A gentleman_s game (queen and country) Page 8

  They found a bench, took it, and Crocker broke out his pack once more, lit another cigarette.

  "We're going to hit back," Crocker said after a moment.

  "That's a given, isn't it? Unless the rules have suddenly changed."

  "No, the same rules still apply."

  "You sound uncharacteristically reluctant."

  He sighed out a cloud of smoke. "I don't object to retaliatory action. I object to committing to retaliatory action with undue haste. It wasn't three hours after the strikes that C was ready to order me to send the Minders on a bloodletting."

  "This is the same C who thinks the Special Operations Directorate is a waste of time, money, and a danger to the Security of the Free World?"

  "That's the one."

  "Changed his mind right quick when he wanted to show the PM that you boys can kick some ass, huh? Sounds like you'll be sending Minders to Pakistan."

  Crocker opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again as a couple passed in front of the bench, holding hands. Cheng waited, tilting her head back against the seat, catching sunlight on her face as she watched the lovers kiss.

  "If it is HUM that was behind this," Crocker resumed. "Those eighteen months leave that open to question."

  "HUM and HUM-AA are two different groups, don't forget that. Same origins, different agendas."

  "In which case it's Minders to Saudi."

  Cheng chuckled. "Like that will ever happen."

  "They've got their knickers in a twist, it might just get authorization."

  "No, it won't. Covert action in Saudi? You'll never get that kind of directive, even if your masters decided it was warranted. They'd go to the MOD for SAS instead, wouldn't they?"

  Crocker grunted the concession. "Still presuming your intel is correct, that Dar was HUM-AA. Just as possible he fell in with another organization."

  "My intel is correct."

  Neither of them spoke for a time, and Crocker finished his cigarette and flicked it away much as he had the first.

  "You'll let me know if anything else crops up?" he asked.

  "Hey, we're in it with you," Cheng replied. "There's more than a couple of folks Stateside saying, 'Hey, that could've been us.'?"

  "New York."

  "New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., the list goes on and on." She got to her feet, waiting for Crocker to follow suit. "I'll see if we can't find out exactly what Dar was doing in Saudi."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  She smiled, began to turn, then stopped, struck by a memory. From her coat pocket, she removed a gift-wrapped package of blue paper with a crushed pink ribbon, which she offered to Crocker.

  "It was your youngest's birthday this week, wasn't it? Ariel?"

  "She turned eleven."

  "Tell her I said happy birthday."

  "I shall."

  He took the package, waited for her to turn away. Cheng didn't move. "You want to keep us in the loop on this, Paul."

  "That's been my intention."

  "All the way, that's what I'm saying."

  It took him a moment to see it. "What was the final tally?"

  "Eighteen," Cheng said, and she turned away, beginning her walk back to Grosvenor Square and the American Embassy. "Most of them were college kids."

  Crocker watched her go before slipping the gift into his pocket and making his own way out of the park, thinking of the eighteen Americans and the twenty-three French and the seven Germans and all the rest who had been murdered in the tunnels of the Underground. • He was back at Vauxhall Cross at eighteen past one, passing through the security first at the gate, then in the lobby, and then at the elevators, and at each point he showed his pass to the guards, then swiped it through the reader. He stopped on the fourth floor, ducking into Rayburn's office in the hopes of finding him, and instead got D-Int's PA, a perpetually grumpy young man named Hollister, who informed him that Director Intelligence was presenting to the JIC, and would D-Ops like to leave a message.

  "Yes," Crocker snapped. "Ask him why the CIA knows more about what Box is doing at any bloody given moment than we do."

  Then he went to his office, to find Kate waiting for him, and before he'd even come through the door she was up and coming around from behind her desk to intercept him.

  "Bloody Box," Crocker said.

  Kate cringed and motioned toward the inner office, where the door was ajar, and Crocker groaned inwardly.

  "How long has he been waiting?" he asked.

  "Twenty minutes."

  "I assume you cleared my desk."

  Kate looked indignant and didn't bother to respond.

