“Well, it beats anything I’ve heard in years. What do you think, Charles?”
“It’s certainly given the Russians a black eye. No wonder they wiped the screen clean,” Ferguson replied. “It’s the smart way to deal with it.”
“And you think it could stay that way? A non-event?”
“As regards any important repercussions. How could the Kremlin complain while at the same time denying any involvement? Okay, these things sometimes leak, Chinese whispers as they say, but that’s all. Miller will mention it to the PM, but it’s no different from the kind of things I have to tell him on a regular basis these days. We’re at war, whether we like it or not, and I don’t mean just Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“One thing does interest me,” Blake said. “According to his entry on the computer, except for the Falklands as a boy out of Sandhurst, Miller spent his eighteen years behind a desk at Army Intelligence headquarters in London.”
“What’s your point?” Cazalet said.
“That was no desk jockey at that inn in Banu.”
Ferguson smiled gently. “All it does is show you how unreliable information on computers can be. I should imagine there are many things people don’t know about Harry Miller.” He turned to Cazalet. “With your permission, I’ll retire.”
“Sleep well, Charles. We’ll share the helicopter back to Washington tomorrow afternoon. I’ll see you for breakfast.”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
Ferguson moved to the door, which Clancy held open for him, and Cazalet added, “And, Charles, the redoubtable Major Miller. I really would appreciate learning some of those ‘many things’ people don’t know about him, if that were possible, of course.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Mr. President.”
FERGUSON LAY
on the bed in the pleasant guest room provided for him, propped up against the pillows. Ten o’clock London time was six hours ahead, but he didn’t worry that no one would be in. He called the Holland Park safe house and got an instant response.
“Who is this?”
“Don’t play silly buggers, Major, you know very well who it is.”
“What I do know is that it’s four o’clock in the morning,” Roper told him.
“And if it’s business as usual, you’re right now sitting ensconced in your wheelchair in front of those damned computer screens exploring cyberspace on your usual diet of bacon sandwiches, whiskey, and cigarettes.”
“Yes, isn’t life hell?”
He was doing exactly what Ferguson had said he was. He put the telephone system on speaker, ran his hands over his bomb scarred face, poured a generous measure of scotch into a glass, and tossed it down.
“How were things at the United Nations?”
“Just what you’d expect—the Russians are stirring the pot.”
“Well, they would, wouldn’t they? I thought you’d be back today. Where are you, Washington?”
“I was. Briefed the Ambassador here and bumped into Blake Johnson just back from a fact finding mission to Kosovo. He brought me down to Nantucket to see Cazalet.”
“And?”
“And Kosovo turned out to be rather interesting for our good friend Blake, let me tell you.”
WHEN FERGUSON WAS FINISHED,
he said, “What do you think?”
“That it’s a hell of a good story to enliven a rather dull London morning. But what do you want me to do with it? Miller’s a troubleshooter for the Prime Minister, and you’ve always said to avoid politicians like the plague. They stick their noses in where they aren’t wanted and ask too many questions.”
“I agree, but I don’t like being in the dark. Miller’s supposed to have spent most of his career behind a desk, but that doesn’t fit the man Blake described in this Banu place.”
“You have a point,” Roper admitted.
“So see what you can come up with. If that means breaking a few rules, do so.”
“When do you want it, on your return?”
“You’ve got until tomorrow morning, American time. That’s when I’m having breakfast with the President.”
“Then I’d better get on with it,” Roper said.
He clicked off, poured another whiskey, drank it, lit a cigarette, then entered Harry Miller’s details. He found the basic stuff without difficulty, but after that it was rather thin on the ground.
The outer door opened and Doyle, the Military Police sergeant who was on night duty, peered in. A soldier for twenty years, Doyle was of Jamaican ancestry although born in the east end of London, with six tours of duty in Northern Ireland and two in Iraq. He was a fervent admirer of Roper, the greatest bomb-disposal expert in the business during the Troubles, a true hero in Doyle’s eyes.
“I heard the speaker, sir. You aren’t at it again, are you? It’s four o’clock in the bleeding morning.”
