The Watchman

Six

Tom Vale made his way back down to the street with a heavy heart. His misgivings about what Moresby was planning were instinctive, formed by many years operating in hostile environments and sending out men and women to uncertain fates. That was a good thing; it engendered caution and a respect for the other side. But there was something in the new Operations Director’s approach which worried him. It smacked of recklessness inspired by ambition, and a cavalier attitude to the dangers out in the field that were not his own.

As he approached the exit, he heard the clatter of footsteps behind him.

‘Tom?’

It was James Scheider. The CIA man was shadowed closely by a smartly dressed man in his early thirties who looked as if he’d been drawn from the Marine Corps store, muscles, buzz-cut hairstyle and all. As Vale stopped, the minder cruised past him and went to the door, eyeing the street.

‘How’s Cavell doing?’ Vale asked. Scheider’s boss and CIA station chief, Wilton Cavell, was off sick with suspected cancer. It had thrown his deputy in at the deep end, but he seemed to be handling it well.

‘Not good. He’s going to be replaced — but you didn’t hear that from me.’ He glanced back up the stairs, then said, ‘You got a minute?’

‘Of course. Here?’

‘It will do. This, uh, business.’ He lifted his chin upwards. ‘Anything I should know about? Only, I got the feeling you weren’t keen.’

‘A little.’ Vale knew he had made it obvious, so there was no point denying it. ‘I’m uneasy about certain aspects. Why do you ask?’ He’d only known Scheider a short while, and was cautious about revealing his feelings to the American too readily.

Scheider surprised him. ‘Because I share your doubts. Not that it has anything to do with me directly, but it sounds like it could be a dirty business if things go wrong. Your people are going to be very exposed with no backup.’

‘That’s what worries me.’

‘Can you do anything to stop it?’

‘Short of taking out a hit on Moresby, no.’ Vale smiled to show he was joking, and added, ‘I need to think about it. But I’d be interested to hear what you think.’

Scheider studied his fingernails, which were immaculate. ‘The plan’s adventurous, no denying that. Hellish risky, too. On the other hand, like it or not, engaging with these people might be a way to resolve the problem. It’s worked with other organizations.’

‘But?’

‘We can’t interfere.’

‘We?’

‘The US.’

‘That sounds official. Are you saying this has been aired already?’

‘Briefly, yes. Moresby floated the approach made by Xasan when it first came in. I think he was testing the water to see how we might react.’

Vale should have known. Moresby had by-passed procedure, probably under the banner of inter-agency co-operation to see if an idea would float in theory. It explained why Cousins and Wilby had been a little off guard, yet supportive. ‘And?’

‘It’s a clear-cut issue as far as the administration is concerned: we don’t have any assets in the immediate area, save for some aid workers. But they’re not our concern until and unless they fall into real danger. We’re limited, therefore, in being able to commit any hard facilities. Drones for camera coverage, yes; signals intelligence via NSA, no problem. Anything more solid would be too … direct.’

It echoed what Moresby had said. Even Vale could see the sense in it. There were some operations where an overload of assets became a distinct disadvantage. The other side was likely to be tuned in to the presence of outsiders on their turf, and any sudden show of force in the region would signal an operation in progress. But he wasn’t about to give up.

‘Forgive me saying so, James, but you’re sounding a little oblique.’

Scheider smiled, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Oblique. That’s a good word, Tom. I guess oblique is what it is.’ He hesitated before adding carefully, ‘What I mean is, if you decide to add any … additional material of your own, shall we say, I might be able to help. But in a strictly advisory capacity.’

‘I think we have all the advisory we need, thank you.’ Vale had to rein in a touch of impatience. Scheider sounded as if he was offering some kind of help, without saying precisely what it might be. He was going to have to tease it out of him. ‘Could you be a little more explicit?’

‘Well, as I said, we can’t commit any hard facilities.’

‘You mean boots on the ground. I understand that.’

‘Exactly. And by the sounds of what was said upstairs, Mr Moresby isn’t about to call on more than one of your resident tough guys to pitch in.’

‘No. He’s not.’ Vale wondered how much Scheider knew about the Basement, SIS’s own force of hand-picked specialists. While its existence was hardly a secret in the closed community of the intelligence world, not too many outsiders ever spoke about it. He was assuming that one of them would be accompanying Angela Pryce on the assignment. But one was not enough.

‘Well,’ Scheider continued, ‘if you happen to hear of a name you might use, I could run them through the Meat Grinder in Langley.’

The Meat Grinder; the CIA’s vast but highly selective vetting software run by a team of IT wizards. It was boasted with some degree of justification that a name fed in one end could appear within an hour or two with a full vetting and background rating suitable for most security clearances.

‘That would be very useful, thank you. Except I don’t recall even suggesting I would consider such a thing.’

