Red Station

FIFTY-TWO

‘ I thought I might find you here.’ The Odeon was dark, but not merely with the gloomy decor of previous days; there were no lights, no sounds from the kitchen and a chill in the air signalling a lack of heating. It had the air of a building being allowed to die slowly, like a terminal patient cut off from life-saving drugs.

Harry closed the front door behind him, shutting out the colder air. Mace was alone in shadow at his usual table. A bottle stood on the table in front of him and his glass was nearly empty. There were no other customers.

‘Where else would I be?’ He sounded drunk, and Harry guessed he’d been hammering the booze since they’d parted. The man must be working his way through every drinking joint in town. He looked exhausted and grey, his hair limp and no longer swept back elegantly over his ears.

‘We should leave,’ said Harry. ‘They could be rolling down the street any minute.’

‘They? You mean the Russians? Or the Hit?’

‘Same difference. I’d rather not meet any of them if I can help it.’ He explained about the flight vouchers Rik had got from the French.

Mace spun the glass on the table top. ‘Good idea. Well done, Rik, eh? Either way, I’m staying.’ He waved a tired hand in the air around him. ‘After all, how can I leave this? It’s the only investment I’ve got left.’

‘You own this place?’

‘Sure. Have done for a while. It was going to close, so I put some money on the table.’ He grinned crookedly. ‘Seemed a good idea at the time, even if it does break every Service rule in the book.’

‘Where’s the old woman?’

‘My business partner, you mean? Up-country somewhere. Said she had to see her niece, make sure she was OK. She’ll be back — she’s keen to pro… protect her share of the assets.’ He swallowed and blinked at the verbal stumble. ‘Christ, think I’ve had too much.’

Harry sat down. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do this. Confrontations rarely went well in his experience, even less so when alcohol was part of the mix. But if Mace was staying put, it might be the last opportunity he had of getting him to talk.

‘You knew all along what was happening here, didn’t you? What Red Station was for… what might happen to anyone sent here. Especially if they tried to leave.’

Mace’s silence was enough.

‘Did you volunteer for this?’ Harry pressed him. He could hear people running in the street, and someone banged on the door as they passed. A car horn sounded, impatient and tinny, and distant shouts echoed off the buildings. The early sounds of panic; the prelude to forced flight. Close by, a man’s voice shouted something at length. He didn’t understand a word of it and cared less. Not right now. ‘Or did they offer you the top desk to keep you quiet?’ He suddenly wanted a drink. This wasn’t like interrogating terrorists or drug smugglers. This was working on your own people. It felt… unclean. ‘They’d have needed someone here, on the inside,’ he continued. ‘Someone they could trust… someone who would agree to working here rather than being pensioned off early. Isn’t that right? The Clones could only do so much… hear so much. What better than having a man on the inside to keep London in the loop?’

Still no reply. No shouting now from outside. Just a distant drone of a car engine. If it turned into something heavier, he was out of here. Mace would have to fend for himself.

‘Did you allow the Clones inside to set up their bugs? Drop them the nod when a team member was away from home so they could run a quick check of their phones and correspondence? Tell them in advance when we were going on a pointless errand so they didn’t have to follow?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Mace’s voice was sticky and dull, like congealing treacle.

‘Of course it was. They couldn’t have run it all the way from London. Someone had to be the eyes and ears on the inside, to make sure the boys ands girls behaved themselves and didn’t get restless.’ He pressed on, feeling like a heel but desperate to know. ‘You were ideal; no further chance of advancement in the Service; your best years were behind you. It must have been a life-saver.’ He reached out and picked up the bottle. Read the label. Felt disgusted by what he was doing, but more so with the man across the table. ‘Pity Jimmy Gulliver didn’t get the same deal.’ He put the bottle down.

Mace blinked heavily. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘You told them Gulliver was going home, didn’t you? That he’d had enough. That he was going to make noises.’ He breathed in, fighting the nausea. ‘You gave them his travel details so they could arrange for an intercept. It had to be you — you were the only one who knew him well enough. The only one he trusted enough to talk to.’

‘I told them he’d left,’ Mace growled. ‘That was all.’

‘I don’t believe you. You could have left it… let it slip out quietly later that he’d skipped town without warning. It would have given him, what — twenty-four hours head start? Time to lose himself en route.’

‘But I did.’ Mace’s skin was mottled and a flick of spit dropped on to the table. He stared at Harry, eyes watering and red. ‘I knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid… I’ve known him since he was a kid. That stuff about making noises… that was just anger talking.’

‘Say again?’ Harry sat forward. ‘You knew him before?’

Mace hesitated, then gave a long sigh of capitulation. ‘Jimmy was my nephew — my younger brother’s kid. His parents were killed on a farm they ran in Zimbabwe… part of Mugabe’s land grab. Jimmy came back and started over, brought up by an aunt — my sister. Did well, won a place at Cambridge, got picked out by an agency talent-spotter and offered a fast-track through Six.’

‘But they must have known you were related.’

‘The vetting didn’t pick it up. I didn’t know he was back until I bumped into him in Vauxhall Cross one day. Knew him immediately, of course, even though I’d last seen him as a boy.’ He shrugged. ‘Bloody shock, I can tell you, finding him in the same grubby line of business. He slipped through the net. It happens.’

‘And you never said anything?’

‘Why should I?’ Mace looked sullen and defensive. ‘They’d have tossed him out. What was the point?’

‘Fat lot of good it did him.’ Harry wondered if he was telling the truth. After his whole life working in the deception game, setting up a smokescreen would be second nature to a man like Mace. Yet he sounded convincing.

‘What d’you mean?’ Mace demanded.

The reality of the situation hit Harry like a thunderbolt. He could see it in Mace’s eyes. He’d asked him not long after arriving here if he’d ever heard from Gulliver. The answer had been no.

It had been the truth.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Harry said, and wondered how to tell him.

‘Know what?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Jimmy Gulliver died in a climbing accident in the Alps not long after leaving here.’ He waited while the news sank in to Mace’s fuddled brain, then continued before he lost his nerve, ‘I had a friend check it out. He never made it back to London.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Mace sounded utterly confused. ‘That can’t be right — he went home. They never told me.’

‘They didn’t intend to,’ said Harry brutally. ‘He was marked down from the moment he came out here. We all were — you know that. Only some of us are graded a bigger risk than others. Gulliver was fast-track, and good. He’d have been pitched right in at the deep end, fed high-grade intelligence normal trainees never see… the pressure-cooker approach to see if he could stand it.’

‘A climbing accident?’ The awful realization was slowly making an impact on Mace’s brain.

‘Yes. He must have chosen to take some time off. Sort himself out.’ Harry was speaking to fill the silence, embarrassed by Mace’s expression of loss. Whatever the man’s previous failings, this was a lot for him to take in. ‘Clare Jardine told me he hired a car and planned to drive back overland. It would have taken him a while. He obviously decided to stop off for some climbing.’

‘He couldn’t.’

‘Sorry?’

‘He couldn’t. Jimmy couldn’t climb. He wasn’t equipped for it.’

‘Clearly. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped him trying.’

‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, man.’ Mace looked angry. ‘He couldn’t have gone climbing — it was his one weakness, same as his father. They both suffered from chronic vertigo.’ He hit the table with his fist for emphasis. ‘You’d have no more got Jimmy climbing the Alps than walking up the Eiffel fucking Tower!’

Shit.