Rafa’i and whatever may have become of him was no longer his concern. ‘What’s the public story with the shootings in St James’s?’ Three killers — two men in military uniform and a young woman, all sent to kill Rafa’i — shot dead in front of a sizeable crowd of witnesses, was bound to have caused a fuss. Harry hadn’t even looked at the newspapers, less concerned by public opinion than Rik Ferris’s gunshot wound and the need to keep a low profile.
Ballatyne looked unconcerned. ‘It’s off the front pages, although a few shaky scenes came up on YouTube before we could stop them. Fortunately, the shooting was all over before anyone could zero in on the gory details. Best we can hope for, I suppose. There’ve been questions in the House. . tourists terrified, appalling lack of security in the nation’s capital, gunmen on the loose just yards from Westminster, that kind of thing. And lots of foreign press coverage, which isn’t so good. Still, give it a few more days and they’ll have something else to occupy them. There have been arrests, too, and resignations here and in the US and Europe.’
‘Archer’s employers?’ The plotters behind the attempt to snuff Rafa’i. Oil interests, mostly, with grey-faced politicians and others hovering in the shadows. They’d be lucky to get all of them, he thought. Some of the financiers and corporate movers and shakers had better security cut-outs to protect themselves from unwanted investigation than most spies.
‘Yes.’ Ballatyne shifted his cup and saucer and placed a photo on the table. It was the one he’d shown Harry immediately after the shooting in St James’s Park. It showed the man Harry knew as Henry Paulton, Operations Director of MI5; the man who had posted Harry to Georgia following a disastrous drug bust and nearly succeeded in having him eliminated by a government ‘wet’ operator known as the Hit. Paulton was pictured about to get into a car in an unnamed street. Harry had been counting on analysing the photo to begin the hunt for his former boss.
‘The situation’s changed,’ Ballatyne said, before Harry could pick up the photo. ‘Paulton’s moved on.’
Harry was disappointed but not surprised. He’d been hoping Ballatyne was better than this, though.
‘Handy.’
Ballatyne blinked at the cynical tone ‘No, I’m serious. I meant what I said: you take Rafa’i to Baghdad and I’d tell where the photo was taken. It was Brussels, in case you’re still interested. Just off Avenue Louise. He’s not there now, though.’
‘But you know where he is.’ It was a statement.
‘Not exactly. He was seen two days ago by an embassy security staffer, leaving Frankfurt airport. Unfortunately, he lost him in the crowd. He could be anywhere by now.’
Harry watched the MI6 man’s face, trying to determine what was true and what was misdirection. There was something there, under the skin. A glint in his eyes which showed that this wasn’t all he had to say.
‘But you have an idea?’
‘Yes. A slim one, but it sounds plausible.’ He cleared his throat and took another sip of coffee. ‘As you probably know, the British army has anything up to two thousand personnel listed as absent without leave at any one time. Most of those are short-term, through illness, family problems, drink, drugs, fights, arrests and so forth. And trauma. A few are long-term, meaning they don’t intend reporting back. Most are from infantry regiments with a few scattered among other units. It’s a problem, but manageable. However, there’s a core group who have gone absent and can’t be found. They’re spread as far as Australia, Canada, South Africa, Thailand. . and lots of other places where we can’t get at them. Within that core group are a few personnel of particular concern.’ He flicked at a sugar grain on the tablecloth and gave a wintry smile. ‘They’re listed as SDPs, or Strategic Displaced Personnel, would you believe?’
‘Meaning what?’ Harry couldn’t quite see where this was going, but it had to involve him somehow; whatever Ballatyne was leading up to, he wasn’t going to leave here without exerting some kind of official pressure to do a job of work. ‘Does this involve Paulton or not?’
‘Yes.’ No room for doubt.
‘How? He’s not on this list, is he?’
‘Hardly. But we believe he’s got something to do with it.’
‘In what way?’
‘Of the maybe two dozen names on the SDP list, there’s a handful who are too important to let go.’
