Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (22 page)

As the sky to the east over Buenaventura took on the pinkish tinge of dawn he crawled to the side, reached for the anchor chain and pulled. Nothing happened. He gave it another tug but it was stuck fast. His heart sank. He just didn’t think he had it left in him to dive down and free the anchor. He sat on the tarpaulin and held his head in his hands. This was not despair: he was absolutely knackered and wondered how much longer he could keep going. He went back to the side and gave another pull on the anchor chain and there it was, coming free in his hands, like the sword Excalibur. He hauled up the chain and put away the anchor. Almost immediately he faced another problem. The tide was coming in fast and the boat was already drifting towards the shore. At this rate he would be bumping up against the side of the Chop House in no time.

He made a quick assessment of his options. Start the outboard and make a break for it? Too risky. It was a feeble fifty horsepower and looked as if it had seen better days. The narcos would overtake him in seconds. Put the anchor back down, stay hidden under the tarpaulin and wait till dusk, in the hope no one came aboard to find him? Not smart. There were no other boats within a hundred metres, so they were bound to come looking here once they
had finished searching the shore. There was nothing else for it: he was going to have to muster his final reserves and do this the hard way. Still staying down, Luke lowered himself over the stern and back into the sea. He clenched his fingers around the rusty metal rungs of the ladder, extended his arms and kicked out like a frog. At first it had no effect, but he kicked out again with all his strength and gradually the momentum began to build and the boat was moving. After several more kicks he glanced over his shoulder at the shore. Yes! It was marginally further away. He kept going, heading diagonally out to sea and northwards, keeping the murderous shanties of Buenaventura on his right, straining to put as much distance as he could between himself and the men who lurked there. He tried not to think of the sharks.

Luke’s arms and legs were numb with tiredness, his hands wrinkled and sore where they gripped the rusty rungs, but it was as if he was on auto-pilot now, kicking out rhythmically and robotically. This was more gruelling than anything he had faced in Special Forces Selection but he had to keep going. The alternative was unthinkable. He picked a distant rocky promontory on the shore far to the north as his marker and focused his efforts on pushing past it. Now a distant memory floated back, a half-buried moment from his childhood. The butterfly. The promontory was like the butterfly he had followed all those years ago as a boy lost in the jungle, the day his parents had died. Well, he’d survived then and he was bloody well going to survive now too.

By the time he drew level with the rocky outcrop the sun was bearing down on him out of a thin haze of white cloud, scorching his shoulders through his tattered shirt. He could feel his forehead and nose blistering, imagining them glowing bright red with sunburn. In his desperation to get away he hadn’t stopped to search the boat for water and now he was tormented by thirst. He stopped kicking and pulled himself back onto the deck, then surveyed where he was. On either side of the outcrop thick, lush vegetation tumbled down a steep slope to a deserted beach of uninviting black sand. He was alone, adrift on this stretch of coast, and he could feel the current sweeping him northwards.

He went into the covered wheelhouse, grateful for some shelter from the sun, and rummaged around in a bucket until his fingers closed around a warm can of Coca-Cola. He wiped it on his sleeve, pulled back the ring-pull and drank it in one go. His teeth were gritty with sugar so he continued his search for water. Slopping around in the bilge beneath the wheel he found a half-empty plastic litre bottle. He unscrewed the top, sniffed and recoiled. It smelt faintly of fuel. But a further search revealed that it was the only water onboard. It would have to do.

Now he needed to find the key to start the engine. The empty silver socket in the dashboard was staring back at him, taunting him. If he couldn’t get the engine started he would make slow progress along the coast and this was still narco territory. Luke got down on his hands and knees, trailing his fingertips through the bilge water on the floor in case someone had dropped the key there. Nothing. Whoever owned the boat had taken the key with them when they had gone ashore. For a moment he felt a pang of guilt, knowing he had just robbed some Colombian fisherman of his livelihood. But this was survival and he’d had no choice.

The soft, rhythmic lapping of the waves against the hull, the torpor induced by the noon heat and the gentle rocking motion as the current bore him northward were all starting to have an effect. Luke could resist it no longer. He dragged the tarpaulin into the wheelhouse, made himself a bed amid its creases and folds, then sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion.

