Devil in the Wires (5 page)

 

Chapter 12

The Octopus

“T
here is nothing to explain. We're businessmen, the same as you. In other circumstances . . .” The Colonel spread his hands. “ . . . we might be sitting at a boardroom table, drinking tea.”

“You carry your fuckin' AK to the boardroom, aye?”

“I carry it wherever I think necessary. All that's unusual about this is what the country itself demands.”

The only time I'd ever seen the Colonel flustered was when I had the god there, dancing on my bit of fishing line. His first retrieval. Well, at least he'd got a show. If he was lucky any later ones were going to be a major disappointment.

But now he was telling nothing. Carl made some noises about “slotting” him or “wasting” him, but the Colonel merely looked at us and asked, “Would you become a murderer?”

“Aye. You and your three sprogs. Don't think that worries me, wee boy. Don't you even think it.”

But it did seem to worry him. It also seemed to worry him that we were getting sightseers along. He said to me, “We should be on the road. Everyone from here to Basrah's gonnae ken what's up.”

The three boys were a better prospect for enquiries, but for one thing: none of them spoke English.

“Ah, fuck it,” said Carl.

“Wise words, my friend.” Nouri emptied out another pack of cigs. “Fuck it, indeed.”

We left them there. There was nothing we could do, and of course, they knew it. At best we might arrest them, take them for trial; but we didn't want them in the truck, and the mission, as Carl pointed out, was to get the flask back safely.

“I thought the mission was to get
me
back safely,” I said.

“Ah no. The flask is full, your job is done. You're expendable.”

He saw the look that crossed my face and punched me on the arm. “Nae offense there, pal.”

Nouri giggled.

“Irrelevant,” I said. “Technically.”

“Aye. Too fuckin' right.”

We took their guns, their papers. Their cigarettes. Perhaps their friends would be back for them. Perhaps not. Either way, this wasn't exactly the middle of nowhere here.

­People sat in the dirt, only a dozen or so yards away, just watching us. A water seller ambled among them; up on the road, a ­couple of food vendors had set up. They had lanterns hanging, they called out in Arabic.

Who'll care about a single truck, Dayling had said. He hadn't reckoned on a major firework display and what must have resembled one more skirmish from the recent war.

We climbed into the truck. One of the Colonel's boys ran after us, babbling, desperate not to be left behind. But the Colonel himself merely stood, his arms folded, and watched.

As we went by, he gave a little, ironic salute.

“Fuck sake,” said Carl. “Does he not know when he's beat?”

Their documents were Arabic and something else, probably something Eastern European. Nothing English at all. Nouri flicked through them, told us, “They name a company called Modern Light and Power. Offices in Stockholm. Does that strike you as likely?”

“Aye, well,” said Carl. “You can put your office where you want, these days.”

“Oh, indeed. Play both sides off against each other. Either way, you win.”

“What?” I said.

Nouri pushed his glasses up his nose, looked at me. “Does your Registry not have an Eastern branch? For Russia, China, India—­wherever?”

“We've made some inroads, yeah, but—­”

“But underfunded. Like he said. Now they want their slice of the pie. The Registry, my friend, is like an octopus: its tentacles are in so many places it no longer knows where it is or what it does. Perhaps no one knows. Hm?”

“That's—­that's the weirdest conspiracy theory I've ever come across.”

“Oh aye,” said Carl. “It's modern business, that. All multinationals nowadays.”

“I think,” said Nouri, “we have just met your poor relations. Don't you?”

“Bollocks,” I said.

I shook my head. I said, “That's ridiculous. Even if it was true, it couldn't possibly—­”

“Ah.” Nouri wagged his head.

“They're pirates,” I said, “That's all. Out for what they can get.”

“Oh yes. And every emperor, every dictator, every CEO—­all of them were pirates once. In-­fucking-­deed.”

“And there you have it,” said Carl. “Pearls of Eastern wisdom. Eh, Nour? Still. I'll tell you what they bloody weren't. Barring your boss man there, your big chief feller. They weren't fucking soldiers, I say.”

“And praise God for that,” said Nouri.

“Wee boys. You dress 'em up in khaki, order 'em around, they think they're—­God knows . . .”

“Royal Marines?” I said.

“Now that, pal, they will never be. Ye ken?”

I
t had been Carl, on watch, who'd heard the Colonel's vehicle approach. He'd woken Nouri. Then he'd gone to take a look, unaware the newcomers were homing right in on our truck. Nouri, meanwhile, seeing the armored car, had assumed it was to beef up our defenses on the journey home, when we'd have company assets to protect. He'd soon found out how wrong he was. And Carl had kept his head down, waiting for his chance.

