Quintin Jardine - Dead And Buried

‘That would have been the early seventies?’

‘Yes. Towards the end of the Nixon era.’

‘You met Ormond Hassett there around the same time, didn’t you?’

‘We were in the same theatre of operations, yes.’

‘Close colleagues?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you say the three of you were ideologically compatible?’

‘Hell, yes: we were all soldiers in the front line against Communism, spies in uniform. There were no liberals in our outfit.’

‘After Germany, where did you go?’

‘Ormond and I headed in the same direction. I was hauled back to Langley, to CIA headquarters, and he was posted to the embassy in Washington.’

‘And Archer?’

‘He stayed on in Germany for a while, but we kept in pretty close touch.’

‘How close?’

‘Very. Josh was a good source of information.’

‘Are you saying that he was on your payroll?’

Armstead nodded at the camera. ‘Yes.’

‘Explain this to our viewers,’ Skinner continued, ‘and remember that I’ve got the gun. Why would a CIA operative want to recruit British intelligence officers as agents?’

‘Simple. Back then we couldn’t always rely on our allies to share and share alike. We were in the business of knowing everything, so we took steps to make sure that we did.’

‘That’ll go down well in London; scare the shit out of a few people too, I imagine. But let’s move on a few years, to 1982. Hassett’s an MP, an aide to the defence secretary, and he and Archer show up in Washington to make sure that your team are on-side over the Falklands operation.’

‘Yeah, and Josh told me he was going to fight. I told him he was crazy, that there would be a load of casualties down there. Ormond could have gotten him a desk to ride, but he was set on action; dead set, the way it turned out. He knew what he was getting into, though: last time I saw him, he asked me to keep an eye on his family, if things did go the other way.’

‘And you did?’

‘I kept my word, yes. Whenever I was in England I went to see them up in Bakewell, just to make sure they were all right. After a few years, once the kids were grown and on their way in life, I asked Joan to marry me and she agreed.’

‘You kept an eye on your stepson’s career too.’

‘I made sure he was all right, but I needn’t have worried. He was a better soldier than his pop ever was, a real little terror. When he moved into intelligence and assumed a new identity, I knew about it and I took him under my wing even more. A few times we took care of things for each other.’

‘So you weren’t surprised when he approached you with a proposition?’

Armstead’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Ah, no, you got that wrong. Moses didn’t approach me. Ormond Hassett did. He came over here to this very house. He sat in that chair where you’re sitting and he told me that there were people in London who were scared shitless about the future of their country. They saw it heading into a federal Europe, a super-grouping in which the role and purpose of the British Monarchy would become irrelevant, until it ceased to exist and Britain became, as he put it, the sort of mongrel state we’re seeing in France, Spain, and even the United States. He said that the thing that scared them most was the fact that those standing in succession to the throne appeared to be in favour of the idea.’

‘And his solution?’

‘To take one of them out.’

‘How?’

‘That was what Ormond asked me. After I told him he was crazy, I told him that the most vulnerable point of attack was the student prince, but that anything that happened to him had to be seen very clearly to have happened from outside. That’s where Pete Bassam’s Albanian gang came into the picture. Kidnapping’s a national sport with these guys; the idea was, they grab him from his university, they hold him for ransom, but somewhere along the line he gets killed.’

‘What did Hassett say to that?’

‘That I was a fucking genius. He said that it was so simple it was beautiful. The way he saw it, not only would it take one of the problems. . maybe the main problem. . out of the equation, but in the scandal that followed the British government would be thrown out of office and replaced by a right-wing, anti-European, Conservative administration, with a commitment to withdraw from the EU and rescind the commitment to the Treaty of Rome.’

‘With Ormond Hassett as one of its leading lights?’

‘He didn’t say that, but that’s what he meant.’

‘You know what, Titus?’ Skinner heard himself chuckle. ‘I think he’d have been right.’

Armstead said nothing: he simply looked at the camera and smiled.

‘So when did Adam Arrow, Moses, come into it?’ his interrogator continued.

‘When I brought him in. Ormond didn’t recruit him, I did. I visited him on the boat in London and I told him about our discussion. If he had told me I was a mad old man even to consider such a thing I’d have forgotten all about it, but he didn’t. He said that he shared Ormond’s fears, and came on board. I knew we needed him, you see. I knew we needed extra insurance on the inside, within the British military, and someone to run the mercenary pick-up team at sea. With his okay, I told Ormond we were green for go, then I gave Moses Bassam’s location and young Hassett was sent to activate him. The operation was under way.’

‘Why did you give him the gun?’

‘To take out young Hassett after the game; Moses thought he was a weakling, and that we couldn’t trust him.’

‘So where did Rudolph Sewell fit in?’

For the first time, Armstead’s eyes left the camera lens and moved to the man beside it. ‘Who the fuck is Rudolph Sewell?’ he asked.

Skinner reached across and switched off the DVD player. ‘Imagine that,’ he said to Sir Evelyn Grey. ‘As serious a player in the spooking game as Titus Armstead is, yet he’s never heard of your head of counter-terrorism. But that’s not all he didn’t know: Moses and the Hassetts never told him about the fall-back plan, to try to wriggle out by blaming it all on Sewell if things went wrong. No wonder Miles was sent to kill him; too bad Moses was right and he wasn’t up to the job, eh?’

‘Indeed,’ the director general agreed. ‘Nevertheless, the warning you sent to Armstead through Ms Gower was a shrewd move: of some assistance to him.’

‘Yes, but still, taking on a tough old bastard like that with a knife was a pretty stupid thing to do.’

‘How would you have handled it?’

The DCC scratched his chin. ‘I’d probably have hidden in his garage and blown his head off when he came in to get his car.’

Grey smiled thinly. ‘How glad we must be that you’re on our side.’

Skinner was out of his chair like a flash, reaching across the table to slap him, back-handed, across the face, with such force that it sent him flying sideways out of his seat. ‘I’ve never been on your side, you bastard, and I never will be. You’re a traitor, the worst this country has ever seen. You’ve run this whole operation, from the very start, through your stooge, Ormond Hassett, and his son.’

He glared at Grey as he picked himself up. ‘Sewell was never involved; he was a victim. We were led to believe that he had directed Amanda’s team towards the theory that the Albanians were drug-dealers, away from their real objective, but the truth was that he was following your orders. You had your fall-back story planned out, all four of you, and it involved setting up poor old Rudy, then throwing him to the wolves. After Adam Arrow was shot, he named him as the leader of the conspiracy, to protect you. I fell for it, bought the story and reported it to you when you debriefed me in Edinburgh after the attack. Christ, I’ve just called Sewell a mug. What does that make me?’