Rogue Elements (4 page)

It was a stitch-up by Tony Watchman. Or Jane Saddle. Either her or Jeremy Elphinstone. One of those scheming rivals who played the political game with a little more attention than she did. They had been quicker to recognize that after the fall of the Berlin Wall it was no longer enough to have a shining record in SovBloc intelligence. In fact, with former KGB officers being invited to parleys at Century House, it could even count against you. What mattered most was who you had batting for you in the committees. And the truth was Madeleine Wraye had never devoted sufficient attention to recruiting batsmen.

She’d wanted DC, had expected the Balkans, had been dealt – following the ‘Christmas Massacre’ that saw much of the Secret Intelligence Service restructured – a career-numbing joke in Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria. The last place on earth for an aspiring spymaster to build her political clout. With the intelligence community still hunting – after the shocking demise of the Cold War – for a new purpose, Wraye needed to be in Belgrade or Beijing, Beirut or Berlin. Abuja held nothing but new concrete and old corruption. Four years of filing the tittle-tattle of Nigeria’s kleptocratic military-political class, never to be read by the Joint Intelligence Committee or even published in the CX Book, would break her.

The first priority, then, was to select new targets for the demotivated staff of two General Service officers and three secretaries that she inherited. Following the growth of international heroin trafficking and racketeering networks operated by the Nigerian diaspora, organized crime was an obvious choice. Madeleine Wraye was quick to see the potential for some real spy work on the networks’ home ground, generating substantive, relevant CX that might actually get circulated back in London. The laborious investigation she initiated yielded scant results in the first months. One of her officers, alarmed by the new regime requiring him to associate with ‘slum-dwelling criminals’, resigned. But the remaining officer took up the challenge, and by the second year they had together assembled a fair picture of the organized crime syndicates operating from Nigeria. By the third year, a headline-grabbing series of drug seizures and arrests had been triggered across Britain.

During those three years, Wraye made a special effort to get close to her CIA opposite number, an old Africa hand with a great deal of influence back in Langley – perfectly placed to talent spot ‘a Brit we can do business with’. The two station chiefs cooperated to shine a light on illegal bunkering operations in the Niger delta and secure advance notice of tanker hijackings. Indeed, by the end of her time in post, the relationship was such that she was able to request, for a particularly unusual liaison operation, the covert aerial surveillance services of a Lockheed S-3 Viking based off a US carrier in the Gulf of Guinea.

‘What I don’t get,’ said the CIA chief over a late-night whisky and soda in the US embassy, ‘is why you’re involving yourself. Hell, I’m no fan of the French, but aren’t they supposed to be our allies?’

It had started with a report from an asset in Djibouti, far from Wraye’s West African patch. The asset was a long-time SIS agent within the French Foreign Legion’s East African base. His cryptonym was SABLE, and he was believed to be a Welshman with the rank of lieutenant in the Bureau des Statistiques – the Legion’s intelligence division – although his identity was known only to his Nairobi case officer and two directors in Head Office. He had marched stiffly – it was joked by those who knew of the Legion’s peculiarities, at a rate of exactly eighty-eight steps per minute – into the British embassy in Paris during his first leave, to offer his services. He loved the Legion and planned to make a career of it; but he loved Wales more, and seeing as Cardiff didn’t run to an intelligence outfit the British one would have to do. Whatever the truth of that particular yarn, for years SABLE kept the Firm closely informed of covert French actions throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

His most recent communication had read:
Legion black incursion Nigeria pm14/am15 May. Target Chadian rebels Borno state.
A grid reference was given, nothing more. SABLE was renowned for his brevity.

Having arrived in Nigeria with no love for the place whatsoever, Madeleine Wraye had come to feel protective of her adopted turf. Large and oil-rich though she may be, Nigeria is surrounded on all sides by Francophone countries. The unwritten rules were clear: the French could stir up as much trouble as they fancied in Togo and Benin to the west, Niger to the north, and Chad and Cameroon to the east, but they stayed the hell out of (British) Nigeria.

