Exit Wound (13 page)

42

DIS building, London
Sunday, 3 May
1430 hrs

We walked the three miles from Paddington Green to Whitehall. After two days of incarceration, Julian thought I’d want to stretch my legs. While we were at it, he briefed me on the DIS and Squadron Leader Gavin Kettle.

According to their website, the mission of the Defence Intelligence Staff was to provide ‘timely intelligence products, assessments and advice to the Ministry of Defence to guide decisions on policy and commitment and employment of the UK’s armed forces, to inform defence procurement decisions and to support military operations’. Alongside MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, it went on, DIS also contributed to the UK’s threat assessment picture at any given time. Despite the general cutbacks, the DIS still seemed to be relatively well resourced.

‘Just don’t mention weapons of mass destruction,’ Julian had said. ‘They still can’t see the funny side of that particular load of bollocks.’

If this man ever did make it to the top, the Queen could sleep easy in her bed at night. The security of her dominions would be in good hands.

‘You ever had dealings with them?’

I shook my head. Not in ten years with the Regiment, or the same again as a deniable operator.

‘Well, they have in excess of four thousand staff on their books. More than six hundred are threat analysts. They’re good at what they do.’

Julian didn’t spot the box that had been left a couple of feet inside Squadron Leader Kettle’s doorway. He only stopped himself falling by shoulder-charging a filing cabinet. A couple of box files crashed to the floor, spilling old aircraft magazines across the well-worn carpet tiles.

I came in behind him. The office, without air-conditioning, smelt like a teenage boy’s bedroom, right down to the lingering whiff of illegal nicotine.

A stern-faced man in his early forties knelt to pick up the mags with the reverence of the obsessive collector. He wore a check flannelette shirt and brown tie that reminded me of the bed sheets I used to have as a kid. A half-eaten prawn sandwich lay next to an old-fashioned light box on his desk. Strips of film were scattered across the backlit glass. I’d thought transparencies had gone out with the Ark. Timely intelligence products? Binning the 35mm and going digital would have been a good place to start.

The squadron leader finished gathering up his mags, then retrieved the upturned box and set it on his desk. Using both hands, he carefully removed something resembling a mirror, roughly the size of a jam-pot lid, attached to a random collection of cogs and springs from an ancient grandfather clock.

He held it up to the window and gave it the once-over.

Double-glazing muffled the rumble of traffic and squeals from the excited Italian teenagers we’d passed minutes earlier as they jumped over the lions at the bottom of Nelson’s column and posed for each other’s camera phones. The stone of the plinths matched the colour of Kettle’s classic RAF handlebar moustache.

Thirty seconds had passed without any form of verbal or eye contact between us. Maybe the squadron leader wasn’t too happy about being called into the office on a weekend.

Julian tried to break the ice. ‘What’s that thing?’

Kettle glanced up and peered at us both for the first time. ‘That
thing
is the seeker-head of an AA-11 Archer – a Russian air-to-air missile.’

Julian was probably as unmoved as I was, but he was better at disguising it. ‘I thought you were a surface-to-air specialist?’

Kettle thawed a little. ‘I am. But during the nineties the Serbs adapted the AA-11 to fire from truck-mounted ground-launchers. It was surprisingly effective.’ He glanced between the seeker-head and Julian’s foot. ‘Lucky the Russians built them to last, eh?’

I pointed at the light box. ‘Holiday snaps?’

All Julian’s good work was undone. Kettle put the seeker-head down and stared at me. ‘You must be the chap who’s taking my place.’

Once my MoE into Iran had been agreed, somebody senior would have told him the good news: after months of anticipation he wouldn’t, after all, be going to Tehran; his place had been taken by someone else.

If Kettle was looking at me the way Dex had examined his plastic glass on the Emirates flight, it was with good reason. Julian had warned me that, for DIS specialists like him, field trips to events like IranEx were the culmination of years of mind-numbing analysis work that would have taken him no further than his office.