“Actually, it’s four-thirty and I’ve just had the General on. Would you believe he’s with the President in Nantucket?”
“He certainly gets around.”
“Yes, well, he’s given me a request for information he wants to have available for breakfast.”
“Anything special, sir?”
“He wants a background on a Major Harry Miller, a general fixer for the Prime Minister.”
Doyle suddenly stopped smiling. “A bit more than that, I’d have thought.”
“Why do you say that? How would you know him? You don’t exactly get to Downing Street much these days.”
“No, of course not, sir. I’m sorry if I’m speaking out of turn.”
“He looks pretty straightforward to me. Sandhurst, saw what war was like in the Falklands for a few months, then spent the rest of his career in Army Intelligence Corps Headquarters in London.”
Doyle looked uncomfortable. “Yes, of course, sir, if you say so. I’ll get your breakfast. Bacon and egg sandwich coming up.”
He turned and Roper said, “Don’t go, Tony. We’ve known each other a long time, so don’t mess around. You’ve known him somewhere. Come on—tell me.”
Doyle said, “Okay, it was over the water in Derry during my third tour.” Funny how the old hands never called it Londonderry, just like the IRA.
“What were you up to?”
“Part of a team manning a safe house down by the docks. We weren’t supposed to know what it was all about, but you know how things leak. You did enough tours over there.”
“So tell me.”
“Operation Titan.”
“God in heaven,” Roper said. “Unit Sixteen. The ultimate disposal outfit.” He shook his head. “And you met him? When was this?”
“Fourteen years ago. He was received, that’s what we called it, plus a younger officer badly wounded. Their motor was riddled. An SAS snatch squad came in within the hour and took them away.”
“They weren’t in uniform?”
“Unit Sixteen didn’t operate in uniform.”
“And you don’t know what happened?”
“Four Provos shot dead on River Street is what happened. It hit the news the following day. The IRA said it was an SAS atrocity.”
“Well, they would.” Roper nodded. “And when did you see him again?”
“Years later on television when he became an MP and was working for Northern Ireland Office.”
“It gets worse.” Roper nodded. “So, a bacon-and-egg sandwich and a pot of tea, and bring me another bottle of scotch. Be prepared to hang around. I may need your expertise on this one.”
HARRY MILLER
had been born in Stokely in Kent in the country house in which the family had lived since the eighteenth century. His father, George, had served in the Grenadier Guards in the Second World War, there was family money, and after the war he became a barrister and eventually Member of Parliament for Stokely and the general area. Harry was born in 1962, his sister Monica five years later, and tragically her mother had died giving birth to her.
George Miller’s sister Mary, a widow, moved in to hold the fort, as it were. It worked well enough, particularly as the two children went to boarding school at an early age, Winchester for Harry and Sedgefield for Monica, who was only fourteen when he went to Sandhurst. She was a scholar by nature, which eventually took her to New Hall College at Cambridge to study archaeology, and when Roper checked on her, he found she was still there, a lecturer and a Fellow of the College, married to a professor, Sir John Starling, who had died of cancer the previous year.
According to the screen, Miller’s career with the Intelligence Corps had been a non-event, and yet the Prime Minister had made him an under secretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office, which obviously meant that the PM was aware of Miller’s past and was making use of his expertise.
Roper was starting to go to town on Unit 16 and Operation Titan, when Doyle came in with a tray.
“Smells good,” Roper said. “Draw up a chair, Tony, pour me a nice cup of tea, and I’ll show you what genius can do to a computer.”
HIS FIRST PROBINGS
produced a perfect hearts-and-minds operation out of Intelligence Headquarters in London, in which Miller was heavily involved, full of visits to committees, appeals to common sense, and an effort to provide the things that it seemed the nationalists wanted. It was a civilized discussion, providing the possibility of seeing each other’s points of view, and physical force didn’t figure into the agenda.
