Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (5 page)

‘Ingenious,’ said the Chief. ‘Go on.’

Luke noticed that Sanderson was scribbling on a piece of paper,
then passing it to Khan, who looked at Luke and nodded slowly. It occurred to Luke that he was either making a really good impression or pissing off half the people in the room.

‘Operation Sword of Honour,’ he persevered, looking from one to another to make sure he had eye contact with everyone, however fleetingly. ‘It’s the Colombian campaign to take out the HVTs, the high-value targets. It’s huge, it’s ongoing, and we’re giving them a big boost on the intel side. It’s got everyone onboard over there: Special Ops, Marines, Judicial Police, attorneys, intelligence fusion centres, counter-IEDs. There’s also our own joint units. They’re having a major impact on the BACRIMs and that’s hacking them off big-time.’

‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Khan. ‘Am I the only person in this room who doesn’t know what a BACRIM is?’

‘Sorry,’ said Luke. ‘It’s shorthand for
banda criminal
, the gangs that produce and ship the cocaine.’

‘Thought you’d know that, Sid,’ remarked the Chief, allowing himself the faintest of smiles on that blackest of days. Luke tried not to smile with him. This was not going to endear him to the man in the pink polo shirt.

‘Telephone intercepts,’ continued Luke, getting into his stride now. He was on his home turf: this stuff was his bread and butter and he was giving them what they wanted. ‘The intercepts form the backbone of a major percentage of all narcotics prosecutions in Colombia and we’re helping them. We’ve got several thousand lines operational at any one time and dozens of listening suites in-country. Signals intelligence – SIGINT – is proving key as well. The Colombians are getting direct feeds from our American counterparts at NSA. And there’s the HUMINT side, of course. We’ve got informants inside every major
banda
, a lot of them reporting direct to us. To Benton, in fact.’

The room was very quiet.

‘So, the port of Tumaco, where he was killed, is the major transit point for Colombian coca paste heading south into Ecuador and on to Peru for processing in the jungle labs. It’s often more cost-effective for the narcos to smuggle it across unprocessed,
less to lose if they get caught. The Colombians are very hot on counter-narcotics, their neighbours rather less so. There are two major gangs down there: Los Rostrojos and Los Chicos. Both very violent. Cutting off ears is the Chicos’ trademark.’

He let the words settle, knowing the effect they would have on the room.

‘So if I could suggest, C, we need to establish exactly who Benton was in contact with, who he was trailing, and why it was so important he risked his life to discover what they were up to.’

The Chief looked across at Angela and tilted his head ever so slightly. The look said, ‘Your boy did OK.’ Luke breathed an inward sigh of relief. He had come out unscathed from his first ever directors’ summit at Vauxhall Cross.

‘Thank you.’ The Chief nodded curtly. Then he addressed the room: ‘I knew Jerry, and that man was not a time-waster. He was on to something big and I’m making it a Tier One National Security Priority that we find out what it was.’ He looked pointedly at Angela. ‘I want someone who knows what he’s doing at the sharp end on this case, I want a fluent Spanish speaker, and he – or she – had better be someone who can look after themselves.’

The meeting broke up and they filed out, grim-faced. Angela motioned for Luke to stay behind. ‘It’s you, of course,’ she said.

‘Say again?’

‘Oh, come on, Luke, false modesty doesn’t suit you. You know you’re the best Spanish speaker in the Service, you know Colombia, and you fit the Chief’s last criterion. I want you on the next flight down to Bogotá. Of course you’ll have someone from LA tagging along with you.’

‘Our Los Angeles station?’

‘No!’ Angela gave a short, brittle laugh. ‘No, LA is Legal Affairs. You’ll get to know them rather well in this place.’

Luke groaned. After four years in Special Forces he tended to give lawyers as wide a berth as possible. ‘Please tell me you’re joking. Are you saying I’ve got to take a lawyer with me to the Colombian jungle? Seriously?’

‘We don’t joke in the Service,’ said Angela. ‘And, yes, I’m afraid
that’s just the world we live in now. Oh, and you’ll be reporting directly to Sid Khan.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘Yes, I know, he’s not exactly out of Central Casting, is he? And that’s just what we like, keeps people guessing. But don’t be fooled by his manner, Luke. Khan’s done the hard yards, believe me. He likes people to think outside the box, in the way he does. He’ll be weighing you up, with his mathematician’s brain, so don’t disappoint him. He’s expecting you now. Fourth floor. Someone will meet you outside the lift. And, Luke?’ Her face softened. ‘Please don’t end up like Benton.’

