Boy Soldier (8 page)

'Just shut up and move,' answered Fergus.

It was also exit time for Eddie Moyes. He knew that the assault team, whoever they were, had missed the chance to capture Fergus and that from now on they would be cleaning up and searching for clues. Eddie had the beginnings of a major exclusive and it was time to go. And quickly. He made his way towards the road, keeping low, being as cautious as possible. But not cautious enough.

Fran was at an upstairs window, checking out the surrounding area with her NVGs. She shouted, 'We've got a runner!'

Fincham, followed by Marcie Deveraux, came bounding up the stairs. He grabbed the goggles from Fran. 'Is it the boy or Watts?' He didn't wait for an answer but pulled the NVGs to his eyes.

Through the green haze he saw Eddie Moyes stumbling about in the mud. 'It's neither. Too fat to be the boy, and no limp.' He held out the goggles for Fran to take.

'Do we kill him, sir?'

It would a simple operation. The body would be taken back to London and frozen so that it could be cut up more easily. That way there was less mess for the team to clean up. The remains would probably then be distributed around London hospitals, to be burned with other body parts that are routinely incinerated. No one would ever know what had happened to Eddie Moyes. He would become a statistic, another name on police missing persons lists.

Fincham nodded and Fran started to leave, but Deveraux gestured for her to wait and spoke to Fincham. 'Sir, perhaps it would be better if we let the runner go.'

Fincham turned from the window. 'Why?'

'We don't know who he is. Get the team to follow him and there's a chance he'll lead us to Watts. It would be a waste to kill him now, don't you think?'

Fincham considered for a moment and then nodded again.

It was first light. Danny sprawled, exhausted, just off the road by a clump of bushes, but his grandfather was still standing. Watching. Listening.

Through the long hours of darkness Danny had discovered the difference between walking quickly and a forced march. Fergus was fit and strong and, despite his limp, his pace was relentless.

They cleared the immediate area of the cottage and then travelled in what seemed to Danny to be a straight line across fields and open countryside. They made a brief stop while Fergus delved into his black bin liner and took out a brand-new, compactly folded day sack, still in its packaging. Most of the contents of the bin liner were transferred to the day sack. Smaller items and cash went into pockets.

Then they moved on, and just when Danny was beginning to think they were out of danger, Fergus told him they were doubling back – 'looping the track', he called it. That way, he said, they would know, and possibly even see, if they were being trailed.

There was no sign of followers and eventually Fergus was satisfied that they could head in the direction he wanted to take. Not that Danny knew what direction that was. He had no idea. Fergus walked in silence, and on the few occasions Danny tried to speak he was abruptly told to shut up and save his energy. After a while he realized it was wise advice.

They didn't stop again until first light broke the skyline.

Fergus took the day sack from his shoulders and looked over at Danny, who was lying back in the rough grass, eyes closed. 'No time for sleep, I want you awake.'

'I'm not sleeping, I'm resting my eyes,' answered Danny, eyes still closed.

Fergus allowed himself the slightest of smiles. He sat down next to Danny on the grass and then delved into the day sack and pulled out a couple of small tins. Baked beans with mini sausages. He took the ring-pulls off both tins and placed one tin on Danny's stomach. 'Breakfast. Get it down your neck.'

Danny opened his eyes. 'I don't do breakfast.'

'You do now. Need to keep your strength up.'

Danny sat up, clasped the tin in one hand and looked at the beans and sausages. 'But they're cold.'

'That's right, they're cold. And I'm not a boy scout so I won't be building a fire to heat them up. And before you ask, no, I haven't got plates or cutlery or a bottle of Daddies sauce. So just eat.'

'But I don't like—'

'Eat!'

They sat in semi-darkness and ate. Slowly. It wasn't a pretty sight. But as Danny devoured the sausages and beans he realized he was ravenously hungry.

And while he ate, he looked at his grandfather. Studied him for the first time. There hadn't been a chance before. He looked just like any other bloke. Middle-aged, ordinary, past his prime. His face was lined, and his short, cropped hair was mostly grey. The sort of man you'd expect to see taking his grandchildren for a walk in the park. Or talking to his mates about retirement and the football results.

But Danny knew his grandfather was no ordinary bloke. He'd done terrible things. Almost unimaginable things. He'd killed people on battlefields and in back streets. Shot them. Fought with them. Life-and-death stuff, hand to hand, face to face. He'd seen for himself the results of his awesome combat skills. The gaping wounds, the ripped flesh. He'd watched men die, seen their blood, smelled it, tasted it.

