Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (38 page)

He frowned. Button would not normally intervene in an operation once she had set it up and briefed him, preferring to keep a safe distance metaphorically and literally until the job was done. The fact that she wanted to see him at this critical stage suggested either that she had concerns or had unsettling intelligence to share. Or it was connected to Shepherd’s trip to Berlin. If the latter, Harper knew he was in big trouble.

He phoned Maggie May and told her that he’d be unavailable for the next twelve hours but that she could keep in touch via text messages. Then he drove his bike to the airport and caught the first flight back to London. He usually travelled via Ireland but he figured that his MI5 Müller legend and passport would mean he could enter and leave through Heathrow without being compromised.

H
arper had booked into a different hotel to the one he’d used during his last visit to London, but it was also in King’s Cross, had no phone in the room and a shower cubicle that hadn’t been cleaned in a year or so. But none of that mattered to him, all that mattered was that he wasn’t asked for ID when he checked in and could pay in cash. There was a grubby plastic kettle and sachets of coffee and Coffee-Mate so he made himself a coffee while he waited for Charlotte Button to arrive.

He had drunk half of it when there was a soft knock on the door. He opened it and let her in. She was wearing a long coat that looked as if it was cashmere and had a black leather Prada bag with gold zips on one shoulder. ‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ he said, and waved for her to come inside. She looked disdainfully around the room and decided the wooden chair by the window was the best place to sit. It was cold in the room and she left her coat on.

‘I’ve got the tracking details of the first consignment,’ he said, handing her a thumbdrive. ‘I know you don’t like me teaching you how to suck eggs but I’d leave it a week or two until the Paddys add the stuff to their existing caches.’

She smiled coldly. ‘Thank you so much.’ She put the thumbdrive into her bag.

‘Is something wrong, Charlie?’ he asked, sitting on the bed.

If anything her eyes got even colder as she looked at him. ‘I’m not sure where to start,’ she said. ‘Okay, let’s kick off with what happened at Letzlinger Heide.’

Harper grimaced. ‘Yeah, we had a bit of a problem.’

‘Didn’t I make it crystal clear that you were to stay below the radar in Germany? There was a gunfight with German troops. Do you want to explain to me how that is staying below the radar?’

‘I shot out the tyres of a truck. That’s all. It wasn’t a gunfight.’

‘That’s not the point. The point is that you were supposed to maintain a low profile; now the Germans are worried that al-Qaeda are trying to steal a Katyusha. The shit has well and truly hit the fan.’

‘No one was trying to steal anything,’ said Harper. ‘The Paddys wanted to see one being fired. The best way to do that was to get them on a range.’

‘Alex, I can’t believe how bloody irresponsible you’ve been. The contract was to take out O’Brien and Walsh.’

‘And to hit them financially. And discredit their organisation.’

‘But nowhere in that brief were you told to go to war with the German Army.’

‘It was a bit of rough and tumble, Charlie. Really. Nothing to worry about.’

‘And I’m far from happy with this whole Katyusha business,’ she said. ‘Why not just offer them RPGs? A ground-to-air missile or two. Something small.’

‘Because a Katyusha is big money. Look, Charlie, they’re not going to get a Katyusha. Not out of the country, anyway. I’ll take their money and the Germans can take the weapons. It’ll all go to muddying the waters. No one’s going to know what’s going on or who’s involved. And O’Brien and Walsh will be collateral damage.’ He grinned. ‘It’s going to be fine, I promise.’

‘You say no one will know what’s going on. But Zelda Hoffmann does. She knows everything.’

‘I’ve known her for years.’

‘She’s an arms dealer who will apparently sell to anyone.’

‘That sort of goes with the turf,’ said Harper. ‘Arms dealers don’t tend to pick and choose their customers.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Button. ‘Any dealer would think long and hard before selling to al-Qaeda, for instance. In Europe and the States, anyway.’

‘They can buy from plenty of other sources,’ said Harper.

‘But there aren’t many dealers offering Katyushas. And Hoffmann was happy enough to agree to sell them to Irish tourists. What if she’s contacted by jihadists?’

‘I think that’s unlikely.’

‘Unlikely? I want a better guarantee than that, Alex.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, why?’

Harper’s eyes narrowed. ‘That sounded like a threat.’