  "Coffee," Crocker told her, and then pushed his door open the rest of the way, to see David Kinney seated in one of the chairs facing his desk. He paused again, taking a breath, reminding himself that Kinney was good at his job. Kinney's people were good at theirs.

  But that didn't change the fact that Crocker hated the man's living guts, and the feeling was mutual, and their encounters were always exercises in barely restrained civility. Tuesday had only made matters worse.

  Interservice rivalry had existed from the word go, when the Special Operations Executive had become SIS following the Second World War. Where SIS was responsible to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Security Services, more commonly known by their short-form official mailing address, or their "Box," reported to the Home Office. In issues of security and domain, SIS and Box were almost constantly tripping over each other's toes. An SIS operation in Gibraltar, for instance, would lead to Box screaming that Crocker had overstepped his bounds-Gib still being viewed in the Home Office as "home territory."

  The legacy of Empire.

  Kinney didn't rise and didn't acknowledge Crocker's entrance. Crocker removed his jacket, hung it on its peg at the stand, then took his seat behind the desk. The desk was bare, and he appreciated Kate's efforts. He hadn't left anything compromising out-he never left the office with anything on his desk that should be in a safe-but all the same, it gave him comfort knowing that Kinney wasn't sneaking a peek at anything he shouldn't.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," Crocker said. "If I'd known you were coming, I'd have stayed out longer."

  Kinney's smile was sincere, in that Crocker saw in it the man's desire to gut him. "It's all right, I could use the pause. Been running nonstop since Chace's little bloodbath."

  "Better late than never. What can I do for you, Mr. Kinney?"

  "We located a flat in Southwark," Kinney said. "Where one of them staged from, looks like. We're working back from the lease, have a list of names. We're running those down but don't expect to find much on them, obviously. But there's the issue of money, how it was supplied to them, and I thought you might like to lend a hand there."

  "Meaning you've hit a dead end."

  "Meaning the inquiries we wish to have made need to be made in Germany and Greece." Kinney pulled a folded sheet from inside his jacket, set it on the desk at the edge so Crocker had to lean forward to take it. "We'd appreciate it if you looked into it."

  Crocker took the paper, opened it, reading names and numbers.

  "Normally I'd have done this through channels," Kinney told him. "But time is of the essence, I'm sure you agree."

  Crocker grunted, set the paper back down, and got up from his chair. "I'll put people on it today."

  Kinney rose, taking his time about it. "And you'll let us know, of course."

  "I thought it went without saying."

  "No, Mr. Crocker, with you, I like to hear the words straight from your mouth."

  "Any findings will be delivered to your people."

  "Nice to cooperate, isn't it?" Kinney said. "Nice being friendly."

  "Yes," Crocker said, holding the door for him. "It's always nice to play make-believe. Kate will see you out."

  As soon as Kinney was through, he slammed it closed behind him.

  7

  Israel-West Bank, Ma'le Efraim 15 August 2043 Local (GMT+2.00) Sinan bin al-Baari a
lmost hesitated before bashing the four-year-old's face in, but then he remembered that it wasn't really a boy, it was a pig and an ape, and that freed him. He struck the blow with all the savagery he could muster, infinitely more than was needed, and the butt of his rifle shattered the child's face with an audible and wet crack, and the boy crumpled to the floor. As soon as he was down, Sinan struck again, and this time broke through bone and spilled brains onto the linoleum floor.

  The boy's father screamed with animal anguish, inhuman in its grief, and then Aamil shot him, and the man fell, eternally silent.

  They stood still for a moment, each of them viewing their work, and finally Sinan said, "God is great."

  "God is great," Aamil echoed, and Sinan thought his voice sounded hoarse and almost choked. He looked to his friend, trying to read the expression on his face, but Aamil was moving away already, toward the switch on the wall, and he flicked it and plunged the small kitchen into darkness.

  Sinan moved out of the room into the hallway, carrying the rifle with its butt pressed between his arm and his chest. The butt was wet from the child and he felt fluid soaking into his shirt, but he didn't mind that, and he continued forward, toward the closed front door with its broken lock. Through the window, he could see the street, the fading sunlight, and as he watched an IDF armored personnel carrier rolled down the street, and when Sinan caught sight of the Star of David painted on its side, he couldn't stop himself from spitting in disgust.

