‘The other one?’
‘Remember I told you I saw someone in the back of that Bell cable van at Roy’s?’
‘Big black dude? Stuck his head between the front seats? That’s when you knew it was a surveillance truck.’
‘Yeah,’ said Winter, biting on a new smoke and offering Gallen one. ‘Him.’
‘They alive? Talking?’
‘Yep, and just.’ Smoke streamed through Winter’s nostrils. ‘Mike’s playing good cop, getting them coffee and donuts. I’m Freddy Krueger.’
Inhaling and looking away, Gallen thought about the next few minutes and how it could be crucial not only to doing their job for Oasis, but staying alive in the medium term. One lesson he’d learned in Mindanao and Afghanistan was that the intelligence fraternity was much harder on itself than it ever was on civilians or the hapless mules who got in the way. Once you declared for one side in the spy world, you were playing for keeps. When Gallen walked in that room and started insisting on answers, there’d be no going back. It would move from a simple snatch that could be explained away as an accident to a hostile act that would certainly be responded to.
‘Before we go in there,’ said Gallen, ‘I need Roy off the farm.’
‘It’s done,’ said Winter.
Gallen’s blood pressure was ticking. ‘Where?’
‘Asked him not to tell me,’ said Winter.
‘What about his cell?’
‘In the mail to a history lecturer at the University of Texas, in Austin.’
Gallen sucked on the smoke and ground it into the floor as he exhaled. ‘Let’s do this, Kenny.’
The room was a wooden-floored space that would have accommodated a tennis court. Natural light streamed through the glass panels in the roof as Gallen strode towards the backs of the two people duct-taped to the chairs. One was a normal-sized Anglo, judging by his shape, and the one on the right was larger — a leg wound was making a pool of blood around his left boot.
Nodding a greeting to Ford, who was making coffee at a small kitchenette, Gallen rounded the chairs and stood in front of the two captives.
The smaller man looked upset, quite unlike his cocky act behind the Spanish bar in Del Rey. The big one had a strapped leg and a smashed nose. He tried a smile. ‘Howdy doody, cap’n.’
Gallen froze. He was looking at his old gunnery sergeant, Bren Dale.
CHAPTER 44
The revving of diesel locomotives wafted into the room, along with the clanking of rail cars and yelling brakemen. Gallen dragged a chair in front of Dale as Mike Ford escorted the other captive out the door.
Then they were two war veterans left with shared memories and not much more.
‘You want to tell me what this is about?’ said Gallen, sipping at the surprisingly good coffee.
‘Why don’t you start?’
‘Okay. A special forces guy leaves 1st Recon and goes spying,’ said Gallen, lighting a smoke. ‘But he’s spooking on his old CO, being a pest.’
Dale’s head shook slowly, the pain from his leg obvious on his face. ‘Shit, cap’n. Let me out of this, and we all walk away.’
‘Like I walked away from that bomb in Harry Durville’s plane?’
Bren Dale eyeballed Gallen. ‘Didn’t bomb no plane, boss.’
‘Someone did.’
Dale looked away. ‘I didn’t ask for this.’
‘You like going to my childhood home, pretending to be a fucking cable guy?’ said Gallen softly. ‘That a fitting finale to what we did on Basilan?’
‘You like creeping round my daddy’s offices?’ Dale took a deep breath, his broken nose running with blood. ‘Remember I asked you to reposition our direct action, that night on Basilan?’
‘I do,’ said Gallen.
‘Remember I told you that the intel from the Philippines side was no good? That it was a fricking ambush?’
‘I do,’ said Gallen again, remembering a night that triggered a three-day retreat from the Moro stronghold. ‘Christ. You were a spook all along?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Dale, in a tone that meant Gallen had got it right. ‘Point is, I told you something and you acted; you saved a lot of lives and you got a promotion out of it, last I heard. Now I’m telling you again.’
‘Fuck, Bren,’ said Gallen. ‘You were DIA? Why didn’t I know?’
‘War on Terror, all that shit. The units had their staff intel briefings, business as usual. But DIA had their own embedded guys.’
Gallen could feel the anger welling in his neck. ‘Why would DIA do something like that?’
‘Same reason we invaded Iraq when we hadn’t secured Afghanistan: clowns running the circus, know-it-alls who know nothing. Point is, I tried to warn you off this time round too.’
‘When?’ said Gallen.
‘Suddenly pulling out of the gig,’ said Dale, his face softening. ‘Shit, boss, I thought you’d work it out: ol’ Brenny just bails out, won’t return your calls? He must be workin’ again.’
‘So who’re you working for?’
Dale shook his head. ‘The who don’t matter.’
‘What don’t matter is that you hold out, Bren,’ said Gallen. ‘Kenny wants a close chat with that boy of yours.’
‘Jesus,’ said Dale, shaking his head and closing his eyes. ‘You know about Winter? ‘
‘Some.’
‘No, I mean, you seen his sheet?’
‘The Assaulters? ISAF?’
‘You know what he did before they cut him loose?’
‘Canadians set him up for a DD. Sign this or we fuck you.’
‘Canadians had nothing the fuck to do with nothing, boss,’ said Dale. ‘He was on payback duty for the Agency.’
‘Payback for what? ‘ said Gallen, lighting another smoke.
‘For that Jordanian bomber up in Khost,’ said Dale, talking about the al-Qaeda double agent who talked his way into the CIA compound in Khost and detonated his bomb, killing seven Agency officers.
Gallen checked his surprise. ‘Kenny?’
‘Made six hits in thirteen days,’ said Dale, smiling with the information ascendency. ‘High-level dudes — al-Qaeda bankers and lawyers. Gaza, Penang, Amman and, . Colombo I think it was.’
‘Bullshit, Bren. Kenny was on secondment.’
‘Bullshit, yourself,’ said Dale. ‘What you think all them Canadian and Aussie special forces dudes were doing in Kabul in the first place? Helping the Eurocrats fill out their paperwork? ‘
‘ISAF head shed, in Kabul?’ said Gallen, knowing the headquarters compound well. ‘That’s NATO, not Agency.’
‘Sure,’ said Dale. ‘But not after the X Rotation.’
Gallen thought about it; Rotation X had been a controversial reorganisation of the ISAF system in February 2007, in which member nations started to contribute their own forces in a ‘composite’ structure, rather than the old integrated NATO command. It was seen as Washington trying to insert its own strategy and operations under an international banner.
‘Well, after that, it was the sadists running the joint,’ said Dale, grinning at the military’s word for the Special Activities Division of the CIA. ‘Fucking Bank of Langley, my brother. Holy shit.’
Gallen knew about the Agency’s SAD, their paramilitaries and political operators. They appeared in forward operations bases, kept to themselves and only referred to themselves by first names. And when they needed to be saved from their own ventures, people like Gallen’s Force Recon units and the Army’s Green Berets were sent out into the night to retrieve them.
Standing in frustration, Gallen walked to the window and looked out over the rail yards. A police helicopter moved across the horizon in the distance.
Something tweaked a vague memory. ‘Bank of Langley?’