“I thought I'd try and scare 'em with a ­couple o' warning shots,” he said. “They were quicker off the mark than I expected over that. But you,” he turned to me, “now that was fucking
nice
, that was. A wee bit distraction there. My head still fucking aches from it, but . . .”

Carl and Nouri took turns driving. There were checkpoints, the usual tension. Between those and the rough roads, I didn't get a lot of sleep. And all I thought was that I wanted to be home.

It struck me I'd grown less at ease with the world these last few years. There was still the pleasure of a job well done, the thrill of taking on something I knew only a handful of ­people in the world could really manage; yesterday, indeed, I'd done something that might have been unique. I'd seen field ops play for effects before—­Martin Klein was a notorious showman, one of the few who actually enjoyed an audience—­but even they never pushed it so far; never had to. But I'd pushed it, pushed it, then pulled it back again, a perfect retrieval.

Maybe I'd been lucky. It could have easily—­too easily—­gone wrong.

It isn't what happened that bothers you. It's what could have happened. What could happen next
.

I had a few days' leave due. Maybe it was time to take them.

 

Chapter 13

Special Projects

“S
ee? It went well, didn't it?”

“Actually, no.”

“But you got it?”

He was just a bit too quick on that for my taste. Not, “What happened?” “Are you OK?” or, “Anybody hurt?” Not even, “Take a seat.” I dropped the backpack on his office floor, in the middle of a red-­and-­yellow oriental rug. His gaze went with it. His hands made little in-­out moves, like silent applause.

“Yeah,” I said. “I got it.”

He called for tea, then made a show of breaking out his best scotch from the secret drawer and pouring me a glass. He had one too, “to keep me company,” he said. I outlined what had happened. For the man who'd assured me we'd be under the radar, I have to say his little pantomime of shock wasn't especially convincing. He asked me how I was. He put his head on one side, then the other. He said, “My God,” “No,” and “Jesus Christ.” Then he said, “Come on. Let's grab some lunch.”

I bent to pick up the pack.

“We'll put that where it's safe,” he said.

“London's pretty safe,” I said.

“Well, we've no flights right this second, Chris. But there's a secure room here. It's not the first of these we've had to deal with, I can tell you. The Registry branch out here might not be very active, but it's not . . .
inactive.
”

I was reluctant to let the thing out of my sight, in light of all the trouble it had cost me, but I did see Dayling's point. The secure room, as it turned out, was a cupboard armored like a bank vault. Steel door, steel walls, combination lock. Very nice.

I was tired, I was irritable. But I was also hungry. And you do get a taste for
bamia
, if it's done right.

We went to the same restaurant as before. The same waiter chewed what may have been the same toothpick—­there were shortages, after all, there was a war on—­and Dayling ordered for us with a genteel magnanimity, as if he knew my own tastes better than I did myself.

“Most of these places,” he told me, “they've got about a hundred items on the menu, but in the kitchen, only one.” He paused, like a conjuror before the climax of the trick. “Fried chicken.”

“I like fried chicken.”

“You'd do well here, then.”

“You've done pretty well.”

He shrugged, mock-­modestly.

“Though I'll admit,” I said, “I'm sort of baffled by it all. I mean, you left Field Ops for a place like this? Is that wise?”

“Or safe?” he countered. “I know, I know.” He started fussing with the dishes on the table, lifting each lid, checking what was where. I noticed that he wore long sleeves again, buttoned at the cuffs.

I said, “Doesn't it get to you? The bombs, the shootings? You said it yourself: easy to kill someone here. Right?”

“Oh—­” He flapped a hand. “I'm not exactly front line. We're well protected, and the money's good. I get regular vacations. Here—­try some of this. You'll like this.”

He ladled some sort of sausage onto my plate. It floated in a pool of grease and veg. Little of it was immediately identifiable.

He looked at me, pulled a serious face. “Chris. I feel so bad about what happened. I feel like it's my fault. If I'd have known the risk—­”

“Yeah. Well. I'm on the first flight back to Brize, and I'm not coming back.” I let this rest awhile. Then I said, “You still haven't answered me. Leaving Field Ops, coming here.”

“Well, that's a hard one, Chris.”

“You mean it wasn't just my shining example put you off your game, then?”

“It's hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“It's like this. Here, there's a risk. We all hope it won't happen, we know it
probably
won't happen. In Field Ops—­in Field Ops, I bloody
knew
that I was going to come a cropper. Just a matter of time, you know? Just a matter of time.”