‘Hoffmann’s the threat. She’s not selling toys. A few Kalashnikovs, fine. But Katyushas? I’m sorry, that’s just not acceptable. Suppose al-Qaeda or ISIS got hold of one? Can you imagine the havoc they’d wreak?’

‘It’s no different to the New IRA getting one. It doesn’t really matter who is pulling the trigger, does it?’

‘Perhaps not, but it does matter where those rockets are aimed. And if Hoffmann is selling them to people who might use them in the UK – or anywhere in Europe – then she is an enemy of the state.’

She stared at him as she let the words sink in. ‘You’re saying she’ll be killed?’ he said eventually.

‘If she starts selling rockets to UK jihadist groups, then I wouldn’t rule it out.’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Harper flatly. ‘Zelda and I go back a long way.’

‘You’re not the only contractor on my books,’ said Button. Her face stayed impassive for a few seconds, then it broke into what was meant as a reassuring smile. ‘But there’s no need for it to come to that. The ones the New IRA are buying can be taken off the market. We can pass on the intel to the Germans and they can pick up the rest.’

‘You mean grass her up?’ Harper shook his head in frustration. ‘She’s helping me, Charlie. Where’s your loyalty?’

‘She’s a threat,’ said Button.

‘She’s a friend. There’s no way I’m going to throw her to the wolves. And not only that, who would ever trust me again if they heard that I’d betrayed her? The sort of jobs I do for you, I need support and backup. Who’s going to help me if they know that at any point I could betray them?’ He stared at her for a while but there was no clue from her face what she was thinking. ‘How about this? I’ll have a word. I’ll put her straight. I’ll tell her she’s not to sell big stuff to jihadists. How’s that?’

‘This isn’t funny, Alex.’

‘I’m serious. You tell her what the ground rules are, I’ll pass them on. I’m assuming that selling to ISIS in Syria isn’t an issue. Or al-Qaeda in Africa? You’re worried about home turf, right?’

‘I’m worried about terrorist groups getting hold of weapons of mass destruction,’ she said.

‘Then you need to be looking at the Russians and the Chinese and our own defence industry,’ said Harper. ‘Half the terrorist groups going have got weapons made by us. You think the government doesn’t know that half the end-user certificates they see aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on? It was a French Exocet that sank the
Sheffield
in the Falklands War. And it was an Exocet that hit the USS
Stark
in the Iran–Iraq War killing thirty-seven Yanks and I didn’t see the Americans going to war with France.’

‘Zelda Hoffmann isn’t a state-sponsored defence firm, she’s selling dangerous hardware to terrorists who are a threat to the United Kingdom.’

‘Then I’ll get her to stop. Trust me.’

Button sighed. ‘Fine. Just make sure she knows that she’s on our radar. Without telling her that you work for me, obviously.’

‘I’ll get it sorted, Charlie. I promise.’

She nodded slowly and he sensed that something else was on her mind. He had a horrible feeling he knew what it was but waited for her to say it. If he pre-empted her he’d only sound guilty, so he flashed her his most confident smile and stayed quiet.

‘Is there something you need to tell me, Alex?’ she said eventually.

‘What do you want to know, Charlie? I’m an open book, you know that.’

Button’s eyes narrowed and then she nodded slowly. ‘I’m really not sure what to do about you,’ she said.

Harper smiled easily. ‘Something has clearly upset you, Charlie,’ he said. ‘And it’s not just Zelda, obviously. So why don’t you come straight out with it?’

‘I know you saw Spider in Berlin,’ she said, her voice a low husky whisper. ‘What I don’t know is why you didn’t tell me.’

The words hit him like a bucketful of ice-cold water but he just shrugged. ‘Nothing to tell,’ he said, his mind racing. Just how much did she know?

‘So you did see him?’

Harper grimaced, realising that he’d just been played. She hadn’t known for sure, but his slip meant that now she did.

‘What do you want me to say, Charlie?’

‘I want to know what the hell’s going on. And I want it to come from you without me having to drag it out. You’re working for me and one of the things I expect from my employees is loyalty. Let me rephrase that. I don’t
expect
loyalty, I bloody well
demand
it. Now you don’t seem to realise the deep pit of shit you’ve fallen into, but trust me, the only way to dig yourself out of it is to tell me everything.’