  He turned away from the door to see Aamil was now behind him, looking anxious.

  "We should go now," Aamil said.

  "We haven't finished."

  "There's no one else here."

  Sinan gestured with a free hand back toward the kitchen. "Father, son… Where's the mother? There's at least one more."

  Aamil glanced over his shoulder quickly, then looked back to Sinan, as if he hadn't liked what he'd seen. "It's enough, we've done enough, Sinan. We should go before we can never go."

  "You're afraid."

  Aamil shook his head.

  Sinan considered, then looked out the window once more. The street was empty, the purple and red of the sky melting to a darker blue. Darkness would help their escape, but it would also lend them more time for the work. Maybe they could enter another house, put down another animal or three? The idea excited him, made his stomach tighten in anticipation. That would be wonderful, to be able to return to the camp and tell all who doubted him what they had done in the Zionist settlement, how they had proven that no one was safe there, not even in their own homes.

  Then he thought of the APC and reconsidered. Aamil had fired his weapon, and it was luck, it seemed, that had kept anyone from hearing the shot. In another house, if it happened again, Sinan doubted they would be so lucky a second time. Even more, he doubted that they would be able to kill those descendants of apes and pigs in silence.

  Aamil was right, but for the wrong reasons.

  It was time to go. • They waited until full darkness had descended and the APC had passed by the house three more times, now shining its mounted halogen lights into yards and alleys. Each time it passed, Sinan could see the soldier at the spot, and each time, Sinan imagined a bullet from his gun entering the soldier's head, and his finger slid from its safe position alongside the guard to the trigger, feeling the curve of metal against the pad of his forefinger. But he kept the gun down, resisting the urge despite his craving to seize the opportunity.

  At last they emerged, sprinting quick and low across the street, between the settlement houses, across a wide backyard, making toward the barbed-wire fence. Sinan led as fast as he could, but this wasn't the way they'd come into the settlement, and he wasn't entirely certain they were heading in the right direction. He tried to remember the map Abdul Aziz had shown him, tried to remember where the gap had been cut in the wire. It occurred to him that they should have left the weapons behind, in the house, in case they were spotted. He still had his passport, the passport he had used to enter the Zionists' so-called state, and if they were stopped, there was the chance he could bluff.

  It had gotten him into Ma'le Efraim, after all, traveling as a man named William Leacock. It had gotten him, and two automatic rifles, and two grenades this far.

  William Leacock's last act, Sinan thought. After this, the name would be dead forever, known and therefore useless.

  They ran across a dirt track, a narrow patrol road running between the outskirts of the settlement and the fence that surrounded it. The fence had been described as barbed wire, but Sinan knew it was more than that, not simply lines of cruel metal but rather a sharpened grate, impossible to climb quickly without perilous lacerations. He saw the shine of the metal in the starlight, surged forward, and the terrain dropped abruptly beneath his feet, turning into a shallow slope. He stumbled, hitting his knees and falling forward, and the fence clattered as his rifle collided against it.

  Sinan righted himself in a scramble, Aamil dropping to a crouch beside him, and he could barely make out his friend's expression, the anger at the noise, the fear of what it might bring. He looked away, focusing instead on the fence, where their escape passage had been cut.

  Except it wasn't.

  At first Sinan put it down to the darkness, the only illumination from the stars above and the dim ambience of the settlement lights. Breathless from the run and the fall, with Aamil hovering close beside, squinting at the barbed links in front of him, he realized they were in the wrong place. He quickly looked down the length of the wire in both directions, trying to find a landmark, something to place him on the remembered map, but the night had stolen all markers, and with a bubble of fear in his stomach, he realized they were lost.

  "Go on!" Aamil whispered urgently. "What are you waiting for?"

  "It's not here," Sinan hissed. "It's not here, this isn't it."

  Somewhere behind them, a dog began to bark.

  "Shit," Aamil muttered, dropping against the slope and freeing his rifle from his shoulder.

