‘This isn’t a chatty call, John. Where are you right now?’
‘Blue Boar.’
‘I hope you haven’t had much to drink.’
‘Half a glass of the Boar’s finest claret.’
‘I need you to get your arse in here. You probably look like shit with a beard ’n’ all.’
‘I may look more relaxed than normal,’ Stratton said, scratching his beard.
‘You have time to get home and clean up. There’s a couple people still on their way from London.’
Stratton could only wonder what it was all about. He checked his watch.
‘Yes, I know it’s late,’ Mike said, as if reading Stratton’s thoughts. ‘Come straight to the ops room. Oh, and put your crockpot in the freezer this time.’
The line went dead.
The crockpot reference used to be Mike’s private code for going away on an op. Perhaps now it just meant going away, as in to jail.
Stratton brushed the thoughts aside. He knew Mike well enough and could tell his mood from the tone of his voice. He’d sounded upbeat and energetic, as if he was keen to get on with something positive. Something was up. The crockpot in the freezer indicated more than a short job.
Stratton felt suddenly energised. This was good, he hoped. If it was an op, it meant he had been forgiven. Perhaps that was stretching it a little too far but it would do for the time being. He got to his feet, grabbed the old leather jacket off the back of the chair and headed to the bar to pay his bill. His favourite piece of clothing had arrived at his house from London a week before, along with the other belongings that he’d left at MI16. Stratton suspected that it had all been checked by forensics for any evidence of his involvement in the plot. They’d even examined his Jeep before it was returned by some innocuous delivery man, again from London.
Fifty minutes later he pulled into the SBS car park and climbed out of the Jeep. As he headed for the main building, fine flakes of snow began to float down from a sky the colour of wet concrete. Yet the snow refreshed him, mentally as well as physically. It conjured up memories, all of them operational in his case - days spent living in hedgerows or on mountaintops, sipping a hot drink and always watching for someone or something. He hoped that, if this meeting was all about a trip somewhere, he might be back in time to enjoy the white stuff.
He walked in through the front doors of the SBS HQ, swiped his ID card that registered his arrival as well as automatically unlocking the inner door, and headed to the ops room door. He did not have access to this one. As he reached for the buzzer the door opened and Mike stood looking at him.
Neither man moved, each studying the other, both with glib expressions. Mike’s face then cracked into a smile. ‘I think you’re going to like this one,’ he said.
Stratton didn’t return the smile. ‘You said that about the last job and I didn’t like it much at all.’
‘You only think you didn’t. You’ll be boring us all with your stories about it when you’re retired. Let’s go meet the gang.’
Stratton followed Mike through the ops room door into the curtain cubicle. Once more they stepped through into the spacious operations room with its myriad flatscreens, charts, maps and communications systems.
The tall, white-haired SBS commanding officer stood in civilian clothes talking to the operations officer and a man in a suit who had his back to Stratton. The CO glanced at Stratton on seeing the men enter and went back to his conversation.
Mike went to the immaculate young operations officer, also dressed in civvies, taking him aside for a quiet word. Stratton stood in the room feeling self-conscious. He hadn’t seen the CO since before the operation and felt something akin to shame, like the feelings he’d had years ago when he’d found himself waiting outside the headmaster’s office for a reprimand.
‘Stratton,’ the CO finally said as he moved to a group of chairs and sat down. ‘How is everything?’ he asked, wearing a thin, knowing smile.
Stratton was about to answer when the suited gentleman turned to face him. It was Sumners, his operational MI6 handler.
Sumners studied him coldly. The sight of Stratton conjured up all sorts of disagreeable thoughts, and not just about the more recent disaster. The man had a track record. Sumners despised the operative. With good reason, as far as he was concerned.
Stratton didn’t share the same degree of distaste for his London superior but he was well aware of Sumners’s feelings. It was a private hatred, though. No one else in the room knew the history behind it. In fact there were probably only a handful of people in MI6 who knew about the potentially disastrous operation that had climaxed in Jerusalem a few years back and had caused the rift between them - and they were all senior mandarins who knew how to keep a secret. Not that Stratton and Sumners had been particularly chummy before that incident. Sumners wasn’t chummy with anyone.
If Sumners had come all the way to Poole that pretty much confirmed to Stratton there was a job on. As the main liaison between MI6 and UK special forces Sumners was usually responsible for giving the intelligence outline before someone else covered an operation’s nuts and bolts.
‘You know Sumners, of course,’ the CO said.
The CO knew something of Sumners’s responsibilities at MI6, and a little of Stratton’s unique relationship with the London-based organisation. He was never privy to any operational details. But he was no fool and was aware that there was no love lost between the pair.
‘Yes. How are you, sir?’ Stratton asked.
Sumners gave him a very brief, empty smile and brushed his lapel, a characteristic gesture of his that implied he was marginally irritated.
‘Right. Shall we get on with this?’ the CO urged. ‘The preamble, please, Mr Sumners.’
Stratton sat in one of the chairs beside the CO. The ops officer remained standing to one side and Mike took a seat at the back of the room. An empty seat remained at the other side of Stratton.
Sumners walked to where he was comfortable addressing everyone and took a moment to collect his thoughts. ‘You all understand that what we are about to discuss is beyond secret,’ he began, somewhat moodily. ‘I am obliged to stress this even though it is a given . . . This operation is unique insofar as it will be a combined SBS and MI6 effort. We have always trained together, shared resources and skills. I have given many intelligence briefs to your personnel in various parts of the world. But I cannot recall the last time the two organisations actually combined operations in the manner we are proposing today. We have been joined at the hip with regards to this task, having previously been pawns in a plot that led to the destruction of the Morpheus and the theft of Her Majesty’s property.
‘Binning was not working alone when he removed the tile from MI16 and brought it aboard the oil platform in order to steal it. It is our belief that the hijacking of the platform was contrived entirely for the purpose of procuring the decryption device.’
‘Excuse me,’ Stratton interrupted, much to Sumners’s annoyance, as well as the CO’s. It was generally unacceptable to i nterrupt a briefing. All questions were usually left until the end. The sign of a good brief, in fact, was that no questions were required by the end of it, the briefer having covered all topics and contingencies. For Stratton to interrupt so soon was a surprise. An unwelcome one.
Sumners could not help taking it as a slight by the upstart. ‘What is it?’ he asked, frowning as he stared at his subordinate.
‘Sorry, but I need to catch up on a few things. I don’t know anything about a tile, or what happened to Binning and Rowena . . . if it’s pertinent to the briefing.’
The CO eyed Sumners with a look of acknowledgement concerning Stratton’s comment. ‘He’s been in information isolation since the incident. You should go back a little further.’
Sumners frowned again, even though Stratton obviously needed to know all the details. The CO coming out on the operator’s side did not help soothe his animosity towards him. ‘The tile refers to an extremely valuable decryption device that Binning stole from MI16, and he, along with Miss Deboventurer, escaped in a lifeboat before the platform was destroyed. During the subsequent emergency response we found the lifeboat. Empty. There was only one way they could have escaped, in our opinion at least, and that was by submarine. It would have been possible for a small surface vessel to get through the security cordon under the cover of the intense storm. But all things considered, that is highly unlikely.The destruction of the platform was calculated, a phase of the escape plan to create confusion and drain the resources of the security cordon. But that would still have left escape by a surface