The kick that woke him seemed to come from nowhere. One moment he was fast asleep, the next he was staring up at a man with a machine-gun. ‘
Levántate!
’ he ordered. ‘Get up!’ Dazed, dehydrated and slightly delirious, Luke did not react at first, so the man jabbed the muzzle of his weapon into his chest. ‘
Levántate!
’ he repeated, louder this time and more urgent. Luke struggled to stand up but his legs felt like lead ballast and suddenly everything was spinning – the man, the boat, the sun, the sky – and he fell helplessly into oblivion.

‘GO HOME.’
IT
was more than a suggestion. Craig Dalziel had come into Sid Khan’s office at seven a.m. to find him slouched forward on his desk, his head in his hands, his eyes red-rimmed, testimony to an almost sleepless night. The news that Luke Carlton had been kidnapped, most likely by the same cartel that the Service was working to dismantle, then taken to one of the most violent towns in Colombia, had left him drained. This was his mission, his alone: he had sent Luke there and now the buck stopped with him. There was no place in Vauxhall Cross today for his usual cheerful bonhomie: people would expect him to pull out every stop to save Luke. But there was a limit to how effectively someone could operate on almost no sleep and Khan had reached his.

‘I’m going, I’m going,’ he replied, making a half-hearted attempt to tidy away the papers on his desk. ‘But before I head home, something’s bothering me here.’

Dalziel let out a snort. ‘That’s putting it mildly! This whole thing has turned to a bag of shite. I won’t even tell you how many agents we’ve had to pull out of that country since we lost Benton.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Khan, holding up a hand defensively. ‘What I meant was, something doesn’t make sense here.’

‘Which is?’

‘That phone call the narcos made to Carlton’s girlfriend, Elise.
Putting him on the line while they beat the crap out of him. I mean, why take the risk? Now we know they’ve got him, and they must know we’ll stop at nothing to get him back.’

Dalziel sucked in his cheeks and pursed his lips. It was an odd habit but it gave him time to compose what he was going to say. ‘Look, Sid, we’ve both come up against some highly unpleasant people in this business. In Agent Handling it still comes down, as it always has, to persuading some very brave people to do very dangerous things on our behalf, right?’

‘Sure, but where are you going with this?’

‘All the reports I’ve read from Bogotá station suggest that these narcos are about the worst you can imagine. They’re sadists. They kill people slowly for fun. You said it yourself, they’ll be torturing our man for information, then do it just for kicks. Twisting the knife into his girlfriend is part of the same deal. It’s what they do.’

For several seconds the two men stood there without speaking, consumed by their own dark thoughts. Then Dalziel spoke briskly. ‘Right. You need to go home and get some sleep. Ask someone to sort you a car – you’re in no fit state to drive. I’ll call you if we get a breakthrough.’

‘Cheers, Craig. Appreciate it. Where’s C today? Is he up to speed on all this?’

‘He’s in Brussels at NIS, the NATO Intelligence Summit, remember? Mullens is with him and taking calls if you need to get hold of him.’

The Chief of MI6 was listening through headphones to interminable speeches from various Baltic intelligence chiefs about Russian covert activity along their borders. It was late in the afternoon, soon after they had all come back from the tea break, when Mullens, his PA, tapped him on the arm and motioned for him to follow him out of the conference chamber.

‘C, it’s Clements,’ Mullens said, as soon as they were in the corridor. ‘Our acting head of station in Bogotá. Says it’s urgent.’ He handed his phone to the Chief.

‘Any news?’

‘They’ve found Carlton,’ said the voice down the line. ‘He’s alive.’

The Chief leaned against the corridor wall and breathed a sigh of relief. With his free hand he massaged his temples. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘The Colombian coastguard found him drifting just south of the Panamanian border. Seems he hijacked some local’s fishing boat to get away from the narcos. He’s been knocked about a bit, needs a thorough medical, but he’s in one piece. They’re flying him up here to Bogotá now for the debrief, and then we’ll get him on the first plane home.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ said the Chief. ‘Is that chap from Legal still with you?’

‘John Friend? Yes.’

‘Tell him he’s to stick to Carlton like glue the moment he reaches Bogotá. He’s not to let him out of his sight, d’you hear? And I want a word with him when he gets back.’

