Текст книги "Saint Death"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

33

He wound the window down as he drove through the city, an old Guns and Roses CD playing loud, his arm out of the window, drumming the beat with his fingers. Welcome to the Jungle. That was just about right. Welcome to the fucking jungle. He turned off the road and onto the forecourt of the hostel and reverse parked. He took out the bullet and did another couple of blasts of cocaine. He went through to the office.

The office was hot. No AC. A television tuned to Telemundo was on in the back, a football match on. The heat made it all woozy. A dazed fly was on its back on the desk, legs twitching. The man behind the desk was dripping with sweat.

“Hola, Señor,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“You have an Englishman staying here?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Yes or no, friend?”

“I can’t tell you anything about our guests, Señor.”

Adolfo smiled, pulled his shirt aside and took out the pistol. “Yes or no?”

The man’s eyes bulged. “Yes. He ain’t here.”

“How long has he been staying?”

“Got in the day before yesterday.”

“Say much?”

“Just that he wanted a bed.”

“That it?”

“Quiet type. Hardly ever here.”

“What time do you expect him back?”

“I don’t know, Señor. He left pretty early yesterday, don’t think he’s been back.”

“He leave any things?”

“Couple of bags.”

“Show me.”

The dormitory was empty. Ten beds, pushed up close together. Curtains drawn. Sweltering hot. A strong smell of sweat, dirty clothes, unwashed bodies. The man pointed to a bed in the middle of the room. It had been neatly made, the sheets tucked in snugly. All the others were unmade and messy. Adolfo told the man to leave and he did. He stood before the bed and sniffed the air. He took the pistol and slid the end inside the tightly folded sheets, prising them up an inch or two. He yanked the sheets all the way off and looked inside them. He prodded the pillows. He looked beneath the bed. There was a bag. He took it and opened it, tipping the contents out onto the bed.

A pair of jeans.

Two t-shirts.

A pair of running shorts.

A pair of running shoes.

Underwear.

Books. English.

‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being.’

‘Great Expectations.’

No money. No passport. No visas.

Adolfo’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and pressed it to his ear.

“Yes?”

“It’s Pablo.”

“What do you want?”

“You know Beau Baxter?”

“Works for our friends?”

“He’s in town. Spotted him an hour ago.”

“Where?”

“Plaza Insurgents. Avenue de los Insurgents. Driving a red Jeep Cherokee.”

Adolfo ended the call and went back to the office. The television was still on but the man wasn’t there. He went outside, got into his car, and left.

34

Anna straightened the hem of her skirt and knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

There were two men with Control.

“Anna,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

“That’s alright.”

“Do you know the Foreign Secretary?”

“Only from the newspapers,” she said. She took the man’s outstretched hand.

“Hello, Anna. I’m Gideon Coad.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

Anna noticed Control was fidgeting with his pen and, as she glanced at him, she heard him sigh. He was uncomfortable introducing her to the politician, that much was obvious. She turned to the older man and gave him a polite smile. She was not nervous at all. She felt comfortable, not least because she had done a little illicit research before leaving the office last night. There had been rumours of Coad’s extra-marital affair with a male researcher and, true enough, it had been easy enough to find the evidence to demonstrate that those rumours were true. Emails, bank statements, text messages, hotel receipts. Anna would have been fired on the spot for an unauthorised and frivolous deployment of GCHQ’s resources for the purposes of muck-raking but, if you were good enough – and she most certainly was good enough – there were simple enough ways to hide your footsteps.

There was another reason for her amusement: she was right at the heart of government, now.

That was good. It was confirmation that they knew nothing about her at all.

Control turned to the second man. “And this is Captain Pope.”

He was tall and grizzled. Slab-like forehead. A nose that had been broken too many times. Cauliflower ears. Anna recognised the type: unmistakeably a soldier.

“Captain Pope is one of our agents,” Control explained. “Like Captain Milton was.” He cleared his throat. “As you know, the Foreign Secretary has asked for a briefing from you about your findings.”

