Dead And Buried

Eighty-eight

‘You had always been close to your stepson, hadn’t you?’

Titus Armstead looked straight at the camera, unblinking. As he watched the monitor screen, listening to himself ask the question, Skinner was reminded of a television series called Northern Exposure, and an actor who played a retired astronaut. ‘From the time his father was killed. Josh Archer and I met in Germany when we were both involved in NATO intelligence, and we became friends.’

‘That would have been the early seventies?’

‘Yes. Towards the end of the Nixon era.’

‘You met Ormond Hassett there around the same time, didn’t you?’

‘We were in the same theatre of operations, yes.’

‘Close colleagues?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you say the three of you were ideologically compatible?’

‘Hell, yes: we were all soldiers in the front line against Communism, spies in uniform. There were no liberals in our outfit.’

‘After Germany, where did you go?’

‘Ormond and I headed in the same direction. I was hauled back to Langley, to CIA headquarters, and he was posted to the embassy in Washington.’

‘And Archer?’

‘He stayed on in Germany for a while, but we kept in pretty close touch.’

‘How close?’

‘Very. Josh was a good source of information.’

‘Are you saying that he was on your payroll?’

Armstead nodded at the camera. ‘Yes.’

‘Explain this to our viewers,’ Skinner continued, ‘and remember that I’ve got the gun. Why would a CIA operative want to recruit British intelligence officers as agents?’

‘Simple. Back then we couldn’t always rely on our allies to share and share alike. We were in the business of knowing everything, so we took steps to make sure that we did.’

‘That’ll go down well in London; scare the shit out of a few people too, I imagine. But let’s move on a few years, to 1982. Hassett’s an MP, an aide to the defence secretary, and he and Archer show up in Washington to make sure that your team are on-side over the Falklands operation.’

‘Yeah, and Josh told me he was going to fight. I told him he was crazy, that there would be a load of casualties down there. Ormond could have gotten him a desk to ride, but he was set on action; dead set, the way it turned out. He knew what he was getting into, though: last time I saw him, he asked me to keep an eye on his family, if things did go the other way.’

‘And you did?’

‘I kept my word, yes. Whenever I was in England I went to see them up in Bakewell, just to make sure they were all right. After a few years, once the kids were grown and on their way in life, I asked Joan to marry me and she agreed.’

‘You kept an eye on your stepson’s career too.’

‘I made sure he was all right, but I needn’t have worried. He was a better soldier than his pop ever was, a real little terror. When he moved into intelligence and assumed a new identity, I knew about it and I took him under my wing even more. A few times we took care of things for each other.’

‘So you weren’t surprised when he approached you with a proposition?’

Armstead’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Ah, no, you got that wrong. Moses didn’t approach me. Ormond Hassett did. He came over here to this very house. He sat in that chair where you’re sitting and he told me that there were people in London who were scared shitless about the future of their country. They saw it heading into a federal Europe, a super-grouping in which the role and purpose of the British Monarchy would become irrelevant, until it ceased to exist and Britain became, as he put it, the sort of mongrel state we’re seeing in France, Spain, and even the United States. He said that the thing that scared them most was the fact that those standing in succession to the throne appeared to be in favour of the idea.’

‘And his solution?’

‘To take one of them out.’

‘How?’

‘That was what Ormond asked me. After I told him he was crazy, I told him that the most vulnerable point of attack was the student prince, but that anything that happened to him had to be seen very clearly to have happened from outside. That’s where Pete Bassam’s Albanian gang came into the picture. Kidnapping’s a national sport with these guys; the idea was, they grab him from his university, they hold him for ransom, but somewhere along the line he gets killed.’

‘What did Hassett say to that?’

‘That I was a fucking genius. He said that it was so simple it was beautiful. The way he saw it, not only would it take one of the problems. . maybe the main problem. . out of the equation, but in the scandal that followed the British government would be thrown out of office and replaced by a right-wing, anti-European, Conservative administration, with a commitment to withdraw from the EU and rescind the commitment to the Treaty of Rome.’

‘With Ormond Hassett as one of its leading lights?’

