The Watchman

Sixty-Eight

Tom Vale walked up the steps into the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and was met as usual by a Marine guard, immaculately ironed and polished. He’d been in this building several times before, but still felt as if he were stepping into a magic kingdom.

He blamed Hollywood.

‘Mr Vale, sir,’ the man said briskly, handing him a visitor’s badge. ‘Mr Scheider said you were coming and to take you right up. If you would follow me, sir.’ He swivelled sharply on his heels and stiff-legged away, leading Vale without delay through the internal security screens and up to the second floor.

They stopped at a doorway at the end of a long corridor, and the marine knocked and asked Vale to go inside. He found himself in a long room with a conference table complete with two communications consoles, a tray of juices and a line of empty chairs. A huge flat-screen monitor bracketed by two US flags dominated the end wall.

‘Tom.’ Scheider greeted him and indicated a younger man. ‘You know Dale Wishaw, I believe?’

Vale shook hands and murmured a greeting. Why he was here was a mystery. A surprise invitation had been waiting for him on arrival at the office, and intrigued by the air of urgency, he had immediately called for a car to bring him here. The car was one of the tangible signs of his new, albeit temporary role in MI6 following Colin Moresby’s resignation. He had felt little sympathy for the man’s abrupt departure, and no hesitation in assuming the position of special operations director while the department was being reformed.

Coffee was served and Scheider complimented him on his new role. ‘Sorry to be so guarded about the reason for this invitation, Tom. I wanted to keep the spread of information strictly limited. You’ll soon see why.’ He put down his cup and nodded to Wishaw.

The younger man picked up a remote, indicated the monitor on the wall and said, ‘Private showing, Tom, just for you. If news of this got out we’d have them queuing down the hallway three deep and that guy Portman would be a Hollywood legend.’

‘Who?’ Vale stared over his coffee cup and the American flushed.

‘Quite.’ Scheider threw Wishaw an unhappy look. ‘Run the footage.’

The image on the screen was hazy at first, a jumble of shadows and shades of grey, reminding Vale of the first unflattering pictures of the moon so many years before. This looked like water but he couldn’t be certain.

His chest went tight as he realized what he was seeing.

Sensing Vale’s thoughts, Scheider signalled for Wishaw to pause the film. ‘What you’re about to see,’ he said, ‘is camera footage of a Hellfire strike fired from a Reaper MQ-9 drone over the coast of Somalia.’ He smiled grimly. ‘I think you know the coordinates so I won’t bore you with the details. The missiles are totally self-destruct, so nobody gets to send any coded parts to a technical lab and find out where it was made.’ He nodded at Wishaw to continue.

The film showed the ground racing by as if being pulled on a rail. Then the camera steadied and locked on a central point, the focus becoming sharper, more real. The image now showed solid terrain, with recognizable trees and shrubs around the faint line of a road or track. Moments later the man-made lines of a building appeared, trembling momentarily before growing, almost filling the screen. A vehicle — Vale guessed a pickup truck — stood nearby. Men, too, some standing still, others moving around slowly, unhurried.

Totally unaware, he reflected, of what was coming their way.

‘Knock, knock,’ Scheider said softly as the target area was magnified, trembling again as the camera lens picked up the image and fed in more detail. Then a flickering, lightning-fast movement showed to one side of the screen and a vast dust cloud rose upwards and outwards, obliterating the square shape, the truck and the men. A delayed flash spread out from north of centre as the Hellfire found its target.

‘Nice shot.’ Scheider tapped his desk. ‘Let’s hope Musa was home to enjoy the visit.’

‘Amen to that,’ Vale murmured, and asked for a copy of the footage, to which Scheider agreed. He wanted to check the results for himself. Not that he distrusted the Americans; they had done what he had been unable to achieve, which was to place a missile right down Yusuf Musa’s scheming throat. But he’d known deadly enemies escape certain death before, in spite of incontrovertible evidence, and this was one man he was determined not to allow off the hook.

He put down his cup and wondered if this was a dry office. As early as it was, he was suddenly in need of something stronger.

When he returned to his office, he learned that Portman had not boarded the Lynx with Tober, but had instead returned to land, for reasons unknown.