Tracers

FIFTY

Harry cut the connection and stood up. While Rik went out to scan the street, he found the washrooms and checked the cubicles. Other than a startled woman in a business suit repairing some damage to her make-up in the mirror, there was no sign of Joanne or her rucksack.

He asked the receptionist if there were any other washrooms close by, but she shook her head. He thanked her and met Rik coming in from the street.

‘A black cab was just off up the road,’ Rik reported. ‘I couldn’t see who was inside. What do we do now?’

‘You heard what Ballatyne said about Dog and the others. Either Joanne’s part of this or she simply doesn’t trust anyone enough — us included — to hang around. Maybe she’s closer to the edge than she seemed.’ And maybe, he thought, the meeting with Marshall had been a step too far.

Rik looked sceptical. ‘I thought she seemed pretty together most of the time. Then she just takes off. Weird.’

‘She’s been under a lot of strain.’ He led the way towards the rear entrance. ‘Come on.’

‘Where to?’

‘Ballatyne’s agreed to meet us on neutral ground.’

Rik pursed his lips. ‘Do you trust him?’

‘As much as I trust anyone.’ He gave Rik a straight look, aware that his friend would follow his lead. ‘We’ve got to bite the bullet sooner or later. Now he knows who we are, he’ll have our photos and service records from Thames House in circulation. We either go in voluntarily or we wait to get picked up. I don’t fancy facing a bunch of nervous firearms officers with itchy fingers, do you?’

Richard Ballatyne was waiting for them at the rear of an Italian restaurant just off Wigmore Street. An elderly man in a waiter’s jacket admitted them, then spun the ‘Closed’ sign to face out, before disappearing behind a curtain at the back. There were no other staff, no indications that the place was open for business.

Ballatyne was of medium height, with dark hair and heavy glasses. He had the slightly owlish air of an academic, but his hands resting on the white tablecloth looked strong and capable.

He nodded a greeting and stood up, gesturing to the chairs opposite. ‘Can I get you coffee?’ A pot and cups were on the next table.

Harry shook his head. He glanced around at the decor of plastic vines, ceramic tiles and numerous Chianti bottles in raffia jackets. A chiller cabinet loaded with bottles of white wine, San Pellegrino and soft drinks hummed in the background, and the buzz of traffic, building by now towards the early evening rush, was muted.

‘Bit garish for MI6, isn’t it? I take it you are Six?’

‘Yes.’ Ballatyne gave a bleak smile. It was sufficient to change his face from serious to almost friendly. Harry guessed he was still reeling from Marshall’s death and remembered to go easy on him. Unless he pushed them too hard.

Rik walked over to the table and poured himself a coffee, then sat slightly to one side. The move wasn’t lost on Ballatyne.

‘No Miss Archer?’ he said.

‘She’s indisposed,’ said Harry. He had no intention just yet of telling Ballatyne that Joanne had disappeared. It could keep.

‘I see. Well, in that case, it makes what I have to say rather easier.’ He tapped softly on the table and seemed to be measuring his words. ‘GCHQ here and at their other installations have been intercepting a series of phone calls made to international numbers over the past few months. They were on a watch and listen list, and connected with a variety of current and past investigations which I can’t go into.’

‘Terrorism, you mean?’ Rik suggested.

Ballatyne nodded. ‘One caller in the past few days was identified several times. It probably wouldn’t have been noted, except that the calls originated from London and from a number they hadn’t seen before. The caller was a man. Tracking back the listed subscriber proved useless; the phone was stolen or cloned. Then a name was mentioned. It was just the one time, but it rang a number of bells.’ He paused for effect, then added, ‘The caller was Subhi Rafa’i.’

Neither Harry nor Rik responded, both trying to work out the significance of this development. They waited for Ballatyne to go on.

‘For a survivor of an assassination attempt, Rafa’i’s been making a lot of international calls. Geneva, Frankfurt, Paris. . and quite a few to Baghdad. Each of the numbers he called corresponds to a banking or finance house with strong links to the Middle East, or to individuals who control funds with Middle East connections. It was the latter who turned out to be the most interesting.’

‘Are these known terrorist connections?’ asked Harry.

‘Yes.’ Ballatyne scratched at the tablecloth. ‘We think he’s been gathering funds. Dirty money.’

‘To do what?’ Harry was certain MI6 would have already worked that one out, but whether Ballatyne would share that knowledge was another matter. He wasn’t disappointed.

‘We’re not sure.’ The answer was smooth and practised, a deflection. ‘We’re still analysing the calls to work out the significance of all the people he was talking to and what role they might be playing. It takes time to get their profiles together. . they’re not all in one place.’

Harry knew what he meant. ‘You have to ask the Americans for the data.’

‘And the French. . the Germans. . the Israelis.’

‘But you think he’s been fund-gathering.’

‘Without a doubt. And where there’s money like that, there are firewalls. It takes time to get through them.’ He looked at Rik as he said it, a small but important signal that he knew their backgrounds. ‘The money we can deal with. If it leaves a trace, we can backtrack and find the source and, hopefully, the destination. Cut it off at both ends. The support is something else, though. I believe you know of Rafa’i’s standing with the Coalition?’

‘Yeah, we know,’ said Harry.

Ballatyne grunted. ‘I think we can dispense with that notion altogether. There’s been a change in the wind. But he’s still a name to treat with caution in that part of the world.’

‘But he’s dead,’ Rik interjected. ‘At least, CNN thinks so.’

