(1995) By Any Name (34 page)

Chaloner stopped talking and stared at him.

Simmonds examined John’s arm.

Misunderstanding Chaloner’s questioning expression, he murmured. ‘Whoever he is, this wound isn’t serious, he’ll live.’

‘Rank?’ Chaloner asked.

‘Colonel.’ John looked past Elizabeth. In that instant she knew that he had regained his memory –

and in his remembering John West had been as irrevocably lost as though he had never existed. ‘I am

– was – in charge of security at the disarmament conference.’

‘Then we’d better get you to the hospital and patch you up so you can be debriefed as soon as possible.’

Chaloner didn’t bother to disguise the scepticism in his voice.

‘You don’t understand, captain.’ Richard was peculiarly composed for a wounded man who’d just killed an NCO. ‘If all military personnel are accounted for and none are missing, someone has taken my place.’

‘There’ll be an investigation,’ Chaloner dropped the telephone back on to its cradle.

‘An investigation, sir!’ Richard admonished.

‘What kind of an officer are you? Your sergeant tried to kill you, me and Simmonds. In my book that puts us, temporarily at least, on the same side. We can trust one another,’ he looked at Simmonds, ‘but I don’t know about anyone outside that door.’

‘There are people… ’

‘You’re prepared to allow their henchmen in here?’ Richard waved the loaded gun he’d taken from the floor at Heddingham and the brigadier. ‘How long do you think we’d last once these two start shouting orders to idiots who’ll obey them because they outrank almost everyone else on this base?’

‘He’s right,’ Simmonds was clearly shaken by the sight of so many bodies.

Richard focused his attention on the two senior officers seated at the conference table. ‘The answer has to lie with them. I suggest we debrief them, captain.’

‘Now?’ Chaloner asked.

‘Given the urgency of the situation. I can’t think of a better time.’

‘You’re wounded – this room – the CO wants in.’

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that if the disappearance of a senior officer in charge of an international conference’s security has been concealed, so could the disappearance of other senior personnel? And we still don’t know what this is all about.’

‘I’ve never heard of a Colonel Richard McKenna.’

‘But no doubt you’ve heard of a Captain Martin McKenna. You should have, he’s in this regiment.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Chaloner answered warily.

‘He’s my younger brother.’

It was then Chaloner realised why “John West”

looked vaguely familiar. He had recognized some of the features but not the man.

‘Whether you trust me, or not is immaterial. We have no option but to work together after being used for target practice. But first we debrief these two. We need somewhere private.’ Richard looked around.

‘There is a bunker below this room.’

‘There is but the CO… ’

‘Ask him not to blast off the time lock and give us an hour. Tell him… ’ Richard hesitated. His head was filled with telephone numbers, and codes he could use to establish his credentials as a senior officer with top rated security clearance. But it had been his immediate boss who had arranged his posting as chief security advisor to the conference. Was he part of this conspiracy? Whatever it was?

If he gave the coding for priority clearance and emergency, would it be believed, or would it bring down the full strength of the army on this steel lined conference room? Not even the inner wall would stand up to a battering by the explosives and devices the SAS used, and he doubted that the area was as secure as it initially appeared. The army was a conservative and cautious institution. Someone would have considered the possibility of the building being infiltrated by terrorists and there’d be an attack plan devised, for just such an eventuality. What other alternative did he have but to use the code? Staring Chaloner straight in the eye, he rattled it off, adding,

‘and tell them to change it.’

Chaloner passed the message down the line. There followed a tense five minutes during which Elizabeth allowed Major Simmonds to lead her back to her chair.

‘Sir… yes, sir.’ Chaloner looked at Richard. ‘And confine all the patrols that were on the Beacons searching for John West to close quarters as they come in until they have been debriefed.’ Chaloner held out the telephone to Simmonds. ‘They want an assurance from you that we’re not being held captive.

You too,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know what that code means, or whether to call you McKenna or West, but we have until the time lock expires, one hour.’

Chaloner walked over to what looked like a plain wall panel. He pressed a button next to the light switch and a door swung open.

McKenna held out his hands to Chaloner who cut through the ropes that bound his wrists.

‘Brigadier, Lieutenant-Colonel,’ McKenna held the door open. ‘After you.’

