The Hostage (19 page)

Just about everyone was inside having supper. Stratton sat at a table with Doles, both eating in silence. Hank had a sudden urge to go up to him and ask what he thought about the day’s activities. But he decided against it. He would play it the Brit way, whatever that was exactly. He picked up a plate, scooped up a steak, some mashed potato and cabbage, took a knife and fork out of the cutlery box and headed for the back of the room where there was an empty table.

Clemens was sat with several others and as Hank passed he heard his name mentioned.

‘. . . and Hank not only went for the bloody thing, he accelerated right into it.’ Clemens laughed in his croaking manner, his mouth wide open, and his huge tongue sticking out. He showed no guilt on seeing Hank. ‘Ain’t that right, Hanky boy? You railroaded that pram and that kid right into fucking space.’

Some of the men were amused but others were not.

Hank paid no heed and sat at the empty table and placed his food down. He was finding it easier to ignore Clemens. The guy had a big mouth.

Hank sawed at the steak with the blunt knife without much effect and then gave up and dug into his pocket for his penknife. The blade cut through the meat with ease but his teeth faired little better than the cutlery and his bruised jaw soon ached with the effort of chewing it. He tried a mouthful of mashed potato, which was obviously powder and water, and decided he would have to be a lot hungrier than he was to get through this particular meal and pushed it away.

Across the room Stratton got up, placed his dishes in the tub and headed out of the room. Hank grabbed the opportunity, picked up his plate and cutlery, and headed between the tables towards the entrance. He scraped the food into the trashcan and dumped the plate and tools in the tub.

Hank stepped outside in time to see Stratton walk around the corner. He hurried up and closed on Stratton’s back. ‘Sergeant Stratton,’ Hank said.

Stratton stopped and turned to face him. ‘We don’t call anyone by their rank when in civvies,’ he said.

‘Right,’ Hank said, suddenly wondering if this was a good idea. Stratton seemed to be in a serious mood. Hank was then suddenly unsure how to begin.

‘I, er . . . We haven’t officially met . . . Hank Munro . . . chief,’ then with finality, ‘Hank.’ He held out his hand. Stratton shook it.

‘Sorry I never said hello earlier. It’s been a bit crazed.’

‘Hey, that’s okay,’ Hank said, shrugging. ‘I know how it is . . . I just wanted to say that I appreciate being invited along.’

‘Always a pleasure to play with our cousins from over the pond,’ Stratton said.

Hank smiled appreciatively then got to what was bugging him. ‘Look, I just wanted to ask you about today—’

Stratton cut him off. ‘You can come to prayers,’ he said. Hank was thrown by the odd comment. ‘Prayers?’ he asked, as if he had not heard correctly.

‘Orders.You weren’t in the galley when it was announced. The operational briefing. Building one.’

Stratton headed away.The briefing, or prayers as Stratton called it, was a complete surprise to Hank. The op was happening and he had been invited to the O group. If nothing else it was an indication he was still okay on somebody’s list.

Several of the guys passed Hank and after they had all entered building one he followed.

It was the same as all the other buildings: one long cold brick room with a concrete floor and a small toilet in a cubicle near the entrance.The only furnishings were a dozen metal chairs spread in a double semi-circle halfway into the room, facing a table and lectern. Behind these were several boards propped on chairs and draped in black cloths to cover what was on them. All the windows were cloaked in the same heavy black cloth. Two men were waiting at the far end behind the table and lectern: Lieutenant Jardene and a man Hank had never seen before.They were dressed in civilian clothes, a little smarter and more tasteful than the men, and their hair was short and neat.

‘Sit down, please, gentlemen,’ Jardene said. Hank waited until everyone was seated and took the last chair, pulling it further back from the others, feeling like an intruder perhaps and subconsciously trying to remain as invisible as possible. Stratton and Doles entered, closing the door.

