Ghosts

Chapter Forty-Six

Control sat at the wide table and glared with undisguised disdain at the three men opposite him. It was a senior deposition: the foreign secretary, a particularly oleaginous politician called Jonathan Coad of whom Control had always had a rather bleak opinion, together with the heads of MI5 and MI6. It was midnight and the meeting had been called as a matter of the greatest urgency. The evidence had been delivered earlier that day. It had arrived by email, from an anonymous account that had been accessed at an internet cafe in Hounslow. Agents had been sent to the cafe to question the owner but he could not remember anything of the customer who had booked fifteen minutes at the machine from which the email had been sent. When they checked his security cameras, they found that they had been disabled. Whomever it was who had sent the email, they had an interest in hiding their identity.

Control had not been given advance warning of the subject of the meeting although, after the failure of any of the five agents to respond, it was not difficult to guess. They had taken thirty minutes to run through the extensive evidence with which they had been presented. There were the pictures of Control with Alexandra Kyznetsov and the correspondence and financial details that had been culled from the flash drives. That, in itself, would have been enough to damn him, but they hadn’t stopped there. They had obtained ex camera search orders and collected his bank details for the last ten years. He was not foolish enough to have passed the money he had received from Kyznetsov, or the other people like her who had come afterwards, through accounts that could easily be traced. There were other accounts for that, ones in jurisdictions that did not so easily divulge their secrets, but even with those precautions in place they had put questions to him that he had struggled to answer: how had he found the money to purchase his property outright, for example? He had paid for his Jaguar in cash. Where had that come from? The holidays, the extravagant purchases. They suggested that they exceeded his income. They accused him of living beyond his means. Where was the money coming from? Control knew that they had already reached their conclusion and that anything he said could only incriminate him further, and so he deflected them all with bluster. How did they find the temerity to question a man who had given so much to his country? It didn’t matter. He had already started to plan his next steps. He had already started, in truth, as soon as it became obvious that the mission to Plyos had failed. Forewarned was forearmed and he had always feared that this day would come, no matter how careful he had been. He had steps in place and, knowing that, he was able to brazen it out.

“Do you have anything you want to say?” Coad asked him.

“Just that I find it difficult to understand how you could accuse me of wrongdoing.”

“No-one is accusing you of anything,” he corrected calmly. “We’re simply saying that there are some questions that need to be answered.”

“Semantics,” Control snorted derisively.

Coad held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We don’t really have a choice in this, old man. We’re going to have to suspend you until this can be cleared up. Shouldn’t take longer than a month, I should think. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good set of answers that will make this all go away. And, when we have them, you’ll be back in post.”

Control got up. “Is that all?”

“Stay in the country, alright?”

“Anything else?”

“No. That’s all.”

He nodded curtly, collected his overcoat from the stand next to the door and made his way to the street outside.

He knew he didn’t have long and so he drove straight to Waterloo. There was a large warehouse not far from the station that had been transformed into a secure storage facility, and Control had rented a space there for the past five years. He took a walk-on suitcase from the trunk of the car, showed his driving licence at the desk and went through the doors into the warren of corridors that had been fashioned by hundreds of crates of varying sizes. The one he wanted was of medium size, big enough to stand erect but small enough that he could touch all four walls from the centre. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and switched on the light. He closed the door behind him. There was just one item inside the room: a hundred litre crate made of opaque plastic. He opened the lid and began to inventory the items inside.

Weapons first. He took out the Heckler & Koch MP7A1 machine pistol wrapped in oilcloth, followed by the sound suppressor. Beneath that were three thirty-round magazines and six boxes of ammunition. There was a FNP-45 .45 calibre double action semi-automatic with one extra magazine.

He put the guns into the suitcase and went back to the crate.

There were six Tesco plastic bags, the heavy duty ones that were supposed to last for life, and, inside, was thirty thousand pounds and ten thousand dollars, all in tens and fifties. A ziplock freezer bag held French and German passports in different names and matching driver’s licenses. There was a wallet with a third driver’s licence, a credit card in the name of Peter McGuigan that would allow him to access the Cayman account with two hundred thousand dollars in it. There was a packet of hair dye, a pair of spectacles with clear frames and a handheld GPS.

He packed the items into the suitcase, left the empty crate behind him, locked the door to the storage room and went back outside to his car. He put the suitcase into the trunk and, before he closed the lid and after checking that he wasn’t observed, he opened the case, withdrew the semi-automatic and covered it beneath his overcoat as he went around to the driver’s side and got into the car.

