The Watchman

Eight

It took Vale’s researchers less than twenty-four hours to come up with something concrete. Challenor was a cover name, used and discarded after the trip to Bogotá. Vale wasn’t surprised. But luck had been with them. They had picked him up on CCTV going through the airport and tracked him to a New York flight, then got him coming off the other end where he’d stopped at an ATM machine. By then his name had become Marc Portman.

This name had yielded three addresses to which he was connected, one each in New York, London, and Paris. Mr Portman seemed to have international connections.

While Vale was waiting for local assets to run visual checks on the three addresses and find out more about the man, he used every channel he could think of to put a block on Moresby’s plans for the meeting.

As an experienced former field controller, and given his oversight role in SIS, he was granted the courtesy of hearings most other officers would not have had. Hearings where he could voice his misgivings, doubts and concerns about the dangers to the personnel involved. The people he spoke to were senior managers, each capable of stopping an operation in its tracks on the grounds of safety, necessity or national security, and each with considerable experience in seeing officers go out into hostile territories where casualties were not unknown.

They listened, nodded at each point he raised and considered the implications, even his carefully worded suggestions that not only had Moresby frozen him out of the announcement of the plans, but that the officer selected for the operation lacked the required experience. But each had politely and firmly knocked him back. Moresby, they advised him, had presented carefully considered plans with full risk analyses and outcomes, and the dice had fallen squarely in his favour.

With his final meeting over, Vale retreated to his office and shut the door. He felt humiliated. He was in the middle of the world’s most effective intelligence gathering organization and he was powerless to use any of it.

He checked a slim file in his drawer, and scanned the brief report on the man who had saved Nate’s life.

A copy of a passport photo was attached. It showed a man with neat, dark hair, dark eyes and prominent cheekbones. Unremarkable looking and of Caucasian, possibly Mediterranean appearance, he was everyman, save for the directness of his gaze. Vale recognized that type. There were at least a dozen men fitting that description in this very building, some of them specialists in the Basement. They all had the same look. And like them, Portman probably had the ability to merge in a crowd, unmemorable and grey.

Also like them, he could undoubtedly handle a weapon on first contact with deadly effect and come out unscathed.

He picked up his phone and dialled Scheider’s direct number. Portman was primarily a US citizen and spent most of his time there. It was logical, therefore, to take up Scheider’s offer and see what the Meat Grinder could turn up about him.

‘Leave it with me,’ the American said. ‘We’ll get right on him.’