“Fine. Here.”

She handed them each a folder labelled JOHN MILTON, CAPTAIN. The name was followed by his government record number, neatly typed on the cover. It was a much slimmer volume than the reports she typically provided, but since her predecessor had found nothing at all, she felt that her smirk of pride was justified.

“You wanted everything I could find about him. I’ve written up his early history, plus sections on his time in the army and the SAS, his friendships – that’s a short section – relationships with the opposite sex – even shorter – where he lives, his bank accounts, medical records, the cars he’s driven, and so on and so forth. Everything I could get my hands on. I’ve found a decent amount. There are 300 pages.”

Coad looked at the report with a dismissiveness that Anna found maddening. “The potted version will be fine for now, please.”

She mastered the annoyance that threatened to flash in her eyes, nodded with polite servility and, when she began to speak, her voice was clipped and businesslike.

“Milton is a very private man but, even so, I was able to build up a picture of his life in the years before he disappeared. He’s forty years old, as you know. Single. He married a Danish national in 1999. Martha Olsen. A librarian. There were no children and the marriage didn’t last; they were divorced two years later. Olsen has remarried and has two children and save a couple of emails and texts between them they don’t appear to have kept in touch. There have been affairs with other women: a businesswoman in Chelsea; a Swiss lawyer in Basel; a tourist in Mauritius. Nothing serious, though.”

“Milton’s not marriage material,” Pope said.

“My main task was to find Mr. Milton’s current location. That was not a simple assignment. He is evidently an expert in going off the grid and it would appear that he has an unusual dedication to doing that – this is not the sort of man who makes silly mistakes. The task was made considerably more complicated by the fact that all the information after he started to work for you” – she nodded at Control – “remained classified. That was like having one hand tied behind my back.”

She didn’t try and hide the note of reproach. Control glared at her and then turned to the Foreign Secretary. “Some things about Milton must remain private.”

“Quite. Get on with it, Miss Thackeray.”

“I ran all of the usual searches but none of them paid off. I wasn’t able to find anything on him at all. No obvious sources of income—”

“Then how is he affording to live?”

“Frugally. There was a withdrawal of £300 in Liverpool before you lost him but nothing since. He has £34,534 left in the account. It’s been untouched for six months. He’s not stupid – he knows that’s the first place a decent analyst would look. There is another savings account with another £20,000, also untouched. No pension.”

Pope laughed. “He wouldn’t have anticipated retirement. Not that sort of job.”

“My guess would be that he has been picking up work on the way. Bar work? Bouncing? Something that attracts migrants. Cash-in-hand, no questions asked. I don’t think we’ll be able to find anything substantial. How detailed shall I be?”

“Whatever you think is relevant.”

“There’s been no correspondence with any of the few contacts I was able to find,” she continued, casting a reproachful look at Control. “He has no family and there have been no emails, calls or texts to the friends he does have. He dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And yet you found him.”

“Mostly down to a stroke of luck. He was fingerprinted in Mexico. Ciudad Juárez. The Mexican police upload all their data to a central database in Mexico City and we picked it up en route. Pictures, too.”

She flicked to the page with the picture of Milton in the police station.

“And there he is,” Pope said.

“This was taken on Monday night. Standard procedure. The passport he gave to the local police is a fake.”

“He’ll have several,” Pope observed.

“I’m sure he does.”

“What else?”

“Knowing which passport he has been using made it much easier to get more on him – like where he’s been for the last six months, for example.” She flipped forwards to a double-page map of South America. “The red line marks the route that he’s taken. Passport data is collected at most borders these days and that data is very easy to find. Once I knew the number of the passport that he was using it was quick to find out where he’s been. He landed in Santos in Brazil in August. He came ashore from the MSC Donata, a cargo ship registered in Panama. It sailed from Liverpool two weeks earlier. From there, he started west. He crossed into Paraguay at Pedro Juan Caballero, then into Bolivia and Peru. Since then, he’s always headed north – Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala then Mexico. Most of the time he was photographed at the border, and I have those pictures, too.”