‘Quite correct, Mr Ferris. To the outside world, Subhi Rafa’i died in the bombing of the compound in the Al-Jamia district of Baghdad.’ He squeezed a fold of tablecloth between his thumb and forefinger. ‘What we don’t know is how many people know the real truth.’

‘No chatter on the net?’ Harry was referring to the intelligence network plugged into the Arab world. Any talk about Rafa’i’s survival would have become known very quickly and spread like wildfire. News like that would inevitably leak somewhere through friendly sources or careless talk.

‘Nothing. Lamentations about his death, sad loss to Iraq, conspiracy theories about Coalition involvement — all of that. But that’s all.’ He glanced at the two men in turn with a glimmer of understanding. ‘You don’t know where he is,’ he said softly. ‘Do you?’

‘What makes you think that?’ said Rik, defensive.

Ballatyne shrugged. ‘Call it a lucky guess. Somehow, I think if you’d spent any time with him, you’d have developed an opinion about him. He’s very persuasive — even charismatic. I doubt you’ve even met him.’

‘So what’s HMG’s position?’ said Harry.

‘My masters are currently discussing that issue against the wider background in Iraq. There are complications.’

‘Such as?’

‘Exactly what he might be up to is the main one. Why he’s here in the UK and how long he plans staying is another. And what happens if his presence here ever gets out.’

‘I’ll give you another,’ Rik muttered. ‘What if he gets bumped off here? That won’t go down well back home, will it?’

Ballatyne looked pained. It was clearly not the first time he had considered that scenario. ‘That would be. . unfortunate.’

‘Nightmarish, more like.’ Rik gave him a sour look. ‘Don’t patronize us, Ballatyne. We can work out what the damages are just as quick as you. If he gets sliced and diced in central London, there’ll be an international riot. The extremists would use it to the hilt, whether they liked him or not.’

‘How about Jennings?’ said Harry, in the silence that followed. ‘He’s the key to what happens next. If anyone can call Dog and his team off, it’ll be him.’

‘We checked his home address. It’s been cleaned out. And I mean cleaned. He evidently knew how things might pan out. It was only a rental place, anyway; he seems to have been moving around a good deal in the past couple of years.’

‘Surprise, surprise.’

‘But we know he’s out there. We intercepted some of his communications, which is how we discovered the presence of the other two men. He’s clearly controlling all three.’

‘But who,’ asked Rik, ‘is controlling Jennings?’

‘That’s what we’d like to know.’

‘Really?’ Harry gave him a sideways look, and the intelligence officer tilted his head to one side.

‘We have some names. We’re checking them out.’

‘The men with Dog,’ said Rik. ‘Do you know who they are?’

‘No. We haven’t got a line on them yet. We’re working through a list of names.’

‘What list?’

Before Ballatyne could answer, the answer clicked in Harry’s brain. ‘You mean the names on the course, don’t you? The course Joanne Archer was on. Just how many killers were you training at the same time?’

Ballatyne flinched. ‘That’s a bit melodramatic.’

‘So sue me. How many?’

Ballatyne hesitated, then said resignedly, ‘All the members on the course were serving personnel, with the exception of three men.’

‘Don’t tell me — Dog and these other two. What were they training for?’

‘That’s classified. I can’t go into it.’

‘Well, they weren’t army chefs, were they?’

‘It’s not as simple as that. As you know, there are times when we have to use whatever tools we can get.’

‘Subbies,’ said Rik. ‘Private military contractors.’

‘Correct.’

‘So what does that make Joanne?’

‘She was different. Special. My guess is, we’ll find these two men failed the course and Dog approached them afterwards. They’d have been sufficiently demoralized or sour to turn without too much persuasion.’

‘But highly trained, even though they failed,’ Harry countered. ‘How long before you work your way through them?’

‘There are four men unaccounted for. Two are believed to be out of the country with their units. If we can locate them, we’ll know for sure who the remaining two are and have pictures circulated immediately.’

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do us,’ Rik muttered. ‘They could be all over us before we know it.’

‘Why was Dog there?’ Harry asked. ‘According to Marshall, he’d already been through everything Special Forces could throw at him.’

Ballatyne shrugged. ‘Frankly, I don’t know. That’s a question for Jennings. He might have been on a refresher, but I think he was there to shadow Miss Archer. She was always the one going to Baghdad because a woman was the only option to place alongside Rafa’i. The others would have been training for different assignments.’

‘But why would Dog have been watching her?’

Ballatyne lifted an upturned palm. ‘We think this whole operation was planned as soon as news leaked out about Archer’s recruitment as a close protection operative for Rafa’i. The people behind this didn’t just cobble something together on a whim; they were thinking long-term. Whatever it is they’re doing, it’s been carefully thought through.’

‘We?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘You said “we”.’

‘There are more than just the British involved. I can’t say more than that.’

‘So how did the news leak out?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry — I have to get back for a briefing.’ He stood up and walked towards the door, then turned before leaving. ‘If it’s any consolation, I know you two were given a raw deal after that business in Georgia. I read the files and I’ve spoken to some of the people around at the time. I can understand your scepticism, but please bear with me for a while longer. We do need your help on this one.’ His eyes drilled into Harry’s, then he turned and left.

‘Well, cheers,’ Rik breathed as the door closed behind the intelligence officer. ‘That makes me feel better.’

‘Ancient history,’ said Harry, standing up. ‘Come on. We’ve got to locate Jennings.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘How about a spot of burglary?’