Authors: Chris Ryan
Kyle was lying on the bed, propped up by pillows, drinking whisky from a toothbrush glass. There was a half-empty bottle of Famous Grouse on his bedside table and his eyes were glazed as he stared at the television. Danny stood by the closed door for a full ten seconds before his brother turned his head. He had the uncanny sensation of looking at an older version of himself. Kyle wore an unkempt beard that was going prematurely grey. His reddish-blond hair was longer than Danny’s, but thinning at the crown. His face was more lined than a twenty-eight-year-old’s ought to be.
Kyle sneered. ‘I’m a bit upset you didn’t fast-rope through the window. That’s what you twats like doing, right?’
Danny ignored the slurred insult. He walked round to the other side of the bed, intending to take the whisky and empty it down the sink in the bathroom. At the last minute, Kyle realised what he was trying to do. A look of panic crossed his drunken face. He clumsily tried to grab the bottle, but knocked it over. The whisky glugged out on to the carpet.
‘Fucking
hell
!’ Kyle said. He set the bottle upright, but it was empty now.
‘You smell like a tramp,’ Danny told him.
Kyle shrugged and took a swig from the glass. There was something about the arrogant nonchalance in his expression that filled Danny with a sudden rage. He leaned over and grabbed Kyle by his sweat-stained T-shirt, which ripped slightly as he pulled his brother towards him. ‘I have to leave the country,’ he growled. ‘If I hear that you’ve so much as laid a finger on Dad when I come back, I swear to God
you’ll
be needing a wheelchair too, and
I’ll
be the one doing time.’
Kyle made no attempt to fight. His body was floppy as Danny threw him back on to the bed. Danny had said all he’d come to say. He made for the door.
‘I already went to the house,’ Kyle mumbled just as Danny’s hand touched the handle.
Danny turned. Kyle’s face had lost none of its drunken arrogance. ‘Surprised, little bro? Surprised that I talked to the old cunt without your permission?’ He snorted dismissively. ‘Don’t worry, we kissed and made up. The prod . . . progid . . .’ He tried three times to say the word ‘prodigal’, then gave up. ‘You want to know what he told me?’ he said suddenly, hoisting himself to his feet. He staggered unsteadily towards Danny.
‘You’re arseholed, Kyle. Why don’t you just keep your pie-hole shut?’
‘He told me sometimes he thought you were more like Taff’s son than his.’
Something snapped. Danny shoved his brother against the wall behind the bed. Their eyes met, but even though Danny had the better of him, Kyle clearly knew he wouldn’t do him any real damage. ‘Stay away from him,’ Danny rasped. As he said it, he felt his fist clenching the scruff of Kyle’s shirt tighter, constricting his neck. Kyle’s eyes bulged slightly, and for a moment he looked a little less sure of himself.
Get a grip, Danny told himself. He forced his anger to dissolve, relaxed his arms and let go of Kyle, who started to cough. There was a banging on the door, and a wheezy voice demanded to know what the hell was going on. Danny stormed out of the room, pushed past the landlord, then hurried down the stairs and out into the street, slamming the front door behind him.
He was out of breath, adrenalin throbbing, his head full of a hundred things he wanted to shout at his brother. He slammed a heavy fist against a postbox, then stalked fifty metres back down the road to where he had parked his BMW motorbike. The tyres screeched angrily as he burned off towards the centre of Hereford.
He had to be back at base. There was kit to sort out. Preparations to be made. But after driving for five minutes he stopped pretending to himself that he was heading to RAF Credenhill. And five minutes after that, he pulled up outside the tiny brick bungalow that he and Kyle had called home all their life. It stood in the heart of a housing estate in the Redhill area of Hereford that looked more run-down every time Danny saw it. It was surrounded by a wooden fence whose uprights were so rotten that it was only half standing. The tiny garden was overgrown. His father didn’t have the money, or enough pride in his surroundings, to pay anyone to sort it out for him, and there was no way he could do it himself. In the road outside, a group of six kids – four guys, two girls, all about eighteen – were sitting on the kerb sharing a spliff. Faces pierced, arms inked up, tinny R&B blaring from a smartphone. They looked at Danny with wary expressions. He might not have been around for six months, but his reputation still stood up around here. At a jerk of his thumb, the kids silently stood up and slunk away.
