Crossfire (12 page)

People paid by Her Majesty's Government to
provide information or 'keep their eyes open' are
known as 'assistants', 'onside' – or 'assets'.
Journalists have perfect cover because it's their
job to investigate and be nosy. The Firm pays
them, but only just enough to establish the
contract. Money isn't the issue. They usually
become assets for reasons of ideology, or simply
to get themselves the inside track on any good
leaks.

Frontline reporters aren't the only ones
approached and asked if they'd like to 'do something
interesting' for HMG. Newspaper editors
are sometimes onside, though they're unlikely to
be recruited directly. The Firm needs permission
from the foreign secretary for that level of stuff,
and they hate asking a politician for anything.
They wouldn't like to be refused. On the other
hand, if journalists are recruited early in their
careers, it can eventually mean high-ranking
assets in most news and media organizations.
Whatever, reporters are the one group the Firm
never fucks over: they never know where even
the lowliest local stringer will land up.

The Yes Man tapped the folder in front of me.
'Unfortunately, there is mounting evidence that
Dominik Condratowicz should be seen in an
entirely different light.' He lifted the cover. 'This
is what happened to one of our people last year.'

I opened the folder to see half a dozen colour
eight-by-tens of a young Arab, maybe early
twenties, sitting on wet concrete. He was held
upright by a pair of over-inflated forearms. The
right one had an ageing scar that looked like a
badly laid railway track. I flicked through the
pictures with no idea if the man was dead or
alive. His body was a mess of cuts, bruises and
burns. His face was so swollen his eyes were
forced closed and his lips were like plastic
surgery gone wrong.

'They were taken in Afghanistan. An illegal
prison. Freelance bounty-hunters, normally
torturing their victims for information about the
Taliban and al-Qaeda.'

I shrugged. 'There's a lot of those guys about
over there. It's the new Wild West. Bad things are
going to happen.'

'Condratowicz was in Kabul at the time,
ostensibly filming a documentary. I have to ask
myself whether there's more to that than meets
the eye.'

One of the pictures was a wider shot of the
room or cell. The door had a sheet of steel
screwed over it and a gaoler's spyhole. The last
one showed a tabletop with the legs removed,
bolted to an oil drum. It looked like an oversized
see-saw, but I knew this was no game. Two
buckets of water stood next to it. A tap stuck out
of the wall. A fat roll of clingfilm sat on a pile of
empty hessian sandbags.

Waterboarding is guaranteed to get its victim
telling everything he knows, and even some
things he doesn't – anything to keep breathing.
The physical experience is like being trapped
under a wave. But that's fuck-all compared to the
psychological horror. Your brain screams at you
that you're drowning. And the reason I knew all
this was because the Americans and the Brits had
invented this shit.

'Then we have a major drugs haul unearthed
in Basra, and yet again it happens that Dominik
Condratowicz is in town. There is more. Believe
me, I could go on. Stack up enough of them,
Nick, and you have to start asking yourself
whether they're not coincidences, but positive
correlations.

'I know that he was with the FCO in Basra the
day before a raid that resulted in the confiscation
of a huge haul of heroin. What are we to make of
that? Was Condratowicz colluding with others to
misbrief the military for certain ends – for
example, to disrupt or stamp out any competition
to their trade? I just don't know. I don't
know any of what he's been up to for sure, but
I've started to wonder, for example, how a television
reporter can afford a seven-million-euro
house in the best street in Dublin . . .'

The Yes Man fixed his gaze on the garish neon
across the road. The pause wasn't to give me a
chance to ask a question. It was to give his words
time to sink in.

He cleared his throat. Even in profile, he
looked appalled. 'So, has he been abusing his
position as an asset to help others ship heroin out
of Afghanistan? I don't know. Might he have
been doing it for the last two years? I can't be
sure. Has he profited to the tune of millions?
Nick, you look at pictures of that house and can't
help asking yourself the question . . .'

He settled his gaze on me. 'I suspect this is a
large and far-reaching network. People in the
FCO could be involved. Maybe people in this
very building.'

'Do you think the cameraman was implicated?
The story is that he got shot by insurgents.'