‘Everyone here, Stratton?’ Jardene asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Stratton replied, standing behind Hank. Hank half looked over his shoulder to see Doles leaning against a wall, holding a pen and notebook. Hank then noticed everyone else had a notebook. He cursed himself for not being in the galley when the warning order for the briefing had been given. It was little things such as this, not having a pen and paper when he needed one, that irritated him about himself.

‘We received the green light for operation Phoenix only a few hours ago,’ Jardene continued.‘This is Captain Sumners from military intelligence. He’s going to kick off with a brief background to the operation. Needless to say, everything you hear in this room will not be discussed outside of it.’ Jardene’s eyes rested on Hank’s for a second, as if impressing upon him that he was aware he was in the room, that it was no mistake, and that the rules applied to him as much as anyone else. Hank felt a rush of importance.

‘Gentlemen,’ Captain Sumners said in greeting. ‘Two months ago one of our intelligence operatives was captured by members of the Real IRA in County Tyrone. It was a well-planned operation that almost succeeded.’ Sumners glanced at Stratton who remained poker faced. ‘RIRA did not just happen upon the operative by chance. They knew precisely where to find him and when.

‘Many of our successes against the IRA over the years have been due to informants within the terrorist organisation itself. It is no secret that the IRA has had its own informants within the RUC and army, and even inside army intelligence at lower levels.The notion that they could penetrate the higher levels of our own military intelligence has always been considered improbable . . . A year ago we learned from a reliable source that there was very possibly a well-placed RIRA spy, or mole if you like, within the ranks of our military intelligence. This not only encompasses MI5, 6, A4, etcetera, but also the various intelligence cells of our military units. The informer who provided this information did not have any more details to offer, other than RIRA had gone to great lengths to protect this highly placed and valuable source.

‘Initially, many at MoD treated this information with scepticism. Today, it is looked upon with serious concern. There are many tactics employed to catch a spy. Luck plays a great part, often a chance encounter seemingly unrelated and setting the hunt into focus. That’s pretty much what happened in this case.

‘RIRA has enjoyed a strong intelligence relationship with the ALG, the largest of the Algerian terrorist organisations. The ALG has its sympathisers within French government, military and intelligence services. We believe our RIRA mole communicates with his or her handler through one such ALG spy who is a member of French counter intelligence, DST . . . Don’t worry if any of this loses you. It’s only background.’

Sumners removed the black sheet from one of the boards. On it were several pictures of a dark-complexioned man in his forties, some taken with surveillance cameras, others official passport photos.

‘Serjo Henri,’ Sumners went on, indicating the pictures. ‘I won’t go into any of his details other than his appearance and VDMs, visual distinguishing marks that is, since it isn’t important to this operation, but suffice to say we believe Henri is the link between our mole and his RIRA handler. In case anyone is wondering why a RIRA mole inside our military intelligence should need to go through an Algerian spy working for French military intelligence, the simple answer is it makes it devilishly difficult to discover or intercept communications. It is safe to assume that Henri is nothing more than a go-between and knows nothing about what he delivers either to the mole or to RIRA.

We have been watching Henri for the past six months and have discovered how he receives invitations to take secret meetings. We’re certain the trigger that tells him a meeting has been called for is a code of some sort stuck on to a lamppost. It’s not uncommon to find small ads on lampposts in Paris and he obviously knows what to look for. He quickly removes the code, which he can do almost without stopping. We’ve never seen one of the codes as he’s very thorough about disposing of them. We think they indicate a prearranged location and a date and time. Henri lives and works in Paris and he takes a walking exercise along various streets in his neighbourhood several times a week. He passes dozens of lampposts, any one of which might hold the invitation, and since it isn’t possible to watch every lamppost in the centre of Paris twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, we can’t catch them that way.’

‘Who’s been carrying out the surveillance?’ Stratton asked.

‘A couple of our embassy staff. Up until now it has not been a high enough priority to mount a full operation, and there are other reasons I’ll get to later, which will also explain why I’m briefing you lot instead of one of our own teams.’

‘Have you covered any of the actual meetings yet, sir?’ asked Doles.

‘No. The two embassy staff members have done well but they are not trained surveillance operatives.’