Danny looked at the bungalow. Cream render stained by years of rain. Double glazing that had only been installed three years ago, because the council offered to pay for it. Cheaper to keep Dad in his own home than pay for sheltered accommodation. Not that Simon Black would ever accept that.
The very sight of the place gave Danny the same claustrophobic feeling that had been his constant companion when he was growing up. All he’d ever wanted to do was get out into the countryside. Track animals. Build fires. Sleep out. His father was stubborn. He insisted that his disability wasn’t going to stop him leading a normal life. In reality Danny had learned from a very young age to always keep an eye on him in case he overstretched himself and fell out of his wheelchair, or worse. And, of course, his dad could never take him out into the fields and forests.
That had been left to Taff.
His dad’s oldest friend visited whenever he could. It was the reason they’d moved from Newcastle to Hereford in the first place, or so Danny had always been told. Taff hadn’t served with the Regiment for years, but his roots were here. Whenever he returned from one of his unexplained excursions abroad, this little bungalow would be his first port of call. Danny looked forward to those visits more than anything else. While Kyle skulked in the corner, Taff had filled Danny’s head with stories of far-off places: central Africa, South America, the Middle and Far East. He’d taken him out and shown him how to build shelters, how to find his way and live off the land.
Once, they’d caught trout in the river using homemade hooks, then built a fire and cooked their catch. Another time they had stalked a deer, after going out before dawn and building a screen of fallen tree limbs from behind which to observe it. ‘Remember today,’ Taff had said as they crouched motionless behind that makeshift OP waiting for their quarry. ‘There might come times in your life when you have to hide. If you can’t hide, then run. And if you can’t run’ – he’d given Danny a piercing look – ‘then fight.’ When the deer had arrived, he had let Danny make the kill with his hunting rifle. A direct hit that Danny had put down to beginner’s luck but which Taff had read more into. ‘It’ll be the Regiment for you, kiddo,’ he’d said that day. ‘You’ve got the hunger for it.’
And now Danny remembered what Kyle had said. ‘Sometimes he thought you were more like Taff’s son than his.’ There was truth in that, he realised. A lot of truth.
He stepped up to the bungalow, but didn’t knock on the door. Instead he went round to the side, where a window looked into the tiny front room. Danny could see his father in his wheelchair, back to the window, in front of the TV. To his right there was a small coffee table with a mug of tea. Danny could just see the steam rising from it. The TV showed some chiselled twat with high cheekbones and a spangly suit ballroom dancing with a girl dressed up like a peacock. Same thing Kyle had been watching. But Simon Black wasn’t watching them. His head was slumped. He was clearly asleep.
Danny stood there for five minutes. Not moving. Just watching. Then he turned away and walked back to his motorbike. He had no desire to disturb his father. He’d checked that the old boy was OK, and that was all that mattered.
SEVEN
At 08.45 hrs the following morning, Danny was back in London. An MoD driver had dropped him at the corner of Jermyn Street and Haymarket. He’d walked along Jermyn Street and left into St James’s Square, where he’d lingered for two minutes, taking everything in. Three attractive young women sat gossiping on the steps of the London Library, piles of books in their arms, casting occasional glances in his direction. Outside the East India Club, a man in a business suit climbed into a black cab. Danny walked anticlockwise round the square, and now he was standing outside one of the tall terraced houses on the south side, looking up at the imposing architecture of number 36. Black railings. Burgundy door with a black knocker in the shape of a lion’s head – clearly decorative because to the right of the door was a state-of-the-art video intercom. Danny’s practised eye immediately picked out a further camera, fitted to the corner of a first-floor window and angled down on to the pavement. He cheekily inclined his head at whoever was watching him on the CCTV, then approached the door. It had a burnished brass plaque on it, engraved with the words ‘International Solutions Ltd’. Beneath the company name was a logo: two hands, shaking each other in a gesture of solidarity. Danny pressed the button on the intercom. A ten-second pause, and then a female voice. ‘Good morning?’
‘I’m here to see Max Saunders.’
