She held a hand.
There was a gasp behind her, then nervous titters.
The lights were on the gloves she wore and the black bones of a hand in hers. The clothing was gone, and much of the flesh. She thought she might vomit. She put down the hand, detached from the wrist because the muscle had burned. She felt the shape of the arm, then the torso and her fingers flickered up to the skull.
A jawbone, an open mouth, eye sockets. It seemed to her that she learned more from the touch than from the glare of the lights on the face. They had called him Muhammad Iyad. She wondered how it had been for him in the final spasms of his life, his mouth wide with agony. Had his faith in God sustained him, or the love of his woman, or had he died in terror – cursing those he served? Her head bobbed, and she shook the thoughts from her mind. Her fingers dismantled the heap and found nothing more.
'Right,' Polly said briskly, to the men behind her.
'That's one of them. Where's the other?'
A murmur of voices behind her, then Ludvik's hang-dog response. 'They have found only one cadaver.'
'You had the building sealed, you told me.'
'Only one body was found.'
It was as if she were a child, and a present in gaudy wrapping was offered her, and when she reached for it the present was snatched away. The prize was gone.
She turned and started to crawl back along the ladder. With the time differential between Prague and London› it would now be 10.35 p.m. at Vauxhall Bridge Cross, and Gaunt would be waiting. With the certainties of night following day, and spring following winter, she knew Gaunt would be at his desk with his shoes up on it, and waiting for her signal.
Polly Wilkins swore obscenely, and came off the ladder.
Frederick Gaunt read the latest epistle from the whey-faced creature who had written the report, now heavily circulated, on the Service's future.
The in-tray left for him by Gloria was empty, its contents either gone to the shredder or dumped on her desk in the outer office for filing. He had done his emails through the evening. Nothing remained for him to read except the report – The Secret Intelligence Service in 2010 (Confidential) – which made his lips curl in irritation.
It was crap.
In five years the Service would 'understand customer and partner requirements'. What was the Service? A division of the bloody London Underground?
He was old school and regarded 'jargon-mongers' with contempt… Maybe he should have gone when the knife hacked through the team responsible for the weapons-of-mass-destruction analysis. Could have gone then, on full pension as a sweetener, and joined the happy ranks of the Whitehall discards. Could have busied himself with his great love of Roman archaeology, set out his stall in a tidy guest-house, like the one at Bradford-on-Avon, and been within walking distance of the excavation, spent his days chipping with a light hammer, digging with a hand trowel, brushing at the mud and stone, letting out little whoops of pleasure as the villa gave up its secrets.
Walking away, he had realized long ago, took courage: perhaps more courage than flowed in Frederick Gaunt's veins. No wife: she'd gone with that hairy-faced beggar to a smallholding in Herefordshire to live like a Balkan peasant. No children: their mother had poisoned their minds against him and contact was lost. No friends: an officer in the Service was adept at avoiding commitment to people outside his tunnel of work. No prizes to bask in: the war went on, different enemies but the same endless threat. When he left he would be one more of the old farts who was unable under the strictures of the Official Secrets Act to say boldly from a bar stooclass="underline" 'Do you know who I used to be?' He would be another senile bore, with Roman artefacts for company and a guest-house for home.
He stayed on and endured the crap of the jargon-mongers. And he waited… And he forced the pages of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010
(Confidential) into the teeth of the shredder… And around him the building was hushed. He did not know whether Wilco would come through on a secure phone line or use the encrypted teleprinter. He would not nag her. Polly 'Wilco' Wilkins was the best girl he'd ever supervised, and the most loyal, and the most unlucky in the twin fall-out of the WMD analysis and love. It would have been an unspeakable crime to pester her for news. He knew that the storm squad had gone in, had been halted in its assault, that fire had ravaged the building and nothing more.
All of it real. He doubted that the author of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010 (Confidential) – the purveyor of crap – had the smallest comprehension of real Service life. Men's lives on the line, body-to-body fighting, dying in combat as duty for their country or for their faith: real life.
He drank the final splash of coffee and grimaced.
He could see a barge progress, west to east, down the Thames and past Parliament. He was wondering if its driver was heavy on 'understanding customer and partner requirements' when the teleprinter against the wall behind him began its shrill chatter.
He read.
Gaunt,
Bloody disaster. One, repeat one, body on premises.
Body is badly burned but I believe forensics will identify Muhammad lyad. Your co-ord slipped the net early and MI bought him a start of up to 24 hours. So, no identification of co-ord and all internal DNA traces obliterated by fire (my estimate).
Will be chasing loose ends in the morning. The bastard is that BIS promised me the area had been secured. You told me once: (quote) Life's unfair, always has been and always will be (end quote). Right now, I believe you.
Love,
Wilco
He had said that to her when she had poured out to him on the phone that Dominic in Buenos Aires had ditched her. A wry, sad smile crossed Gaunt's face. It seemed to matter more to her than losing her fiance that a potential co-ordinator of al-Qaeda had been mislaid, was loose in Europe with a full day's time bought him. He signalled her.
Wilco,
If life were easy, everybody would be doing it. Sleep tight.
Gaunt
He closed down his desk, switched off the light and left darkness behind him. Frederick Gaunt, bowed by disappointment, went along the silent corridors, down in the elevator, across the hall, where he failed to notice the greetings of Night Security, and home to the loneliness of his flat. He felt himself to be in a maze of uncertainty and did not know where his path would lead or who would walk with him in similar ignorance. But Frederick Gaunt was not a quitter, and the loss of the trace on the co-ordinator would bring him to his desk early and back to the trail.
He whistled to himself as he walked across the bridge.
13 January 2004
Taking charge: that was the talent of Hamish McQueen.
As the company's senior sergeant, he ran Bravo.
'What the hell happened, Corp? What sort of shambles was that?'
The section's corporal told him. A patrol, routine. An ambush, not routine but handled. 'Actually, we did well, Sarge, really well. We had three incoming fire positions and we did good neutralizing on them, and we have at least one confirmed kill. Everything was brilliant. We did good hard target, did it at speed, didn't give the hostiles anything to hit. They took punishment and they broke off. Did you stop the ambulance?'