He shook his head. 'Like everything else in this
mess, I can't say for sure, but I very much doubt
it.' He placed his cup carefully back on its saucer.
'Perhaps he saw something he shouldn't . . . Who
knows? But get Condratowicz back to me and it's
one of the things I stand a chance of finding out.
You're independent of us, Nick, and that suits us
very well. There's much less risk of anyone
getting tipped off. You—'

I raised an eyebrow. 'Dom was against the
heroin trade. Vehemently against. He wanted to
expose it, not encourage it.'

The Yes Man leant across the veneer.
'Afghanistan now produces over ninety per cent
of the world's heroin. One of the trafficking
routes is into Iran and thence Iraq, alongside
Iranian weapons and ordnance. The network
knows this. They know those weapons kill
British soldiers, they know the drug money
finances terrorism, but it hasn't stopped them. So
what would prevent them killing a cameraman
who got in their way?'

He sat back. 'I know we haven't always seen
eye to eye, and I know you probably feel you
don't owe me too many favours, but this isn't
about you and me, Nick. Think about the
soldiers. Think about their families. This has got
to stop. Bring me Condratowicz and I promise
you it will.'

'Is there any kind of trail?' There was no harm
in asking.

'The FCO made some enquiries. They say he
left Basra with a fixer, and crossed the border into
Iran soon after. But in the light of what I've told
you, can we trust what they say? I've had to soft-pedal.
I don't want anybody to find out who's
looking for him – the whole network could go to
ground. But your name came into the equation,
Nick, and it started me thinking. You know the
man. You know his habits, the way he
thinks. You, I believe, are the best chance I have
of reeling him in.'

Dublin Airport
Tuesday, 6 March
1415 hrs

Rain dripped off the canopy outside Arrivals as I
stood in line for a cab. The bus would have been
just as quick, but I wouldn't have learnt as much.
It was a long time since I'd been there, and a chat
with a cabbie's the best way of getting up to
speed.

That was the excuse I gave myself. In truth, I
wanted to squeeze myself a bit more thinking
time. I needed to be in control of the situation
and keep on my toes. Bullshit baffles brains, but
the Yes Man was spinning too much of it my way.
He must take me for a complete dickhead if he
thought a few rubber stamps on a folder were
going to make me think it now had a yellow card.

The only known points of contact for Dom that
remained were the station, his wife and his stepson.
I'd told the Yes Man to have surveillance put
on Dom's mobile and his wife's, all landlines and
the house computer. No flies on him. He already
had that in hand with his Irish counterparts.

OK, so there was no signature page on the
inside flap and never would be. That didn't
matter. I was going to use the Yes Man and all his
resources to help me find Dom. But after that it
would be me who found out what he knew – and
dealt with it, if necessary.

Siobhan had been Dom's last point of contact.
He had called her from the COB before he'd permanently
closed down. I should have gone
straight there, but his file hadn't revealed that
much about him, let alone her. It wasn't known if
she worked, spent her days in the gym or just
shopping. What was the point of getting there
early and hanging around for hours on the street
corner? It made more sense to go where I was
going.

The driver of the cab that rolled towards me
had to have been seventy if he was a day. There
were creases in his face that even a steam press
wouldn't get out.

'O'Connell Street, mate.' I jumped into the
back with all my worldly goods still in my
Bergen. The Yes Man had sorted me with a UK
bank account, and I now had ten thousand euros
in cash in my pocket. I'd drawn it all out because
that gave me control of it. He wouldn't be able to
track my movements whenever I made a withdrawal.
I hadn't got changed. My clothes could
have done with a bit of attention from that steam
press as well.

'Been to Dublin before, have you, sir?'

We nosed out into a queue.

'Many times, but not for maybe twenty years.
Stag parties, rugby matches . . . You know the
sort of thing.'

'A bit of that still goes on. But you'll see a lot of
changes. A rags-to-riches story, Dublin is. I wish
I was young enough to enjoy it.'

I'd had enough fun mixing with the stag and
hen parties and rugby supporters, but that had
had nothing to do with getting drunk enough to
vomit over a policeman. We used the weekends
to our advantage when I was in the Regiment.
We used to come down here from the north on a
Friday night to lift people Special Branch wanted
to have a private one-to-one with.

