Chapter Forty-Two
He got to work early, running on residual anger that still had no clear focus. The datadown rolled out its gathered screed of messages. Top of the line, Irena Renko, subject: need loading fast. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the name in the last week. Something snapped.
‘For fuck’s sake.’ He hit reply, and listened to the dial.
‘Da?’
‘Listen to me, you stupid fucking natasha. I do not need your whore’s services, now or ever. Just leave me the fuck alone.’
There was a pause, during which he nearly hung up. Then the accented voice came back, icy with controlled rage.
‘Just who fucking you think you are talking to? Fucking suit cowboy, think you will talk to me like this. I am Captain Irena Renko, commander of free sub freighter Kurt Cobain talking to you.’
‘I’m. Sorry?’
‘You should fucking be sorry. Fuck your mother! Four days I am here in Faslane, awaiting second loading. Four days! My crew drunk in Glasgow bars. What for you waste my time like this?’
‘I. Wait. The Cobain?’ Chris flailed across the desk and hit the datadown deck. Details fled up into a new window. ‘You’re loading for the NAME? Military hardware.’
‘No,’ purred the woman at the other end. ‘I am not loading, because I’m waiting four fucking days for cargo. Port Authority know nothing. I call Lopez, he also knows nothing. Normally, Cobain, she sails and fuck you all if this happens. But Lopez tells me, call you. You are sympathetic, he says. Not like other suits. Perhaps I have wrong man.’
‘No, no. Captain Renko, you have the right man. I, I apologise for my tone earlier. There’s a lot going on at this end.’
‘Well, at this end is nothing going on. No delivery, no data about delivery. And mooring charge is costing me—‘
‘Never mind the mooring charge. I’ll cover that, plus ten per cent for your inconvenience. Go get your crew, I’ll get back to you.’
He cut the connection and stared across the office. The marbled chess board gleamed back at him, pieces frozen in a pattern that hadn’t changed in weeks. He called Mike.
‘Yeah, Bryant.’
Mike, listen, we’ve got a problem.’
‘I’ll say. I would have called you earlier, but I didn’t see the Saab. Didn’t know you were in.’
‘It’s still at home. I haven’t been back for it yet.’ A chilly quiet back down the line. ‘Mike, I just heard from our couriers to Barranco.’
‘We haven’t got time to worry about the NAME right now, Chris. Didn’t you catch the news this morning? Fuck, last night even.’
‘No, last night I.’ I was kiss-and-make-up fucking your ex-mistress. ‘I went to bed early. Headache. And I’m coming from the hotel in cabs at the moment, I don’t get the radio either. What’s going on?’
‘Some fucking junior Langley aide just came down with a bad dose of conscience. He’s promised covert reports from the last two years to ScandiNet and FreeVid Montreal.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘Yeah. What I said.’
‘Cambodia?’
‘We don’t know yet. This gutless wonder at Langley worked archive, so could be the Phnom Penh stuff is too recent to show up. But we can’t rely on that. There’s no telling what he’s going to give them.’
‘Can’t we just have the guy wiped?’
‘Oh, what do you think Langley are trying to do right now? Chris, he worked for them. He was on the inside. You don’t think he’s going to have covered himself? He’s grabbed the discs and gone underground.’
‘Okay, so get someone else, someone better than Langley. Special Air, or one of the Israeli contractors.’
‘Same applies, Chris. First they’ve got to find the fucker. And meanwhile ScandiNet and FreeVid are leaking this fucking stuff like vindaloo diarrhoea. We’re going to have the UN charter people all over us by end of the week at the outside.’
‘Well, look.’ Chris frowned. Something didn’t fit here. ‘Calm down. They don’t have any power of access. All they can do is make a noise. We fight them in the courts, the whole thing boils down to two years’ paperwork and legal wrangling. What are you getting so bent out of shape about?’
‘It’s bad for fucking business, alright. Leakage of any sort. Kind of publicity we don’t need.’
‘Yeah, well, speaking of bad for business, you’d better get onto your pal Sally Hunting. I’ve just had a Russian sub commander yelling at me because she’s been waiting four days at Faslane for a NAME shipment that hasn’t turned up.’
There was a beat of silence. ‘What?’
‘You heard. Barranco’s Mao sticks have gone walkabout. No one at Faslane can find them.’
‘That can’t be.’ There was an odd strain in the other man’s voice.
‘Can be. Is. Look, I’m going to ring Lopez in Panama. See if he knows anything. You get onto Sally, then call me back.’
Lopez wasn’t answering. Chris hung up and was about to try again when the datadown lit with an incoming video call from Philip Hamilton. He frowned again and picked up.
‘Yeah?’
Hamilton’s soft features resolved on the screen. ‘Ah. Chris. There you are.’
‘Yeah.’ Still the vague sense of something out of place. He’d had almost no dealings with the junior partner since he joined Shorn. Some of the Central American stuff he’d inherited from Makin brushed up against Hamilton’s accounts, but—
‘What can I do for you, Philip?’
‘Well, Chris.’ The junior partner’s tone was silky. ‘It’s more a case of what I can do for you, I think. You’ve no doubt heard about the Langley crisis.’
‘Yeah. Mike t—‘ He just stopped himself. ‘I was just talking to Mike about it. Archive material, they reckon. Suggests the Cambodia stuff might not be included.’
‘That’s correct.’ Hamilton nodded. His chins folded. ‘In fact, we just got confirmation. Good news for everybody. Louise will probably forward it down to you shortly. But, ah, it seems there is one covert operation that will crop up, and unfortunately it has your name on it. I’m talking about the action you took against Hernan Echevarria’s security forces in Medellin.’
Now the sense of wrongness was quick and jagged. Like the floor cracking apart under him.
He covered it with drawl. ‘Yeah. So?’
‘Well, I think under the circumstances, and given recent developments with the Echevarria regime, the best thing would probably be if you were removed from the NAME account, at least for the time being.’
Chris sat up. ‘You can’t fucking do that.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What developments are you talking about, Philip? Last I heard, the Echevarria regime was a corpse walking.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Hamilton fingered his jowls. ‘This also is new. Perhaps you’d better come along to the briefing this afternoon. I’d invited Mike, and assumed he could pass on detail to you later. But, yes, perhaps it’s better if you’re there. Main conference, two o’clock.’
Chris stared at him. ‘Right. I’ll be there.’
‘Marvellous.’ Hamilton beamed and cut the link. His face inked out, still smiling.
Chris tried Lopez again. Still nothing. He windowed up an indesp site he had the keys to and checked the Langley data. Nothing solid. The whistleblower’s face grinned out of an employee file thumbprint that was five years stale. He looked young and happy, and blissfully unaware of what his just-acquired job was going to do to him a few years down the road.
Because they’re going to fucking crucify you, son, Chris told the thumb-print silently. They’re going to take you apart for this.
The datadown chimed. Audio call from Mike. He grabbed it.
‘Talk to me, Mike. What’s going on.’
‘I don’t know, Chris. I wish I did. Sally says the order still went through, but it’s been diverted to some surface shipping contractor out of Southampton. Standard cross-Atlantic rate, she’s getting a cashback bonus for the difference in cost.’
‘Surface?’
‘I know, I know. I don’t get it either. It’s not like Barranco can wander into Barranquilla docks and just sign for it.’