‘You’re risking a court-martial, Chaloner,’

Heddingham threatened when McKenna moved towards him.

Chaloner looked at Simmonds. ‘You handle a gun?’

‘I’m a soldier,’ Simmonds replied.

‘Take over here. Shoot to kill if that man makes a move.’ Chaloner indicated the surviving member of the sergeant’s patrol before throwing Simmonds the dead sergeant’s gun. He followed McKenna and the two officers through the door and closed it behind him.

A short flight of concrete steps led down to a large square room with cream washed concrete walls and a floor covered by a coating of rubberised black vinyl.

A dozen bunks, erected in tiers of three, lined one wall, a steel table and half a dozen chairs stood in the centre, and a bank of computers and tele-communication equipment was ranged on a series of black metal shelves on the wall opposite the bunks.

Richard sat on one of the chairs. He lifted his injured right arm on to the table with his left but didn’t relinquish his hold on the gun. Chaloner moved two chairs between the bunks and the table, motioning the lieutenant-colonel and the brigadier to sit on them.

‘Are you going to tell us what this is all about, or do we have to beat it out of you?’ McKenna asked softly.

Heddingham sat tight-lipped, but sweat was pouring down the brigadier’s cheeks despite the chill atmosphere.

‘Strip!’ McKenna ordered tersely.

‘I object!’ The lieutenant-colonel countermanded.

‘I’ll have you… ’

‘You have to be alive to give an order. Strip!’

McKenna reiterated.

A blow from Chaloner’s rifle butt to the small of Heddingham’s back stilled further protest, and once he was stripped and lashed, legs and arms to each leg of the chair with the rope Chaloner had taken from one of the shelves, the brigadier meekly submitted himself to the same humiliating treatment.

‘This bunker is soundproof?’ McKenna checked.

Chaloner nodded.’

‘How much time do we have left of that hour?’

Chaloner glanced at his watch. ‘Forty-five minutes.’

‘Forty minutes should be enough. Bring one of those camcorders over here. Point it at our captives and switch it on. I have a feeling they are going to tell us some very interesting things.’

Chaloner reflected that for someone who’d only just remembered his name and rank, McKenna was presuming a great deal of authority, but he carried out his orders.

‘You’re absolutely certain this room is soundproof?’ McKenna repeated.

‘Absolutely,’ Chaloner concurred.

McKenna leaned forward and pushed the barrel of his gun into the brigadier’s exposed testicles. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Colonel Richard McKenna,’ the brigadier stumbled over the words in his haste to get them out.

‘This isn’t debriefing, this is torture. It violates all human rights!’ Heddingham blustered.

McKenna rose and walked round to the back of Heddingham’s chair. Kicking the legs he brought it crashing down on its back. Heddingham lay with his legs tied high to the front bar of the chair. McKenna stood above him. Taking the machine gun from Chaloner, he hammered it, butt side down into Heddingham’s stomach. The lieutenant-colonel screamed long and loud. The brigadier sobbed and cried alongside him.

‘Who has taken my place as chief security advisor to the conference?’ McKenna pitched his voice below Heddingham’s screams.

‘Donovan O’Gallivan,’ the brigadier gibbered fearfully. ‘He’s been briefed to sabotage the conference,’ he revealed when McKenna returned the barrel of the gun to his testicles.

‘Who’s paying him?’

‘We are.’

‘Who are “we”?’

‘Army officers and MOD contractors… ’ he screamed louder than Heddingham when Richard slowly eased back the trigger on the gun he was holding.

‘How many delegates has O’Gallivan been briefed to assassinate?’

‘All of them.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘You fools, don’t you see what’s happening?’

Heddingham shouted, the mixture of pain and humiliation making him reckless. He launched into a well-rehearsed speech he had obviously delivered several times before.

‘This conference will put even more nails into the coffin of the armed forces. More regiments will be merged, traditions lost, manpower cut to a level where we’ll be hard pressed to find guards for Buckingham Palace. Over the last few years this country’s finest institution has been being disbanded and reduced to a joke by idiot politicians who can’t wait to pour our military assets into a trough they can dip their snouts into. They’re fooling themselves and the world. They tell civilians that terrorism is the only threat to our security. That future wars will be fought differently, and large armies are old-fashioned and surplus to requirements. They’re putting tens of thousands of our finest officers out to pasture to cut costs. Ever since the Communist threat crumbled and terrorism emerged they’ve fooled civilians into thinking that all that’s needed is a couple of Special Forces regiments, to fight the terrorists on their terms. So, not only do we allow the enemy to set the rules, we kow-tow and play by them.’