  Sinan followed suit, pressing himself against the cracked earth, just as the lights began coming on in the houses they'd left behind. The dog continued its alarm, growing more frantic, and he heard another dog joining in, this one sounding closer, to their left. Halogen bounced off the ground above their heads, cracking the darkness, and in its spill he could see Aamil, the fear on his face, and he shared it. If they were lucky, the Zionists would kill them. If they weren't, they'd become prisoners, and he'd heard enough stories from others in the camp to know what that meant. Torture at the hands of the Zionists, how they used water and electricity, how they fed their prisoners the blood and flesh of Muslim children.

  "They don't take us alive," Sinan whispered.

  Aamil responded with an urgent, spastic nod. They could hear voices in the distance now, alarmed but cautious. From farther away, the sound of the APC's engine coming closer. And the damn dogs were still yapping, and if anything, now it sounded like there were more of them.

  Sinan rolled softly onto his back, holding his rifle against his chest. The rifle was a Kalashnikov, his Kalashnikov, fully loaded and ready for work, and he pressed it against him with one hand, reaching into his coat with his other. The grenade in his pocket was smooth and cool and reassuringly solid as he wrapped his palm around it, pulling it free. He glanced to Aamil, waiting for his friend to do the same thing. Aamil hesitated, then licked his lips and quickly followed suit.

  The APC was coming along the track now, they could hear the rocks and pebbles crackling beneath its tires, its engine so low Sinan could almost believe it was on idle. The dogs had been silenced, and he strained his ears, trying to make out voices. Lights were being shined along the fence up the road, filling the little gully where they lay, making their way closer.

  Sinan watched the beams approaching, felt his heart beat so fiercely in his chest he was certain his rifle would fly from his body. He moved the grenade in his right hand onto his chest, reached over the rifle with his left, slid
his index finger through the metal pin. If his throw was true, if Allah was with him, perhaps he could drop it into the APC and take the soldiers with him. It wouldn't be enough to win freedom, he accepted that. Even if the soldiers fell, the settlers were surely armed, it would end the same way. But he would have taken more of these kufar with him, and that was the only thought in his mind now.

  "Look!" Aamil whispered, pointing past Sinan and up the length of the gully. "Look!"

  Sinan snapped his head around, feeling the dirt grinding into the back of his head, and it took his eyes a moment to register what he was seeing past the light, the darkness in the fence. At its base, near one of the posts, fifty or sixty feet away, the gap that had been cut for their escape.

  Aamil was already starting to move, dropping down to the bottom of the shallow gully, rifle in one hand, grenade in the other. Sinan began to push himself forward, to follow, then stopped, watching as his friend prowled farther away. Digging his feet into the earth, Sinan pushed himself up toward the road, peering over the edge of the slope.

  The APC was crawling along, the spot now drawing carefully along the fence, when suddenly it stopped moving. He heard a soldier's shouted exclamation and the APC ground to a halt. The spotlight readjusted, focused on the gap at the base of the fence, where the sheeting and wire had been cut and pulled away. Sinan heard weapons being readied, orders exchanged, and the first soldier dropped from the vehicle to the ground, readying his weapon, as another moved to take position behind the mounted machine gun.

  Sinan looked up the gully, saw that Aamil had realized what was happening, that there was no way out for him. He watched as his friend dropped to his knees, laying his rifle carefully at his side, and Sinan thought it was odd, but perhaps he was just preparing to throw the grenade. Then Aamil set the grenade on the ground, too, and raised his arms, folded his hands behind his head, and Sinan felt his mouth dry as if filling with sand. The impact of the betrayal was so sudden and so unexpected that, for a moment, he lost his breath.

  One of the soldiers was shouting, coming down into the gully toward Aamil, another covering them both, and all under the shadow of the APC's machine gun. Aamil was shoved roughly into the ground facefirst, his rifle and the grenade kicked away. The soldier worked quickly, his knee in Aamil's back, binding Aamil's hands together with a plastic tie. Once finished, he used the cuffs as a handle, jerking Aamil upright, forcing him toward the APC.