always believed Abed did not know the meaning of the word and was suddenly filled with concern. His own orders, privately conveyed from the sheiks, was that if anything happened to Abed, he was to take charge of the mission, and if any member of the team had a change of heart, for whatever reason, he was to be instantly killed. They had never said as much but that would include Abed.
Ibrahim’s hand tightened on his scimitar and slowly started to draw it from its scabbard. But whatever was going through Abed’s mind seemed to pass and he lowered his eyes and faced the corridor again.
He drew his scimitar, adjusted his grip around the haft and stepped from the darkness of the weather-lock into the brightness of the ship, followed by Ibrahim and the others.
Stratton stood in the arched entrance of a grand Elizabethan country house set in ten acres of manicured gardens, looking down on to a spacious, groomed lawn where a hundred well-heeled guests were enjoying an official morning garden party: VIPs, the titled, ambassadors, statesmen and ministers of various levels. He had arrived with his four-man team at dawn to carry out preliminary security checks, search the grounds and scan the extra staff, caterers and valets as they arrived.The guests had started trickling in around 10 a.m. and an hour later everyone of importance had arrived.
It was a fresh, sunny day and Stratton was dressed in a smart jacket and tie, his dark hair shorter than it had been in many years, and he was bored as hell. This was not his usual employment by a long shot but he knew why he was here. His bosses in the Special Boat Service thought they knew, but they did not. The mandarins in Whitehall, far above his superiors at the SBS headquarters in Poole, had retired him, thrown him out and back into ‘normal life’, a relative term for life in Special Forces could never be described as normal. It was not a punishment though, far from it. In their eyes, they had done him a favour.
Bodyguard work was the most boring job for anyone, let alone an SF operative. It meant long hours hanging around doing nothing but watching and waiting, in cars, restaurants and always at the whim of those they looked after. It was true that a lot of Special Forces work was also spent waiting and watching but, for Stratton at least, bodyguard work had some features that qualified it as the most loathsome of assignments in his business. He hated working for civilians, and the work felt like nothing more than glorified servitude.
Civilians and soldiers mixed like oil and water in their working modes: there was no mystery about being a civilian since all soldiers had been one, but few civilians could truly understand the life of a soldier. There was an even bigger chasm between civvies and Special Forces; a civilian might scratch the surface of understanding life in SF by reading every book available on the subject, but they could never begin to fathom the mentality of an operative. There were civilian parallels - sportsmen, firemen and police armed-response teams for instance - which touched on aspects such as the team ethos, but the lifestyles and working conditions did not begin to compare with those who fought side by side in a war and weathered the dangers of operating alone on undercover operations. The job created bonds for life.
Within this microcosm, Stratton was an anomaly; he was highly respected for similar reasons to those of civilians who respected SF: they did not know what he did. He was a regular SF operative, but he was also a favoured agent for military intelligence and had often been called upon to carry out assignments independent of his parent unit, the SBS.
His unusual relationship with MI5 and MI6 began in Northern Ireland many years before while working against the IRA. Like many others, he had first been noticed as an intelligence gatherer with the Northern Ireland undercover detachments. It became evident to his masters in London that his Special Forces combat skills, intelligence and aptitude for working alone made him a versatile tool that could be utilised to a far greater degree. Before long he was brought into the inner sanctum of military intelligence and exposed to the more deadly undercover front-line fight, beyond the awareness of most senior military officers and ministers, let alone the general public. Even his own bosses in the SBS did not know where he went or what he did when the request came to ‘borrow’ Stratton.
Initially, Stratton had embraced this new side of specialist military work. It suited him perfectly. He preferred to work alone and revelled in the dangers and high degree of autonomy. He never questioned the assignments at first even though there were occasions when his conscience warned him he was moving into a darkness in which he might one day lose his way. His first assassination had been justified as far as he was concerned, as indeed they all appeared to be at the time, but he gradually began to feel like an executioner, an image he did not like. His work was not all killing though, and he felt he could control his conscience with some practice. But Stratton was living in denial which came at a price, one he was not aware he was paying until greatly in debt. Like a cancer creeping through his body, Stratton realised something ugly was happening to him when it was almost too late. In a few short years he was no longer the young man who had enthusiastically joined the military in search of excitement and adventure. The hubris was gone. He was weathered and dented and the shine had disappeared from his eyes.
This change had not gone unnoticed by the man who gave him his assignments; the voice on the phone that beckoned him to London to receive orders for his next piece of work. Stratton had come to loathe that voice, but, like a drug addict, or someone hypnotised, he always trotted off to do his master’s bidding.
Then one day the calls stopped. It took many months of silence before Stratton began to accept he had been beached, and a year had now passed since Sumners had made his last contact. He should have felt relieved, but the disturbing truth was that deep down he was not. Perhaps he had not yet learned to live without his fix, or perhaps it was something else; he didn’t know. It didn’t matter any more though; he would have to learn to move on. Perhaps it was the sense of failure that hurt him most, for that was the only reason he could think of why they did not call. He was no longer good enough for them.
Jobs like this one did not help. They gave him far too much time to examine himself. He watched the people on the lawn chatting politely, nibbling their cakes and sandwiches, the women in their bright hats and dresses, the men in their expensive suits, the car park beyond filled with Bentleys, limousines and other such cars. Rich trappings did not touch Stratton though. He had no interest in the lifestyles of these people who appeared dull and mundane to him.
Morgan, a large black guy with a distinct blend of African and European features, wandered over to Stratton. His father was Jamaican and his mother Antiguan, and he described his looks as Caribbean with a bit of whitey thrown in. He was in his early thirties and his broad, heavy-boned and powerful body was not designed for formal dress. He looked plainly uncomfortable in his borrowed jacket, shirt and tie, and kept sticking his fingers inside his collar in futile attempts to stretch it to stop it digging into his neck.
‘Can’t wait to get this bleedin’ gear off,’ Morgan said, pulling up the sleeves that ended at his knuckles. ‘Didn’t realise Foster’s arms were so bleedin’ long,’ he said, referring to the SBS lad who had loaned him the clothing at such short notice.‘Never seen so many toffs together in one place before. ’Ow the ’ell did we get cobbled into this job?’
‘I happened to walk by the RSM’s office just as he was looking for someone to palm it off on. Sorry.’
‘I thought the cops usually did this bollocks.’
‘They do, but apparently someone in MoD especially asked for Special Forces. There’s a lot of high-powered people here.’
‘Lotta wankers too.’
An attractive woman who looked to be in her late teens walked from the lawn and up the steps towards Morgan and Stratton who parted to let her through. She was wearing a pink frilly outfit with a low-cut neckline that was on the side of brazen for such an occasion.
She smiled coquettishly as she approached the two men and let her eyes linger on Stratton’s just a little too long as she squeezed between them to enter the building.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ Morgan said enthusiastically to the back of her head, keeping his eyes on her rear as she moved down the hallway and out of sight.‘Sweet,’ he drooled. ‘I’d crawl through an ’undred yards of minefield just to ’ear ’er fart down the end of a field telephone.’ Morgan was known for his basic sense of humour.
‘She’s probably never had an offer like that before,’ Stratton said dryly, his attention caught by a shrill scream
