Fair Game (25 page)

Katra drove them to McDonald’s and they picked up a takeaway and ate it at home in front of the television.

The following day Shepherd took Liam to school in the CRV, then went home and changed into his running gear – an old sweatshirt that had once been white but which had greyed over the years, a pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms and two pairs of wool socks. He went downstairs and fetched his boots and a battered old rucksack from the cupboard under the stairs. The rucksack was heavy, packed with half a dozen bricks wrapped in newspaper, and the boots were more than ten years old. Shepherd didn’t run for fun, he ran to make himself stronger. He took a plastic bottle of Evian water from the fridge and headed out of the front door.

He had half a dozen routes starting from his house, varying from three miles to twelve, and he decided to run for a while in the fields not far from his home on a route that would include a small wood and take him the best part of forty-five minutes.

He ran the first mile at full speed to get his heart beating fast and then he settled back to a more solid pace to give himself a good cardio workout. The rucksack bounced against his hips and shoulders with every stride but he ignored the pain, just as he ignored his aching feet. Shepherd had long ago learned to ignore pain and discomfort, he simply gritted his teeth and got on with the job in hand.

By the time he was halfway around his circuit he was sweating freely but his breathing was still steady and even. He cut through woodland and slowed down to avoid overhanging branches and grasping brambles. His boots slapped through mud and twigs cracked like gunshots and his lungs started to burn. He took deeper breaths, increasing the amount of oxygen he was taking in, and pumped his arms back and forth as he ran.

He heard a twig crack to his left and he looked over but didn’t see anyone or anything so he increased his pace.

He emerged from the woodland on to a recently ploughed field and turned left, running between the furrowed soil and a high hedge. A group of crows scattered from the branches of a tree overhanging the field, then re-formed as Shepherd continued on his run. At the end of the field he cut left, following another hedge, then jumped over a ditch into a field of sheep that turned to watch him run.

Shepherd checked his watch and smiled grimly. He was thirty seconds slower than the last time he’d run the route. He ran all the way around the pasture and jumped the ditch back into the ploughed field. As his boots hit the ground he realised that there was somebody standing by a five-bar gate. A man. A big man in a black tracksuit.

‘You’re slowing down in your old age, Spider,’ said the man.

Shepherd’s jaw dropped and he took a step back, almost falling into the ditch behind him. He was in total shock because the man in front of him was dead and buried. Shepherd tried to speak but his mouth worked soundlessly.

The big man smiled. ‘I’m not a ghost,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘You’re dead,’ was all he could manage to say. And that was the truth. Major Allan Gannon had been killed in a car bomb almost a year earlier. But the man in the black tracksuit was no ghost, and there was no mistaking the wide shoulders, the jutting lantern jaw and the oft-broken nose.

‘That was then,’ said the Major. ‘This is now.’ He took a step towards Shepherd. ‘I’m sorry to spring this on you, but there’s something you need to know.’

‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ said Shepherd. ‘What the hell’s going on, boss?’

‘Not here,’ said the Major. ‘There’s a lot to talk about. Go home, get changed, and come on over to the barracks. The indoor range.’

Shepherd opened his mouth to argue but before he could say anything the Major had turned and run off, heading towards the trees. Shepherd ran a hand through his hair, unable to come to terms with what had just happened. It was impossible. The Major was dead, blown to bits outside his London home. The Real IRA had claimed responsibility, and revelled in his death. Shepherd had been at the funeral. So had Charlotte Button and more than a hundred members of the SAS, past and present. And the Major’s name was on the clock tower in the Stirling Lines barracks, where the Regiment made sure that its dead were never forgotten.

Shepherd started to jog home, his mind in a whirl.

After he’d showered and changed his clothes, Shepherd climbed into his BMW X3 and drove to the Stirling Lines barracks at RAF Credenhill. He showed his MI5 identification card at the gate and a uniformed guard told him where to park. As he approached the indoor firing range he heard a handgun being fired in bursts of two. Rat-tat. Rat-tat. Rat-tat.

He opened the door and the acrid tang of cordite assailed his nostrils. The Major was reloading a magazine and he grinned when he saw Shepherd.

‘Fancy showing me what you can do?’ he said, holding out the gun. ‘Never met a spook who could shoot to save his life.’