It was a two hour drive to the south coast from Waterloo. He drove carefully so as not to draw attention to himself, following the A23, M23, A23 again and then the A26 until he reached Lewes. He passed the Beachy Head Hotel and the sign for the Samaritans at the side of the road: ‘Always There, Day or Night’, the last appeal to those who were intent upon doing away with themselves. It was a beautiful spot, the exposed promontory whipped by the winds that blew in from the Channel. The white chalk cliffs were five hundred feet high here and the vertiginous drop to the spume-crested rocks below had claimed hundreds of lives; Control had read somewhere that it was the third most popular place for suicides in the world.

He parked the Jaguar in the car park, leaving the keys in the ignition, collected the suitcase from the trunk, and wheeled it back to the bus stop that he had passed as he drove in. There was a telephone box next to it. He went inside and called the local minicab office that had left business cards wedged into the sides of the window.

The operator picked up after a dozen rings.

“I need a taxi.”

“Where are you, mate?”

“Beachy Head.”

“And where do you want to go?”

“Southampton Airport, please. Quick as you like.”

Control stood outside the telephone box and watched as the fiery rim of the sun slid above the edge of the cliff, the light flooding into the midnight blue of the sky. The dawn chorus greeted it noisily and, back at the pub, a milkfloat rattled and chinked as the driver pulled in with his delivery. Control drew his overcoat around him and breathed in a lungful of fresh, salty air.

It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Milton got off the underground at Heathrow Terminal Five. The platform was crowded with travellers, some with handheld luggage, others hauling cases on wheels. Milton was unencumbered: all he had was his watch, his oxidised Ronson lighter, a packet of cigarettes and three thousand pounds that he had withdrawn from an account he had opened five years earlier and never touched. He didn’t need anything else. He took his place on the escalator and rode it all the way to the first floor and the departure lounge. A travelator hurried the seemingly endless queue of travellers onwards: parents corralling boisterous children; business travellers with newspapers open before them; backpackers with grungy t-shirts and brightly-coloured bracelets on their wrists. Milton waited in line. There was no sense in rushing; he wasn’t in any kind of hurry.

The huge, cavernous shed opened out before him: hundreds of check-in desks, thousands of passengers. There was a Starbucks concession this side of security and Milton headed for it.

A man was sitting at one of the shiny metal tables. Milton sat down opposite him.

“Pope.”

“Milton.”

Pope’s face still bore the evidence of his beating at the hands of Pascha Shcherbatov. His eyes were still bruised, but the vivid purple had faded away, to be replaced by a dull puce. He shifted in his chair, better to accommodate the residual pain from the ribs that had been broken.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

“But I look better than I did?”

“You look old.”

“We both look old, John. We are old.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko walked towards them from Boots, a small bottle of water in her hand. She stood at the table and offered Milton her hand; he took it.

“Mr. Milton,” she said with cold formality.

“Anna. How are you?”

“I’m very well.”

The conversation was stilted; he had hurt her pride for the second time.

“Are you going to sit down?”

“I don’t think so. My flight leaves soon.”

She was dressed in a business suit with a white shirt, similar to the outfit that she had been wearing when she had got him out of trouble in Texas. That seemed an awfully long time ago now.

She looked down at him: beautiful, frigid, haughty.

“I’m not going to say I’m sorry, Anna. It was business. It had to be done. But, for what it’s worth, you are an excellent agent. You just need a little seasoning.”

She stiffened. “I don’t need your apology,” she said curtly, “and I don’t need your advice.”

“I’m sorry about the colonel. What happened to him wasn’t what we planned.”

Anger flashed. “No? What did you have planned?”

“I was going to give the flash drives to him.”

Did she believe him? It didn’t look like it. She shook her head derisively, the curtain of red hair shifting across her shoulders. She collected her bottle of drink from the table. “I should be going,” she said. “Goodbye, Mr. Milton.”

“Goodbye, Anna.”

“Perhaps we will see each other again.”

“Perhaps.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Milton and Pope wandered across to the wide windows of the observation lounge. It was a dark night, the moon and stars hidden by a thick blanket of low cloud. The 747 that was liveried in the colours of Aeroflot lumbered down the runway, raised its front wheel from the tarmac and struggled into the air. Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko would be back in Moscow in four hours.