She flicked through to a series of photographs. The tall cranes of Santos appeared in one picture and the barren deserts of the Brazilian interior in another. Milton was looking into the camera for some of them, bored and impatient. Others had been taken without him noticing.

She scratched her head. The Foreign Secretary examined her with searching eyes. “So he’s been in South America since you lost track of him,” she said. “No idea what he’s been doing in between his border crossings. But we do know where he is now. He came across the Mexican border at Tapachula four weeks ago, travelling by bus. He’s been heading north and it looks like he got to Juárez earlier this week. We’ve got the police pictures and the prints and so I tried to find something else. I ran face recognition on everything I could think of and picked up this. They’re from CCTV from a restaurant in the city.”

She turned to the series of stills she had grabbed. Milton was approaching the camera across a broad parking lot. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder. Black glasses obscured his eyes. He was tanned and heavily bearded.

“How did you find that?” Coad asked.

“The software’s pretty good if you can narrow the search for it a little. There was a disturbance at this restaurant the same day this was taken. A shooting. Seven people were killed. Footage from all of the cameras in the area was uploaded by the police. I was already deep into their data. Made it a lot easier to find.”

Control scowled at the pictures. “Was he involved?”

“Don’t know.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Don’t think so.”

Coad held up his hand. He paused for a moment, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the armrest of his chair before turning to her again.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No,” she admitted.

“You’ve checked hotels?”

“First thing I checked. Nothing obvious. He’ll be paying in cash.”

“So where do we look first?”

“Lieutenant Jesus Plato – the policeman who fingerprinted him. He’s the best place to start.”

“And if we should decide to send agents to Mexico to find him … what is your estimate of the odds that we would find him?”

“I can't answer that. I’d be speculating.”

“Then speculate,” Control said.

“If he’s as good as I think he is, he won’t stay in once place for more than a week or two and he’s been in Juárez since Monday. Plus there’s the danger that what happened at the restaurant might have spooked him. But if you’re quick? Like in the next couple of days? Decent odds, I’d say. He won’t know you’re coming. If he’s moved on, he won’t be far away. A decent analyst might be able to pick up a trail.”

Control looked across at Coad and, at the latter’s curt nod, he turned back to Anna. “We’ve been in contact with the Mexican government. They’ve given us approval to send a team into Mexico to bring him out. Captain Pope will be in charge. Six agents and you, Ms. Thackeray.”

“Oh.”

“Are you willing to go?”

“I’ll do what I’m told.”

Pope nodded at her. “Juárez is not a small place,” he said, “and, if you’ve done your research, you’ll know it’s not the easiest city in the world to find something. It’s overrun with the drug cartels. Normal society has broken down completely. We might need help tracking him down. And you know him as well as anybody.”

“Well?” Coad said.

“Of course,” she said.

Control nodded brusquely. “You’ll be flying from Northolt and landing at Fort Bliss in Texas. You’ll go over the border from there. Do you have any questions?”

“When?” she said.

“First thing tomorrow.”

* * *

Anna rode home, changed out of her leathers and went out for a walk. Pittville Park was nearby and she made her way straight for the Pump Room and the ornamental lakes. The building was a fine example of Regency architecture and the lakes were beautiful but Anna was not distracted by them. She slowed as she approached the usual bench. She sat and pretended to watch the dogs bounding across the grass. When she was satisfied that she was not observed, she reached down beneath the bench, probing for the metal bars that held the wooden slats in place. Her fingers brushed against the narrow plastic box with the magnetic strip that held it against the rusted metal. She retrieved the box, opened the end and slid the memory stick inside. It contained her full report on Milton, plus the regular updates that she provided on the operation and scope of GCHQ’s data-gathering activities. She didn’t know how long she would be out of the country, and she did not want to be late in filing. She paused again, checked left and right, waited, and then reached back and pressed the case back into its place. As she left for home, she swiped the piece of chalk that she held in her hand against the side of the metal bin next to the chair.