As the lift pinged open at the fourth floor Luke found himself looking straight into the face of a girl with the most beautiful unblemished skin he had ever seen. Caribbean parentage, he guessed, can’t be more than twenty-five. He almost felt old.

‘Luke Carlton?’ Absolutely no trace of an accent. ‘Hi, I’m Shakina. I work for Sid Khan. Would you like to come this way, please?’

Luke followed her, trying hard not to glance at the hips beneath the tight beige skirt. Get a grip, he told himself. You’re about to be given your mission, and here you are, perving.

When they reached the door to Sid Khan’s office she knocked twice, then showed him in, closing the door after him. Khan was already back behind his desk, reading something he held in one hand and twirling a teaspoon round a china mug – ‘Keep Calm and Carry On Spying’ – with the other. ‘A present from my late wife.’ He gestured at it.

‘Right,’ said Luke. So Khan was a widower. He felt a pang of sympathy for the man. He wondered if Khan was one of those people who worked long, late hours, trying to put off the loneliness of going home to the bachelor flat and the microwave dinner for one. He made a quick appraisal of the room. A box of Tetley teabags lay open on Khan’s desk, there were several papers bordered with red ink and marked ‘Strap 2’, and on the wall above his desk a group of framed photos of cricket teams.

Khan looked up and smiled before he spoke. ‘There are
corridors of excellence in this building. I need to know you have what it takes to walk down them.’

‘Right.’ Luke had no idea where Khan was going with this.

‘That’s what they said to me on my first day in this place,’ continued Khan. ‘Agents, young man. They’re the beginning, middle and end of everything we do here at SIS. Understand that and you’ll go far in the Service.’ He turned to gaze out of the window at the traffic on the river below. A cargo barge was emerging from beneath Vauxhall Bridge, emitting a trail of oily smoke from its chimney as it chugged downstream towards Docklands.

Khan turned back to Luke and picked up where he had left off. ‘I’ve been here over twenty years now and that rule hasn’t changed. We still persuade people to do difficult and dangerous things for this country, Luke. Others might disagree, but we are the world’s leading HUMINT service. Some people do it for the money, others because they believe in an ideal. I expect they banged on about that at the Base, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ agreed Luke.

‘Now, Synapse was our key agent on this case and he was risking his life on that op. How much do you think we were paying him?’

‘I couldn’t say. A thousand quid a month?’

‘Try half that. Less. Synapse wasn’t doing it for the money. He was doing it because he believed it was the right thing to do. Jerry Benton spent two years developing him as an agent; they trusted each other and it was all starting to pay off. As of today, that’s all gone down the tube. Unless you can find him. So you need to track him down, fast, and get inside his head.’

‘Right.’

For a long moment, Khan said nothing, just looked at him, that mathematician’s brain sizing him up, cogs whirring inside his head. Then he levered himself out of his chair and walked over to where Luke was standing. He wondered what was coming next. An embrace? A kiss on both cheeks? Instead Khan placed both hands on Luke’s shoulders, gave them a squeeze, then let go. ‘I want to tell you a story,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve got a flight to
catch so I won’t take much more of your time, but this is important. Back in my university days I used to go running with a mate at weekends out on the moors.’ Khan caught his look. ‘I know, I know. You’re thinking, How did that fat knacker ever go running? Right?’ Luke said nothing. ‘Well, that was before I hit the balti curries and put all this on.’ He patted his sizeable belly almost affectionately. ‘So my mate’s old man used to take us out for dinner now and then, and we got talking. He’d been in the Service, stationed in Berlin in the early sixties, about the time the Wall went up. He told us how one Saturday night he was walking down the main drag there, the Ku’damm, minding his own business, when he noticed a crowd starting to form ahead. Turned out there was this middle-ranking East German Army officer, a border guard, drunk as a skunk, having an altercation with a West German policeman. Crowd were getting pretty hostile. They wanted the policeman to arrest him. So tell me, Luke, what would you have done?’

‘Intervened?’

‘Exactly! It was a golden opportunity. Flash your diplomatic ID, take him under your wing, get him off the hook and he’s for ever in your debt. Now you’ve got a man on the other side of the Wall.’