‘Your name, please?’
‘He’s expecting me.’
Another pause, and then a low hum and the door clicked open.
The offices of International Solutions were extremely plush. The reception room in which Danny found himself had a thick carpet and art on the walls. Along the left-hand side there was a large, comfortable sofa with curved wooden feet. As Danny closed the door behind him, a young woman in an elegant business suit walked in from another room at the far end. Her blonde hair was immaculately cut and straightened and her glasses looked like a fashion accessory rather than a necessity. She was about Danny’s age, and walked like she would be more at home on the catwalk than here. ‘Max will be with you any moment,’ she said. ‘Can I get you something? Coffee? Guatemalan or Colombian? Mineral water?’
‘Mug of PG?’ Danny suggested. ‘Three sugars?’
The PA gave him a forced, thin-lipped smile. ‘I can offer you Earl Grey, Assam or Lapsang Sou—’
‘I’m fine, love.’ Danny pointed at the sofa. ‘Shall I wait here?’
‘Come on through, come on through!’ A new voice, male. Danny looked past the PA to see a man walking into the reception room.
Max Saunders couldn’t have been taller than five foot eight, but Danny didn’t let that fool him. He was a tough, wiry little guy. Although he was probably in his late forties, he clearly still kept in shape. His greying, curly hair was slicked back with gel, and he wore little round glasses propped halfway down his nose. ‘Has Anastasia offered you coffee? We’ve got some bloody good Guatemalan stuff.’ Without waiting for a reply, he strode up to Danny and shook his hand firmly. ‘Max Saunders. You must be Black. Come on through.’
Danny winked at the ice queen, then followed Saunders into the room beyond and up an impressive wooden staircase.
‘Bit uptight, young Anastasia,’ Saunders said in a conspiratorial tone of voice as they walked up to the next floor. ‘Fucking terrible secretary, but she’s got a pair of titties on her like a couple of Zeppelins. Defy gravity. They should give them the once-over at CERN, see what’s going on.’
The thought of Saunders’ personal assistant giving this self-important little Rupert a happy ending wasn’t one Danny wanted to linger on. ‘Nice gaff,’ he said, to change the subject.
‘Comes a time in a man’s life,’ Saunders said, ‘when he needs more than a wet tarp and a plastic bag to shit in. I did my time in Hereford, you know.’
‘Yeah, I heard,’ Danny replied. In fact, he’d heard a lot more. Saunders’ name was well known back at HQ. He’d started International Solutions fifteen years ago. Nice little business model: let the Regiment spend hundreds of thousands training up the most ruthless fighting force in the world and then, when they get too old, or too sick of risking their neck for a pittance in the bank account at the end of the month, Saunders would welcome them with open arms. Danny knew full well that half the Regiment were banking on two pensions: the one they’d get from the government, and the one they’d get from Max Saunders. Recently he’d taken things a step further. The Regiment’s L Detachment had taken to welcoming some of Saunders’ personnel on training exercises on the Brecon Beacons. It meant they were fully up to date with all the latest technology, and their skills were kept razor-sharp. They were SAS in all but name. Convenient for the British government, who could swear blind they had no troops in a particular territory, when in fact they’d just contracted the job out to Saunders. And Saunders himself was a Rupert to the tips of his toes – while his men were on the ground, bodyguarding greedy businessmen in God knows what hellholes around the world, he was happy to stay in the comfort of his fancy London offices, growing fat off the profits.
‘Course, back in my day we were having a crack at the Mick,’ Saunders was saying as he showed Danny into his personal office. ‘Bloody dirty little war that. Who’s your OC?’
‘Major Anderson.’
‘Eddie?’ Saunders said with delight. ‘I knew him when he was in the Guards. Bloody good soldier. Give him my regards, won’t you?’
Saunders’ office was more like a trophy room. The walls were panelled with oak, and his vast wooden desk was covered with trinkets: ivory statues, wooden carvings, an elaborate gold hookah. This was clearly the room of a well-travelled man, or at least of a man who wanted to give that impression. Hanging on the wall behind the desk was an enormously blown-up image of a stretch of coastline, deep sea to the left, highly forested land to the right.