35

Captain Michael Pope took off his boots and his jacket and went through into his kitchen. It was late and his wife was asleep upstairs. He looked in the fridge but there was nothing that took his fancy. He took a microwave meal from its paper sleeve, pierced the film and put it in the oven to heat. While he was waiting, he reached the bottle of whisky down from the cupboard, poured himself a double measure, added ice and sipped it carefully to prolong it. He rested his hands on the work surface and allowed his head to hang down between his shoulders.

Did he know Milton?

He did. He knew him very well indeed.

* * *

They met twenty years ago. They had both been in the sandpit for the first Iraq War, young recruits who were too stupid to be scared. They were in the same Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets, but in different Battalions. Milton had been in the Second and Pope in the First. They hadn’t met in the desert but, once that was all over, Pope had transferred into the First Battalion. He was assigned to B Company.

That was the same company, and then the same rifle platoon, as Milton.

They were almost immediately sent to South Armagh.

B Company had been assigned to South Armagh. That was bandit country, and Crossmaglen, the town where they would be based, was as bad as it got. It was right on the border, which meant that the Provos could prepare in the south and then make the quick trip north to shoot at them or leave their bombs or do whatever it was that they had planned to do. The men had been billeted in the security forces base and their rifle company lived in ‘submarines,’ long corridors with beds built three high on one side. Milton had the top bunk and Pope was directly beneath him. It was the kind of random introduction that the army was good at but they quickly discovered that it was propitious; they had plenty in common. Both liked The Smiths and The Stone Roses and the films of Tarantino and de Palma. Both liked a drink. Both wore civilian duvet coats from C&A beneath the nylon flak jackets and both had taken to writing their blood groups on the jackets just like all the other blokes. Both had girlfriends back home but neither was particularly attached to them. Milton’s sense of humour was dry and Pope’s was smutty. They were both obsessed with getting fitter and stronger and both intended to attempt SAS selection when they had a little more experience. The chemistry just worked and they quickly became close.

One memory was clearer than all the others.

One night.

He remembered it almost as if it were yesterday.

It had been towards the end of their first posting. The battalion was due to go back to Andover the following week and they had one more patrol to do. They were picked up by helicopter and flown out into the countryside. It was a four-day cycle: four days out, four days on town patrol, four days in sangars. The helicopter was one of the Army Air Corps’ Lynx AH-9s and, as it powered up to take off again, there was a muffled bang from the direction of the tailboom and the engines died. The pilot tried everything he could think of to get it started but nothing worked. It was grounded.

The Lynx was a multi-million pound piece of equipment and not something they could just leave there overnight. The men were put on stag to guard it while they flew in an engineer. It was farmland. The farmhouse itself was five hundred feet away. Dark and isolated, lots of barns and outbuildings. It was cold and wet and there was an almost tangible sense of danger. The platoon were arranged in a defensive posture with an inner and an outer cordon, split up into groups of two and three. Their arcs overlapped each other, giving them three-hundred-and-sixty degrees cover around the stricken chopper.

Milton and Pope formed one of the two man teams. They lay face-down in the mud, their SLRs resting on bipods, both squinting down range into their nightsights. They were cold and soaking wet. Pope’s legs were frozen, the cold chilling all the way through to the marrow, his hands felt like blocks of ice and he couldn’t cover his ears because he had to listen for activity. They were both in a foul mood, cursing the pilot for breaking the chopper and the engineer for his inability to fix it.

Pope looked through the nightsight.

Movement? He checked and rechecked.

“Two men coming out of the barn towards us,” he reported.

“Bollocks.”

“And there’s a third. I’m serious, John.”

Milton looked through his nightsight. “Alright. Not bollocks.”

Pope watched them as they approached. They were moving carefully, keeping low. Two of them were carrying rifles and the other the unmistakeable shape – long, and with a bulbous onion-shaped end – of an RPG. Just their luck. They must have landed right in the middle of a PIRA hotspot. They were coming straight for them.

