Red Station

FORTY-EIGHT

‘ We got a problem, old son. Well, two, actually.’ Bellingham was sprawled behind his desk when Paulton was ushered up to his third floor office. The MI6 Operations Director looked flushed, and had it not been too early in the day, Paulton would have sworn he’d been drinking.

After responding to Bellingham’s call for an urgent meeting, it wasn’t the best of openings. Paulton felt his spirits sink. ‘What sort of problems?’

Bellingham flicked a sheet of paper across his desk. It was a photocopy of a press item. ‘This is circulating faster than the pox,’ he snarled. ‘How the hell did Whelan get hold of your man’s name?’

Paulton’s stomach gave a lurch. He’d already seen the report. ‘He hasn’t — didn’t,’ he answered. His voice came out an octave above its normal pitch on hearing the journalist’s name. ‘This doesn’t actually mention Tate’s name. It’s Whelan’s friend making wild claims.’

‘Don’t act the arse, George. I don’t care if he’s got Tate’s name sewn into his knicker elastic in gold thread. It’s the idea that Whelan might have been knocked off by the establishment that worries me — and should be scaring the buggery out of you.’ He sat back and clasped his hands over his belly. ‘See, I know what you did, George. You were covering your backside, weren’t you? You thought Whelan was getting too close so you decided to put him off. Permanently. Pity you didn’t tell me first.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d have dealt with it a lot better, that’s why.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘Still, as long as nobody left Tate’s name lying around, we can deny it until the Second Coming and they’ll never be able to prove otherwise.’ He eyed Paulton carefully. ‘I take it there’s no chance of anything turning up, is there? No little clues that might drop you squarely in the kaka?’

‘Of course there isn’t!’ Paulton’s chest began pounding at a rate he was sure wasn’t good for him. The way Bellingham was talking made him wonder if this conversation was being recorded. If so, he was cooked; he’d already said too much.

‘Mmm. Good. Best forgotten, then.’

‘What else was there?’ Paulton asked him, anxious to get on and get out of here fast. There were things he needed to do.

‘What? Oh, the other thing, yes. Y’know that server thing we set up for Red Station — Clarion? Bloody thing’s worked well so far, absorbing useless messages from Mace’s motley crew like a baby’s nappy.’

‘What about it?’

‘I think somebody’s rumbled us.’

‘What?’ Paulton jumped in his chair as if he’d been stung. ‘Somebody here?’

‘No, not here, you idiot. I’m the only one with access, remember? Over there, in the arse-end of beyond. Some smart-Alec — probably that communications twerp you sent out there — sent a couple of silly messages, one of them a load of nonsense which any fool could see was a deliberate draw. He was testing the response. The other was real, asking about Russian troops in militia uniform, initiated by your man Tate. I missed the rubbish one and didn’t notice the second until it was too late. Other things on my plate.’

‘Can’t we explain away the situation — a communications malfunction or something, to keep them quiet?’

‘Nix. We’re too late.’

Paulton tried to think through the implications. His head suddenly felt inexplicably hot. It was one bloody thing on top of another. Ferris. Rik Ferris. A young IT graduate who’d got bored punching keys and saw things he shouldn’t have. Nothing critical, but enough to cause a stink if he’d gone public. He wondered what had prodded him into action after all this time. There could only be one answer.

Harry Tate.

‘Ferris — is that him?’ Bellingham was still chuntering on, and came to the same conclusion. ‘He’s been getting very pally with your man Tate, I hear. Therein lies the real problem.’

Paulton stared at his opposite number and wondered just how many lines of communication he had into Red Station. The man was like a fat spider, tugging on his web. ‘How do you know all this?’

Bellingham laid a finger alongside his fleshy nose. ‘Got spies everywhere, that’s how. Thing is, we overlooked one vital aspect of the people we were sending out there, you know that?’

‘Did we?’

‘They’re professionals, that’s what. Used to grubbing about in the muck and noticing stuff other people wouldn’t see. Can’t help themselves. See something and they have to report it. With all that’s going on over there, they’re starting to trip over raw intelligence they — and we — can’t ignore. So far, Mace has been fielding it. But he’s losing it, and now your man Tate has taken an interest in world events rather than his own sorry neck, and he’s stirring up trouble.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Well, we can’t just turn a blind eye. What would happen if they found a way of by-passing the comms channel into Clarion? Worse, we have no way of explaining where this raw intel’s coming from.’

‘Don’t you have any people on the ground?’ Paulton was feeling desperate. ‘You could attribute the source to them.’ This entire business wasn’t going the way Bellingham had said it would. In fact, it was beginning to unwind like a badly-knit jumper.

‘Weren’t you listening in that briefing the other day?’ Bellingham replied irritably. ‘They all got wiped out. The bloody forces of evil came along and nobbled them!’ He looked morose for a moment, then continued, ‘Apart from the embassy in Tbilisi, which is worse than useless, we haven’t got anyone. Freedom bloody Square, that embassy address — did you know that, George? So free, they’ve got security spotters sitting on their shoulders every minute of the day. Probably on Putin’s payroll, every damn one of them. As far as our lords and masters know, we’ve got bugger all over there, so we can hardly develop a new stream of intelligence chatter coming over official wires from the middle of nowhere, can we?’

‘You’ve got access to satellite coverage.’

‘We do. But it’s open-channel. Might as well advertise it as Shareware, let everyone take a peek. They do, anyway, so I can’t suddenly pop up with stuff nobody else can see. Might as well claim we’re using a sodding medium.’ He scowled. ‘No, it’s about time we recognized our limits, George. It was a nifty idea, but it’s outlived its usefulness.’

Paulton felt a measure of relief. Maybe if they got everyone out of there, they could quietly let the whole affair fade into history. God knows what he was going to do with Tate, though. The shooting in Essex was still front-page news, with the parents of the dead girl raising hell about her murder and demanding names. And the family of the dead firearms officer was questioning why he was sent in to danger with insufficient back-up or training. Heaven alone knew how they had got that bit of information, but he was willing to bet Gareth Nolan, the Deputy Commissioner, had let it slip to a press buddy. Anything to cover his own feeble neck. Maybe another posting for Tate was the best, then they could all relax.

At which point Bellingham swept the rug from under his feet.

‘I’ve sent in the Hit.’

‘What?’ the words kicked Paulton out of his reverie. Mention of the Hit brought the brutal realization that there would be no quiet and orderly retreat; no remote posting for Tate and no salve for his conscience over what had happened to Brasher and Jimmy Gulliver. That was gone the moment the Hit moved in, because they had one main function, and one only.

They killed people.

‘Time to call it a day, George. We can’t pull ’em out and we certainly can’t have our rabbits turning up at Immigration with stories to tell. There’s no way we could keep ’em all quiet. One flappy lip and they’d all be under the spotlight. With the fuss that’s about to break anytime now, they’ll simply have to disappear.’

‘What — all of them?’ Paulton’s throat closed around the words. He knew his protests were futile, but a tiny vestige of self-respect made him try. ‘You can’t!’

‘Can and will, George. Can and will.’ Bellingham threw his head back and smiled with a ruthless absence of humour. ‘It’s a matter of expediency. Nasty word, expediency. But it was invented for a purpose. We can kill several birds with one stone. We’re closing down Red Station. Permanently.’