Kettle had built up a picture of what the Iranians were up to in the SAM (surface-to-air missile) weapons arena, increasingly vital with the current threat of first strikes by the US and the Israelis against Iranian nuclear facilities. He would have been aware that his meticulously crafted briefing documents on Iranian air defences were required reading within the Firm and the Ministry of Defence, occasionally even landing on a minister’s desk. The IranEx trip would have been his reward – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now the Iranians, eager for press coverage of their indigenous weapons industry, had decided to throw their doors open to the international media.

Kettle’s cover had been prepared long ago. He’d be travelling as a writer for a defence publication called
Aerospace and Defence Technology Monthly – ADTM
to those in the trade. His alias: James Manley, ex-RAF, divorced, and trying to make it in the notoriously badly paid world of freelance defence journalism. His passport was ready. His visa was ready. For several years he’d submitted articles under his assumed name to the wholly innocent editor of
ADTM
.

And at the moment he was all set to go – just as he was about to take the Labrador for a walk and pick up the Sundays – he’d had the phone call telling him to get into the office and brief someone who was going to fill his slot. After all that hard work he’d been mugged by some dickhead who didn’t know SAM from Samantha and didn’t even talk proper.

Julian looked at his watch. ‘I’ll leave you two to get to know each other. We don’t have much time and you have quite a lot to talk about.’ He paused by the door. ‘Call me as soon as you’re through and be as quick as you can. There’s a lot more to do before tomorrow.’

Kettle turned and gave me a look like I’d just run over his dog.

43

‘Listen, mate.’

There was nothing matey about his tone. The room temperature had dropped several degrees as soon as Julian closed the door. Fair one – in his shoes I’d have been pissed off too.

‘There’s nothing unusual about DIS posing as a freelance defence journalist. It happens all the time. The Russians know it happens. We know it happens. Bet you a penny to a pound, the Iranians know it happens, too. Defence exhibitions, no matter where they are, end up crawling with spooks. So, mate, whoever you are, at least you’ve got that going for you.’

Kettle had known better than to ask my name and I hadn’t volunteered it. I still hadn’t shaken his hand. The only good things were that I no longer noticed the smell and he hadn’t offered me a bite of his sandwich.

‘Right, so you want the one-oh-one on the fledgling Iranian missile industry so you can be James Manley, eh?’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘How long have we got?’

I hated briefings. And I hated government buildings – especially dust-filled places like this one. They brought back too many bad memories of too many bollockings. Besides, I just needed enough to make my cover story sound like I knew what I was on about. I was there for something more important than geeking up. I couldn’t wait to get out.

‘No more than two hours.’

Kettle went over to the filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer. He riffled through it, yanking out sheets of paper as he went. They turned out to be magazine articles.

‘Take them with you. Don’t worry, they’re all open-source – some recent pieces from
Jane’s Defence Weekly
and
Aviation Week
on the state of the Iranians’ air defences. You can bone up on it at your leisure, but here’s the short version. Don’t make the mistake of dismissing them as a bunch of no-hope, clueless Islamofascist rag-heads – they’re not. Since the Shah got deposed, they’ve built up an incredibly successful aerospace and defence industry. It’s in their blood. They’ve had to, given all the arms embargoes that have been imposed upon them over the years.’

I glanced at the articles. From everything I’d read, the embargoes had proved about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. ‘They’ve been getting technical assistance from everyone on Baby Bush’s axis-of-evil list, haven’t they?’

Kettle shut one drawer and opened another. ‘Plus some that aren’t even on the list yet. But then again, necessity is the mother of invention.’

‘So what invention shit have they been up to?’

‘No need for that.’ He clearly wasn’t a big fan of profanity. Maybe it was because it was Sunday. He threw some more homework my way. ‘Take their air-defence network. It’s a mish-mash of old Soviet stuff and missiles that the Americans abandoned when the Shah left in a hurry. The Iranians have watched and learnt. They’ve not only reverse-engineered spare parts but, where necessary, they’ve improved upon the actual hardware. For the past decade or two, this has been sufficient to ward off any threats they might face, but with the Israelis and the Americans back in sabre-rattling mode, they need something a little more effective. Which is where IranEx enters the equation. Or would have. For me, I mean.’