‘He didn’t say that, but that’s what he meant.’

‘You know what, Titus?’ Skinner heard himself chuckle. ‘I think he’d have been right.’

Armstead said nothing: he simply looked at the camera and smiled.

‘So when did Adam Arrow, Moses, come into it?’ his interrogator continued.

‘When I brought him in. Ormond didn’t recruit him, I did. I visited him on the boat in London and I told him about our discussion. If he had told me I was a mad old man even to consider such a thing I’d have forgotten all about it, but he didn’t. He said that he shared Ormond’s fears, and came on board. I knew we needed him, you see. I knew we needed extra insurance on the inside, within the British military, and someone to run the mercenary pick-up team at sea. With his okay, I told Ormond we were green for go, then I gave Moses Bassam’s location and young Hassett was sent to activate him. The operation was under way.’

‘Why did you give him the gun?’

‘To take out young Hassett after the game; Moses thought he was a weakling, and that we couldn’t trust him.’

‘So where did Rudolph Sewell fit in?’

For the first time, Armstead’s eyes left the camera lens and moved to the man beside it. ‘Who the fuck is Rudolph Sewell?’ he asked.

Skinner reached across and switched off the DVD player. ‘Imagine that,’ he said to Sir Evelyn Grey. ‘As serious a player in the spooking game as Titus Armstead is, yet he’s never heard of your head of counter-terrorism. But that’s not all he didn’t know: Moses and the Hassetts never told him about the fall-back plan, to try to wriggle out by blaming it all on Sewell if things went wrong. No wonder Miles was sent to kill him; too bad Moses was right and he wasn’t up to the job, eh?’

‘Indeed,’ the director general agreed. ‘Nevertheless, the warning you sent to Armstead through Ms Gower was a shrewd move: of some assistance to him.’

‘Yes, but still, taking on a tough old bastard like that with a knife was a pretty stupid thing to do.’

‘How would you have handled it?’

The DCC scratched his chin. ‘I’d probably have hidden in his garage and blown his head off when he came in to get his car.’

Grey smiled thinly. ‘How glad we must be that you’re on our side.’

Skinner was out of his chair like a flash, reaching across the table to slap him, back-handed, across the face, with such force that it sent him flying sideways out of his seat. ‘I’ve never been on your side, you bastard, and I never will be. You’re a traitor, the worst this country has ever seen. You’ve run this whole operation, from the very start, through your stooge, Ormond Hassett, and his son.’

He glared at Grey as he picked himself up. ‘Sewell was never involved; he was a victim. We were led to believe that he had directed Amanda’s team towards the theory that the Albanians were drug-dealers, away from their real objective, but the truth was that he was following your orders. You had your fall-back story planned out, all four of you, and it involved setting up poor old Rudy, then throwing him to the wolves. After Adam Arrow was shot, he named him as the leader of the conspiracy, to protect you. I fell for it, bought the story and reported it to you when you debriefed me in Edinburgh after the attack. Christ, I’ve just called Sewell a mug. What does that make me?’

He glanced to his side, where Shannon and Amanda Dennis sat, then picked up a document and thrust it towards the director general. ‘Winston Chalmers isn’t nearly as tough as he looks, Evelyn. This is his statement, witnessed by Dottie; I had the whole story out of him in about two and a half seconds. He admitted to me that he strangled Sewell, on your orders, before I had a chance to interrogate him. He throttled him and then fixed it to look like suicide. If I’d chosen to see Sewell first, he’d have done it the day before. He also released Miles Hassett, again on your orders, into Piers Frame’s custody. As for Frame, he was astonished when you told him to pick up Hassett, but he didn’t question it, not until I did, not until I told him the truth. When you ordered Chalmers to release Hassett to Frame, we were meant to assume that he had asked you to turn him over to MI6. But that’s not how it was, Evelyn, was it?’ He glared at Grey. ‘Was it?’ he repeated.

‘As you know, it was not,’ the DG replied, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘I told Piers to go and get him, and to take Ormond with him so that Miles would know he was safe, that he wasn’t going to be driven off to a convenient hole in the ground somewhere. Piers thought he was being released into his father’s custody; given Ormond’s intelligence background that was entirely reasonable.’