Harry felt his spirits sink. ‘You want me chasing down a bunch of squaddies? I don’t think so.’ He made to stand, but Ballatyne put out a hand to stop him.
‘Wait. That’s not what I’m leading up to. Well, not entirely.’ He waited for Harry to relax before continuing. ‘The people I’m talking about are not your average squaddies, too pissed to find their way back to their units. All of them have tactical, planning or technical information in their heads; information that if let out, would be a disaster for our operational and strategic capability.’
‘Let out?’
‘Sold.’
Harry breathed out. He began to see where this was going.
‘In the business world,’ Ballatyne continued smoothly, ‘people like this would be head-hunted from one corporate body to another, valued and appraised for their technical skills, education and potential. Most would have been fast-tracked from university on career-management paths. Well, these specialists are no different. . only, the interested bodies involved are not our friends.’
Nice, thought Harry. Russia. Iran. North Korea. China. And a few smaller countries who’d love to get their hands on our latest weapons technology. Throw in al-Qaeda for the fun of it and the nightmare was real.
‘And you think Paulton’s involved in horse-trading military specialists?’
‘He’s got the background. And he’s got a living to make. He wasn’t like Bellingham and a few others we could name, born with the benefits of a silver spoon; he was a normal wage slave like the rest of us.’
‘He’s nothing like the rest of us.’ Harry’s words come out as sharp as tin tacks, his hackles rising. Paulton, along with Bellingham, his MI6 opposite number, had conspired to have Harry, Rik Ferris and several other security and intelligence services staff terminated. That put him well outside the pale of normal.
‘Forgive me. Clumsy comparison.’ Ballatyne looked genuinely sorry. ‘But I think you know what I mean. There’s a lot of money swilling about out there looking for the right information. Paulton’s got contacts built over a lifetime in the business, he has a first class brain and knows his way around every kind of negotiating situation. He dealt with the IRA for years, he’s mixed it with numerous other terror groups and their front men, and he’s very good at keeping people onside. He’s also an expert at disappearing. As you’d expect, he has numerous passports in a variety of names.’ He held up a hand and began to count off his fingers. ‘Some MI5 personnel knew him as Henry. Others knew him as George. To his neighbours in the block of flats where he lived, he was George Henry, civil servant. Other names we’ve discovered are Patrick Towen, George Bartholomew and Paul McHenry. There’s a John Arthur Millar and a Colin Bracewell out there, too, although documents in both those names have turned up recently, so he’s probably ditched them by now. He seems to have made an art out of playing identity games with everyone he ever came in contact with, just for the hell of it.’
‘And nobody picked this up?’
Ballatyne shrugged. ‘Apparently not. Shows how good he was. His life was carefully compartmentalized, so one group never met the others. Classic undercover technique. Only he took it several stages further.’ He smiled coldly. ‘If it happened and two separates did meet, he probably had a good explanation for it. Having two names is not uncommon. I’m still known by my family as Paul — my middle name. Apparently I never liked Richard as a kid. Once I started work, though, Richard was on my records, so Richard I became. In a perfect world, a psych evaluation should have seen Paulton’s budding paranoia, but he appears to have avoided close examination for years.’
Harry felt himself being hemmed in, dragged slowly against his will into a separate kind of chase, one not of his choosing. Hunting down Paulton was all he’d been thinking about for months. But he’d been planning on doing it on his own terms. Having got this close to a possible location, he was now recognizing a carrot being dangled before him; a carrot intended to get him to do a job of work in exchange for knowledge about Paulton’s whereabouts.
He tried one last method of stepping sideways. ‘You’ve got people who can do this. You don’t need me.’
‘Sure we have. But this is delicate. And we’ll pay you for your time, sub-contract rates. Ferris, too, if you need him.’ Ballatyne sighed. ‘Look, the MOD has a squad of recovery officers chasing down overdue squaddies and persuading them to come in. But they have limited skills and authority. Redcaps are good, too, there’s no denying,