Kettle gathered a few more articles into an envelope, scrawled ‘Russia’ across it, and chucked it onto his desk. ‘Technology transfer between Russia and Iran has been particularly active – albeit at a covert level. In 1998, UN sanctions were issued against a number of Russian organizations – state research facilities as well as companies – that had supplied technical expertise to Iran’s ballistic-missile effort. Not unnaturally, that’s where most of the world’s attention has been focused. After all, it’s the ballistic missiles that will carry the weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and otherwise, that threaten the West. But we know that Russian co-operation with the Iranian state weapons industry goes way beyond that.’

I had a long night ahead of me. ‘What do you know about M3C?’

‘Moscow Missile Manufacturing Complex. They Anglicized it to M3C. Less of a mouthful on the international circuit, where they compete against the big boys from the US and Europe. M3C used to be three different Soviet-era weapons entities until somebody, somewhere, read a book on market economics and decided it was better to lump all Russia’s missile expertise under one roof, like every other country does.

‘M3C make everything from anti-tank missiles to space launch vehicles. The way they read the rules, there’s nothing wrong with lending assistance to the Iranians as long as it’s for defensive purposes or ends up in space. That’s not exactly how I’d interpret the rules of the Missile Technology Control Regime, but in Putin’s Russia, nobody much seems to care as long as it brings in the bacon – and, trust me, when it comes to hard cash, the Iranians have petro-dollars aplenty to splash about. Have you ever been to a defence exhibition?’

I shook my head, although that wasn’t exactly true – I’d once been to the British Army Equipment Exhibition during my time in the Regiment, but I couldn’t be arsed to explain. I just wanted him to keep waffling.

‘There are a number of elements to any exhibition that are important to journalists. The first is the press centre. Every major defence exhibition has a place set aside for the media, a place the hacks can go to file their stories, meet up and grab a beer.’ He laughed. ‘Although that clearly won’t be an option in Iran.

‘The press centre will keep you informed as to whether there are any announcements that day and whether the major news conferences are due to be held in the dedicated conference centre or in one of the chalets of the exhibiting companies.’

‘Chalets?’ He made it sound like a ski resort.

‘An exhibition area is divided into exhibition space, usually in covered areas, where the companies show off their hardware, and chalet areas where their execs do all their hobnobbing.’

‘So what are the magic words to get you in?’

‘I’m sure Iranian Revolutionary Guards will be on hand to ensure that hacks don’t wander where they’re not supposed to. But in a Western defence exhibition – Farnborough or Paris or IDEX – they let accredited media into the chalet area. The big companies like to keep the press onside. I don’t know how it will be in Iran. You’ll just have to play it by ear.’

He glanced at the Russian missile seeker that was now sitting on his desk like some bizarre executive toy.

I followed his gaze. ‘You nick that?’

Kettle smiled for the first time. ‘Let’s just say there’s a Russian exhibitions manager who’s probably still in the
gulag
, or wherever Russians keep their miscreants these days. Anybody could have nicked anything at that particular show – Farnborough ’ninety-two. It just happened to be me.’

‘I hope it was worth it.’

‘Certainly was. We hadn’t seen this particular variant of the seeker-head before. That’s why defence exhibitions are such good value.’ He looked at me earnestly. ‘I have no idea why you’re going in and it’s none of my business. I just hope thatit’s – as you say – worth it.’ He looked at the clock. We were out of time. I picked up the envelope and the other material he’d selected for me and headed for the door.

‘One other thing . . .’

I turned to see him playing with the seeker-head.

‘The new SA-16M. Read about it in your notes. The missile’s seeker has some kind of fault. It’s important that we know what it is, and what they’re doing to correct it. That was my sole reason for going to IranEx. Any information you can find about the 16M is vitally important to DIS.’

The moment I closed the door behind me I pictured him grabbing his Nick Stone voodoo doll from the filing cabinet and jabbing its bollocks with pins.

