‘You told them Gulliver was going home, didn’t you? That he’d had enough. That he was going to make noises.’ He breathed in, fighting the nausea. ‘You gave them his travel details so they could arrange for an intercept. It had to be you — you were the only one who knew him well enough. The only one he trusted enough to talk to.’
‘I told them he’d left,’ Mace growled. ‘That was all.’
‘I don’t believe you. You could have left it… let it slip out quietly later that he’d skipped town without warning. It would have given him, what — twenty-four hours head start? Time to lose himself en route.’
‘But I did.’ Mace’s skin was mottled and a flick of spit dropped on to the table. He stared at Harry, eyes watering and red. ‘I knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid… I’ve known him since he was a kid. That stuff about making noises… that was just anger talking.’
‘Say again?’ Harry sat forward. ‘You knew him before?’
Mace hesitated, then gave a long sigh of capitulation. ‘Jimmy was my nephew — my younger brother’s kid. His parents were killed on a farm they ran in Zimbabwe… part of Mugabe’s land grab. Jimmy came back and started over, brought up by an aunt — my sister. Did well, won a place at Cambridge, got picked out by an agency talent-spotter and offered a fast-track through Six.’
‘But they must have known you were related.’
‘The vetting didn’t pick it up. I didn’t know he was back until I bumped into him in Vauxhall Cross one day. Knew him immediately, of course, even though I’d last seen him as a boy.’ He shrugged. ‘Bloody shock, I can tell you, finding him in the same grubby line of business. He slipped through the net. It happens.’
‘And you never said anything?’
‘Why should I?’ Mace looked sullen and defensive. ‘They’d have tossed him out. What was the point?’
‘Fat lot of good it did him.’ Harry wondered if he was telling the truth. After his whole life working in the deception game, setting up a smokescreen would be second nature to a man like Mace. Yet he sounded convincing.
‘What d’you mean?’ Mace demanded.
The reality of the situation hit Harry like a thunderbolt. He could see it in Mace’s eyes. He’d asked him not long after arriving here if he’d ever heard from Gulliver. The answer had been no.
It had been the truth.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Harry said, and wondered how to tell him.
‘Know what?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Jimmy Gulliver died in a climbing accident in the Alps not long after leaving here.’ He waited while the news sank in to Mace’s fuddled brain, then continued before he lost his nerve, ‘I had a friend check it out. He never made it back to London.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Mace sounded utterly confused. ‘That can’t be right — he went home. They never told me.’
‘They didn’t intend to,’ said Harry brutally. ‘He was marked down from the moment he came out here. We all were — you know that. Only some of us are graded a bigger risk than others. Gulliver was fast-track, and good. He’d have been pitched right in at the deep end, fed high-grade intelligence normal trainees never see… the pressure-cooker approach to see if he could stand it.’
‘A climbing accident?’ The awful realization was slowly making an impact on Mace’s brain.
‘Yes. He must have chosen to take some time off. Sort himself out.’ Harry was speaking to fill the silence, embarrassed by Mace’s expression of loss. Whatever the man’s previous failings, this was a lot for him to take in. ‘Clare Jardine told me he hired a car and planned to drive back overland. It would have taken him a while. He obviously decided to stop off for some climbing.’
‘He couldn’t.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He couldn’t. Jimmy couldn’t climb. He wasn’t equipped for it.’
‘Clearly. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped him trying.’
‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, man.’ Mace looked angry. ‘He couldn’t have gone climbing — it was his one weakness, same as his father. They both suffered from chronic vertigo.’ He hit the table with his fist for emphasis. ‘You’d have no more got Jimmy climbing the Alps than walking up the Eiffel fucking Tower!’
Shit.
FIFTY-THREE
Half an hour later, Mace was about as sober as he would ever be this side of tomorrow. It was pitch black outside and there was no traffic noise. Harry had hunted down the mains fuse-box and got the electricity fired up, turning on the kettle and making a pot of industrial strength coffee. The decor hadn’t improved with the lights on; it looked sad and neglected, out of date like a subject in a sepia photograph.
He’d so far poured a pint of the coffee down Mace’s throat, and the powerful brew seemed finally to be working. From initial unwillingness to see that the death of his nephew had been anything other than a mistake, Mace had finally reached some kind of plateau; he was beginning to realize that it must have been deliberate, to keep Gulliver permanently silenced.
‘Who set up Red Station?’ said Harry, refilling Mace’s mug. He was determined to keep going until the chief’s liquid level read ‘full’. ‘It must have been someone with clout; arranging the building and the funding, the Clones — all that. You don’t set up something like this using cash from the milk money.’ He sipped his own coffee. ‘Was it Paulton?’
‘He’s one of them.’ The answers seemed to be coming easier, the effects of increasing sobriety and the beginnings of cold reasoning. ‘But he wasn’t the one who really got it working. He wouldn’t have had the clout to get it past all the Whitehall watchdogs.’
‘So who? MI6? They’d have to be in on it, with their staff involved.’
Mace nodded, his breath whistling through his nose. His skin had taken on a greasy pallor, as though he was leaking chacha through his pores. ‘Bellingham. Try Sir Anthony Bellingham.’
Harry had heard the name before. One of the ghosts, usually spoken of in whispers. Bellingham was high up the tree in Vauxhall Cross. ‘What does he do?’
‘He’s one of their ODs — Operational Directors. Access to funds, an organizer, a strategist. He can get whatever manpower he needs, no questions asked. He’s strictly old-school ruthless, all posh vowels and a black heart. You want to watch yourself with him, lad. He’s toxic. Cut your heart out and smile doing it.’
Harry breathed out. It was starting to gel. ‘And the Hit? Are they Bellingham’s people?’
‘Yes. The Clones are Paulton’s. The two groups stay compartmentalized. Never meet. Different jobs, you see. Different skill sets.’
He made them sound like corporate departments. ‘How do you mean?’
‘The Clones are a training wing. They ship ’em in, teach ’em how to track and monitor, give them a taste of a foreign turf, then move them on. It’s what the original idea was all about… what the explanation is if anyone starts asking too many questions.’
‘But you had direct contact with them.’
‘Yes. As far as the Clones were concerned, it was all part of the course. I fed them information about our movements, but only to save wasted trips.’
‘Really? But that day I ran the field test, they followed everyone.’
‘I didn’t tell them, that’s why.’
‘Why not? All it would have taken was a phone call.’
‘I…’ He stopped and pawed at the table top. ‘I never wanted this… this sell-out. Not particularly proud of myself, either. That day… I pretended to be sceptical when you suggested the test but I wanted to see if you could get one over on them.’ He shrugged miserably. ‘It was a small victory.’
‘What about the Hit? You have contact with them?’
‘No!’ Mace’s voice held the ring of truth. ‘Never. Nor would I want to. The Hit have… other uses.’
‘Go on.’
‘Black Ops. Wet work.’
Stanbridge had been telling the truth.
‘Who are their targets?’ Apart from Brasher and Jimmy Gulliver, he wanted to add. But he didn’t. He’d exhausted that route already.
‘Whoever they’re pointed at. Gang bosses, terrorists, assassins… whoever looks like jumping the fence and getting away with the chickens.’ He grunted. ‘I told you Bellingham’s old-school. He’s a solutions man… gets things done and doesn’t ask permission. He doesn’t like untidy ends — you’d do well to remember that.’