The Lucifer Network
Read The Lucifer Network Online
Authors: Geoffrey Archer
Contents
Geoffrey Archer's gripping thrillers are inspired by a deep knowledge of international intrigue gathered during more than 25 years of reporting for ITN's
News at Ten. The Lucifer Network
is the second novel featuring M16 agent Sam Packer, who first appeared in
Fire Hawk.
It follows his other international bestsellers:
Java Spider, Scorpion Trail, Eagle Trap, Shadow Hunter
and
Sky Dancer.
Sky Dancer
Shadow Hunter
Eagle Trap
Scorpion Trail
Java Spider
Fire Hawk
The Burma Legacy
Dark Angel
Geoffrey Archer
This book is dedicated to the RN Submarine Service
whose pivotal role in great dramas cannot always be
revealed.
The Service celebrated its centenary in 2001.
Zambia
Tuesday, 25 August 1998
THE ENGLISHMAN SWITCHED
off the engine of the hired car. The emptiness of the parking area in front of the game lodge was broken by a handful of four-wheel-drives. Beyond and above the lattice of trees ringing this small country club a few miles outside Kitwe, the African sky was purple with the start of a still night. Cicadas tickled themselves in the trees. Under the bonnet of his rented Toyota something clinked as it cooled.
The last time he'd been in Africa the job had been dirty and it was dirty again. The same muck as before. âClearing up' London had called it. âYou were in at the start, old son. Only proper you should be there at the end.'
By rights it was a job for an in-house man, someone under diplomatic cover, but they'd sent him because he was deniable. And because the matter was personal â if the man he'd come to see were to talk and was believed, it would be
his
head on the block as much as the Service's,
his
career at an end.
The car window was open, the night air still warm but with a freshness not there during the day. Sam Packer wanted a drink. Something large and volatile. But he knew to restrain himself this evening. At the
table Jackman would order the house red, because that's what he always drank here. Brain glue, he called the stuff that came in a deceptively plain bottle from the Cape. A year ago Sam's headache had been memorable. This time he would limit himself to a single glass. There was a deal to be struck. A man to be got the better of. A man who was unprincipled and full of guile.
In his late thirties, Sam Packer had a strong, square face with a chiselled chin whose determination was concealed by a close-trimmed beard. He disliked facial hair but had grown it two years ago out of a need to change his appearance. He had thick, dark hair and eyes that seemed distant, yet recorded all they saw. He was a man women tended to take an interest in.
He watched a Range Rover pull up and four men get out. White men with the look of engineers â here for the copper mines, he guessed. With wives who tinkered with oil paints and did voluntary work at the local school. The group made its way in to the restaurant, bantering gently.
He knew that decades ago whites fell in love with this sultry continent, never wanting to leave it, but his own experience had been recent and the parts of it he'd seen had smelled of death. It was a place where he didn't want to be, particularly for a mission like this.
Headlamps swept round the car park, as a vehicle turned in from the Kitwe road. Packer slumped in the seat. Was this Jackman already, doing the same as him, coming twenty minutes early to check the place out? He felt crazily jumpy tonight. Too much was hanging on the outcome of this meeting. The halogen beams bounced round the potholed parking area and died close to him. He raised his eye-line above the door sill, enough to see out. It wasn't Jackman climbing out of the vehicle parked a few feet from his, but a young and beautiful Zambian couple. As they walked with the grace of gazelles towards the lodge, they entwined fondly. He felt a twinge of envy. He pushed open the car door and stood up.
Tall and straight-backed, he wore freshly pressed tan slacks and a blue cotton shirt. He stretched to shake out the stiffness from his shoulders â there'd been little sleep on last night's flight from London. The air smelled of some alien vegetation. Dust dry. It'd be December before the rains came, according to the hotel porter who'd carried his bags earlier that day. As he closed the car door and locked it, he listened to the rhythm of the tree crickets.
Pools of darkness surrounded the car park. He peered into them one by one, looking for shadows that moved. A year ago Jackman had told him the price for a contract killing in Zambia was fifty pounds. Sam touched the pocket of his trousers to check the wallet was there, then crunched over the gravel to the lodge, running a finger under the sweaty collar of his shirt to free it from his neck. Lights set high in the dark-leafed trees at one side of the building illuminated well-watered lawns and a few hardwood easy chairs and tables. But it was the mosquito hour and the guests were indoors. Instinctively Sam smacked a hand against a cheek, imagining some winged malaria-carrier braving the repellent he'd daubed on earlier.
The lodge was reed-thatched, as were the two small accommodation chalets that stood slightly apart from it. A private venture, Jackman had told him, a more restful haven than the hotels in town for visiting relatives of European mining specialists. And the restaurant served good steaks in reasonable privacy. The lodge was of timber, darkly varnished. On its walls, paintings of elephants, baboons and exotic birds glowed under their picture lights.
