Ken McClure - The Secret

Andrews could now see that there was no destination ahead other than the sluggish river and panic appeared in his voice — albeit controlled panic. ‘What the hell are you doing, man? What are we doing here?’

‘Justice for Simone,’ said Steven. ‘Time to pay for what you did to my friend.’

‘This is crazy,’ exclaimed Andrews. ‘I had nothing to do with that, Steven. As God is my witness I believed it was an accident until last week when I found out about Ranjit Khan. That’s why I was following you; I came to warn you about Khan.’

‘Sure you did. You pretended not to know Khan when I spoke to you in Paris when in fact you and he had been buddies for years. You even played houses when you were at Harvard together.’

‘Sure we did, but come on man, he was Pakistani Intelligence and I — as I suppose you now know — am CIA. We didn’t want to advertise any intelligence interests at the time.’

‘You told me he’d returned to Pakistan when in fact he flew to Paris where he killed Aline Lagarde.’

‘Christ, man, I thought he had returned to Pakistan. I genuinely thought that. I didn’t know the bastard had a different agenda. That’s what I came to warn you about.’

‘You and Khan killed Simone. You were working together.’

‘No,’ insisted Andrews, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. It was just like I told you; I lost my contact lens and made a stupid joke about it. The next thing I knew was that Simone was over the balcony.’

‘Khan put her over... while you created a diversion.’

‘Look, it didn’t occur to me at the time that Khan had anything to do with it: I didn’t think he had any reason to, but in the light of what I’ve learned recently... that might well be true. But I swear to God, I personally had nothing to do with it.’

The water level had risen so that the Thames was now lapping over Andrews’ shoes. He seemed not to notice as he looked pleadingly at Steven.

‘Remove one of your contact lenses,’ said Steven.

‘What?’

‘You heard. I don’t think you wear contact lenses. If you do, I just might believe you. If you don’t, it was a diversion in Prague and it’s kiss-your-arse-goodbye time.’

Andrews seemed to freeze completely for a few seconds: Steven suspected that he must be contemplating one last desperate move to save his skin. He moved the Glock slightly to emphasise that he was entirely focused on the matter in hand and could pull the trigger faster than Andrews could mount any last ditch attack. ‘I’m waiting.’

Andrews put his hands to his face and went through the motions of removing a contact lens. Steven remained suspicious, thinking that this was exactly what he’d do in Andrews’ position before going for a last minute lunge.

‘There you go,’ said Andrews, holding out his right hand, palm upwards.

It was too dark for Steven to see. ‘Turn around: put your hand behind your back and then open it.’

Andrews complied, the water now sloshing round his ankles.

Steven moved down two steps and pressed the barrel of his gun against the back of Andrews’ neck. ‘Don’t move a muscle,’ he warned. He looked down and saw the lens sitting in Andrews’ palm. He removed it with the tip of his index finger then replaced it. ‘You live to fight another day.’

Steven replaced the Glock in its holster and took out Andrews’ gun from his pocket. He removed the magazine and threw the clip in the river before handing the weapon back to Andrews. ‘You’re not out of the woods yet.’

‘What happens now? Where are we going?’ asked Andrews at the top of the steps.

‘My place.’

With Andrews sitting at his kitchen table, his socks and shoes drying on a radiator, Steven put a mug of coffee down in front of him and said, ‘Now, tell me everything.’

‘Only a few at the very top know everything,’ said Andrews ruefully.

Steven didn’t feel inclined to argue. ‘Then tell me what you do know. Tell me why my friend and four other people have been murdered and tell me exactly what your lot and mine have been up to in Afghanistan.’

‘As I understand it, we’ve been trying out an agent developed at Fort Detrick on remote populations of people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. I know it sounds awful but I’m told it was absolutely essential to carry out this work in the national interest of our countries.’

‘Why?’

Andrews grew uncomfortable. ‘I don’t rightly know.’

This elicited a cold, blank stare from Steven.

‘I really don’t. To be honest, the agent didn’t appear to make people that sick but I was told that there was to be more than one stage to the operation. Fort Detrick and your Porton Down were preparing the next stages.’

‘Go on.’

‘Your friend, Simone and her team came across one of the villages by accident. I don’t think she realised what was going on but she was pretty upset about the children’s vaccination schedules and wanted to complain about that. It was no big deal for us. By that time all the right people had been told about the CIA teams looking for Bin Laden’

‘So why kill her?’

Andrews swallowed nervously. ‘I swear to God, man, I don’t know. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘But?’

‘Presumably, Simone knew more than she let on or maybe she got hold of something that really pissed somebody off.’

‘Like Khan?’

‘I guess. We thought Khan was with us but it turns out that he is part of a Pakistani faction that has plans for taking on India in a big way. The old enemy.’

‘How did you reach that conclusion?’

‘My boss told me something had gone badly wrong. The guys at Fort Detrick were ready with the final stage of the experiment — or whatever you want to call it. One of their top scientists was sent out to a top-level meeting in Pakistan with a CIA led team. The guy was supposed to bring our allies up to speed but they never made it. They set off from Islamabad one morning with a guide from Pakistani Intelligence and disappeared off the face of the planet. We think the guide set them up.’

‘So the information fell into the wrong hands?’

‘We thought not. The agency didn’t trust Pakistani Intelligence. They had a plan B in place if there was any kind of double cross. It was deployed when our guy didn’t call in by a certain time and we thought the info had been destroyed along with the punks who ambushed our guys but new intelligence says not. Khan’s behaviour suggests it’s still out there somewhere.’

Steven didn’t tell Andrews what it was or where. ‘But presumably Fort Detrick still has all the details?’

‘Oh sure, it’s just a question of them not wanting the info to fall into the wrong hands.’

‘Or any hands other than theirs,’ said Steven.

Andrews shrugged. ‘Hey, maybe that’s what Simone discovered?’

‘Maybe.’

‘So where do we go from here?’

‘I take it you’re taking steps to deal with Khan, now he’s no longer one of your pals?’

Andrews looked uncomfortable again. ‘Khan’s crimes are seen as a European affair. We don’t like to... interfere in the internal affairs of our allies.’

‘Isn’t that just the sweetest thing...’ said Steven.

Andrews looked down at the table top. ‘What do you intend to do now?’ he asked.

Steven shook his head. ‘Just go,’ he said. ‘Just go.’

Nothing more was said as Steven waited for Andrews to put his socks and shoes on before showing him the door. Steven opened the kitchen window to let out the lingering odour of Thames-soaked footwear before closing the door behind him and going through to the lounge where he poured himself a drink.

‘Jesus,’ he muttered as he started to assess what he’d learned from the encounter with Andrews. Not a lot was his conclusion although it was nice to have what he’d already worked out confirmed. The British, US and Pakistani governments had colluded over the testing of a new bio-agent on people in the North West Frontier — or whatever they called it now. If that was good enough for Kipling, it would do for him he thought, feeling bolshie about the whole business.