The Watchman

Sixty-One

‘What are you going to do?’ Moresby looked beaten, his voice dulled and tired as he looked across his desk at Vale. It wasn’t quite the response Vale had been expecting; he’d been anticipating more venom and wondered if Moresby was playing him. Not that he was going to trust the man further than he could throw his desk; even wounded animals can fight back.

He’d spent the day waiting for news from Portman and talking to the SIS liaison officer at the embassy in Nairobi. Pryce had been delayed by bad weather out of Mombasa, and the local security officer had advised against trying to speak to her until she was safe in the embassy’s secure suite. In between, he attended to two other operations he was running and a third where he was first stand-in. The hours had been eaten away surprisingly quickly, and it was only now that he’d been able to go back to Moresby to find out what the man had done since their last meeting.

The answer, it turned out, was almost nothing. In fact, Moresby seemed nearly paralysed by indecision, pushing papers around his desk in a seemingly random manner as if hoping to find an answer buried in their midst.

‘How far away are the frigates?’ Vale asked him.

Moresby’s eyes flickered. ‘I don’t know — several hours, last I heard.’

Vale picked up Moresby’s phone and slid the handset across the desk. ‘Get on to the MOD and find out their best estimate. We need those Lynx choppers in the air as soon as they get close enough.’

Moresby shook his head. ‘But the Somalis—’

‘Screw the Somalis,’ Vale barked, cutting him off short. ‘We can worry about territorial niceties later. If they had better control of their coastline, none of this would be happening.’ He reached for his mobile and punched in the speed dial number for Portman’s satellite phone.

It rang but there was no reply.

He let it ring out for a full minute, hoping against hope that Portman was either in a dead zone or unable to answer securely due to outside circumstances.

He cut the connection. Even if the Lynx and their detachments did arrive, it would take time to locate Portman and Tober — if they were still alive. Better to concentrate on Pryce and make sure she could give a full account of what had happened.

He stood up and walked towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Moresby called after him.

He turned his head but didn’t stop. ‘I’m going to make sure that we at least have one person coming out of this alive.’ He wanted to add that he was going to talk to Scheider, but he didn’t trust Moresby not to wake up and jump in first and tell the American to keep out of it. Once he recovered his equilibrium, Moresby would be looking to rescue the situation and start the process of clearing up the mess. And that would entail making sure that there were no embarrassing stories circulating afterwards. ‘Don’t wait up,’ he added, before closing the door firmly behind him.

He returned to his office and slumped behind his desk, exhaustion beginning to invade every fibre of his body. If he didn’t get some proper sleep soon, he’d start to unravel like a badly-spooled ball of wool. And that would suit Moresby just fine.

His phone rang and he picked it up, nearly dropping it in the process. Christ, he felt like an old man. What the hell was he still doing this for? It certainly wasn’t for the money or the kicks. Perhaps this call was going to put a stop to it.

‘Vale.’

There was a slight delay, then a familiar voice floated down the line.

Portman.

He sat up immediately while the American brought him up to date in a few terse sentences stripped to the bare bones.

‘We had a couple of hot contacts, but we’re out and away. Tober’s taken two. He’s mobile for now.’

‘Badly?’

‘He’s got one in him and I think a busted rib. He’s lost some juice but I’ll patch him up as best I can. He’s tough — he’ll make it.’

‘How will you get out?’

‘By sea. We’ll aim to head down the coast and make landfall somewhere near where Piet keeps Daisy.’

Vale caught on immediately. Malindi. The town was located on a small bay and easy to spot from the sea. The airport was about a kilometre inland. The two men could get a flight from there to Nairobi. ‘It’s a long way down.’

‘It’ll take a few hours, but any further north and they’ll stand a greater chance of picking us up. Once at sea we’ll lose ourselves. If not we’ll hug the coast as much as we can. I’ll call you later.’

‘Do that. There are two frigates on the way with marine detachments, but I can’t tell how long they’ll take.’ Vale didn’t want to add that policy and politics might actually get in the way and prevent them from getting too close to Somali or Kenyan land; Portman had enough on his plate without negative information putting a dent in his spirits. ‘Thank you, by the way, for getting Pryce out.’ It was the least he could say under the circumstances, and he hoped he would be able to enlarge on it at a later date.

‘All part of the service.’ Portman sounded almost cheerful, and Vale wondered how the man kept going under the circumstances, with no backup and no guarantees other than his own skills and experience to draw on. But then, he’d been like that himself once, back when nothing seemed impossible and danger was a welcome break from tedium.

‘Once we’re out of here,’ Portman continued, ‘you might have one of your flying robots take a close fix on the coordinates of this place.’

Robots. He meant drones.

‘I can do that. But why?’ He couldn’t — not directly — but he knew a man who could.

‘I think they’re making it a base for operations in the south. It’s filled with supplies. Be good if it fell over, don’t you think?’

Vale breathed out. So Musa hadn’t moved out yet. It meant he was planning on staying in the area for a while. And while shipping off the Kenyan coast might feel it was safe down there, away from the traditional pirate hunting ground around the Gulf, they would soon find out how wrong they were. He wondered if the government was aware of that. Plainly the Kenyans weren’t planning on doing much to tackle the pirates just yet.

He toyed with the possibilities, the rights and wrongs, the moral imperatives of taking the fight to Musa’s front door. Whether he could get the UK’s own recently set up Remotely Piloted Air Systems drone team to do it, or persuade the Americans to use one of theirs, was a big question. If he could, it would certainly send a very clear message to others like Musa, who might try to do what he had done: You can be reached. Whoever and wherever you are, you can be touched.

‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Fine. But give us time to get clear first. I’d hate to see one of those Hellfires coming in head-on.’

Vale nearly choked when he realized what Portman was saying. ‘You mean you’re actually right there? How close?’

‘Close enough to start a war.’

Then he was gone.