Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2) (2 page)

Chapter Two

C
aptain Michael Pope, newly appointed as Control, had arranged for an agent to work as a barista in the Covent Garden branch of Starbucks. It was simple tradecraft and yet as effective today as when Somerset Maugham had met his old butter-woman in a Geneva marketplace. Beatrix had palmed her a note after receiving her latte and had received a reply in the same fashion when she dropped in for a coffee the following day.

Pope would meet her at Gatwick.

He was waiting for her in the seats arranged across the large hall that preceded security. She bought a coffee and watched for a moment to check that he was not observed. Beatrix had no history with Pope, and so she had to be careful. He had been cooperative so far, but then he had little choice. She had evidence that would cause significant damage to the government if it were ever released. Pope’s predecessor was a very bad man, and he had been using Group
Fifteen
and its cadre of assassins as his own personal hit squad for years. That kind of information would be very destructive if it ever got out into the world.

She had to tread lightly. Pope seemed like a good man, but she was not naïve enough to think that he was immune from manipulation by the mandarins who pulled the strings above him.

He was reading a copy of the
Telegraph
, the large broadsheet spread wide and obscuring his face, and as she approached, Beatrix could not help but notice that the front-page story below the fold recounted the unexplained murder of a security analyst outside her Wiltshire house.

“You’ve made more noise than I expected,” Pope said as she took the seat next to him.

“I wasn’t in a particularly subtle mood.”

The pain had flared up as she drove south to the airport, and she had already taken as much morphine as she felt comfortable taking. Pope still did not know about her diagnosis. The only other person who knew, other than Mohammed, her housekeeper in
Marrakech
, was John Milton, and there was something about his stolid
dependability
that said he would keep her secret.

“I might have what you need to go after Duffy,” he said.

She felt the familiar tightening in her stomach as she sipped her coffee and waited for him to continue.

“We need to discuss it first. I’ve given you Joyce and Chisholm. No questions asked.”

“What do you want, Pope?”

“There needs to be a little
quid pro quo
with this one. You scratch my back . . . you know how it is. The intelligence . . . well, it’s very sensitive, and I was only able to get it by promising that we would help iron out a few problems that Manage Risk and Duffy have helped to cause.”

“Whose problems?”

“The government’s.”

“That sounds like you’re making this conditional,” she said.

“No . . .”

“And I thought we agreed that this was going to be
unconditional
.”

“It is. By and large, anyway. You don’t
have
to do it this way.”

She nodded. “I could do it myself.”

“You could. They know that. And they know you could release the evidence on Control. Don’t think they’ve underestimated the trouble that would cause, because they haven’t.”

“So what do
they
want?”

“A bit of history first.” He took out a folded printout from his pocket. It was a map. “You know where he is. Joyce told you, didn’t he?”

“Iraq. Chisholm confirmed it. But I don’t know where.”

“There’s an enormous oilfield at Rumaila. The biggest in the country and they think the third largest in the world. The Iraqis say there could be eighteen billion barrels. It’s worth a ridiculous amount. The oil ministry auctioned the contract off six months ago, and they had Exxon and Mobil bidding on the one hand and a
consortium
of BP and the Chinese on the other. The Americans won, which didn’t make the government particularly happy, as you can imagine. The treasury revenue on this is enormous. And frankly, we could do with the money.”

“What does this have to do with Duffy?”

“I’m getting to that. It goes without saying the area isn’t safe. The Americans lost three executives when they went down to spec it out. The insurgents didn’t take too kindly to them and had them shot. So the companies invested in better security. Our friends, Manage Risk, tendered and won the contract. They’ve been supplying ex-Spec Op guys, SAS, SEALs and Rangers, and they’ve kept a lid on things for the most part.” He stabbed a finger on the map. “Rumaila. Twenty miles from the Kuwaiti border, just south of Basra. Sunni territory. It was discovered in 1953 by the Basra
Petroleum
Company, but then it was confiscated by the Iraqi
government
. The Sunnis have always maintained a claim to it.”

“This is very interesting, Pope, but I don’t have time for history. Just tell me where Duffy is and what you want me to do.”