MOTORCYCLE OUTRIDERS. NICE
touch, thought Luke. The Colombian security people were taking no chances. In a convoy of four they swept down the leafy avenue of gum trees and into the courtyard of the
finca
, the discreet farmhouse north of Bogotá that served as MI6’s Colombia station. Several people offered to help him out of the car but he waved them away.

‘I’m fine, honestly.’ But they all saw him wince as he put his weight on his right foot. One of the Colombian intelligence men from ANIC whispered something to a policeman. He hurried away, returning moments later with a large hospital wheelchair.

‘
Para usted, Señor Carlton. Por favor . . .
’

‘Seriously?’ said Luke, looking from the wheelchair to the circle of pitying faces. Could he really not make it from the car to the front door by himself? He made an effort to straighten up. He could do this. ‘No, thanks,’ he told them. ‘I’ll manage.’

He hobbled slowly to the door of the main office, trying not to show the pain he was in from the wound in his foot. Then he stopped and grinned. ‘John!’

There in the doorway stood the lawyer. Luke hadn’t thought he would be happy to see him but today, after all he had been through, he was. Now John Friend crossed the courtyard to greet him. There was a dab of blood on his collar, Luke noticed, where he had probably nicked himself shaving. ‘Come on, you old
bastard,’ he said. ‘Give me a hug.’ The two men embraced awkwardly, Luke finding he was doing all the back-patting. The Colombians looked on approvingly.

‘My word, you’ve been through the mill,’ said Friend, stepping back to take a good look at his colleague. And Luke was quite a sight: there was a livid purple bruise beneath his eye where they had hit him hard soon after his capture. His face was scorched with sunburn from the boat, his hair matted and unwashed, he had a few days’ growth of beard and he smelt appalling.

‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ Friend said. ‘The doc will need to check you over and there’s a heap of stuff Khan wants me to go through with you but that can wait. D’you fancy a fry-up? Carmen here can do you some bacon and eggs. I believe we’ve even got some baked beans in the kitchen.’

‘Right now, I can think of nothing better on earth. Lead me to it!’

‘
YOU’RE PUTTING ME
on the spot here,’ said Sid Khan. ‘Look, no one’s more relieved than I am that he’s alive, but I just can’t do what you’re suggesting. Not today, not now.’

Angela stood in the doorway of his office on the fourth floor at Vauxhall Cross, one hand on her hip, and regarded him coolly. The head of Counter-terrorism was wearing a suit and tie again today, she noticed. Must be a reason for that. ‘I’m just saying it would be a good idea if you met him off his flight, that’s all,’ she said. ‘After all he’s been through. I mean, it was you who sent him. And Luke was progressing well on my team. He’d had some successes already and his probation was nearly up. I think he’ll make a first-class case officer in time – that’s if we haven’t put him off by now. As his line manager, I’m obviously going to the airport, and we’re taking his other half along, plus the family liaison officer. The Met can keep any press away.’

Khan fidgeted with his pen. He seemed to be only half listening. ‘We’re going to have to agree to disagree on a few things here, Angela. As I say, no one in this building is more relieved than I am to see Carlton come back in one piece. I don’t have to tell you that.’ And yet you just have, twice, she thought. ‘But he went completely off the grid for several days. He took it on himself to set off on an unsanctioned operation that ended up with ten Colombian policemen killed—’

‘He was betrayed, though, wasn’t he?’ she interrupted. ‘As I understand it, the local police chief the Colombians assigned him to work with turned out to be playing for the other side. That’s hardly Luke’s fault!’

‘That’s by the by,’ said Khan. ‘He’ll have to face an internal inquiry when he’s well enough to come in. Meanwhile . . .’ Sid Khan pushed back his chair from his desk, rose heavily to his feet and buttoned up his jacket ‘. . . we still have a potentially serious CT situation building here and I’ve been asked to chair a COBRA meeting in Whitehall in less than an hour.’ That would explain the suit, thought Angela. She had never seen him like that before, all self-important and formal. It was not like the Khan she knew at all.

Then, as if he had read her mind, Khan relaxed a little and let his shoulders slump. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I don’t mean to come over all official – it’s not my style, as you know. But I’m under a lot of pressure here and I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks. That last report Carlton sent after debriefing our agent, Synapse, has set a lot of hares racing, I can tell you.’