By then, she had worked the Abuja cocktail circuit long enough to have built up strong relationships with all the key players in the military government. It was a simple matter to pick up the phone and pass on SABLE’s intelligence. His grid reference pinpointed a village thirty kilometres south of Lake Chad which served as an occasional training camp and weapons store for Chadian insurgents. On the morning of 14 May, the Nigerian Army High Command quietly evacuated the village and brought in two companies of the 3rd Armoured Division to lay an ambush.

Wraye had attached one fundamental condition to her tip-off: the legionnaires should be released within a week of capture. The goal was to shame France, not condemn her mercenaries to long prison sentences. Above all, there must be no casualties.

When the call came from the US Navy Viking loitering high over the Legion field base outside Massakory, Wraye and her CIA counterpart put down their whiskies and decamped to the secure conference room to watch the infra-red video feed. At 1 a.m. exactly, the engines on a plane parked beside the camp’s dirt airstrip underwent a rapid change of colour and twelve glowing bodies climbed aboard. As the aircraft departed to the south-west, Wraye phoned the Army High Command. The Viking tracked the French plane through Cameroonian airspace and across the Nigerian border. Wraye made a second call when it was five nautical miles from the target village. She watched as twelve bodies tumbled from the plane, then she bid her American host good night, drove home and went to bed.

The following afternoon, Madeleine Wraye was invited to Army Headquarters Garrison – a rare honour for a declared spy. The ambush had been a great success, she was told. All twelve of the legionnaires had surrendered without a fight. There was just one curious detail. When it came time to handcuff the prisoners and transport them to Abuja, only eleven legionnaires remained.

After an extensive search by over 400 troops, the twelfth was recaptured just one kilometre from the Cameroonian border. He was, to everyone’s surprise, English. Would Ms Wraye like to see him?

If the Army High Command had expected Madeleine Wraye to intercede on behalf of a British subject, they were to be disappointed. On the contrary, intrigued by his disappearing trick, she encouraged them to sweat him. After observing the first four hours of his interrogation, she was more than intrigued. The Englishman showed not the slightest concern at finding himself in a foul cell, strapped to a steel chair and roared at by a bearded Hausa giant. He offered up a name and rank immediately, followed almost teasingly by a date of birth and regiment number. But on the subject of the Borno raid, and on every other subject, he was silent.

‘That’s not his real name,’ Wraye told the interrogator when he returned to the darkened observation room. On the other side of the one-way glass panel, the young man calling himself Corporal Jonathan Reeves sat peaceably, with manacled hands in his lap and curious eyes hooded against the savagely bright lights. ‘The Legion issues each recruit with a new name for the duration of their service. Make him tell you his real name.’

The Hausa giant tried hitting the legionnaire, first in the gut, then in the face. He punched him hard enough to split the skin on his jaw and tip the steel chair over. He hosed cold water into his mouth and nose. With Wraye’s agreement, he beat him with a stick and then a whip made of strips of animal hide. He even tried a little electricity work. Nothing had any effect.

The presiding officer said, ‘We will get results if we go harder, but is there a reason? What can he tell you that it is worth crippling him?’

Wraye nodded. ‘Keep him awake forty-eight hours, no water, then I’ll talk to him.’

That evening, she issued an urgent requirement for SABLE:
Require civilian name Corporal Jonathan Reeves
. She hoped the Welsh lieutenant would appreciate her brevity.

The legionnaire was kneeling in a stress position with a hood over his head. The pool of urine had largely evaporated, adding a new note to the background stench of the cell. Two guards, whose job it had been to prod the prisoner with batons whenever his spine softened, came lazily to attention as Wraye entered carrying a small pile of books.

‘Go,’ she said.

When the door was locked behind them, she removed the hood and gazed at the dirty stubble, swollen jaw and bloodshot eyes of the man she had decided to recruit.

‘Hello, Stephen.’

His head jerked up.

‘You’ll have to learn to disguise your reactions. That is, if you want to go on using false identities. No good if you give yourself away like that.’

She pointed him to the steel chair and took the other, padded seat. He stood up warily, and with some difficulty. When he sat, his back remained straight, his cramped legs half-tensed.

She gestured to the pile of books. ‘They tell me you’ve been asking for some reading material on the region.’

