Brute Force

32

I drove off the ferry and into Holyhead. I parked up near the first internet café I could find and paid for an hour.

If they were following me they'd soon find out where I was heading. I checked the windows and there was still nothing obvious to tell me anyone out there walking the streets, sitting in a parked car or just mincing about window-shopping had a trigger on me. Maybe they didn't have to now: they'd just lift me at Lynn's place, once I'd found out where it was.

My first port of call was obvious: I tried a site that searched the telephone directory. I didn't know Lynn's first name, but had to insert at least an initial. It was going to be a laborious process. I started with A Lynn and Norfolk as the location, and got over a hundred results straightaway – just for the site's free directory enquiries listings. There were many more listings on the electoral roll and birth, marriage and death records, but you had to pay to view them. This wasn't going to work. I could plough through a couple of thousand free listings, and still not have a result. He could be ex-directory.

The only clue I had to a more specific location came from our twenty-year-old conversation at the Tripoli docks, and what he had told me in his office ten years ago, when he was forced into early retirement after a deniable job he'd sent me to do in America had gone very wrong, and his head had rolled.

After the Tripoli job, Colonel Lynn came back to the UK and acted as liaison between the MoD and SIS. He'd sent me to Washington to deal with a renegade operator, and I had. But others, mostly Americans, got caught in the crossfire, and since this all happened inside the White House, I wasn't exactly flavour of the month. Since then he'd treated me as if he was a bank manager and I was asking for a bigger overdraft, trying hard to be nice but never quite managing to conceal his disdain. I didn't mind. I'd been used to that kind of shit since I was a kid. As long as he didn't expect me to look up to him with reverence.

I still remembered asking to be put on the fulltime payroll, permanent cadre as a K, a deniable operator. His words stung in my memory.

'After your total lack of judgement, do you really think that you would ever be considered for permanent cadre?' His face flushed. It was the first time I'd ever seen him angry. 'Think yourself lucky you are still on retainer. Do you really think that you would be considered for work after you –' his voice got louder and his right index finger stabbed the air more vigorously with every point – 'one, disobey my direct order to kill that damned woman. Two, actually believe her preposterous story and assist her assassination attempt in the White House. God, man, your judgement was no better than a love-struck schoolboy's. Do you really think a woman like that would be interested in you?'

He couldn't contain himself. It was as if I'd touched a raw nerve.

'And to put the tin lid on it, you used a member of the American Secret Service to get you in there . . . who then gets shot! Do you know the havoc you have caused, not only in the US but here? Careers have been ruined because of you. The answer is no. Not now, not ever.'

That was when I realized this wasn't just about me, and it wasn't early retirement at the end of his tour next year. He'd been given the push. He had been running the Ks, the deniable operators, at the time, and someone had had to pay. People like Lynn could be replaced; people like me were more difficult to blow out, if only for financial reasons. The government had invested several million in my training as a Special Air Service soldier. They wanted to get their money's worth out of me even after I got out. It must have killed him to know that I was the one who'd fucked up, but he was the one to carry the can – probably as part of the deal to appease the Americans.

I didn't feel sorry for him for long. The Intelligence Branch, the top tier in the Firm's food chain, looks after its own. Even if one of the IB has been given the sack for such gross misconduct as fiddling with kids and getting blackmailed for it, he or she goes into a feeder system where they get work somewhere in the City or in a sports organization. That ticks two boxes: it keeps tabs on them, but also it keeps them sweet, and, more importantly, quiet. Me? Once I was no longer useful, I wouldn't be so lucky. Maybe this really was my time.

At that last meeting he told me what his future held. He didn't need to become a share dealer or the chair of the Sack Race UK Committee. He had the family mushroom farm. He'd talked, too, about sailing and Norfolk, and opening your window and smelling the sea. His farm couldn't be more than a mile inland.

I Googled 'Norfolk+mushrooms', got 33,000 results, changed the search to 'Norfolk+sailing' and up popped about thirty sailing clubs. I tried phoning one from my mobile. Fuck it, if they had my number they would be following anyway. They might as well know where I was going. If this didn't draw them out nothing would. I only got voicemail. Of course – these would just be little set-ups; there wouldn't be anyone around to answer.

One club said it was in the homeland of Admiral Nelson, and I remembered he'd mentioned a pub called the Hero. I Googled it. It was in a place called Burnham Overy Staithe, about halfway along the top edge of Norfolk.

I started to punch in the pub's number then thought better of it. Lynn would be expecting me – why else would he have sent the message? But what if I was wrong and the Firm wasn't after me? Charging around the village asking questions could be a mistake – this was backwoods country, where blood was thicker than water and neighbours were actually neighbourly.

No matter; if the pub landlord couldn't tell me where he lived, Google Earth might be able to.

I went back and zoomed in on the area. The whole north coast was a patchwork of farmland. And what did a mushroom farm look like when it was at home? I didn't have a clue, but Mr Google did. He told me: 'A mushroom farm would consist of a number of environmentally controlled growing sheds and because the conditions are fully controlled, high temperatures are not a problem. A pack-house and cold store are also required along with offices and staff facilities. An area of concrete and a pasteurization room would be required for the production of compost.'

I went back to Google Earth and the overview of Burnham Overy Staithe. I moved the cursor left and right, up and down from the centre of the village, and finally found what I was looking for: a line of three large, low-level outbuildings, with a large farmhouse, some smaller sheds and a couple of cars. The farm sat in a triangle of land, bordered on all three sides by B roads. I noted the lat and long, and the road names.

I got back in the car and headed northeast towards Manchester. From there, I'd drive cross-country, southeast to King's Lynn. I'd then hit the North Sea, and turn right.