‘So your friend’s dad was able to recruit him?’ said Luke.

‘No!’ Khan’s voice was almost a shout. ‘No, he didn’t! And that’s just the point. He walked on by and he regretted it to the day he died. So, my point is, young man, don’t go missing any opportunities. Take every chance that comes your way. Good luck out there.’

Then Khan embraced him, sending him off with a slap on the back. And a faint feeling of foreboding.

IN THE LIFT
down to the ground-floor car park, Luke was already making a mental checklist of what he needed to do before he headed out to Heathrow. Concurrent activity, they called it in the military. It was a hard habit to shake off. Buckled into his Land Rover once more, he turned left out of the gates into the traffic streaming into Westminster, then crossed Lambeth Bridge into Horseferry Road and pulled over to dial the number he needed to call.

‘Jorge? It’s me, Luke.
Sí . . . sí . . .
Listen, I can’t do squash tonight, something’s come up but I need your help.’

‘Any time, my friend. So what’s up?’

Luke had been introduced to Jorge at a Latin America forum organized by a London think-tank just off the Strand. Like sharks circling their prey, they had eyed each other warily, both convinced the other was not quite what his business card said. Luke’s card read, ‘Foreign & Commonwealth Office’, yet Jorge was looking at a man with broad, load-bearing shoulders, a broken nose and a missing finger. FCO? Sure. And here was this young South American, a naval attaché at just thirty-six? Luke checked him out in the Diplomatic List and found that Commander Jorge Enriquez was Colombia’s youngest naval attaché at any of their embassies anywhere in the world. And for good reason, Luke
had discovered, when he dug a little further. The man’s résumé spoke for itself.

On his first command in Cartagena Jorge had helped direct an operation that had netted a record haul of 92 per cent pure coke and put several very violent and sadistic people behind bars. After promotion they had moved him to the Pacific Coast, where his enthusiasm for the job, combined with a background in intelligence, had led to several imaginatively planned and successful operations. His achievements had not gone unnoticed by the cartels, and when a contract was taken out on his life, the Defence Ministry in Bogotá had sent him to London, to give him a break. Jorge’s arrival at the tall, red-brick Colombian embassy in Knightsbridge had coincided almost exactly with Luke’s first month on the job at SIS. After that first introduction Luke had reported the contact to Angela, who had encouraged him to get to know the young prodigy of a naval officer. Colombia was, after all, considered a ‘friendly’ country by the Service. Their professional friendship had soon turned into a social one, going for beers after fiercely competitive games of squash, and Jorge introducing Luke to a succession of his stunningly beautiful Latina girlfriends. ‘I want you to meet Gabriela,’ he would say, or Beatriz, or Alejandra. Elise said he was a bit fly, but Luke liked him. More importantly, no one else in London knew more about Colombia’s coke cartels than Jorge Enriquez.

Luke pulled up at the Colombian Embassy just behind Harrods and waited while a security guard removed the orange cones that were keeping a space free for his dented and faded Land Rover. He parked behind a spotless yellow Lamborghini with Qatari numberplates. Up the flight of steps, into the embassy, a right turn into a reception area and there was Jorge, in a well-cut charcoal-grey suit, silk tie and brown brogues, a tiny Colombian flag pinned to his lapel. He was holding out a steaming cup of rich
café tinto.
Luke took the coffee, savouring its rich aroma. So much better than the overbrewed stuff they served at VX.

Jorge waited for him to drain his cup, then wagged a finger in feigned admonition.

‘So you heard, then?’ said Luke, knowing the answer already.

‘Bad news travels fast,
mi amigo
,’ replied the Colombian. ‘What the hell was your guy playing at down there? Tumaco is a shit-hole. No one goes there unless they have to.’

‘Which is why I need anything you can give me on the gangs there. I’m on tonight’s flight.’

Jorge smiled sympathetically. ‘You poor bastard. Why couldn’t they send you to my city, Medellín? Man, I don’t envy you.’

‘Thanks. You’re all heart.’

‘OK. So, here you go.’ He handed Luke a thick manila envelope. ‘It’s everything we’ve got on the crims in Tumaco. Faces, names, aliases. I have to tell you, there are some real punks down there on the border. Just don’t end up getting caught by them, because I’m not coming to get you!’

‘And you know I’d do the same for you, Jorge. Now give me another cup of that coffee, then I’m off.’