Red Station

THIRTEEN

Clare Jardine was waiting for him when he left Mace’s office. She was dressed in black cargo pants and walking boots, with a dark fleece top. Her hair was tied in a severe bun. She clearly wasn’t dressing to impress.

She tossed him a set of car keys. ‘I’m going out. Mace says I have to take you with me, God help me. I’ll let you drive; it’ll be your first taster of life out here.’ She indicated a kettle on a side table, with a couple of flasks standing next to it. ‘Make yourself some coffee; we’ll be operating in a Starbucks’-free zone.’

I love you, too, thought Harry, and picked up a flask while she paraded impatiently back and forth. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, pouring in boiling water.

‘I’m meeting a contact at a truck stop twenty miles north of here. He says he’s got some figures on military truck movements which he thinks might be of interest.’ She rubbed her thumb and fingers together to indicate that money was involved.

Harry shook the flask and screwed on the top. He’d made it black and strong, to keep him awake. It seemed to be what everyone drank around here, with the possible exception of Mace. Maybe it explained Jardine’s spikiness; she certainly seemed wired up.

‘So why would exposing me be a good idea?’ he said.

Jardine stopped pacing and stared at him. Rik Ferris, working at a PC monitor, looked up with interest. ‘Why wouldn’t it?’ she replied coolly. ‘You saying you don’t want to come?’

‘I’m saying your contact might know you, but he won’t know me from a fence post. Seeing me will either scare him off or give him another face to identify if he gets compromised.’ He shrugged. ‘Just thought I’d mention it.’

Jardine’s jaw worked hard as she processed the inference. ‘Are you an expert?’ she said, her cheeks colouring, ‘or is this just superior alpha male bullshit?’

Harry sighed. She’d taken his response as a challenge, but he really didn’t give a rats. He had no idea how solid her contact was, nor how long she had been working him, but he wasn’t about to follow her blindly without question, no matter how well she knew the ground. It was his neck at risk, too.

‘Think what you like. But I’m entitled to ask when a risk is worth taking. Besides, can’t satellite tracking give us troop movements?’

‘You’re right, it can.’ Mace was standing just inside the doorway. ‘But we need more details than satellite images can supply. A lot of these buggers aren’t big on badges and we need to know who and what they are. Up close and personal is the only way.’ He nodded and went back to his office.

Harry shrugged. It sounded reasonable, but he still didn’t like it. When Clare Jardine turned and walked out, he followed. As he passed Rik’s desk, the young man lobbed him a small black mobile and said, ‘Remember, no calls to Australia and no online gambling.’

By the time he got downstairs, Jardine was standing next to a battered grey Toyota Land Cruiser. Harry pressed the remote and they climbed aboard. The engine sounded smooth, although the car looked as if it was a survivor of a demolition derby.

He soon discovered why.

Jardine told him to head north and pointed the way. He took the vehicle out through the town, and they were soon in open country, on a road which might have been a major route here, but would have been downgraded as a track elsewhere. The surface was pitted with holes and the edges were crumbling, with deep gullies waiting to catch unwary drivers. The locals held the centre of the road with suicidal aggression, their victories marked by a regular scattering of broken car and lorry parts along the verges.

Ten minutes out of town, they passed a convoy of military trucks filled with men in drab uniform and helmets. They looked heavily-armed and wary. Harry saw no obvious regimental or unit insignia save for a small lightning bolt on one sleeve.

‘Local militia,’ Jardine explained. She sounded cool but professional.

‘Whose side are they on?’

‘Their own. They follow orders from their regional commander — a sort of warlord.’

‘Won’t that conflict with the regular army?’

She gave a ghost of a smile. ‘If it does, they’ll probably kick the army’s arse. They’re better equipped, better motivated and get paid more. Until then, they flex their muscles and train a lot just to remind everyone who really runs the place.’

‘Let’s hope they don’t get tested by someone with bigger muscles.’ He was thinking of what Mace had said about the Russians.

She looked at him, probably wondering how much he knew of the local situation. ‘It depends who they decide to back. If they fall back on old loyalties, they could jump either way.’ She pointed to a fork in the road, and he followed her directions to take the left one. ‘Let’s hope it never comes to that.’

The road they were now on became wider, but not much better. There was almost no southbound traffic, and Harry was able to pull out and overtake whenever conditions allowed. They passed several huge haulage or military trucks, belching fumes and hogging the centre line, and more than once Harry found himself holding his breath as the Land Cruiser was nearly brushed off the road by one of the lumbering vehicles. To have squeezed over too far would have invited disaster, but the alternative — to be wiped out by a clash against one of the huge wheels — would have been terminal.

A flash in his mirror and a blast of air horns alerted Harry to someone else heading north. He pulled over as a big four-by-four shot by, nearly taking off their wing mirror. Clare Jardine grabbed for a handle, but seemed unfazed by the manoeuvre. The vehicle disappeared, leaving Harry with a vague impression of two men inside and a smiley face sticker on the rear window.

Forty minutes after leaving town they came to a large, low building ahead, plastered with signs and posters and surrounded by trucks. Jardine signalled for Harry to pull in. He did so, parking close to the building. There were no other cars that he could see, and he guessed this was the area’s one and only truck stop.

