Greed

Matt answered the door on the second knock. Alison was wearing a black trouser suit with a red cardigan underneath, a string of pearls slung across her neck. She glanced at him briefly, smiled, then looked across the room. There was something different about her today, Matt judged. She was colder, and a couple of lines seemed to have creased into her brow.

I'm not sure she's pleased to see us.

'The mission was a great success,' she said. 'You are all to be congratulated. You've achieved a significant blow against al-Qaeda. Without money, they are nothing.'

'Save us the speeches,' said Matt, turning to face her. 'What's going to happen to us?'

Alison stood with her back to the window, her face framed by the sunlight breaking through the clouds. 'You get to keep the money, pure and simple,' said Alison stiffly. 'So far as I know, there is no change of plan.'

'Somebody tried to kill me,' said Cooksley. 'In Cyprus.'

'Something's going on,' said Matt. 'And we want to know what it is.'

'Cyprus is a small place,' Alison answered, turning to face them, her tone harsh. 'Nasty little island full of cheap package tourists, Russian gangsters and a few half-drunk squaddies getting burnt in the sun. It's full of people who drink too much beer, and talk too much. So who knows what has happened? Maybe one of you shot your mouth off in a bar, started trying to impress one of the girls. Maybe the local villains tried to take it off you?' She paused, looking directly at Matt. 'How the hell am I supposed to know?'

'It wasn't like that,' snapped Matt. 'We were there, and you weren't.'

'Then how was it?'

'Nobody shot their mouth off,' said Matt. 'We stayed together at the hotel, and Ivan taught us how to play bridge.' He laughed. 'We were probably the most sober, best-behaved stag party in recorded history.'

Alison turned away again, reaching for her handbag. She pulled out a handheld Olympus tape recorder, and placed it on the table. 'Listen to this,' she said.

She pressed the play button. A stream of Arabic came out of the machine — one main voice, with a pair of less distinct voices in the background. Matt spoke a couple of words of Arabic, but not enough to make any sense of the words he was now hearing. But you didn't need to know any of the language to understand that the man speaking was afraid, very afraid. The fear was scratched into the tone of his voice.

'The voice you just listened to is the captain of the boat you hit,' said Alison. 'He's speaking over an Immarsat satellite mobile phone. He made the call just after you hit them. We've had it translated. He's telling his bosses that the boat has been hit, and that they need help. After the bomb went off, the line went dead. I guess the blast destroyed the transmitter.' She switched off the machine.

'How the hell did you get that?' said Matt, impressed.

'We and the Americans monitor the voice traffic right through the Mediterranean,' said Alison calmly. 'A satellite phone is not a secure line. The NSA taps all conversations.'

'Maybe they're hoping to get Osama on the line one day saying I'm having a birthday bash at my house,' said Cooksley.

Alison didn't laugh. 'They passed this on to us,' she said. 'If you guys had managed to shoot all of them straight away, then this wouldn't have happened.'

'We got them just the way we meant to,' Reid interrupted.

Alison shrugged. Rain was starting to hit the window, leaving a thin film of water on the glass. 'It's too late to do anything about that now,' she said. 'And I don't think it's that important. We've had the whole thing translated, and all it says is that some men are raiding the boat. Al-Qaeda were always going to get that anyway, when the boat didn't make it to its destination. It doesn't say who you are, what you look like, even what nationality you are.'

'But it does tell us that al-Qaeda might be on to us earlier than we thought,' said Matt.

'Either way, it's of no concern to MI5,' said Alison. 'The job is done — it was well done. Thank you very much, end of story.'

Matt raised his hands into the air. 'Hold on,' he said. 'You're washing your hands of us?'

'What did you expect?'

'Five have safe houses, don't they?' said Cooksley, interrupting. 'We've got a week until the gear arrives in Rotterdam. We need to stay out of harm's way until then.'

Alison laughed: a light, shrill sound that started at the back of her throat and cut right through Matt's nerves. 'You've been reading too much spy fiction,' she said. 'Five might have a couple of safe houses, but they are all occupied right now.'

'We risked our fives on this mission,' snapped Matt. 'We want some protection.'

Alison started walking towards the door. 'You seem to have forgotten something,' she said. 'This was never an official mission, and there can be no official protection.'

* * *

Matt put the round of five double-cheeseburger meals on the table. The McDonald's was right across the road from the hotel, next to the B&Q warehouse. None of them had eaten since breakfast, and Matt reckoned they should get some food in their stomachs before they made any decisions. He didn't want anyone flapping.

'Bitch,' said Reid, his teeth sinking into the burger. 'I never liked her from the moment I first laid eyes on her.'

'She's just using us,' said Damien 'Go get this boat, knock out al-Qaeda's money, then the minute something goes wrong we're on our own.'

'Sorry, boys, thanks for risking your fives, lah-de-bloody-lah,' said Reid. 'We'd love to help you but we're a bit busy right now.'

'I'll tell you something else as well,' Ivan chipped in. 'Five have plenty of safe houses. There are at least three I know about just in my patch over the water. I reckon there must be a couple of dozen in London. She could stash us away somewhere if she wanted to.'

'She doesn't want to,' said Cooksley. 'She's just a bloody Rupert in a skirt.'

I can't disagree, thought Matt. Better legs, and a softer smile — but she's a Rupert with blonde hair and perfume. And you can never trust a Rupert.

'I suppose she hasn't broken any promises,' he said, looking around the table. 'We weren't told we were getting any protection, just that we were getting paid. We always knew we'd have to look after ourselves.'

'We didn't know it was about to go wrong, did we?' Reid snapped, ignoring the no smoking sign and lighting up a cigarette.

'And we didn't know al-Qaeda would be phoning details of the hit back to base, did we?' said Damien. 'She says there's nothing on the tape about who we are, but we don't know that.'

'Let's cool it,' said Matt. 'There's no point in going over this. She's said no safe house, and that's that. We have to look out for ourselves.'

Damien leant forwards on the table. 'We've got six days until the boat arrives in Rotterdam,' he said. 'After that, we're rich men — that makes life easier. Perhaps it was just some local Cyprus boys, whatever.' He paused, taking a swig on his Coke. 'If not, then we use our money to change our names, disappear. I know some boys down in Bermondsey who can come up with new passports, new credit cards, even a new face if you really want one.'

'Damien's right,' said Matt. 'We hold out for the next six days, we should be in the clear.'

'Until then, we stick together,' said Reid. 'We all look out for one another.'

'And we all meet the gear coming off the boat and take it to the fence,' said Ivan. 'Only then do we go our separate ways.'