Adrian Magson - Red Station

Harry put down his mug. ‘Come on. Time for a cup of real coffee.’

‘What?’

‘We’re going walkabout, see if we can spot one of these Clones.’ He wasn’t sure why he should care, but it was better than doing nothing.

He led the way downstairs. On the way out, he picked up a large brown envelope and handed it to Rik, with instructions to make his way to the railway station. ‘Walk normally. If you clock one, don’t do anything, just keep going as if you’re on a boring errand. I’ll see you there.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Closer than you think.’

He waited for Rik to clear the end of the street, then slipped outside and followed at a discreet distance.

He picked up the first watcher a hundred yards out.

Heavy rain clouds had closed in on the town overnight, dumping a blanket of cold drizzle on the streets and filling the paper-choked gullies. Potholes were invisible under a covering of water, and Harry hugged the buildings to avoid a drenching from passing trucks.

The first man he saw fitted Rik’s description to the letter: young, lean, anonymous, bristle-cut hair and nothing to mark him out. He wore a scruffy denim jacket, patched jeans and trainers, and hunched against the cold rain; he would have been invisible in any crowd.

He was also good at following a target.

Five minutes later Harry spotted another likely contender. This one appeared out of a shop doorway across the street. He sloped along, keeping Rik in his sights without losing pace. If there were any signals exchanged between him and his colleague, they kept them discreet.

The railway station was a heavy concrete structure with no pretensions of style, a plain, arched entrance and few windows. Like a brick shithouse with trains, thought Harry. He walked on by, allowing the first Clone to follow Rik inside. The other man had disappeared, and Harry guessed he had gone to cover the other exits. If there were any more on the job, they were keeping well back.

Once out of sight of the station entrance, Harry stopped and counted to fifty before doubling back. He passed a cheap clothes shop on a corner and ducked inside. When he came out he was wearing a waterproof ski hat pulled down over his ears.

The inside of the station was noisy, damp and unwelcoming, with a cold wind cutting through the concourse and tugging at a row of pennants strung across the front of the ticket office. Stalls selling hot drinks and snacks were doing a good trade, and he stopped at the nearest to buy a coffee and get his bearings.

He spotted Rik hovering by a stall selling nuts and dried fruit. He was holding the envelope and digging in his pocket for some coins. He looked at ease, a man on a minor errand, and Harry was impressed; from his earlier display of nerves, Rik was coping well with being thrown into the role of a decoy.

Clone One was loitering nearby, nibbling on an apple while reading the timetables, but rarely taking his eyes off Rik for more than a few moments. It was a few seconds before Harry realized that the man was speaking into a thumb-microphone.

Clone Two must be close.

Harry stayed where he was, using the other customers as cover. He had no chance of blending into the background; his clothes, although fairly nondescript, were still sufficiently different in cut and style to make him stand out if anyone looked at him carefully enough. And if he went walkabout in such a confined area, he’d be spotted immediately.

It wasn’t long before he realized that the other Clone hadn’t put in an appearance. He soon saw why: the man was behind him, in the shelter of a doorway. He could feel his eyes on the back of his neck.

Harry finished his coffee and dumped the mug in a rubbish bin. He’d slipped up; the man had spotted him as a newcomer, and therefore an oddity. Or maybe they had pictures and had picked him out the moment he showed up.

He nodded a thank you to the stallholder and walked away, taking him on a course which would pass close by Rik’s position. As he drew level, he raised his hand close to his chest and pointed towards the exit.

Rik blinked once to show he understood.

Twenty minutes later, after taking a circuitous route through the town, Harry arrived back at the office to find Rik already there nursing a cup of coffee. He looked unsettled, and Harry guessed he probably hadn’t done this kind of thing since basic training.

‘Did I do OK?’ asked Rik nervously. ‘I don’t think they clocked you, did they?’

‘You did fine.’ Harry wasn’t about to tell him that he had been made, or that identifying two of the Clones wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great. Somewhere in the background, unless they were resting, the other Clones had been operating unseen. If so, they would have identified him, but he had no idea what they looked like.

For now, though, he had other things to think about. On the way back, he had passed an alleyway with an army truck parked in the entrance. Near the rear of the truck stood three men. Two were in uniform, although he couldn’t see any insignia. The other man was in civilian clothes, and handing out cigarettes, chatting amiably. It was an everyday scene, even given the military presence.

The only anomaly was the civilian.

Harry wondered how Carl Higgins of Ohio had become so fluent in the local language.

Harry spent several days getting to know the town, its layout, the road network, the general infrastructure and its people. While what he could see was simple enough to commit to memory, the people, although genial enough when faced with a foreigner who didn’t speak their language, proved an odd nut to crack. Some were immediately friendly, in spite of the language problem, while others showed open distrust, as if he had ‘MI5 Officer’ emblazoned across his chest.

The town itself was an odd hotchpotch of tired, shabby buildings interspersed with newly constructed offices and shops. In among the clearly care-worn structures of the older shops, with tin roofs and crumbling brickwork, were occasional signs of coming prosperity, international brand names jostling for space with local products.

By way of contrast, each intersection had its huddle of traders dealing in everything from cheap watches, jeans and mobile phones, to vodka and even petrol. In between, men argued and smoked with zeal, while elsewhere, rounded women swathed in heavy coats and headscarves carried giant sports bags or cloth bundles tied with string, on a never-ending journey from one part of town to another.

The outer boulevards were wide yet deserted, mainly residential, while the inner streets were narrow and congested with vehicles and pedestrians, their surfaces deeply potted and crumbling. It was as if the inhabitants found it safer or even comforting to stick to this tight, worn network of thoroughfares rather than the open spaces. Yet there was something else; and the more he moved around, the more he began to feel that something in the air. He wondered if it had anything to do with the growing numbers of soldiers in the town, and the accompanying aura of threat hovering around them, even when they were not on duty and unarmed. They were everywhere, yet somehow disconnected from the hustle and bustle around them, like onlookers who had no place being there.

Two days after his first sighting of the Clones, Harry spotted another watcher.

Coming out of a small fruit store, where he had bought some apples, he saw a man across the street. He was checking his watch as if waiting for a lift.

It was the watcher from the airport.

Twenty minutes later, he saw him again. This time he was getting out of a car, which pulled away and sped out of sight.

Harry ignored him; if he was local security police, he’d have to make sure he did nothing they could pick him up for. But the idea that he might be another MI5 watcher made him feel increasingly edgy.