Danny had had a few fights in his time – most had been of the playground variety. A lot of posturing, barging, shoving, threats. But once there had been a real fight. A kid called Peter Slater had goaded him into it for weeks. In the end he couldn't back down. It was set up for after school, behind the gym. Slater boasted all day about what he was going to do to Danny. Everyone in the school was talking about it, everyone wanted to be there.

There must have been a couple of hundred watching when the time came, as many girls as boys. They gathered, shouting and cheering, in a huge circle, with Danny and his mates on one side and Slater and his on the other.

When it began, they both prowled around the circle, feinting, advancing, throwing a few punches that mainly missed or brushed against raised arms or fists. The crowd bayed for more action. The blows got harder and found their target more often as the fighters started to tire.

Slater did the first serious damage, thumping Danny in the guts, forcing out every bit of his breath. Danny staggered back, gasping, and a shout went up: 'Finish him! Finish him! Finish him!'

Slater grinned as he moved in for the kill. Maybe he was over-confident: his guard was down and he walked straight into the hopeful punch that Danny threw. Pain jarred up through Danny's arm into his shoulder as his fist smashed into Slater's nose. It crumpled and squashed like a rotten tomato, exploding in a fountain of blood. Slater went down, blood everywhere – on his face, on his clothes, staining his white school shirt. And all over Danny's throbbing hand.

A girl screamed and turned away and then the whole crowd went silent, staring at Slater, pale-faced and spark out on the ground with blood pumping from his busted nose.

This was real fighting. It was bloody. It was horrible. And it was there, in their faces. Not on a cinema screen or a video game.

Slater came round quickly enough. All he said to Danny afterwards was, 'Respect.' Pretty soon he was boasting about his permanently damaged and crooked nose. It was like a battle honour, a medal.

But Danny knew that his one experience of real violence was another world, another planet, another universe to the things his grandfather had seen and done.

Fergus seemed to sense that Danny was staring at him. He looked up. 'What?'

Danny shook his head and went back to finishing the beans while Fergus delved into his day sack again and took out two small bottles of water.

'There's a bus stop a couple of hundred metres down the road from here,' he said, giving Danny one of the bottles. 'First bus is in an hour. We'll be on it.'

'To where?'

'Southend. Plenty of people there to get lost in.'

'I've had enough of this, I'm going home.'

Fergus laughed. 'You don't get it, do you, boy—?'

'Stop calling me
boy
!' yelled Danny. 'Just 'cos you're a killer it doesn't mean you're a man. I'm more of a man than you are. I haven't worked for drug dealers and made a fortune out of people's misery.'

When Fergus replied his voice was almost a whisper. 'I see you've been doing your research . . . Danny. You know, I was younger than you are when I joined up. Sixteen. They called us boy soldiers in those days.'

'I don't give a shit what they called you then,' snarled Danny, 'just what they call you now. A coward and a traitor. You're family, the only family I've got, and I'm ashamed of it.'

Fergus took a swig from the bottle of water. 'Maybe you are, but if you want the truth I'll tell you. And if you want to survive, you've got a lot to learn. And quickly.'

'I know the truth, I've read it all. And there's nothing you can teach me, nothing worth knowing.'

Fergus's mind went back eight years, to the hot, humid Colombian jungle and the group of surly, ill-tempered boys standing in line, none of them wanting to learn a thing from him. And then he saw the youngest boy lying dead on the jungle floor, with a bullet through his brain. He wouldn't let that happen to Danny, no matter what his grandson thought of him.

'Just listen to me. You can have your say when I've finished.'

'I don't wanna hear—'

'Shut it!'

The way Fergus glared at Danny gave him no option but to do as he was ordered.

'I was SAS, I'd been in Colombia for two years. We were chasing FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. They're drug traffickers; they control all the cocaine coming out of their country.'

'I know all that,' snapped Danny. 'I've read all about you. Everything.'

Fergus ignored him. 'We were trying to destroy their manufacturing plants but getting nowhere fast. That's when I was recruited by the Firm.'

'The what?'

'The Firm, the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Different names, same set-up. When I went over to FARC, I was actually working for our side, for the Firm.'

'You were a traitor, it said so in the papers,' said Danny. 'Everyone knows it, even your old mates.'

'Forget what it said in the papers, I was—'

The sound of an approaching vehicle stopped Fergus mid sentence. He grabbed the day sack in one hand and Danny with the other and they ducked down low behind the bushes. A few seconds later a milk van went by, bottles shaking and rattling and radio blaring.

Fergus continued the moment the van turned the corner. 'I was what's called a K, a "deniable operator". That meant—'

'You're just trying to confuse me,' said Danny angrily. 'Baffling me with words, and excuses.'

Fergus moved like lightning, grabbing Danny's jacket in both hands and yanking him forward so that their faces were just inches apart. 'This is not bullshit! I told you you'd get the truth and you are!'

