‘Tartarus is a black ops arm of British Secret Intelligence,’ Sinclair said. ‘A department within a department. A ghost. Not even the Chief of MI6 knows about it, let alone the Prime Minister.’
‘What kind of black ops, Sinclair?’ Ben asked in a hard tone.
The agent looked up at him. ‘Put simply, Tartarus stages incidents designed to be perceived by the public as acts of terrorism. Most of its international operations are low-grade exercises, not intended to produce casualties or significant damage, but to impact the media by scapegoating extremist terror groups — generally Muslim groups — and propelling them into the public eye. The unexploded car bombs that are always discovered by police just in time. The suitcase left in the train station that turns out to be full of Semtex. That kind of thing.’
‘A fake terrorist organisation?’ Ben muttered, dazed. He felt as if he were in a dream.
‘It’s not always entirely faked,’ Sinclair said. ‘And it’s not that there are no real terrorists out there. It’s not us setting off pipe bombs in Belfast or Londonderry. We leave the small potatoes to the handful of tin-pot fanatics scattered here and there throughout the world. But sometimes, when a real, existing terror group lacks the means or the funding to orchestrate effective attacks, which they very often do, Tartarus facilitates their ability to carry them out — either by infiltrating the group with trained agents who can pose as allies, or by making use of cultivated assets. It goes without saying that the daft buggers who blow themselves up in street markets in Iraq and Pakistan are only pawns in the game. They’re either drugged-up deadbeats who don’t realise what’s going on, or dedicated fanatics who don’t have the slightest inkling of who’s behind the scenes.’
Ben said nothing. He hadn’t the words.
Sinclair went on. ‘In other cases, the groups blamed for terrorist acts never really existed. We only want the public to think they do. And to keep the illusion real, every so often the need arises to stage something more spectacular than a bomb scare at a racecourse or a few token casualties at a bus station in some place the British public neither know nor care about. Sometimes, it’s necessary to make it feel that bit more real and close to home, to make people sit up and take notice. The Selfridges bombing certainly did that.’
‘Why?’ Ben said. ‘Why?’
‘Why exaggerate the terrorist threat? Why fabricate an enemy? For the same reason it was in the CIA’s interest to perpetuate the myth of Soviet might during the Cold War. National security. Them and us. Keeping our flag waving and our state intact. It’s simple, and it’s been going on for centuries.’
Ben’s teeth ground together so hard he could taste blood in his mouth. He had the pistol aimed right between Sinclair’s eyes and every nerve in his body was telling him to squeeze the trigger. He’d fought and risked his life for this government. Now here was this man telling him that the country’s rulers were capable of inflicting this kind of atrocity on its own people. Ben felt sick. ‘And so Larry Moss was your trigger man,’ he said. ‘Is that what you’re going to tell me?’
‘No. Larry Moss spent thirteen years helping to engineer and carry out Tartarus missions across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He was the best. But he had nothing to do with the London bombing. In fact, that’s the whole point. Moss really did go rogue on us.’
Ben listened numbly as Sinclair described Moss’s fall from grace. While cultivating contacts in Karachi, the Tartarus agent had fallen ill with a severe fever that had landed him in hospital for two weeks. There he’d met and befriended a Pakistani nurse called Salima — the beautiful young woman whose picture Ben had been shown on the flight from Grand Cayman to London. Sinclair was positive that nothing had happened between her and Moss, although there was a possibility that he’d developed a strong romantic attachment.
On his release from hospital, Moss had continued with his mission, which had culminated some weeks later in the very successful and well-publicised bombing of a nightclub in downtown Karachi. But when the names of the forty-seven dead were released, Moss had seen that his Salima’s name was on the list.
‘It was the first time he’d ever known one of his victims,’ Sinclair said. ‘And it had a profound effect on him that none of us understood at the time. It
was only some weeks later, when Moss was summoned to the private Tartarus committee briefing where the planned London operation was revealed for the first time, that he snapped. It all came pouring out — his guilt over Salima’s death, how it had changed him, how he’d started praying to God for forgiveness and all that.’
‘You mean he’d developed a conscience,’ Ben said.
‘By the time the operation was ready to roll, Moss had been deemed unfit for a job of that scale and been removed from duty. We relocated him to a Tartarus safe house on Little Cayman, in the hope that he’d dry out and come to his senses. It was felt that he could still be a valuable operative, in a diminished role. But unknown to us, while he was on Little Cayman, Moss was plotting to blow the whistle on Tartarus. We intercepted a call to one Simon Shelton, a reporter for The Independent. Thankfully, Moss held back all the details over the phone, only saying that he could offer Shelton the biggest scoop of his life, a story that would bring down the government and change the world forever. He and Moss arranged to meet for coffee at Paddington Station on the afternoon of July 24. Far too public a place for any kind of intervention. Moss was going to tell him everything, everything. Preventing that rendezvous from taking place was given top priority. We were in a state of absolute emergency.’ Sinclair paused uncomfortably. ‘And so, the moment we learned that Moss was getting on the CIC flight off Little Cayman, the order was given.’
‘The order,’ Ben echoed in a strangled voice.
Sinclair nodded. ‘On July 23, two Harrier Gr7s were deployed from a Royal Navy Invincible-class aircraft carrier stationed on Caribbean Patrol duty, ostensibly as part of the ongoing task of protecting the Virgin Islands, Montserrat and other British dependencies from drug traffickers. Their real mission was to intercept and destroy the CIC Trislander. The pilots and their superiors were given the same information as you: namely, that a known terrorist on board was threatening a strike against a major target.’ Sinclair paused, glancing nervously at Ben. ‘There was no warning shot fired. The first rocket blew away the Trislander’s tail. The pilot somehow managed to belly-flop the plane down on the sea without it breaking up, and it grounded on the reef. The Harriers destroyed it outright on the second pass.’
Ben could visualise the horror of the reality behind Sinclair’s matter-of-fact account. The terrorised screams of the passengers and their children. The flames, the smoke, the wail of the plane as it plummeted towards the sea. Nick’s desperate determination to get his passengers down safely, overlaid by his sure knowledge that nobody on board was intended to survive the unthinkable attack. Even in that moment, with the certainty of death just moments away, he’d remained as much in control as humanly possible; and, when most men would have been thinking only of themselves, he’d thought to call his daughter to say goodbye.
‘And when Nick’s phone was retrieved from the scene of the wreck,’ Ben said, ‘you found the message he’d left Hilary and had her killed too.’