‘Then how do you know the lamppost triggers are for meetings?’ Doles persisted.

Sumners was a patient man and used to having questions fired at him since so much of his work was piecing together bits of a puzzle. ‘We haven’t actually covered any meetings, as I said, but we’ve housed Henri at a couple just to prove our theories. In both cases Henri picked up his trigger in the afternoon, on a lamppost as I have described, and then he went to a café the following morning. Different cafés, but in the two cases we observed he sat outside, then after a while he went inside, presumably to meet his contact. Without a proper surveillance team and technical support we wouldn’t even attempt to cover the actual meetings inside.’

Brent put up his hand. ‘Sir, so how have you tied Henri to the mole?’

‘By cross-referencing sightings with events in the past we’ve been able to make some conclusions. Obviously, one must be careful about one’s deductions, but like doing a cross-word, there are certain answers to clues on which one must depend to support others until they can support themselves. On three occasions Henri’s actions have coincided with events in Northern Ireland. An example is his movements five days before the intelligence operative was abducted in Tyrone. Henri picked up a trigger for a meeting, which he took the following morning in a café. When he left the café half an hour later he caught a taxi. One of the attachés just happened to have his car nearby and managed to follow him - to the airport, where he boarded a flight to Dublin. We had a man waiting for Henri at the other end. He followed him on a train to Dundalk where he left him.This meeting tallies with a report from RUC special branch. Four days later the detachment’s operative was snatched. We believe Henri met with our mole in the café that day and was handed information that led to that attempted kidnapping.’

‘How many of our people knew the operative was in the car?’ Doles asked.

‘We’ve obviously covered that route in great detail. The orders for that operation went to London a week before it took place. There are a fair number of people who could have had access to the file in the Lisburn office as well as London. An investigation in that direction would not be worthwhile for a number of reasons.’

Sumners paused for a moment to check where he was on the board. ‘Right. Let’s move on to the op. Yesterday afternoon Henri was seen picking up a trigger from a lamppost a mile from his apartment. If past habits are anything to go by he will attend a meeting somewhere in Paris tomorrow. We can only hope it will be with our mole, and if not, someone who can take us to the next step in finding him . . . Are there any questions before we get on with the operation orders?’

There were none. Sumners deferred to Jardene, who pulled the cover off the other large board to reveal a detailed map of a section of the centre of Paris. Dotted around the map were photographs of specific streets and locations in that area.

‘The ground is central Paris,’ Jardene begun. ‘Specifically a triangle formed by the Place de la Concorde, L’Opéra and the Louvre. It’s a somewhat upscale part of the city, a lot of shops, businesses, very much a tourist area. Henri lives in a small apartment over a shop, here in Rue Shebal. In the past his meetings have been within two miles of his apartment. He prefers to walk or use public transport. He likes to practise anti-surveillance techniques often but he doesn’t move very quickly and if you keep a good team formation you should have no trouble with him. Your mission is to house him at the meeting and then cover it with audio and visual recording systems.’

Hank sat listening with interest as Jardene spent the next hour going over every detail of the operation.When Jardene revealed the individual tasks Hank hoped that, despite it being a long shot, his name would be mentioned, but it was not. When Jardene got to the final phase of the orders, naming the command structure from top to bottom, Hank’s name failed again to make the list. Hank remained philosophical. There had been no chance of him going on the op from the beginning, but hoping had not done any harm.

‘Are there any questions?’ Jardene finally asked the room at the end of the briefing.

‘Sir,’ said Jackson putting his hand up. ‘Why us? I mean, we’re not as good at surveillance as the det is. Why not use them or A4?’

Jardene looked to Sumners.

‘Yes, I was going to mention that, wasn’t I?’ Sumners said. ‘Since we have no idea who the mole is - my suspicions lean more towards MI5 - we want to do this out of house.We doubt the IRA has infiltrated your lot. It wouldn’t make much sense since only a handful of SBS and SAS operatives work over the water these days and therefore spend little more than a fraction of their careers working against the IRA.’