‘What’s going on, boss?’ said Shepherd. He was in no mood for making small talk with a man he’d thought was dead.

‘It’s been a funny old year,’ said the Major, putting down the gun. ‘I’ve had to lie low, for obvious reasons. They almost got me, Spider.’

‘I went to your funeral, boss. We all did. How the hell could you do that to us? How could you put us through that?’

‘No one could know,’ said the Major. ‘If they thought I was still alive then they’d keep coming after me. By letting them think they’d killed me, they lowered their guard and we could find them.’

Shepherd pointed at his own chest. ‘What about me? How the hell could you not tell me?’

‘I couldn’t tell anybody,’ said the Major.

‘Bollocks,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Regiment must know for a start.’

‘And only the Regiment,’ said the Major. ‘I’m here full-time now. Hardly ever leave the barracks.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘You could have trusted me, boss.’

‘It’s not about trust, Spider. I had to go ghost, I had no choice.’

‘But the bomb?’

‘They were careless. There was a smudge on the bonnet, and the bomb was rigged to the ignition. I got out and made a call and the Increment did the rest.’

The Increment was the Government’s best-kept secret, an ad hoc group of highly trained special forces soldiers used on operations considered too dangerous for Britain’s security services. The Increment could call on the resources of the SAS and its naval equivalent, the Special Boat Service, and the Major had run it for almost five years.

‘Including coming up with a body?’

‘There wasn’t much left after the bomb went up.’

‘In a residential area?’

‘It was controlled. Damage was kept to a minimum and the area was immediately cordoned off by the MoD and the Met were kept well away.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I wasn’t happy about it, about any of it. But it has to be this way, at least until I’m sure that all the leaks are plugged, and frankly I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen.’

‘Does Martin know?’

‘As of today, you’re the only person outside the Regiment who knows I’m alive.’

‘So what are you doing?’

‘I’m based here. I stay in the barracks, which is just about the safest place in the world for me. I do some work with the Increment but obviously I’m not running it any more. Also, I’m heading up X-Squadron.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘X-Squadron?’ he repeated. ‘I haven’t heard of them.’

‘I should bloody well hope you haven’t,’ said the Major. ‘Come on, let’s get some fresh air.’ They walked outside. ‘X-Squadron is all secret squirrel. Made up of volunteers from the SAS and SBS, held in reserve for black operations approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Really hush-hush. Automatic D-notice if it’s even mentioned by a journalist. We’re about to send an X-Squadron team to Sangin in northern Helmand province to take out a sniper that the Taliban have paid to kill our boys. Never a dull day.’

‘I hate snipers,’ said Shepherd.

‘You and me both. I rank them alongside car bombers.’ The Major grinned. ‘Mind you, we’ve got personal reasons for hating both, haven’t we?’

‘It’s a coward’s way of fighting, striking from a distance.’

‘Yeah, well, this one is a pro. We think he’s a former Marine.’

‘A Yank?’

‘Born-again Muslim. Rumour has it that the Taliban are paying him ten thousand dollars for every soldier he kills.’

‘It’s a sick world, isn’t it?’ said Shepherd. ‘I can understand killing for what you believe in, but killing your own for money, I don’t get that.’

‘He probably sees himself as fighting the infidel and that every hit is a step closer to his seventy-two virgins.’

‘Do you think anyone actually believes that crap?’

The Major shrugged. ‘Who knows? But the one thing I’m sure of is that if we don’t stop him he’s going to carry on killing our boys.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, the sun’s over the yardarm. Fancy a drink?’

‘You still haven’t told me why you’ve come back from the dead.’

The Major put an arm around Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘Let’s do it over a drink in the officers’ mess,’ he said. ‘You’re going to need one.’

‘To crime,’ said the Major, raising his glass of lager and clinking it against Shepherd’s Jameson’s and soda. ‘Or at least the fighting of it.’ They both drank. They were sitting in easy chairs in the officers’ mess. The Major had poured the drinks himself and they were sitting at a window overlooking the clock tower. Shepherd looked over at the tower and the Major read his mind. ‘Funny seeing your own name listed among the dead,’ he said.

‘Yeah, it must be,’ said Shepherd. ‘As funny as being pall-bearer at a funeral only to see the deceased come back to life a year later.’ He sipped his whiskey. ‘So no one at MI5 knows about this?’