“Have we spoken to the Russians?”

“I believe so.”

“And?”

“They’re not unhappy. As far as they’re concerned, you did what you said you’d do.”

They strolled to a couple of empty seats and sat down.

“Here,” Pope said, proffering a new passport. Milton flicked through the pages; they were clean, unstamped, virgin. There was something to be written there. Possibilities.

“Thanks.”

“Look at the last page.”

Milton did: the passport was in his own name, not an alias.

“You’re in the clear, John. You are officially retired.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“I’m serious. It’s finished, John. You can do whatever you want to do.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I do.”

“And does Control see it that way?”

“He isn’t going to be a problem any more. Not for you, anyway.”

“They got rid of him?”

Pope paused, an awkward grimace on his face, and Milton connected the dots.

“Seriously? They took him out?”

“He’s been given a file.”

“But?”

“But he can’t be found. His car was found at Beachy Head last night. The keys were still in the ignition.”

“No way,” Milton said. “He’s faked it. He didn’t jump. He’s a cockroach, Pope. It’s going to take more than that to get rid of him.”

Pope nodded his agreement. “They’ve searched the rocks and they didn’t find anything. We don’t think he jumped either. He’s running. I don’t even want to think what they’re going to find out when they dig into what he’s been doing all this time. The number of files he passed down to us for actioning … how many of those were people he wanted out of the way? I can deal with it if I know that the target deserves what’s coming to him. If they were to cover for him, though, that’s something else.”

“I’ve been thinking that, too.”

“Shcherbatov would have been pleased.”

“He would have said the job was only half done.”

“Yes, but we’ll finish it. He can’t run forever. We’ll find him.”

Milton stopped, looking at his old friend. “Hold on,” he said, a slow realisation dawning. “Who’s replacing Control?”

Pope shrugged.

“You?”

“They asked me yesterday.”

“And you said no.”

He smiled ruefully.

“You said yes? Don’t be an idiot, man.”

“It’s the only way they’re ever going to get off your back.”

“You don’t have to do that for me.”

“It’s not just for you. I’m the same age as you. You think I want to be in the field for ever? I’m old and slow. I was sloppy last time. I got lucky.”

Milton protested. “But you’re not a politician. Get into private security. Go and be a consultant somewhere. Make some money. You think you can work with the government? They’ll eat you up.”

“Ouch,” he said. “A little more credit, please. It’s in your interest to see me do well. I’m the one who’s saying there’s no point in chasing you halfway around the world anymore. I’m the one saying you’re free to do whatever you want. I rescinded your file. That was the first thing I did.”

The two of them paused; Milton didn’t know what to say. He knew that Pope was a superb agent, not as good as he had been but good, and that having him ride a desk was a criminal waste of his talents. But, as his old friend smiled with patient affection at him, he realised that, maybe, his promotion had benefitted from a little good sense. Pope was solid and dependable and, after the corruption and avarice that had latterly been exposed in his predecessor, those were not unhelpful qualities to have. He was strong-willed, the kind of man who would question his orders and, Milton thought, that too would be a useful trait.

“You’re not going to congratulate me?”

“For accepting a poisoned chalice? You couldn’t pay me to do that job.”

There was a moment of awkwardness between them. Pope slapped his hands on his knees, dispelling it. “What are you going to do next?”

Milton thought about that. “I don’t know,” he said. “If the Group isn’t looking for me, I don’t have to hide.”

“No,” Pope agreed. “You can go wherever you like. You need money?”

“Does it look like I’m begging?”

“No. I think it looks like you’re leaving with nothing.”

“What else do I need?” Milton shrugged.

“No luggage at all?”

“If I need something, I’ll get it when I arrive. I’ve always travelled light.”

“You know where you’re going?”

“I’ve made a habit of not telling people that,” he said, and then when Pope frowned at him, he added, “Wherever seems right.”

“I can’t persuade you to stay around?”

“There’s nothing for me here.”

Milton really didn’t know what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go. His plan was to walk into the departures lounge, look at the flights that were leaving in the next couple of hours, pick one, buy a ticket, and go.

“You want some advice? If it were me, I’d find somewhere I liked and I’d stay there a while. Put down some roots.”

“That’s not me,” Milton said. “I’ve been on the move for six months. I’ve got no ties. Don’t think I want any.”

“You don’t want a woman? Get a family?”