Scheider grinned knowingly. ‘Of course. Understood. But we’ve both been round the block a few times, so I guess we might be thinking along the same lines. If you do get a name and you’d like to check it out, call me.’ With that, he walked away, his minder preceding him out of the door like an attack dog.

Vale watched him go, then turned and made his way back towards Vauxhall Cross. Scheider had been surprisingly perceptive, although as he’d said, perhaps not so surprising given their shared background. An idea had been bubbling through Vale’s mind as he came downstairs after the meeting. It sprang from a memorable period while on his first posting in Cold War Berlin many years ago. Back then, in a burst of unexplained aggression, British operatives and agents moving back and forth across the Wall had been targeted by the East Germans for capture or assassination. Since neither they nor their masters, the Russians, were given to half measures, it was decided to set up a team of shadows, unseen and unidentified, to cover the agents as they moved. Vale had been given the task of monitoring them. After one or two ‘incidents’ involving the unexplained disappearance of East German operatives, the targeting had ceased and the shadows had been disbanded. The matter had never been admitted to, the funding channelled through a number of covert accounts until its origins and goals were lost in a fog of bureaucratic subterfuge. It was yet another aspect of that less documented period which meant that certain matters would never be made public, even under the ‘30-year secrecy rule’ releases which regularly caused those who studied such matters a severe rush of blood to the head.

Vale arrived at Vauxhall Cross and cleared security, then stood for a while in a deserted stretch of corridor near his office, mulling over Scheider’s words. The CIA deputy clearly shared his reservations about the risks inherent in Moresby’s plan, not least to the people involved. But he’d made it clear in just a few words that putting in his own people to help was a non-starter, mainly because of current US commitments elsewhere and increasing levels of accusation about their role as self-appointed global police.

He felt frustrated. In spite of his reservations he could see that the potential outcome of the plan, if successful, was too good to miss. And to many observers in the corridors of Whitehall, that would prove sufficiently attractive to outweigh any risks.

He stared out of the window at the river below, watching a barge trundle by with two men on board, mugs of tea in hand. He wondered fleetingly at the simplicity of their life, and decided that all the sound-proofing and bullet-proof glass and walls of this place, while conveniently preventing outside noises filtering in, probably affected some officers’ judgement in their relationship with the outside world, causing a disconnect in more than just space.

He returned to his desk and picked up his phone. He checked his watch and dialled a number. It was very early for the person on the other end, but he knew the man’s habits. He didn’t sleep for long and would be up and about already, working on a new day.

‘Sweetman.’ The voice was early-morning gruff but alert. Vale was calling his brother-in-law, an American living in New York State. Nate had passed through London only a few days ago, and had told Vale a story that had surprised him. He hadn’t yet had time to look into the details, but now was maybe the moment when he needed to think outside the square, as some of the hipper officers downstairs were fond of saying.

‘Nate, it’s Tom. How are you?’

‘Hey, Tom, I’m good. You?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ He had never told Nate what he did for a living, but the American was perceptive enough to have guessed that Vale was no ordinary civil servant. He launched straight in with his reason for calling. ‘You remember that person you told me about — the one who delivered you to that airport down south last week?’

There was a momentary hesitation as the cogs clicked into place, then Nate said, ‘Damn right I remember. How could I forget? What about him?’

‘I know you mentioned it already, but I need his name and room number.’

‘No problem. It was Challenor. It’s engraved on my memory. No idea of his first name. His room was next to mine: three-oh-two. But he won’t be there now … he flew out the same day as me.’

‘Do you know where he was headed?’

‘No. New York, I think — at least, that was the impression I got. I was flying to Chicago.’ He paused. ‘Funny thing was, I asked what his name was, where he lived, where he was going — all the usual stuff when a guy comes out of nowhere and saves your life … but he never got round to giving me any detail.’

‘That may have been for a reason,’ Vale suggested cryptically. He thanked Nate for his help, told him to give a big kiss to his sister, and cut the connection. His next call was internal, to a researcher on the floor below.

‘That’s all you have — a surname and hotel room number?’ It wasn’t a criticism; most of the time they had far less to work with.

‘That’s all.’

‘Fine. What level of information?’

‘The full card. Names, addresses, next of kin, jobs, what he eats for dinner. The works. Especially his military record. And get a visual on any current location.’

‘Got it.’

He sat back and thought things through. The way he saw it, there was only one way to protect Angela Pryce. He couldn’t prevent Moresby from sending her out on his proposed op, but he could do his best to ensure she wasn’t completely vulnerable. That excluded the specialists SIS had on call, those men and women with Special Forces backgrounds, trained in insertion and extraction work in hostile areas, since it would require too much in the way of counter-signatures and electronic records — none of which he dared use. Moresby would see it as interference and immediately block it.

The only thing he could do was find the mysterious Challenor, a man who could apparently step out of his hotel room into a three-gun kidnap in one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America, and walk away with the intended victim leaving two kidnappers dead and a further two unconscious.