âI'm meeting Harry Jackman here,' Sam announced to the shirt-sleeved European who greeted him inside.
âMay I ask your name sir?'
âFoster. Simon Foster.'
Today's name. And last year's. The one Jackman had known him by when they'd done the deal that was now causing the firm such pain. Twelve months had passed, almost to the day, a year that had proved, if proof were ever needed, that even the best of intentions could go sour.
âWhen he comes I'll tell him you're in the bar, sir.'
âThank you.'
The restaurant was small, not more than a dozen tables, several set against wide windows overlooking a small lake. Beyond it, the western horizon glimmered deep violet, its colours mirrored in the water. The four men he'd seen emerging from the Range Rover were already seated, studying menus and gulping beers.
The almost empty bar was separated from the dining room by a Chinese lacquered screen and lit by flickering oil lamps. Packer glanced around pretending to be looking for a friend. Two couples sat at tables, white haired and with the even-tanned complexions of the well-heeled. He returned their smiles, then made for a cane armchair in the shadows at the far end. The barman followed him to his seat.
â
Mosi
please,' he asked, remembering the name of the local beer. The African retreated to prepare a tray.
Packer felt intensely uneasy. His tactics were bad. He aimed to wrong-foot the wily old gun-runner, yet their meeting was at a time and place Jackman himself had set. His home ground. There'd been no other way, of course. The Service wanted a solution fast and Jackman held all the cards. Short of silencing him with a bullet, there had to be a negotiation. A gentle probing to see
what he wanted. So it had been the phone call from an untraceable number at the headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. âWe're upset, Harry. Just don't get it. Why are you doing this? We need to talk.' And now this dinner date where, if the man was truly bent on discrediting his own country's Intelligence Service, he might well have invited the press along to join them.
There was movement beyond the Chinese screen. Sam half covered his face. Instinct. Pure self-preservation. But it was only more dinner guests arriving.
Jackman could well arrive with a snapper, he realised. Some hack who'd flown out â maybe even on the same plane as Sam â to get the proof their story needed. Proof that the British government, through its intelligence arm, had involved itself in a coup in the small independent African state of Bodanga a year ago. A coup which had failed, leaving thousands dead, including the European staff of a refugee camp whose raped and machine-gunned bodies had been shown on a billion TV screens across the globe.
And it was Sam who'd paid Jackman to provide the guns for that coup. Paid him with a briefcase full of British taxpayers' sweat, handed over twelve months ago. The cash had bought a lot of guns. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of thousands of bullets.
After the débâcle he'd asked himself if it would have felt less dirty had the coup succeeded. A quick clean kill, a tyrant overthrown, victims in the dozens, not thousands. No violation of those sweet girls from Surrey and County Clare. Probably. The politicians would have crowed, assured of a place in history when the cabinet papers came out in thirty years. Consciences clear, instead of being burdened by guilt â and now by panic.
Two more elderly white couples entered the bar,
greeting one of those already there. There was air kissing and many gentle embraces.
âMy dears, it's been an age . . .' The flat accents of Europeans bred south of the equator.
No Jackman yet. No cameramen, thank God. Just these people. What were they? Tobacco farmers? Traders who killed with cancer instead of lead and never gave it a moment's thought?
The Service had been baffled by what Jackman was threatening. Why would a man who'd been the only real beneficiary of that deal to arm the coup plotters try to blow the lid off it? Why had he told a prominent British newspaper editor of MI6's complicity in the botched coup? And why
that
editor, Frank Hampson, a man whose links to the Intelligence Service had been common knowledge for years, a choice of mouthpiece that had led to the story being quickly blocked. Bad luck on Jackman's part, or deliberate? Telling a brown-noser because he
wanted
his intentions known by SIS? But what
did
he want, this man enriched by decades of illicit dealings?
Packer finished his beer. The chilled amber liquid had been pleasant, though watery. He rejected the barman's offer of another. He wanted the clearest of heads this evening.
The file on Jackman was thin â a few A4 sheets sketching suspected involvement in international intrigues and criminality, but little hard proof. The sort of bundle a graduate trainee would compile during induction at Vauxhall Cross. For more than twenty years Jackman had worked the rich vein of Africa's corruption, first gold and precious stones, then tapping the richer lode of arms. The Angolan war had bought him homes in Zambia, South Africa and Spain. Congo and the ANC had helped him accrue property back in England under nominee names. There'd been money laundering and sanctions busting. Wisps of
evidence. Not enough to convict, but possibly enough to frighten. It was Sam's only card, but hardly an ace.
The skin crawled on the back of his neck, telling him he was being watched. He turned his head slowly but couldn't see from where. A few minutes later the
maître
d
' appeared in the bar.