“Do I look like a family man? I’ll leave that to you. I’ve never been cut out for it.”

And, he thought, I’ve got too much that I need to do. Too much to make amends for.

“Alright, then,” Pope said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He offered his hand and Milton took it.

“Thanks,” he said. “You didn’t have to do what you did. I won’t forget it. If you need me, you know where I am. Alright?”

Milton felt a moment of hesitation.

He looked up at the screen with two dozen destinations on it.

“Good luck,” Pope said.

“You too.”

Milton put the new passport in his hip pocket and walked towards the nearest ticket desk.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Pope had left his car in the short-stay car park. They had offered him a driver and a better car but he wasn’t interested in either; the old Control had been in post for so long that it felt like the time was right for a change in approach. He would do things his own modest way, and if that meant doing them quietly and without extravagance, then so be it. He could only be himself.

He unlocked the door and sat down. He was reaching for the engine start button when he was aware of someone in the car behind him.

“Easy.”

He felt a prickle of tension across his shoulder blades. “Who are you?”

“It’s Beatrix Rose.”

He looked into the rearview mirror: it was dark but there was enough of a glow from the courtesy light to see her sallow face and long blonde hair. She was sitting back against the seat, unmoved and unconcerned, her cold blue eyes staring at him in the mirror. She was wearing a tight-fitting leather jacket.

“Relax? Are you serious? I’ve seen what you can do. And you’ve broken into my car.”

“I needed to speak to you,” she said.

“You couldn’t make an appointment?”

“I’d prefer it if we could keep it between us.”

The courtesy light faded out and Pope could only see her as a dark shadow. “You don’t have anything to hide from any more.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“No-one is looking for you, Rose. Control has gone.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

Pope rested his hands on the wheel. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is. No-one knows. You have my word.”

“You understand why I want him?”

“Yes. What happened to your family. I know. Milton told me.”

“And you know I can’t let that stand.”

“Yes, of course. I’d be the same.”

“So I need you to find him and give him to me.”

“I know I owe you. What you did for me will buy plenty of favours. But that’s going to be very difficult to arrange.”

“Difficult but not impossible.”

“No. Not impossible.”

“I’m not expecting favours, Pope. I can pay my way.”

“With what?”

“I know you’re replacing him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Never mind. You want to know how I see this? Control has left you a group of agents that you can’t trust. He picked all of them and you don’t know which ones were involved with him and which ones weren’t. For all you know, they all were. That would be the safe assumption. Five of them are dead and you’re out of the game. That leaves six. I don’t know about you, but not being able to trust them wouldn’t make me feel very safe. If you agree to work with me, I’ll vet all of them for you: surveillance, background checks, whatever you need. All off the books. You and I would be the only ones who know.”

“And if we find any of them are crooked?”

“I’ll take care of them.”

He knew what that euphemism must mean. “We could talk about that.”

“You need to know something else, too. I don’t want to get our relationship off on the wrong foot, but I have the evidence to prove what Control did. Milton gave it to me. I sent it to the government. They have it just as they want it at the moment: Control is gone and you’ve taken his place with no fuss and no noise. Smooth and seamless. But it wouldn’t take very much to rake over those coals again. I could easily send it all to a newspaper.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“Depends how you take it,” she said. “That’s not what I want it to sound like.”

“What do you want it to sound like?”

“I want you to have all the information you need when you make your decision to work with me.”

She was confident and she had reason to be; she had a strong hand. “What exactly would you want?”

“Oliver Spenser is dead. I want the four agents who were responsible for the murder of my husband and the abduction of my little girl. Their names are Lydia Chisholm, Connor English, Joshua Joyce and Bryan Duffy. Chisolm might be dead. If she is, I want solid proof of it. The other three are out there somewhere. I want GCHQ to make finding them a top priority, and then I want you to pass me the information. I’ll take care of what happens after that.”

“But we wouldn’t have to worry about them?”

“They’ll go quiet. You wouldn’t have to worry about them.”

A car went by, sweeping its headlights into the cabin and, for a moment, he saw her hard, implacable face. “No,” he said. “I don’t think we would.”

“And most of all I want Control.”

“That’s five,” Pope said. “How are you going to get all of them?”

“One at a time.” He heard the door open. “I’m going to get out of the car now. I’m not unreasonable. I know you’ll have to give this some thought.”

“I’ll need a couple of days.”

“You can have a week. I’m not going anywhere.”