There was something just a little off about him, something raw and jittery. I cut a piece of sausage. I could smell the herbs in it, rich, exotic. Then I said, “Funny, though. I got the feeling you'd have liked this last one. Thought you'd want a crack at it yourself, yeah?”

“I'm not Field Ops.”

“Still. You could have come along, just for the ride?”

“I told you. I'm not built for it.”

He started on his own plate. He put his head down and I watched him eating.

Then he said, “I've visited Assur.”

“Really?”

“Long time back. I was still in Ops. We were taking readings, . . . Country was a bit rough, even then. No retrievals. Not allowed. But I got the chance to . . . sit there.”

“Commune with it,” I quoted.

“I could . . .
feel
it, Chris. I could feel its moods. Feel it talk to me. I'd never known that. I was—­this will make you laugh, but I was quite religious in my teens. Life was . . . very difficult for me. I'd go to church when no one else was there, and pray and pray and pray. I'd bunk off school and go to church. I practically wore the knees out in my trousers. And I never got a sense of God. I wanted so much just to feel that there was someone there, you know? That there was something more than just the—­the shit that I was going through. I wanted Him to say, ‘It's all right, Andrew.' Only He never did. But in Assur . . .”

“It spoke to you?”

“No. He didn't
speak
. But he was there. I don't think that I even prayed—­well, not exactly, but for the first time I was aware that, if I did . . . someone would hear. It was—­I still get flashbacks, sometimes. Very rarely, but I do. It was extraordinary.”

“You were Field Ops for a long time. You must have experienced—­”

“Not like this.”

His body language had changed. No longer suave, laid-­back, now he angled forwards, his gestures nervous and incisive.

“You know that being close to them, it does things to your head. Your thoughts—­”

He slapped his fork down, a little too loudly.

“I know all about that.
All
about it. Don't try to make excuses or explain it away. This was different.”

“It's the oldest known,” I said, hoping to deflect him.

“More than that. It's the primary. This is where it all began. I swear.”

“Well, it's a theory . . .”

“The gods aren't local. They're not from our space-­time. That's why everything gets . . . twisted up around them. It's my belief that the Assur entity was first, and then it . . . let's say it budded, like a plant. And all the others grew from that. But it was always first.”

“That's interesting,” I said.

“Oh, it's more than interesting. It could change our whole perspective on them. I don't know . . .” He sighed. “I would have gone. I really would. Except they wanted you.”

Something in his tone just pricked my interest then.

“ ‘They,' ” I said.

He waved a hand dismissively, and reached out for the water jug.

“This came from Seddon, right?” I said. “In London? That's where I get my orders. That's where I got this one.”

He drank, said nothing.

“ ‘They,' ” I said again.

“Well.” He pursed his lips, wiped his mouth on a napkin. “I don't suppose it matters now. It was the US office, Special Projects. They wanted you, mentioned you by name. I wasn't meant to tell you.” He looked sheepish. “But it can't do any harm now, can it? And we're old friends.”

“Special . . . Projects?”

“That's right. Why?”

So I said a name.

I said, “Shailer.”

Dayling said, “I didn't like the secrecy, I must admit. When it's a question of security, that's fine. But not between ourselves, eh?”

“Did you deal with him directly? Shailer?”

“Only once. He said he knew you, but they wanted me to deal with it. I realized then that's the only reason they'd called me. Because I knew you. They thought it would help.” He looked down at his plate. “I wasn't important at all, you see? Except for that.”

The rest of the meal was long and awkward. I kept trying to question him and wound up pretty much convinced he was as ignorant as he claimed. What bothered me the most, though, was that I'd got the job the usual way, through Seddon's office, without even a hint of subterfuge or outside involvement of any kind. I asked repeatedly, “Was Seddon in on this?” But all he'd say was, “Seddon wasn't mentioned.” We finished with two tiny cups of thick black coffee, which pretty much disposed of any hopes I'd had for decent sleep. I tossed and turned in my hotel bed, and in the morning, checked my flight time, swallowed a quick breakfast, then went to Dayling's office to collect the flask. He wasn't at work. He wasn't answering his phone, or, so I was told, his door.

It took a while to find someone who knew the combination for the safe room, but presently a plump young man appeared, fussing with a bunch of keys. He wore jeans and carpet slippers. He dialed the combination lock, then tried a variety of keys upon the other two until he got it open. He was very apologetic about the delays, though nobody was listening by then in any case.

The flask, of course, was gone.

And so was Dayling.