey Gillot: arms dealer, purveyor of death, misery-maker. Big deal? Hardly… Was she going to feel guilty for infringing Harvey Gillot’s privacy, or was she going to crack on with the last tidy-up of the press release?
She had it up on her screen. There was a shout from behind her. ‘Megs, I’m not a nagger, promise. When?’
‘Ten minutes, if you get off my back.’
And he wouldn’t have minded, Megs reckoned, if she’d been on her back and him on her… Oh, shit. She swivelled in her chair, giggled, and beaded on her project manager. So, he had the lecher look, so… She had rolled up her T-shirt at the waist and dragged it down at the throat because Planet Protection didn’t do air-conditioning and most of the windows were sealed – years of paint, rust and pigeon shit on the outside. Not a bad-looking bloke, but at least eight years younger than her and he’d been all clumsy and frantic. Didn’t matter. She’d heard them talking about her once, a guy and two of the girls. She hadn’t had her cubicle light on and she was reading, quiet, not keyboard bashing. All hearsay, of course, because she hadn’t bedded the guy, who was straight out of college and had a good brain to go with an acne problem. One of the girls had been with a man who had now left, so he must have been the top source. Well, Megs had shagged that man, and he must have done some pillow talk. The word from the other side of the partition was… the bullet points needed a run-over.
• The global arms trade is out of control and brings in more than thirty billion American dollars a year for manufacturers of weapons and munitions.
She looked good, but underneath the god-awful clothes she wore, she was sensational. Brilliant body, hell of a waist.
• Nine million more small arms are produced every year and are swallowed by an already satiated market. Five hundred thousand people are killed each year by small arms throughout the world.
She was great in bed – if she could be bothered – and made an art form of it.
• In excess of sixteen billion bullets come off factory production lines every twelve months: two are available for every man, woman and child on the planet.
Apparently the down-side of relationships with her was the post-coital behaviour. Stop grunting, sit up, have a laugh, reach out. Find the cigarette paper and the tobacco pouch, roll one, light it, puff without sharing, then start spouting, as if everybody was as fanatical as she was about the crime that was the arms trade.
• Half a million people, the huge majority of them civilians, are killed each year by conventional weapons, which is equal to one person dying of gunshot injuries every minute of the day and night.
Short, sweet – and not forgotten: the conclusion played in her ears.
• The United Kingdom, our country, our government to whom we pay our taxes, is the fourth largest exporter of weapons in the world.
She didn’t have a guy at the moment, didn’t have time for one, and wasn’t fussed.
Beyond the bullet points there were paragraphs of explanation, additional statistics and a little rhetoric. The scratch in her mind – the phone call, giving an address, not getting a name – slipped to a back place in her priority queue. She wondered if she should have done a section on child soldiers and scanned in a photograph of some little Rwandan mite holding an AK that was nearly as big as himself. Yes. Megs held up the whole process, and the bullet line was:
• Today there are three hundred thousand child soldiers involved in conflicts and all are armed by the international dealers in death, and they kill and are killed.
She thought it read pretty well, and would have loved to slip on to the balcony above the fire escape for a quick roll and a smoke.
She hit the buttons, sent it to him.
It came into the building when the day was winding down and landed on a chief inspector’s desk. Not much there, but enough for him to curse the timing, get off his chair and shout at his door for Mark Roscoe. He liked the young sergeant, although he suffered from problems of attitude and might not be a ninety-minute team player. He called him in because he had no option. Roscoe was the only one with the clout, experience and reputation to carry this – the others were out, had shipped off home or gone down the pub.
Roscoe peered over his shoulder as he tapped it up for him to look at.