He pushed Danny away and took a long drink of water. 'Deniable operator means what it says. It's dirty work, stuff that can't be officially sanctioned by our government. So if your cover is blown, you're on your own. It's the risk you take. My job was to gain the rebels' confidence, locate the DMPs and get out. I was almost there, nearly ready to come out. And I'd discovered something else, something even more important.'

Fergus paused as he drank some more of the water. He glanced at Danny, who was staring back with a look of scorn and disbelief. 'So what was it? What was so important?'

'The FARC leaders were being fed information about anti-drug operations against them by the Firm's desk officer back at the British Embassy in Bogota. He must have been copping a small fortune, and that was why the rebels had always been one step ahead of us. What I didn't know was that by the time I was ready to move, the desk officer had found out I'd been sent in as a K.'

Fergus finished the last few drops of water and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. 'He lets his friends at FARC know and suddenly I'm sent on this training mission with a bunch of kids. FARC don't give a toss about losing a few raw recruits so they tip off the anti-narcotics police, exact location, everything. We didn't stand a chance.'

'Why should they do that?' said Danny. 'If FARC found out about you from this desk officer, why didn't they just kill you?'

'Because it all worked out perfectly for them. What better way is there to protect a traitor than by exposing a traitor? I was the fall guy, and best of all, I was a deniable operator. No one was gonna come to my rescue. That's the truth, Danny, believe it or not. It's up to you.'

Danny got up and walked to the roadside, turning the story over in his mind. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe every word. He wanted to believe that his grandfather was a hero and think of him with pride instead of shame. Slowly, he turned back and stared at Fergus. 'You're a liar.
You
were the traitor. You were then and you are now. And you'll never make me believe anything else.'

George Fincham stood in his office, cradling a delicate, bone-china cup in both hands and staring out through the window, upriver towards Parliament.

He never tired of this view, his personal picture of the home of government, the seat of all power. Power which he had long ago pledged to protect and maintain. Fincham had worked tirelessly and ruthlessly for many years to achieve his own position of power and influence.

As head of the security section, he was an important figure within the Firm. And if he hadn't risen quite as high in the set-up as he believed he deserved, there was still time. As long as there weren't too many repeats of last night's botched operation to be rid of Fergus Watts.

Watts was an irritation, like a fly buzzing around Fincham's head. But soon the fly would be swatted. Squashed. Killed. The cover story would be that he died trying to avoid capture. No fuss. Cleanly and efficiently over, just as Fincham liked it. He prided himself on the efficiency of his section.

He could depend on the loyalty of all his operators, particularly the four assigned to the Watts operation. They had been with him for a long time and he had selected them personally for this job. They knew his methods and never questioned them, and they took pride in the reputation of the section.

And then there was Marcie Deveraux, the latest recruit to the section, but already invaluable. Fincham could depend on Marcie too. She was like him. Ambitious. Ruthless. And she knew that he was her route to the top.

Fincham finished his coffee, turned away from the window and sat at his desk. He was an intensely private man who never revealed even the smallest detail of his personal life within the Firm. Only his few close acquaintances – Fincham had acquaintances rather than friends – knew that he was a collector of things of rare and exotic beauty. His bachelor flat contained his small but stunning collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings as well as many exquisitely bound, first edition antiquarian books. They were rarely seen by anyone but their owner.

There was a knock at the door. 'Come.'

For someone who had worked throughout the night, Marcie Deveraux looked incredible. Fresh and totally unruffled. She took the seat on the opposite side of the desk. 'We have the identity of the runner, sir.'

'Tell me.'

'Eddie Moyes. Freelance reporter, bit of a has-been. Hangs around the Victory Club quite a lot looking for SAS stories, which probably explains how he latched onto young Danny. We've pulled old stories he did about Fergus Watts off the Internet.'

Fincham nodded. 'And?'

'The team followed him to a pub. He stayed there for a while and then got a taxi back to civilization. Then a train home. He's there now – sleeping, I would imagine.'

Fincham looked at the plasma TV churning through its Ceefax list of news headlines. 'I do not want anything appearing in the press, Marcie.'

Deveraux shook her head. 'I don't think it will, sir. He's only got half a story, and being a freelance he's got to make the most of his information. Once he files his first report he'll have the whole of Fleet Street chasing this.'

'So what do you suggest?'

'Surveillance, sir. His phones, his PC. And a CTR on his flat. I went there at four this morning and carried out a locks recce. Let's find out what he knows and use it to our advantage.'

Fincham stood, went to the coffee machine that sat on a small side table and poured more coffee into a fresh cup. 'Excellent, Marcie. Moyes will never get to file this story.' He glanced over at her. 'Coffee?'