‘The lovely Charlie, you mean?’ Gannon shook his head. ‘We’ve got a problem with Five.’

‘In what way?’

‘The Real IRA found my home. How could they have done that? It’s not as if I’m in the phone book. And I’m sure the Regiment wouldn’t play fast and loose with my information.’

‘But Five? The Secret Service?’

The Major laughed. ‘Secret Service? They’ve got a website and the director general is always in the papers. How secret is that? But it’s the Irish situation that’s thrown the cat among the pigeons. The second-largest MI5 centre outside London is in Loughside in Northern Ireland. It’s not just running local intelligence operations, it’s now the back-up HQ in the event of a national emergency. If something goes wrong at Thames House, operations are switched to Loughside and five hundred key staff will be straight over. Loughside is already handling a big chunk of Five’s international counter-terrorism operations as well as the local stuff.’

‘So?’

‘So they’re recruiting locally. And just like the cops, they’re bending over backwards to sign up Catholics. They’re now as politically correct as the rest of the Establishment so they can’t afford to be repeating the mistakes of the old regime.’

‘But everyone is positively vetted, right?’

‘Sure. But suppose they get a Belfast graduate with a PhD in Arabic studies applying, and a Catholic to boot. Are they going to care overmuch if he’s got a couple of cousins who are known Republican sympathisers? Probably not. But what if down the line he gets an approach from someone pointing out that the fight against Islamic fundamentalism is one thing but that his loyalty to his country is another.’

‘His country? But we’re talking about Brits.’

‘They’re both, Spider. They’re British but they’re Irish too. Everyone born in the North of Ireland is entitled to British citizenship and Irish, don’t forget that. And I’m not saying that the barrel is full of rotten apples but it’s only got to happen once for it to be a problem.’

‘And you think that’s happened already?’

The Major nodded. ‘I’m sure of it.’ He grinned. ‘You know, the SAS is one of the few organisations left where we can say we don’t want to take someone on because we don’t like the look of them. Doesn’t matter if he’s as fit as fuck, if we don’t think he’s got what it takes we can just say no and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.’

‘It can’t be any other way, can it?’ said Shepherd. He remembered his own selection, almost fifteen years earlier. One of the hardest parts of the gruelling process was the Fan Dance, where the soldiers had to run up Pen y Fan, the tallest peak in the Brecon Beacons, fully loaded with kit and weapons, run down the far side, and then run back up and down again. It was the most demanding physical exercise on the course and could break the fittest soldier. Shepherd did the Fan Dance with fifteen other men in a winter rainstorm, and it was the weather that did for three of the men. One slipped and broke his ankle on the first ascent, one collapsed from exhaustion the second time they reached the summit, and the third managed to get separated from the group and turned up a full eight hours after everyone else. All three were sent home. Shepherd’s time was respectable and he finished the Fan Dance about half an hour after the leader, a black Liverpudlian called Frankie, who’d done five years as a paratrooper before applying to the SAS. He was tall but wiry with a runner’s build and he powered through all the stamina and endurance tests. He was probably the fittest on the course, but in the end he wasn’t accepted because he had the wrong attitude. He took every opportunity to belittle the others on selection, mocking them when they got tired or struggled to finish a section, and laughing at anyone who made the smallest mistake. Frankie was dropped because he wasn’t a team player, and the SAS was all about teamwork.

‘No, but in any other organisation if someone gets turned down for a job for pretty much any reason they can sue. Wrong sex, wrong colour, wrong disability, wrong religion – the world has gone so politically correct that you can’t risk offending anybody. And Northern Ireland is now as politically correct as it gets. So even MI5 can’t be seen to be rejecting someone just because they drink the blood of Christ on a Sunday.’ He held up his hands. ‘I know, not every Catholic supports the IRA, Real or Continuity, but I’m damn sure that there are no Protestants among them.’ He took another pull on his pint before continuing. ‘It’s not just an Irish problem,’ he said. ‘I know of at least four al-Qaeda sympathisers who are working in Thames House as we speak. They’re being watched and they won’t be able to do any damage, but that’s not the point. What about the ones we don’t know about? By throwing its doors wide open in the way it has, it’s left itself wide open to penetration by the very forces it’s supposed to be combating.’