Red Station

EIGHT

‘ George?’ It was Marcella Rudmann, in a neat grey business suit and glossy shoes. Her hair was coiffed and shiny under the lights of the main hallway of the Ministry of Defence, and she was carrying a smart document case and a mobile, traditional armaments for a meeting. She seemed surprised to see Paulton.

Stuff her, he thought rebelliously. She doesn’t know everything.

‘Good morning.’ He almost called her Marcella but decided against it. Familiarity paid off only with those innocent or pompous enough to be fooled by it.

‘How did the… posting business go?’ She was referring to Harry Tate.

‘Very well, actually. He should already be in place by now. Why?’ Paulton didn’t like the idea of being checked on; watching people was his job, not hers.

‘Oh, no reason. The Deputy Prime Minister was asking if the press were likely to get hold of Tate’s name. There are questions being asked which come uncomfortably close to the truth.’

‘Questions? By whom?’

‘Shaun Whelan — who else?’

Paulton puffed out some air. He wasn’t surprised. Whelan was a poisonous little hack who’d been booted out of RTE, the Irish broadcasting network, for disclosing private information about government officials in Dublin. He now worked as a freelance, nosing around the corridors of Whitehall like a bitch on heat. Thankfully, few took him too seriously, but his clumsy probing had a habit of causing unwelcome ripples.

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Rudmann’s voice was insistent, her eyes digging into his. ‘You know his reputation.’

‘He’ll keep.’ Paulton wondered how much power this woman really had. The fact that she was being so blatant in her interest over the shooting was becoming a worry. Maybe she had discovered a way of consolidating her career by riding on the back of a potential scandal.

‘I hope you’re right. I told the DPM you had the situation in hand.’

Paulton felt a further pinprick of annoyance. It was the lack of subtlety as much as the superior attitude; that they felt no hesitation about letting him know they didn’t entirely trust him to do what was required. Had the boot been on the other foot, he knew they’d have been outraged at the suggestion that they couldn’t cope. But he couldn’t help feeling a touch of alarm. Had someone been pointing a finger? Was that it?

‘It’s all in hand,’ he confirmed, with a cool undertone. ‘Perhaps the DPM would like proof? We have a satellite going over shortly; I’m sure we could get Tate to look up and wave if you like.’

Her face stiffened but he was beyond caring. Time was, he’d have been left alone to get on with the trickier elements of his job without interference. Now, politicians were all damage-control experts — especially when they thought their own careers were at risk.

‘I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ she muttered, the ice in her voice a clear warning. She began to walk away, then turned and said carefully, ‘Just see that none of this ever goes public, that’s all. Do you understand?’

‘How could it?’ he said coldly. ‘Whelan doesn’t know where Tate is.’

As he left the building, he had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. What did Rudmann mean when she said that none of this affair should ‘go public’?

Was she referring to Harry Tate… or Shaun Whelan?

Later that day, Marcella Rudmann returned to her office and opened a folder sitting in the middle of her desk. It was a summary file on the life and work of Harry Tate. She skimmed through it, noting a few high points in his army and intelligence career, but nothing to suggest he was or ever had been a star. A plodder, by all accounts; solid, unremarkable, a good and loyal servant who did his job and caused no ripples. In many ways an ideal intelligence officer. There were a couple of blips, though, she noted; one minor, the other surprising.

The minor one was a report on Captain Harry Tate disarming a drunken member of 2 Para who’d gone on the rampage in a bar in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1995. It wasn’t the fact that he’d done it that was noteworthy, but that he’d broken the other man’s arm in three places, and none of the man’s Para colleagues had intervened.

The second notation was very different. In August 1999, Tate had been assigned to a United Nations KFOR unit in Kosovo, looking for signs of ethnic cleansing. Serb forces were suspected of systematically rounding up and ‘disappearing’ numbers of Kosovar Albanians, and the UN desperately needed proof. On a reconnaissance mission in the hills ten miles from Motrovica, they had stumbled on a group of heavily-armed Serb paramilitaries. An armoured personnel carrier stood at the side of the road, its 20mm machine gun cocked and ready to fire.

The UN convoy was faced with an unenviable choice: back down or make a fight of it to prove their credentials. The senior officer had urged caution, ordering his men to turn back. The alternative route would add hours to their journey, but it was better than a fire-fight and serious casualties.

But Tate had seen something none of the others had noticed: three small Albanian girls were huddled behind the APC, their clothes torn and dirty. It was clear they didn’t want to be there but were too traumatized to ask for help.

Tate had argued that the men had taken the girls prisoner, and that they should investigate further. The senior officer — a Dutch Major — had declined, fearing escalation, whereupon Tate had jumped down from his vehicle and walked over to the APC. Ignoring the Serb soldiers, he had clambered up the side, knocked the gunner cold and turned the gun towards the watching Serbs.

They had handed over the three girls without argument.

Rudmann pursed her lips. So, she reflected, a good and loyal servant with an occasional spark about him. But that had been years ago.

Pray God he kept it bottled up.

She sat back and stared at the ceiling. Part of her brief was to make sure that there were no ‘own goals’ in security operations which could come back to haunt the government later. Like the Essex operation. Getting him out of the way had been an instinctive move, and Paulton had obviously foreseen the need. But her brief gave her considerable power and responsibility — far more than men like George Paulton were even aware of — and she took the work seriously. For that reason, she had sent for Harry Tate’s personnel file, just to be sure he wasn’t a rogue male who might bring disaster on them, no matter what Paulton’s opinion of the man might be.

She closed the file and summoned her secretary to return it. Harry Tate had once shown a spark of something, but that was all. Sparks didn’t always translate to flame. Even so, he was better off out of the way. For all their sakes.

‘Get this back without fuss,’ she told the young woman who entered the room. ‘Remember, no signatures and no record.’