‘Then who did?’
‘We did,’ Sinclair said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ben recoiled. For a few moments, he couldn’t speak.
‘Now you know what nobody was meant to know,’ Sinclair said miserably.
Realising that the pistol had wavered way off its aim, Ben readjusted his grip and tried to focus his mind. ‘You’re telling me that the British government – that MI6 – set off a bomb in the middle of its own capital city?’ Ben could hardly believe the words from his own mouth.
Sinclair shook his head. ‘Not MI6. They wouldn’t have a clue about that. That’s something else I lied about. I don’t really work for them.’
Ben thumped him roughly across the face with the pistol, beating him to the ground. ‘Who are you? Who do you work for?’
Sinclair got to his knees and wiped the blood from his cheek. ‘Tartarus,’ he mumbled, then let out a hysterical laugh. ‘There. I’ve said it. Now I’m completely fucked. Done for.’
Many years before, in a life that felt more like someone else’s than his own, Ben had studied Theology at Oxford. It hadn’t lasted long, before he’d gone his own way and ended up enlisting in the army. But he still remembered a few things from those days. Tartarus was from classical mythology, and also figured in the Bible’s Book of Enoch: Tartarus, the dark, shady underworld, domain of wicked, fallen angels. ‘Explain,’ he said to Sinclair.
‘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 m
atter-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.’
‘You make it sound so personal,’ Sinclair snapped. ‘I didn’t have her killed. It’s just politics. We couldn’t have known what Chapman had told his daughter until we had hold of her phone. The message might have ruined everything. And we couldn’t just steal the damn thing from her handbag – if she knew anything at all, it had to be silenced. As it turned out, we needn’t have worried about the bloody message. It would never have stood up in court. But, as you know, you can’t always predict these things.’
Right now, Ben was predicting how many blows from the blunt edge of the shovel it would take to separate Sinclair’s head from his shoulders. ‘You could have had a bullet put in Moss’s head while he was still tucked away on Little Cayman. Nobody would have even known. Instead you ordered the deaths of sixteen innocent people.’
Sinclair shook his head vehemently. ‘Too many people had already come into contact with Moss. If he’d suddenly turned up dead, washed up on a beach with his head blown off, who knows what might have come out? That he was a former secret service agent? That would have been sloppy. Tartarus doesn’t do sloppy. This way, we could to make him disappear completely. It was a perfect opportunity. Until you came along.’
‘Who’s Jennifer Pritchard?’
‘That’s not her real name. She’s one of ours.’
‘And you planted her at CIC to erase all trace of Moss getting on the plane.’
Sinclair nodded.
‘And Shelton?’
‘Eliminated the day afterwards. Carbon Monoxide poisoning. A leaky appliance at his flat in Hammersmith.’ Sinclair shrugged. ‘It happens all the time.’
‘Another perfect opportunity,’ Ben said. He was eyeing the agent closely.
Because something was happening.
When Sinclair had begun his forced confession a few minutes earlier, he’d been pale and shaking with terror. Now, a peculiar change had come over him. He was saying too much, too openly, and too confidently. The fear in his eyes had diminished, gradually returning to the same confident sparkle from when Ben had first met him. ‘Perfect opportunities are what Tartarus specialises in exploiting, Major,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘And though you may not realise it, there’s one developing even as we speak. Its outcome, needless to say, not so favourable for you.’
‘Are you developing a sense of humour, Sinclair? Have you forgotten the situation you’re in?’
‘You don’t quite grasp what you’re dealing with, old chap. There you are, thinking that you’ve brought me to this deserted spot where you could press the truth out of me and get rid of me. Whereas in fact it’s I who allowed you to bring me to the perfect location for us to dispose of you.’ Sinclair laughed. ‘As you said yourself, six thousand acres is plenty enough room for a man to disappear.’
From somewhere among the trees, a twig snapped Ben looked sharply round to see a dark shadow step out of the forest. And a second. And a third. In moments, he was surrounded by armed men.
‘I did tell you that Tartarus doesn’t do sloppy,’ Sinclair said breezily. ‘All our agents are trained to use code to indicate when they’re under duress. Briggs back there told me a lot more on the phone than you imagined. “Ellis and Nash are down?” There are no Ellis and Nash. While I’ve been keeping you talking all this time, our people have been moving into position, using the GPS tracking device from that Audi you so cleverly decided to borrow from my men. Now, I’m afraid you’re in rather more trouble than you’re ever going to get out of.’
‘Drop the weapon – down on your knees!’ commanded a voice as more armed men came stalking out of the forest, approaching from all sides.
Ben sighed and tossed the gun. But if he was going to get shot, he didn’t want the last thing he saw to be the cheesy grin plastered across Sinclair’s face.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. And before anyone could react, the shovel was off the ground and spinning through the air. Its blade caught Sinclair in the mouth. Teeth and blood flew. Sinclair let out a crazed howl and staggered back, cupping his hand over his ruined lips.