Despite the short tour in Iraq, Milton and Pope were still green. Chasing outclassed Republican Guardsmen on the road back to Baghdad was one thing; the Provos, with years of experience and full of hatred for the army, were something else entirely. Pope started to panic. What were they going to do? They couldn’t contact an officer or NCO for advice since they were too young to warrant a radio. Protocol said that they should issue a challenge since these could be three of their own men but if they weren’t friendlies then that would mean that they would either be in a firefight or chasing the players as they went to ground, and this was not the sort of country where you wanted to get lost and cut off from your mates.

Milton did not panic. He was calm and assured. He knew the correct routine for this situation and he followed it to the letter.

He pulled back the bolt to cock his rifle, identified himself as army and called out for them to stop.

They ran for it.

Milton fired. Pope fired.

The farm descended into pure chaos. The inner cordon saw the two tracer rounds from the tops of their magazines and thought that they were under attack. They started to fire on Milton and Pope. They both rolled into a slurry-filled ditch and covered their heads, screaming out that they were friendly. One of the lads with a light-machine-gun joined in the fun, sending a fusillade of fire down onto them. They were safe enough in the ditch and Pope remembered very well the look he had seen on Milton’s face as he risked a glance across at him. He grinned at him and then, in the middle of the firestorm, in bandit country with a broken-down Lynx and twenty men throwing fire down upon them, he gave him a big, unmistakeable wink.

The search for the three Provos had been both immediate and thorough. And utterly thrilling. It had been, Pope recalled, the best night of his life and the one when he had decided that the army was definitely what he wanted to do. It seemed as if the whole company had descended on the farm. The brass sent a Gazelle to join in the search, circling overhead as it shone down its powerful Night Sun searchlight. A Saracen armoured car turned up with a soldier manning the big turret-mounted machine-gun. Roadblocks were thrown up and dogs and their handlers spilled out of cars. The rifle company was out all night but it looked as if their quarry had got away.

But then, two days later, a man admitted himself at a hospital in the south with a 7.62mm wound in his buttocks. Pope and Milton knew it was one of the Provos that they had chased into the fields and that one of them had shot him. They argued about who should claim the credit for months.

* * *

Pope wasn’t one for mementoes but he had kept a couple of photographs from that part of his career. He took down an album and flicked through it, finding the photograph that he wanted: seven men arranged around a Saracen. In those days, the vehicles were fitted with two gallon containers at the rear. They called them Norwegians. The drivers filled them with tea before they left the sangar each morning and although the tea grew lukewarm and soupy before too long, it was a life-saver during cold winter patrols. The photograph was taken in a field somewhere in Armagh. Three of them were kneeling, the other four leaning against the body of the truck, each of them saluting the camera with a plastic cup. Milton was at the back, his cup held beneath the Norwegian’s tap, smiling broadly. Pope was kneeling in front of him. Milton was confident and relaxed. Pope remembered how he had felt back then: it had been difficult not to look up to him a little. That respect was something that remained constant, ever since, throughout their time together in the Regiment and then the Group.

The microwave beeped. He knocked back the rest of the whisky, collected the meal and took it into the lounge.

He sat down with the album on his lap.

Memories.

He didn’t question his orders but they were troubling. Control had said that Milton had suffered from some sort of breakdown. That didn’t seem very likely to Pope. Milton had always been a quiet man, solid and dependable. Extremely good at his job. Impossible to fluster, even under the most extreme pressure. The idea that he might snap like this was very difficult to square. But, there again, there was all the evidence to suggest that something had happened to him: the trouble he had caused in East London, shooting Callan, and then, after six months when no-one knew where he was, turning up again in Mexico like this.

Something had happened.

He had his orders, and he would obey them as far as he could.

He would go and bring him back. But he wouldn’t retire him unless there was nothing else for it. He would do everything he could to bring him back alive.