“How will I find you?”

“You won’t,” she said. “I’ll find you.”

Beatrix Rose stepped out of the car. Pope found he had been holding his breath. He looked in the wing mirror and watched as she stepped between the two cars parked behind him, turned to the left, and then disappeared. He stayed where he was for a long minute, staring into the dark and watching the lights of the stacked planes as they patiently waited for their chance to land. She was a dangerous woman, he knew that much for sure. Dangerous didn’t even cover it. Ten years of enforced exile would have filled her to the brim with spite and bitterness and there was no telling what consequences that might have.

How reliable was she? How much could he trust her?

She did have a point, though: he had no idea about any of the men and women that had been bequeathed to him. Were there any bad apples? Which ones? Were they all bad apples? And she had the evidence of Control’s corruption. It was difficult to imagine how deep down the rabbit hole that would go if it ever saw the light of day.

He heard the sound of a high performance motorcycle engine somewhere behind the car. A single high beam headlight cut through the dusk and a red, white and green Ducati 1098 roared by the outside of the car. The engine growled and the rear light cluster glowed red as the rider braked at the exit and then, as the gate lifted, the engine howled again as the rider fed revs and accelerated onto the road and away.

Pope shook his head. The way he saw it, he really didn’t have any choice. If he didn’t take up Rose’s offer, she would probably find them all herself. It would just take a little longer. In the meantime, she could bring down British intelligence. Didn’t it make better sense to take advantage of the very particular set of skills that she could bring to the table?

Pope started his car and pulled away.

The motorcycle was already long gone.

Chapter Fifty

Milton smiled at the steward and handed him his boarding card. The man checked it and smiled in return, welcoming him on board and directing him down to the right, into economy. He had a window seat just in front of the wing. He nodded at the woman sitting in the aisle and she unclipped her belt and stood so that he could sit. He sat down and stuffed the copy of Great Expectations that he had bought in the airport shop into the mesh pouch on the back of the seat in front of him. Space was a little tight and his knees bumped up against the seat. He looked out of the window at the runway and the terminal buildings beyond. The headlights of the service vehicles that buzzed around the big jet raked across the runway.

The woman next to him bumped her elbow against his as she gripped his armrest by mistake.

“I’m sorry,” the woman next to him said. “My nerves are awful. I’m a terrible flyer.”

“Quite alright,” Milton said.

She was quiet as the plane rolled down the taxi-way, following the queue of jets waiting for their take-off slots. As they swung around at the end of the approach, perpendicular to the start of the runway, the angle allowed them to watch the BA flight ahead of them as its engines boomed and it climbed slowly into the air.

“I hate take off the worst of all,” the woman said.

Her face was a little pale. Milton gave her his most reassuring smile. “You probably know the statistics. You were more likely to get into a situation on the way to the airport than you are now.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Sadie.”

Milton didn’t really want to get into a conversation; he would have preferred to read his book for an hour or two and then try and catch some sleep. “I’m John.”

“Is this business or pleasure?”

He thought about that; it was an excellent question.

“A bit of both.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m between jobs.”

She carried on talking, vague sentences tumbling out with nervous energy. Milton kept an open, friendly expression to his face and made the appropriate responses when they were required, but he quickly zoned her out. This was business, not pleasure. He had been unable to decide upon his destination after Pope left and so he had bought a newspaper and a sandwich and found an empty seat. He had opened the newspaper and started to read, trusting that something would present itself. The story that finally caught his eye was on the tenth page, buried in the international news. It had snagged his attention and, no matter how much he tried to think about something else, he could not. He made up his mind. He finished the sandwich and went to buy a one-way ticket from the desk.

The pilot jockeyed the jumbo around until it was on the runway, nose pointing straight down the centreline. The engines cycled up and the jet lurched forwards. The woman stopped speaking, gripping her armrests so hard that her knuckles showed white through the skin on the back of her hands. Milton looked out of the window as they sped through the buildings, the lights merging into a multi-coloured blur. They roared through the terminal and out the other side and the cabin tilted gently as the jet took to the air. Front wheels, back wheels, and up. Milton kept watching as the airport opened up beneath them, and then the lights of the towns and villages that surrounded it, the cars on the motorway, the late night train that snaked its way east towards London. He looked down on England wondered when he would see it again. Perhaps he never would.

John Milton closed his eyes and thought about what he was going to do next.