He ignored her and continued. “The locals have been protesting ever since the Americans won the contract. They’ve picketed the offices, targeted the officials and vandalised the drill sites. It came to a head last week. There was a big protest, several thousand locals, and it started to turn ugly. They tried to break into the compound. There were a few Iraqi soldiers there, but mostly it was men from Manage Risk. They opened fire on the crowd with machine guns. Two hundred injured, sixteen dead. It’s been a very big deal down there. The locals tried to get the men prosecuted, but the charges were all thrown out.”

“I read about it. Unreliable evidence.”

“And it was. The judge said it was built on testimony given in exchange for immunity. The reason you should be interested in this is because Bryan Duffy was one of the five defendants. He was
Manage
Risk’s top man on the ground that day. The evidence
suggests
he gave the order to fire.”

“He’s still there?”

Pope nodded. “Working between Basra and the oil field. One of the other defendants is having a crisis of conscience. His name is Mackenzie West. He’s a man of faith and he can’t square what happened with there being no punishment. We’ve heard through
channels
that he’s ready to give evidence against the other four. Manage Risk knows that. They’ve trumped up a bogus medical
reason
why he needs to be taken out of circulation. We need you to go and get him out.”

“What’s it got to do with us?”

“If the case against Manage Risk is successful, it will make it very hard for the Americans to hold on to the oilfield. There’s already been a backlash, and if this can be made to stick, it’ll get much, much worse. BP has been told by the Iraqis that there’s a good chance that the contract will be torn up and the field put out to tender again. The government is anxious that should happen. All this intel is coming from MI6. Everyone wins: you get Duffy, the Iraqis get justice, BP gets the oilfield, the treasury gets billions in fresh taxes.”

“Very neat. He’s protected?”

“By the best they’ve got.”

“How many?”

“There’s three hundred in Basra. Good men, not chumps.”

“So it wouldn’t be easy?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“And I don’t have a choice?”

“
No, of course you do. You could go in your
self and take Duffy out.”

“But I’ll get no cooperation?”

“I won’t be able to help if you do that. My hands are tied. If you help, I’m authorised to get you into the country and arm you. If you don’t, I can’t. And they want you to remember that you still have Connor English and Control that you need to find. And they’re looking for them for you now.”

She snorted dismissively. “They’ve been looking for a year, and there’s been nothing.”

“They’ll still find them faster than you will.”

“So I could work with you or do it myself. There’s another option. I could release the information I have.”

“They’re hoping you won’t think it’s necessary to do that. The loose partnership we’ve had so far has worked well for you. There’s no reason why it has to stop working now.”

She shook her head. She was tempted to ignore him and go it alone, but that would take much longer, and if there was one thing she did not have, it was time.

“Tell them I’ll do it,” she said.

Chapter Three

B
eatrix flew British Airways to Marrakech. She was tired and in pain, but she had arranged a meeting with a particular contact who was difficult to pin down, and the only day he was available was today. She had placed a large order that was going to make him a lot of money. She was sure that he would be glad that he had made the time in his day to see her.

She had little in the way of luggage, just a carry-on bag with a few things inside it, and so at least she was reasonably unencumbered as she stepped into the car at the taxi rank and asked for the carpet shop that Abdullah used to front his other business.

The traffic was heavy, but the driver, mercifully, was silent.
Beatrix
was able to spend the time collecting her thoughts. She had made good progress. Oliver Spenser had been eliminated in Russia when she came to Milton’s aid. Joyce had been more difficult to reach in Somalia, but she had managed it. Chisholm had just been a case of good intelligence. She had been the easiest of the three. She had adopted another name, but she was still in the country, tangled up in the spider’s web of intercepts that ended at GCHQ, and it had been a matter of time before the signals were decoded and she was tracked down.

Three names had been scrubbed from her list.

Bryan Duffy would be more difficult. She had not been to Iraq for many years, but she knew very well how infiltrating a lawless state could present particular challenges. If Manage Risk was the same as the American security firms that had rushed in to gorge on the carcass of Saddam’s old regime, it would be the equivalent of a small and supremely well-equipped army in a country that was il
l-equipped
to stand up to them.

