‘John Brice.’ He briefly shook Eddie’s hand, then sat again. ‘I assume Peter’s told you why you’re here.’
‘Yeah, Mukobo,’ said Eddie. ‘You need me to ID him for you.’
‘That’s right.’ Brice opened a slim laptop. ‘Our pictures of the men in the villa are here.’ A few clicks, then he slid the machine to Eddie. ‘Oh, screen facing the wall, if you don’t mind. Wouldn’t want anyone looking over your shoulder.’
‘Your girlfriend have clearance, did she?’ said Eddie, irked by the younger man’s patronising tone. He sat with a wall behind him, then regarded the screen. The image, taken with a telephoto lens, was of a scowling black man in mirrored sunglasses. ‘That’s not him. Too young.’
‘Swipe through to the next one,’ said Alderley. Eddie did so. The next man was older, but also unfamiliar.
‘By the way, I read your file, Chase,’ said Brice. ‘Interesting career you’ve had.’
‘Yeah?’ Eddie replied, bringing up the next image.
‘Yes. Edward Jeremy Chase, born 1975. Joined the army at sixteen the day after finishing your GCSEs, so the earliest possible time allowed by law. Problems at home?’
‘None of your business,’ was the irritated reply.
‘Served competently but unremarkably,’ Brice went on, unfazed, ‘as a squaddie for six years with a promotion to corporal, then applied to join the Special Air Service. On your first selection attempt, passed the endurance, jungle training and escape and evasion phases, but failed on tactical questioning and returned to unit.’
Alderley was surprised. ‘You didn’t pass first time?’
‘“Tactical questioning” is basically being tortured,’ said Eddie. ‘Whatever they do, you’re only supposed to give ’em your name, rank and serial number, or say “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question.”’
‘So what did you say?’
‘One of the interrogators started on about how he’d shagged my mum. So I told him I’d shagged his girlfriend. Which… I had.’ He grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth. ‘He got pretty annoyed with me.’
‘I can imagine!’
Brice exhaled impatiently. ‘Reapplied the following year, this time succeeded. Joined 22 SAS “A” Squadron, promoted to sergeant in 2000, court-martialled and demoted back to corporal following an incident in Afghanistan when you struck a superior officer. Redeemed yourself in 2002 when you were awarded the Victoria Cross’ — a hint of disbelief, as if unable to accept that the man before him could have received the British military’s highest honour — ‘for rescuing your wounded commanding officer while under fire. Married Lady Sophia Blackwood in 2004 after saving her from terrorists in Cambodia, left service in 2005, divorced in 2006.’
Eddie looked up from the laptop. ‘You got all this fu—… flippin’ memorised?’ He caught himself before saying something stronger; he had promised his wife — and himself — when Macy was born that he would stop his habitual swearing for his daughter’s sake. ‘Thought you were a spy, not presenting This Is Your Life.’
‘I like to know as much as possible about the people I deal with.’ He indicated the laptop. ‘Have you seen Mukobo yet?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then keep looking.’ Eddie frowned, then turned back to the screen. ‘After that, you worked as a mercenary in numerous countries. Including Rwanda, where you encountered Mukobo… and let him go.’
The Yorkshireman’s gaze returned to Brice. ‘Got something to say?’
He shrugged. ‘Merely an observation.’
The dismissive response annoyed Eddie still more. ‘Our convoy ran into him by fluke — he wasn’t expecting trouble, or he’d have had more than one bodyguard. He was outgunned, and surrendered. I wasn’t going to shoot a prisoner, so we took their weapons and told ’em to piss off. I didn’t know he was a warlord who’d been killing and raping people in four different countries. If I had…’
‘You would have done something about it?’
‘Turned him in, at the very least.’ A shake of the head. ‘But I didn’t, so now we’re here. None of these guys are him, by the way.’
‘Damn,’ said Brice quietly. He retrieved the computer. ‘Then I’ll need you to come to our observation post and see if you can identify him from there.’
‘I was planning to be on a flight back home tonight.’
‘As soon as you ID him, you can go.’ Brice finished his whisky in a single slug. ‘All right, let’s move.’
Playa de las Américas was a relatively new resort, still expanding into the surrounding arid hills. The unfinished shells of apartment blocks and ranks of tightly packed little houses rose up the slopes like a concrete cancer, aesthetics and interior space secondary to giving as many future buyers as possible a view of the sea, however distant, from their place in the sun.
The trio’s destination was beyond the sprawl, however. The hilltops had already been claimed for the rich, expansive villas imperiously overlooking all below. ‘That’s the target,’ said Brice as Alderley guided the Peugeot up a dusty road.
The red-roofed villa was about half a mile away. What Eddie could see of it over its high surrounding walls was impressive. ‘Nice place. Where’s the observation post?’
‘That ridge,’ Brice told him, pointing. Another dusty hill rose ahead.
Before long, Alderley turned on to a dirt track, the 308 jolting uphill behind the ridge. Eddie looked up to its top, spotting a man lying beneath a camouflaged sunshade — then tensed as a sixth sense developed from training and experience told him the watcher was not alone. ‘Who else is up here?’
‘Three-man snatch team from the Increment,’ said Alderley as he stopped behind a dusty Land Rover Discovery. ‘Well, a sub-unit, GB63.’ He pronounced it six-three. ‘We call them the Removal Men. Because, ha ha, they remove—’
‘Yeah, I get it.’ The Increment was one of several codenames for a top-secret MI6 unit, its members drawn from the SAS and other British special forces. Eddie tried to locate the other two men. It took a few seconds to spot one watching them from behind a rock, but the last remained unseen. ‘Anyone I know? Always wondered who the Increment took on.’
‘You were almost one of them yourself, Chase,’ said Brice, exiting the car.
Eddie followed. ‘You what?’
‘You went on a selection exercise in summer 2001.’
‘First I’ve heard of it.’
Brice gave him a patronising smile. ‘They wouldn’t have told you what it was. You don’t ask to join the Increment — you’re chosen for it. You went to an SIS training facility. We call it “the Funhouse”.’
A memory surfaced; Eddie recalled being unexpectedly summoned by his commanding officer and taken in the back of a windowless van to a building somewhere in the English countryside, where he had taken part in an unusual exercise. ‘What, the place set up inside like an Iraqi village?’
‘Oh, that’s what you had?’ said Alderley with interest. ‘Every MI6 field officer gets tested in the Funhouse, and everyone gets a different scenario. They must have at least a dozen sets they can swap around. Mine was a half-flooded submarine.’ The recollection did not seem pleasant.
They started up the hill, Eddie still searching for the third man. ‘So I was being tested to join the Increment?’
Brice nodded. ‘You were. But you failed.’
‘Like fu—… like hell I did,’ Eddie protested. ‘I shot every single one of those animatronic dummies guarding the hostages.’
The smug smirk returned. ‘Sometimes, being a good shot isn’t enough. Killing the kidnappers wasn’t the mission, was it? You were supposed to eliminate the leader and recover his laptop without being detected; the hostages were irrelevant. You prioritised wrongly, so you failed the test.’