He picked one up with cuffed hands. ‘These are wildlife guides. I asked for histories.’ His voice was contorted by thirst.

‘You’re in Abuja. A manufactured city. It has no history.’

Wordlessly, he let the book drop.

‘Why did you run, Stephen? Why did you abandon your comrades?’

‘My name is Jonathan Reeves.’

‘Well, now, that’s what’s confusing me. The name of the prefect expelled from St Michael’s following the death of a classmate was Stephen Gordon. The name of the seventeen-year-old private kicked out of the Coldstream Guards – his father’s old regiment – for aberrant and unbecoming behaviour was Stephen Gordon. The name of the boy who presented himself at the recruiting office of the French Foreign Legion in Lille three weeks later was Stephen Gordon. What do you think they’re saying about you, Stephen? Stephen? The men you abandoned. What happened to that glorious
fraternité
we hear so much about?’

The legionnaire didn’t answer. He kept his gaze on Wraye, but gave nothing more away.

‘I expect you’d like a drink.’

Nothing.

‘No?’ She produced a plastic bottle from her briefcase. ‘It’s mineral water. Safe. Cold. The Nigerians bottle it on some mountain or other. Have a drink, Stephen. After I’m gone you may not be offered another for some time.’

She held out the bottle, but he made no move to take it.

‘I mean, really, what is the point? Põldoja’s been chattering away for hours. So have Kraft, de Souza and the others. Why put yourself through this pain when all Abuja wants is an admission of guilt before they let you go. Christ, you were caught red-handed, bearing French arms on Nigerian territory. It’s not like you’re telling them anything they don’t already know. They just need to hear you say it. African pride, Stephen. Stephen? Just a rough operational sketch and you’re on a plane back to N’Djamena. Back to the warm, welcoming breast of La Patrie. Croissants and garlic for breakfast. Otherwise it’s more thirst, more beatings, more pain.’

He was smiling. Dark, antagonistic, nonetheless a smile. ‘You think this is pain? You should try a Legion jail sometime. You should try a Legion training camp. Our NCOs would have a lot to teach your friend with the beard.’

Wraye suppressed a flutter of excitement. He was perfect. He’d made a mistake responding – any engagement, however defiant, is a way in for a skilled interrogator – but the resilience and attitude were just what she wanted. There weren’t twenty officers left in the whole of the Firm who could summon up a smile under these circumstances.

‘Is that right?’ she said. ‘Beau Geste has teeth again? Because word is the Legion’s a shadow of the force it was in Algeria.’ There are many ways to manipulate, and Madeleine Wraye knew and used them all. But her preferred technique was prodding. Goading her subject to reveal what he shouldn’t, with little pricks to his vanity and his self-esteem.

It didn’t work on the legionnaire. He gazed at her thoughtfully, then said, ‘A general Nigerian history would be fine.’

‘Stephen, let’s cut the crap,’ she said, swiftly changing tack. ‘You’re not in a good position here. The Nigerians can hold you as long as they like. They’ll claim they let you go, deny all further knowledge of you. When you don’t show up, the Legion will write you off as a deserter. Meanwhile you’ll be rotting in a cell that makes this place look like Shangri-La. You want that?’

No response.

‘I can help. I can get you out of here today.’

‘What does that make you? Military liaison?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Oh,’ he grimaced. ‘That’s what you are.’

‘Maybe you do want to rot. Maybe that’s why you joined the Legion. For the pain. The forced marches. The punishments. Breaking rocks all day. Confined to a hole in the ground for a week. They still do that? Maybe that’s why you took the Coldstream branding game too far. You wanted the pain of that steel burning into your chest. All because you killed a schoolboy. Thomas Parke, organ scholar and shoo-in for Cambridge, beloved by his mother and three younger sisters, drowned in a storm drain because you dared him to follow you. Do I have that right, Stephen? I heard they had to use a garden rake to get his body out. Your best friend’s corpse. Do you want the Nigerians to throw away the key so you can finally forgive yourself? Would twenty years here salve your conscience?’

She’d reached him. At last she’d got through. He didn’t say anything for three long minutes, but she knew from the slight shifts in the muscles of his face that she’d found something real, something that cut deep.