44

Monday, 4 May
1039 hrs

As the Galaxy people-carrier sped west along the A4 by the Chiswick flyover, I gazed out at the high-rise office construction projects stalled by the credit crunch and wondered how the skyline would look in Tehran.

Julian had handed over all the supporting documentation I’d need – passport and business cards in the name of James Manley, a letter of commission from the editor of
ADTM
, a media visa from the Iranian embassy – and I’d been boning up all night on the country pack and more int on Altun. Sitting next to me, his eyes closed, Julian seemed to be doing some quiet reflection of his own.

The traffic bunched on the Heathrow spur road. I reached down for Kettle’s envelope. I’d have a couple of hours at the airport and a good few more
en route
to Tehran, but I had a lifetime of plane-spotting to catch up on.

I pulled out a clutch of papers marked ‘Technology’ in the squadron leader’s spidery handwriting. There was a note attached with a paperclip to some cuttings on an advanced handheld missile.

Mate, Anything the Iranians are publishing on the SA-16M is of interest to us. Get whatever you can lay your hands on in the way of brochures and leaflets. Take as many photographs as they’ll let you, and a few more if you can. We can never use enough imagery in this place.

M stands for ‘modification’ in Russian. We know that M3C has developed this missile, but very little information has been released about the improvements. We need to know if the malfunction rumours carry any weight. Get whatever you can; nothing is wasted. And good luck.

I started laughing to myself and Julian opened his eyes. ‘What?’

‘Kettle’s given me some homework.’ I handed him the note. If it was going to self-destruct in five seconds I didn’t want to be the one holding it.

‘Not such a bad idea. Having something to do – something legitimate, I mean – will help you blend in.’

He wasn’t wrong. The more I looked like I belonged, the better.

The Galaxy pulled up outside Terminal 3. It was less than a week since I’d been here with Red Ken and Dex. At least this time I wasn’t in golfing pink. It was back to Timberlands, jeans and shirt. I’d left all my cover golfing clothes and the cheap and cheerful Tesco’s funeral outfit – to down-gear me in the doing-well stakes – in a bin liner outside my local Oxfam.

I pulled my holdall from the boot, and the day-sack containing my Nikon, laptop and briefing notes.

Julian held out his hand.

It was the first time I’d ever shaken any of my bosses by the hand and meant it. They normally coerced me into this shit. But this time? I wanted to go.

‘Will you recognize him again?’

‘With my mates’ blood still wet on his shoes? He could have body doubles, plastic surgery or spent the last few days shoving Mars bars down his neck to become a fat fuck, but nothing will disguise his eyes, Jules. That’s what’ll tell me I’ve got him.’

I didn’t tell him that for me this wasn’t just about taking Altun’s picture and sharpening up his CV. But I didn’t think he’d be particularly surprised. I headed into the terminal.

I’d put on the jokey fucking-about act for Julian’s benefit because I didn’t want him to stand me down from the job. I wanted him to use me. I wanted him to think that I was being practical about the situation.

Truth was, there was a bit more to this than revenge. I needed to square away my guilt. I couldn’t help feeling that I should have done more for Red Ken and Dex. Maybe I could have tried harder to talk them out of it. Maybe I could have been closer to them on the airstrip. That way, I might have reacted quicker. I knew the two of them would have called me a dickhead for thinking it, but they would also have understood.

They would also have expected me to get payback, and I wouldn’t let them down.

The terminal was its normal over-packed nightmare. I dodged the trolleys and manic wheelie-case runners as late passengers ran for their gates.

I wasn’t going to stitch up Julian. Why would I do that to the only friend I now had? I allowed myself a rueful smile. I must be going soft. Friendship was an accolade I didn’t hand out easily. Especially when I’d only known someone a few weeks.

I’d do what he wanted because there was stuff there that he needed to know. But after that I’d kill as many of the fuckers as I could get my hands on. I knew that wasn’t going to save the world but it would make me – and, if they were still keeping an eye on things, Red Ken and Dex – feel a whole lot better.