Miller met and discussed with Sinn Fein and the Provos, everything sweetly reasonable. Then came a Remembrance Day, with assembled Army veterans and their families, and a bomb that killed fourteen people and injured many more. A few days later, a hit squad ambushed a local authority van carrying ten Protestant laborers who were there to do a road repair. They were lined up on the edge of a ditch and machine-gunned.
Finally, a roadside bomb destined for two Land Rover army patrols was late, and the vehicle that came along was a bus carrying schoolgirls.
It was that which had changed Miller’s views drastically. Summary justice was the only way to deal with such people, and his superiors accepted his plans. No more hearts and minds, only Operation Titan and disposal by Unit 16, the bullet leading to a crematorium. All very efficient, a corpse turned into six pounds of gray ash within a couple of hours. It was the ultimate answer to any terrorist problem, and Roper was fascinated to see that many hard men in the Protestant UVF had also suffered the same fate when necessary.
He found the names of members of Unit 16 and the details of some who had fallen by the wayside. Miller had been tagged as a systems analyst and later as a personnel recruiter at Army Intelligence Headquarters in London, and then, a captain, was put in charge of what was described as the Overseas Intelligence Organization Department. A harmless enough description that was obviously a front.
Unit 16 itself consisted of twenty individuals, three of them women. Each had a number, with no particular logic to it. Miller was seven. The casualty reports were minimal on the whole: the briefest of descriptions, names of victims, location of the event, not much more. Miller’s number figured on twelve occasions over the years, but the River Street affair was covered in more detail than usual.
Miller had been detailed to extract a young lieutenant named Harper who’d been working undercover and had called in that his cover had been blown. When Miller picked him up, their car was immediately cut off in River Street by the docks, one vehicle in front, another behind.
A burst of firing wounded Harper, and Miller was ordered at gunpoint to get out of his vehicle. Fortunately, he had armed himself with an unusual weapon, a Browning with a twenty-round magazine. He had killed two Provos by shooting them through the door of his car as he opened it, turned and disposed of the two men in the vehicle behind through their windscreen. As Doyle had mentioned, they’d reached the safe house later and been retrieved by the SAS.
“My God, Major,” Doyle said in awe. “I never knew the truth of it, just the IRA making those wild claims. You’d have thought he’d have got a medal.”
Roper shook his head. “They couldn’t do that—it would lead to questions, give the game away. By the way, Lieutenant Harper died the following day at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.”
Doyle shook his head, genuinely distressed. “After all that.”
“Name of the game, Tony, and I don’t need to remind you that this is all top secret at the highest level.”
“I’ve worked for General Ferguson long enough to know my place, and it isn’t in Afghanistan, it’s right here at Holland Park. I wouldn’t jeopardize that for anything.”
“Sensible man. Let me get on with this report for Ferguson.”
“I’ll check on you later.” Doyle hesitated. “Excuse me asking, but is Major Miller in some kind of trouble?”
“No, but old habits die hard. It would appear he’s been handing out his original version of justice in Kosovo, in company with Blake Johnson, of all people.”
Doyle took a deep breath. “I’m sure he had his reasons. From what I’ve heard, the Prime Minister seems to think a lot of him.”
He went out and Roper sat considering it, then tapped “No. 10 Downing Street” into his computer, punched Ferguson’s private link code, checked the names of those admitted during the past twenty-four hours, and there was Miller, booked in at five the previous evening, admitted to the Prime Minister’s study at five-forty.
“My goodness,” Roper said softly. “He doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet. I wonder what the Prime Minister had to say?”
MILLER HADN’T BOTHERED
with Belgrade. A call to an RAF source had indicated a Hercules leaving Pristina Airport after he and Blake had parted. There had been an unlooked-for delay of a couple of hours, but they had landed at RAF Croydon in the late afternoon, where his credentials had assured him of a fast staff car to Downing Street.
He didn’t phone his wife. He’d promised to try and make her opening night, and still might, but duty called him to speak to the Prime Minister on his return and that had to be his priority. There was a meeting, of course, there always was. He kicked his heels in the outer office, accepted a coffee from one of the secretaries, and waited. Finally, the magic moment came and he was admitted.