‘Something to remember me by,’ Ben said.
Spitting gouts of blood, Sinclair snatched up his fallen CZ and aimed it at Ben. There was the same wild look in his eyes as there’d been in those of the Iraqi gunman in Basra who’d put the rifle bullet though Ben’s ribs. Sinclair’s finger tightened on the trigger and his bloody mouth opened in triumph. There was nowhere for Ben to hide.
The shot cracked loudly in the still night air.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ben staggered back a step and felt his knees go weak at the sound of the gunshot – but there was no impact, no nerve-jangling sensory alarm as the body registered extreme damage.
Blood spurted from Sinclair’s open mouth. His knees buckled under him, and with a last look of pained confusion he collapsed on his face on the forest floor.
Ben looked down at Sinclair’s corpse and raised his hands as the black-clad gunmen surrounded him, weapons trained on him from all sides. Suddenly they parted to make way for a grizzled, heavyset man in his late sixties, wearing a grey suit and holding a smoking pistol.
Now Ben realised who’d shot Sinclair. The man gazed unemotionally at the body. ‘Idiot,’ he grated in a deep, throaty voice, then turned his impassive, strangely pale eyes towards Ben. ‘I beg you not to compel us to use any further force, Major Hope. There’s been quite enough violence tonight already, don’t you think?’
Ben didn’t reply. The man snapped his fingers and two gunmen stepped up to seize Ben’s arms.
‘I can walk by myself,’ Ben said. At a nod from the man in the suit, they let him go. With two guns in his back they guided him through the trees, lighting the way with powerful flashlights, to where a pair of identical black Range Rovers and a plain, unmarked panel van were parked by the Audi. One gunman opened the back door of the van, another motioned for Ben to get inside. Before the van door was slammed shut, closing him in total darkness, Ben caught a glimpse of the man in the suit climbing awkwardly into the passenger seat of the lead Range Rover.
Instants later, the vehicles took off. Ben sat on the hard inner wheel-arch of the van and braced himself as it bounced over the rutted forest track. After a while they hit smooth road and the bouncing settled to a steady thrumming roar that went on for the best part of an hour before Ben felt the van turn sharply, as if passing through an entrance. He heard men’s voices and the rattle of metal gates.
The van rolled to a halt. The back doors opened, and the light of dawn flooded inside. More guns pointing at him. A harsh order to get out.
Ben stepped down to the cracked, weedy concrete, flexed his stiff legs and looked around him in the early morning haze. The two Range Rovers and the Audi were parked a few yards away, already empty, hot metal ticking as it cooled. Judging by the journey time, he estimated they’d travelled about thirty or forty miles from the northeast edge of London to somewhere rural and secluded – Buckinghamshire, maybe, or Cambridgeshire. Wherever the place was, there was no mistaking the high wire security perimeter, iron gates and neglected-looking prefab buildings of a disused military base.
Ben was hustled indoors by his captors. In a large, neon-lit, otherwise completely empty room with no windows, the man in the suit was sitting on a wooden chair waiting for him. He peered over his spectacles as Ben was shown inside. The
door locked, closing them in alone together.
Under the hard glare of the strip-lights, the heavyset old man looked even older. Deep lines creased his brow, and there were grey pouches under his eyes. It seemed to take him an effort to breathe. He gazed at Ben with those pale, unemotional eyes and spoke in his gravelly voice: ‘Major, my name is one you won’t have heard. I am Hayden Roth.’
‘The head of Tartarus,’ Ben said.
Roth nodded. ‘I gather that Egerton Sinclair told you a certain amount about our organisation.’
‘Is it true?’
‘I felt there was no more reason for duplicity. Sinclair’s instructions were that, if you survived the little initiation test we set for you – and I was confident that you would pass with distinction – he was to reveal to you the truth about the nature of Tartarus.’
‘Then that makes you a murderer, Roth.’
No flicker of emotion showed in the man’s eyes. ‘None of us is immaculate. You included, Major. As you have aptly demonstrated, you’re a highly efficient killing machine. One who happens to serve precisely the same masters as I do. We’re all part of the same hypocrisy.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t belong to your world.’
‘Dear boy, if you knew how naive you sound. The orders that dispatch men like you all across the world to risk their lives and end those of others may come directly from our elected representatives in Whitehall, but not even they are aware of the larger picture. As a matter of fact, they are kept largely and deliberately ignorant.’ Roth gave a chuckle that was as empty and humourless as his expression. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But it would be pointless to begin debating with me about democracy. If you were in my position, you would understand that democracy, party politics, the electoral process, are no more than a piece of theatre put on to appease the people, to make them believe they hold some power over the course of things. And I’m sure that even some of our worthy elected politicians share that same delusion. The fact is, Benedict – I may call you Benedict? – that irrespective of whichever political party the voters have chosen ostensibly to rule them, the real executive power rests in the hands of individuals whose names and faces are never made public, nor ever will be.’