‘Sure, but actually, he was just being released, to take care of the Titus Armstead problem, because by that time, you knew I would link him to his stepson, and through him, to you.’

Skinner looked around the room, the big upstairs apartment in the Surrey safe-house, the same one in which he and Shannon had interrogated Miles Hassett a few days earlier. ‘What do you think of your new accommodation, Evelyn? I hope you like it, because you’re going to be here for a bloody long time.’

Anger seemed to ooze from the Scot’s pores. ‘I haven’t hated many people in this life, but you’re high up in the group. Why? For many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that you played me, man, and you did it by using my weakest point, my inflated bloody ego. Why the hell should you have invited me to run this inquiry? Logically, I should have been a witness not an investigator, but no, you said you had to have me, and that the Prime Minister himself had backed your choice. I was hardly even flattered at the time; I believed you, took it as my due, until doubt crept in, and I went to see the Prime Minister, to discover that he had no knowledge of my involvement.’

His eyes blazed. ‘In fact, he had no knowledge of the conspiracy at all: he had been fed the official version, that it was a kidnap attempt, foiled at the last minute by his gallant forces. But once he knew what was happening, he opened all the doors for me, and he gave me access to the information I really needed, your own service record.

‘Evelyn, you’ve been hovering behind these guys for the last thirty years: when Josh Archer and Ormond Hassett were getting to know each other in Germany, you were their boss, the senior NATO intelligence officer out there. That’s when the three of you got together. When young Moses Archer needed referees on his Sandhurst application, who did it? You and Ormond, that’s who. Titus Armstead asked you both to do it, and you did. Anything for an old comrade’s son, and to oblige a CIA buddy as well. . and, who knows, the boy might prove useful in the future. You and Titus met in Germany too. All I have to do is run that tape some more and you’ll hear him admit that, and the rest. You and he have been pursuing your own agenda ever since.’

Skinner resumed his seat, facing the prisoner. ‘I knew all that before I went to America, and I had Piers Frame let you in on my plans. So you sent Miles to kill Titus. . but I warned him through Merle Gower that he would be coming. From the moment I left the PM’s room in the House of Commons you’ve all been under surveillance. Once I left Armstead with his video confession in the bag, I made a phone call and you were pulled in. The Americans are taking care of Titus, by the way: they set a team from the Dover air base on my signal and took him, and Miles Hassett’s body, away in a black van.’

He leaned across the table again, until the spymaster flinched. ‘You chose me to run your so-called investigation, Evelyn, because you thought you could control me. A soldier died in your plot after all, and you had Defence Intelligence to placate, so within your own community you had to be seen to do something. You planned to silence Sewell, and have Miles implicate him and name him as Bassam’s controller. Everything would have been closed off, and I’d have written a classic whitewash report for you to show to MoD and to take to the PM when you chose, to cover your arse.’

He looked at Shannon. ‘That’s what it was all about, Dottie, except for the part I’ve missed out: if Hassett had killed Armstead, he’d have been waiting for me to arrive, probably armed with part of the small arsenal that Titus kept in his cellar. That’s why I had to leave you in Washington.’ He gave a small involuntary shudder.

‘The irony of it all, Inspector, is that it wouldn’t have come to that, the whole thing would have worked, if only Miles hadn’t embroidered his carefully planned story by saying that he met Sewell on the Bulrush. Rudy was never there: it was Arrow he met, Arrow who gave him Bassam’s location, courtesy of his stepfather. I’d never have gone looking for a houseboat but for that slip. If I hadn’t, I’d never have found out who Moses Archer was, and I’d never have been led to Armstead, Ormond Hassett, and ultimately to the arch-traitor across the table there.’

‘And to what conclusion?’ Grey asked quietly. ‘As you said of Sewell and Miles at the beginning of all this, they can hardly try Ormond and me for all this, and we’re too important simply to disappear.’

‘Wrong,’ said Amanda Dennis, as she took a small-calibre pistol from the pocket of her grey jacket and shot him between the eyes.