Harper stared at her in silence, trying to work out exactly what she knew. She’d already fooled him once.

‘Let me start with an easy one,’ she said. ‘Why was Spider in Berlin?’

‘He wasn’t there for you?’

‘I think we both know he wasn’t,’ said Button. ‘Now, I’m going to give you one last chance to come clean, but if you don’t, it’s going to get very messy from this point on.’

Harper put up his hands, as if in surrender. ‘He wanted a chat. He called me up and asked for a meeting.’

‘He knew you were in Berlin?’

Harper thought back to his initial conversation but he couldn’t for the life of him remember whether he had told Shepherd he was in Germany. ‘Hand on heart, I don’t know. Maybe I told him where I was. I don’t have his trick memory.’

‘Did he know why you were there?’

Harper shook his head. ‘No, and I didn’t tell him.’ He saw the look of disbelief flash across her face and he put his hand on his chest. ‘Hand on heart, Charlie, I told him nothing.’

‘Do you think he knew already?’

Harper frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought about that. Yeah, he didn’t ask anything about what I was doing, so maybe.’

‘And when did he meet you?’

‘Last Friday.’

‘Where?’

‘We went to a bar. Had a few drinks.’

‘You didn’t go to his hotel?’

Harper shook his head. ‘Definitely not. We met at a bar. I left, he made his own way back to his hotel.’

‘But you knew where he was staying?’

Harper nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘And you knew he was being followed?’

Harper swallowed but his mouth had gone dry and he almost gagged. He sipped his coffee and watched Button over the top of his paper cup. He was reasonably certain that Button already knew everything, but until he was sure he wasn’t going to go running off at the mouth.

‘You spotted he had a tail?’

Harper nodded again.

‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Lex? Any idea at all? You killed two Russian agents. Members of Putin’s protective team.’

Harper’s hand trembled slightly and he saw the look of satisfaction on Button’s face as she registered his reaction. ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ said Harper. ‘They were heavy hitters, they would have identified me and my team eventually. I couldn’t take that risk.’

‘Spider got you into this. Why the hell didn’t you say something to me?’

‘Spider doesn’t know they’re dead,’ said Harper. ‘At least not from me.’ Harper tried to sip his coffee but his hand began to shake again so he put the cup down on the bedside table. ‘Look, he wanted to meet, I saw that he had a tail so I pulled in the two guys I spotted. I was worried that they might be on to me. I questioned them and during the course of the interrogation my team started to worry that they had been compromised. You know what bastards the Russians can be. None of them wanted to end up stashed in a kitbag in their bathroom.’

‘So you killed them?’

‘We had a Chinese parliament and we decided it was the only thing to do.’

‘You can’t go around killing people like that.’

Harper flashed her a tight smile. ‘To be fair now, that’s what I do.’

‘They’re Russian secret service. There’ll be repercussions.’

‘There would have been repercussions if we hadn’t done it. They’d have tracked us down eventually. They’d have found out why we were there. And that would have opened one hell of a can of worms, wouldn’t it?’

‘That doesn’t make what you did right. It doesn’t even make it necessary.’

Harper shrugged. ‘What’s done is done. No use crying over spilt milk, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘You’re a bit flip about the death of two men, Alex.’ She looked at him for several seconds. ‘And Spider doesn’t know you killed the two Russians?’

‘Swear to God. I said I’d let him go back to London and then cut them loose. But after he went my team started to have misgivings.’

‘And despite the fact you knew who and what they were, you still killed them?’

‘It was precisely because of who they were that we had to, don’t you see that? They were pros. They’d have tracked us down one by one. At least this way we had a chance of getting away clean. Who else knows, Charlie? Who else knows what happened?’

‘At the moment, only me. The Russians know that their men were killed. I mean seriously, Alex, a mugging and a suicide on the same day? Did you think you’d get away with that?’

‘We were thinking on the hoof,’ said Harper. ‘We just wanted rid of them. With no witnesses, no one would know we’d been involved.’

‘And what about Spider? The two Russians who were following him both turn up dead on the same day. You didn’t think that would put him in the frame?’

‘He was back in the UK when it happened.’

‘In which case the Russians would think it was Five or Six.’

‘Not if they thought they were following an assassin who was planning to take a crack at Putin.’