This would be the most difficult target so far.

The taxi stopped in a quiet side road. The shop catered to the tourist trade, touting rolls of carpet and Berber rugs for extortionate prices. Beatrix told the driver to wait and went into the shop through the back entrance. Abdullah was drinking mint tea in a large wicker chair. He was old, fat and lecherous, and Beatrix found him repulsive, but he had contacts and discretion, and that was enough for her to put up with him.

“Beatrix! My dear girl.”

“Abdullah.”

“How are you?”

“Tolerable.” She had no inclination to engage in small talk with him. “Did you get what I wanted?”

“You are fortunate, Beatrix. It wasn’t easy.”

“Did you get them?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I need you to deliver it.”

He looked at her gravely. “It is not going to be cheap.”

“How much?”

Abdullah named a price.

It was very, very expensive, and Beatrix knew that he would be adding a fifty or sixty per cent markup to the price he was paying God knows who to source the order for him. That was the cost of doing business with this type of merchant and this type of
merchandise
. Same the world over. Not much she could do abo
ut it.

“I’ll transfer half tonight,” she said. “Half on receipt.”

“That is acceptable.”

“When can you deliver?”

“Tomorrow morning. Are you in the same place?”

“Yes.”

“Then they will come to you hidden in crates of fruit. I hope you like orange juice.”

“Can’t beat it,” she said.

Chapter Four

T
here is a series of buildings on the bank of the Thames, some on the water and some set back from it. They are anonymous and bland, and for all intents and purposes, they accommodate a host of companies and organisations that look like all the other companies in all the other similar buildings in the area. The real purposes of those companies are jealously guarded, cloaked with the draconian protection of the Official Secrets Act and unknown to the thousands of ordinary Londoners who pass them every day. There is the hulking mass of the building constructed to look like a Mesopotamian
pyramid
. It could hardly be less conspicuous and is referred to by the locals as
Babylon-on-Th
ames. Its brashness was a design choice. The
government’s
decision in the middle of the last decade to acknowledge that it was the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service gave an official imprimatur to a fact that was well known in any event. The building’s ostentatiousness also has the useful side effect of attracting attention to it and deflecting curiosity away from some of the other buildings in the immediate neighbourhood.

In that sense, it is a lightning rod.

Those buildings, and the clandestine organisations that work within them, would have been
much
more interesting to those with even a passing interest in national security.

There is one building, for example, that is particularly anonymous. It is separated from the MI6 building by two lanes of busy
traffic
and is hidden down a narrow side street that can trace its
history
all the way back to the Great Fire. The neighbouring
buildings
are old and historically significant, but this one, erected on the site of a Luftwaffe bomb, is a banal sixties infill. There is no
reason
to give it a second glance. The brass plaque on the wall and the notice above the desk in the utilitarian reception advertise
“Global Logistics.”
A search of the internet furnishes the
information
that the company was founded twenty-five years
earlier
, is engaged
in the
import and export business, and has a board of directors who are as bland and uninteresting as the architecture of the building in whic
h they work.

None of that is true.

It is the headquarters of Group Fifteen, a beyond top-secret, quasi-military organisation that
is
responsible for implementing the foreign policy of the United Kingdom when diplomacy and the more nuanced methods of the Secret Intelligence Service
have
failed. It is responsible, for example, for the liquidation and elimination of enemies of the state or those men and women who, for whatever reason, stand between Her Majesty’s Government and the pursuit of its global ambitions.

Captain Michael Pope, the new Control of Group Fifteen, parked his unremarkable Audi Q5 in the underground garage and stepped out. He was unremarkable himself: black hair, a rugged face, the build and bearing of a military man. He walked to the secure elevator, activated it with his thumbprint, faced the unblinking eye of the security camera so that his identity could be verified and then waited for it to carry him to his office.

The office floor was divided into cubicles, and it hummed with quiet industry. The staff were seconded from the internal and
external
security agencies, with others assigned from the Ministry of Defence. They monitored ongoing operations, vetted potential new recruits, researched targets and provided intelligence to agents in the field. Pope had benefitted from their professionalism when he had been on operation himself, and he still found it a little jarring to have been promoted into a position where he was responsible for them, rather than the other way around.