His contempt was blatant and Chaloner recalled Heddingham’s attitude to the SAS when he’d been called in after West had escaped from hospital.

‘It’s 1934 all over again. Appeasement – peace at any cost and hang the professionals. Let them join the ranks of the unemployed and in the meantime we open our doors to the extremists, the fundamentalists, the nuts, any terrorist group who only need half a dozen nuclear or neutron bombs picked up at bargain basement prices from the old Soviet block to rule the world. They don’t give a damn for national security or for the millions in the armament industry who’ll be out of a job and… ’

McKenna had listened long enough. ‘Who’s involved, Heddingham?’ he cut in.

Heddingham fell silent.

McKenna crashed his gun butt down on to the side of the lieutenant-colonel’s face.

‘You can’t do this!’ Heddingham screamed McKenna turned and pointed his gun between the brigadier’s legs again. He didn’t have to do any more.

Names poured from the man’s lips. Chaloner checked the camcorder to make sure the tape was still running.

It was.

‘Masters?’ McKenna demanded, when the brigadier finished.

‘There are no more that I know of,’ the brigadier muttered wretchedly. ‘Please… move that gun… ’

‘Heddingham, can you name any more?’

McKenna looked down at the man, no longer belligerent, but cowed, battered and bloodied.

‘Masters?’ he repeated.

Heddingham shook his head.

‘Who’s in control?’

‘The minister,’ the brigadier supplied, unable to stand another scream from Heddingham.

‘Who is Masters?’ Chaloner asked McKenna.

‘My controller. He posted me as security advisor to the conference.’

‘The minister said he couldn’t be trusted.’ Now the brigadier had started talking, he couldn’t stop. ‘But he ordered Masters to recall you to control security at the conference. He used the excuse that no one knew the Arabic world like you. Masters believed him.’ He looked nervously at McKenna, beads of perspiration dripping from his nose. ‘Well Masters would, wouldn’t he? You’ve worked undercover in the Middle East for the past two years. And you had other attributes.’

‘Other attributes?’ Richard echoed.

‘Your physical description matched O’Gallivan’s.’

‘We’re alike?’

‘Not face to face, but that didn’t matter. Hardly anyone’s seen you in years. Before you were sent to the Middle East you were stationed in the States. We arranged for your brother to be posted abroad for the duration of the conference, you had no other family to report you missing.’

‘Only my wife and daughter,’ McKenna couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘How did it feel to kill an unarmed woman and an eight-week-old baby, Brigadier?’

‘Heddingham gave the order,’ the brigadier gibbered. ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t want to kill them… ’

‘You sent amateurs,’ McKenna said coldly. ‘They botched it. They managed to kill the unarmed civilians but couldn’t manage me.’ McKenna stepped slowly, almost leisurely towards Heddingham. ‘Where are my wife, and daughter’s bodies?’

‘Buried… with respect,’ Heddingham added, staring at the gun in McKenna’s hand.

‘Where?’

‘The walled garden of the house.’

McKenna walked blindly forward keeping his face turned to the wall so no one could see the emotion in his eyes.

Chaloner was first and foremost a professional soldier, but he even he found it difficult to maintain his composure in the face of Heddingham’s confession.

‘Have you anything to add?’ Chaloner asked the brigadier

‘Only that the plane crash in Scotland was part of it,’ the brigadier confessed. ‘There was a man on board the minister had approached. He wouldn’t join us. He said he wouldn’t give us away, he didn’t know much but the minister was worried… ’

‘How many people have you murdered’ Chaloner demanded.

Both men remained silent.

‘My God I could chop the balls off both of you myself.’ Chaloner took a long bladed hunting knife from a sheath attached to his belt.

‘We’re entitled… ’

‘You’re entitled to absolutely nothing, Heddingham,’ Chaloner corrected harshly.