They climbed out and stretched, studying the building. The windows were heavily steamed up, and although it was morning, the neon lights advertising vodka and beer were ablaze.

‘Follow my lead,’ said Jardine. ‘Try and pretend you belong.’

Harry glanced at her. In spite of the tough act, he guessed she was nervous. He nodded, and she walked ahead of him and pushed through a pair of heavy swing doors. They were hit by a hot, smoke-filled rush of air from inside and the blast of loud conversation. There was no music, Harry noted.

There must have been over a hundred men in the room, seated at rough tables or standing against a bar running from front to back. They looked like truckers everywhere, most of them big and flushed. The clink of glasses and the clatter of crockery vied with the background sounds of steam machines and shouts from the kitchen.

Conversation dropped appreciably as Harry and Clare moved into the room. Harry wondered whether it was because they were strangers or because Clare was one of the few women in the place. He now saw why she had come without make-up; a trace of lipstick and there would have been a riot.

They took a table near the front window and were approached by a waitress dressed in jeans and a shapeless jacket streaked with food stains. Clare ordered two beers and looked out of the window, ignoring the stares. Eventually, the conversation returned to its original level as the truckers resumed the business they were here for, which was food, refreshment and gossip.

Harry was halfway down his beer when the doors opened and three men in military uniform stepped inside. The first was an officer, the other two without rank. They stood and surveyed the room, unaffected by the unfriendly faces turned their way.

This time, all conversation ceased.

The officer walked slowly along the bar, hands behind his back. He was followed by one of his men. The other remained by the door.

They began checking papers. A rumble of protest went through the room but nobody argued. Gradually, the officer and his colleague worked their way through the crowd. Many of the drivers began to leave, their drinks unfinished. They went unchallenged by the man at the door.

‘Is this normal?’ asked Harry. He watched as the officer approached a large man at the bar dressed in jeans and a heavy jacket, a woollen cap pulled down over his ears. There was a burst of muttered conversation but the man eventually slid something along the bar and shook his head.

Clare shook her head. ‘It’s a random check; vehicles and papers — mostly vehicles. The ones leaving are drivers without papers or those with dodgy loads.’

‘Why aren’t they being stopped?’

‘They are. Take a look outside.’

He checked through the window, brushing aside the heavy condensation. The parking area was dotted with soldiers, pouncing on the truckers as they left and accompanying them to their vehicles. Nobody was exempt.

Harry watched as the officer worked his way towards their table, gradually clearing the room. Then he realised: the truckers weren’t the ones he was after.

‘Don’t.’ Clare gave him a warning look. ‘If he speaks to you, shake your head and play dumb. Hand over your passport only if he asks.’

Then the officer was at their table and looking down at them. Up close, Harry could see he was freshly-shaven, and smelled of soap and leather. He was in his forties, with clear, dark eyes and a blunt nose, and held an unmistakable air of authority. He held out his hand and Clare handed him her passport. Without returning it, he held out his hand for Harry’s.

He took a long time studying the documents, flicking pages back and forth while the soldier waited nearby. The few remaining patrons in the place took no notice, turning their backs and pretending the soldiers weren’t there. What happened to two foreigners was of no concern; they had problems enough of their own. Behind the bar, the owner, a short, squat figure with a balding head, glared sourly at the loss of business.

‘Thank you,’ the officer said in English, then dropped the two passports on the table. With a brief nod, he turned and marched outside, followed by his men.

Harry picked up his passport and began to stand up, but Clare reached out and touched his hand.

‘Wait. Give it a while.’

Five minutes later, they heard a shout and the soldiers began clambering aboard their trucks. Moments later, they were gone, leaving the air over the lorry park thick with exhaust fumes.

‘Time to go.’ Clare stood up and paid the waitress, then led the way back outside. Over half the trucks had disappeared, but several drivers were making their way back to the building, laughing or muttering, depending on their luck with the vehicle check.

‘What now?’ said Harry, as they got back in the Land Cruiser. ‘Looks like your contact was scared off.’

‘No, he wasn’t.’ She took out her passport and opened it below the level of the window. A slip of paper fluttered out and fell on her knee. Harry caught a glimpse of some numbers and scribbled words before she folded it and put it away. ‘See?’

‘Neat,’ said Harry. It was, too. To have a contact here at all took some doing. To have a contact who was an army officer was nearly miraculous. He wondered if London knew… or cared. ‘What is it?’

‘Not sure yet. Map co-ordinates, I think.’ If she knew more, she clearly wasn’t going to share anything with him.

He shrugged. Silly games. Let her get on with it. Then his attention was drawn to another vehicle starting up nearby. It was thirty yards away, and had been hidden by other vehicles when he and Clare had arrived. It was a large four-by-four, with two men inside and a smiley face on the rear window.

The road hog who’d nearly taken them off the road on their way here.

It charged away with a roar of the exhausts, and Harry watched it go, eyes on the man behind the wheel. It was the big man in the woollen cap.

It was only when they were back on the road that he suddenly realized that he knew who the man was.

Carl Higgins.