He crossed the floor and returned the greetings of the analysts who looked up from their work.

His office was on the side of the building that faced the water, and it boasted a spectacular view over the river and the skyline beyond.

Pope opened the door and went inside.

Sir Benjamin Stone, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service,
which was
more commonly known as MI6, was waiting for him.

“Oh,” he said. “Good afternoon, sir. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know,” said Stone. He was in his late fifties, a little overweight, and dressed with the stuffy good taste that marked out the better shops on Savile Row. He was sitting on the sofa next to the 
fireplace
. His legs were crossed, and he had a copy of the
Telegraph
spread out across his lap.

“How can I help you?” Pope said breezily as he turned away and took off his coat.

Stone folded the paper and shoved it into the case at his feet. “I wanted to know first-hand how it’s going.”

“With Rose?”

“Who else.”

Pope hung the coat and turned back to Stone. “I saw her
yesterday
.”

“And?”

“She’ll do it. Just as you asked.”

“Excellent,” Stone said. “Well done.”

Pope walked across the office to the fireplace. “I wish there was no need to bargain with her like this,” he said. “After what she’s been through? What Control and the others did? We should be doing everything we can to help her, not putting distractions in her way.”

“And we
are
helping her, Pope. We gave her Joshua Joyce in Somalia. That took some fancy footwork. The Americans were not pleased.”

“The hostages would all have been dead if it wasn’t for her. The SEALs had given up.”

“That might be true, but they don’t like being blindsided. And they had
no
idea.”

Pope ignored that. “Let’s be honest about this, sir. We’re only helping her with Duffy because it is in our best interests and because she’s agreed to do our dirty work for us. She’s engaged in SIS work and she’s not a serving agent, sir. That makes me very
uncomfortable
.”

“And it’s for the best that she isn’t an agent. Those oilfields are a very big prize. Billion-pound assets. Washington is heavily invest
ed in them.”

That was true, but it didn’t make it right, and Pope suppressed a sigh of impatience. “We’re not helping her enough. She’ll need backup in Iraq.”

“And I told you, we can’t be seen to be involved.”

“There are ways around that . . .”

Stone held up a hand impatiently. “Your concerns have already been noted, Control. Let’s not rehash old ground again. It’s tedious. We give her the minimum amount needed. Twelve has no active record.
No one
knows who he is. He’s completely deniable. If he gets caught, then we have no idea who he is or what he’s doing there. If Rose gets caught, then we say she was going after Bryan Duffy and it has nothing to do with us. It’s perfect. You, though, are different. You
are
known. If you got caught, if the State Department found out who you are and why you were there, trying to interfere with American contracts, the result would be very unpleasant. That’s a full-blown diplomatic incident, and I guarantee you we would be completely and utterly buggered. So let me be as clear about this as I can be. I don’t want there to be any ambiguity. You are not, repeat
not
, to be involved in any meaningful, practical capacity. You are not to be on the ground. I don’t even want you dreaming about Basra. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean it, Control.”

“I understand.”

“And she’s a big girl. I’m sure she can sort herself out.”

Pope gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir.” He went around to the other side of his desk and sat down.

“What about Chisholm?” Stone asked.

“There’s not much left of her. Beatrix paid her a visit.
Followed
her home last night, camped out and then took care of it
this
morning
.”

“How?”

“Left a bomb under her car.”

“Not quite as . . . visceral as the other two.”

“I don’t think she cares how they go, sir. She’s not into causing them suffering. She isn’t a sadist. The way she sees it, they’ve done her wrong, and now they have to pay. It’s like a ledger. An eye for an eye. Simple accounting.”

“The police?”

“They’re investigating. They won’t find anything. Rose is an expert. It’s clean.”

“Spenser, Joyce and Chisholm. That’s three left.”

“I’m assuming we still don’t know where Connor English and Control are hiding?”

“With Manage Risk. That’s obvious. But the company has
powerful
friends, and they are being protected, Control
especially
.
He could be anywhere in the world. She might need to find
him 
herself
.”

“She will,” Pope said.

He was certain about that.