The last time, it had been just like this: grey,
wet and miserable. But instead of driving the
couple of hours down we'd flown to London and
out again on a Friday night Five Nations special.
The pubs heaved with Brits in rugby shirts, so
we'd blended in nicely in the ones we'd bought
duty-free at Heathrow. Our target was a
Provisional IRA war-council member, who'd
thought he was safe conducting PIRA's drug-trafficking
activities in the South.

Connor McNaughten spent most of his time in
Dublin, only venturing up to Belfast or
Londonderry to kneecap someone or collect
another suitcase full of profits from the Provos'
drug rackets. Towards the end of the war, once
most of the PIRA ASUs (active service units) had
been wiped out, it had felt as if most of our operations
were against drug barons rather than
terrorists.

We lifted him in the early hours of Saturday
morning when he was out on the piss. We
dragged him into the boot of a car that had been
driven down by one of the other lads, and took
him north, straight to Castlereagh police station.
The big stone fortress was the Abu Ghraib of
Northern Ireland. No fucker, no matter how hard
they were, wanted to be interrogated there by
Special Branch. Go into Castlereagh and you'd
come out minus a couple of fingers and with
a few bones bent out of shape. And it wasn't a
myth. Twenty-four hours, maximum, that was
the longest anybody ever lasted before they
spilled whatever beans they had to spill.

Connor was a little fat boy, but hard as fuck.
He lasted more than twenty hours, and after that
SB had a grudging respect for him.

Later, he was bundled back into a car boot and
returned across the border before the weekend of
Dublin jollity was over. Once back in the city,
with his right hand short of a pinkie, I'd told him
in no uncertain terms that if he breathed
a word to anyone about what had gone on
Special Branch would spread the whisper that
he'd come up with the information willingly.

All that was required of him was that he went
back to his seedy little existence, and when called
upon for information, he would give it.
Otherwise he'd be lifted for another night or two
at the castle, or bubbled to the Provos. Some
choice: lose a couple more fingers or have a
paving slab dropped on your head. No wonder
we ended up with more supergrasses than Kew
Gardens.

All that has stopped since Gerry Adams and
Ian Paisley started their power-sharing love fest.
I wondered what Sundance and Trainers made of
it. After all those years fighting with the UDA,
and the Prod 'never surrender' business, that
was exactly what the Loyalists – and Nationalists
– had done. They probably saw it as a total waste
of a war. I doubted I'd ever ask them. I liked
having teeth and unbroken bones.

As for Connor, he'd kept well quiet about his
little visit to the castle and done as he was told.
But even better than that, he'd become a Dublin
Sinn Fein councillor a year later. It meant the
Brits had a source there, too.

I looked out of the window as we nudged
through the outskirts. The driver was right.
Dublin had gone from rags to riches since Ireland
had joined the EU, and it obviously wasn't just
the Irish themselves who were fuelling the
economic miracle. We passed a billboard
advertising a newspaper. All the text was in a
foreign language, but I recognized 'Polski'. 'You
got many Poles here?'

'They even have their own TV show. Good
people, I like them. We have all sorts. We got
those Lithuanians, Africans, Spanish, and loads
of those little Chinese fellas. We've even got a
mosque.'

'That it?' I was looking at a silver pole pointing
skywards over the city centre.

He chuckled as he wove in and out of the
traffic. 'Bertie Ahern wanted to build some sort
of sports stadium, but in the end they decided on
a spire instead. We call it Bertie's Pole . . . or the
Stiffy on the Liffey.' His face creased into another
thousand lines. He enjoyed that gag so much he
jumped the lights. Not because he was impatient,
he just hadn't seen them.

We drove down a street I sort of recognized. I
remembered it in a shit state, women selling fruit
and veg and bits of fish from babies' prams. Now
there were African hairdressers, Arab delis,
Chinese restaurants and loads of Internet shops.
Places selling coconuts and all sorts. It reminded
me of parts of New York, the city where you
think everybody smokes because the new laws
have driven the lot of them outside.

And judging by the size of the huddle puffing
away on the pavement, TVZ 24's entire staff had
been recruited on the other side of the Atlantic.