Michael Parker - A Covert War

Cavendish had just about made himself comfortable, but responded immediately. ‘My take on it, Prime Minister is that a huge hole has been blown in my investigation; one from which I cannot see us recovering.’ He helped himself to a glass of water. He took a sip and put the glass down on to a small table. ‘At the moment all I can think of is damage limitation and trying to keep the Press out of it.’

‘Was your investigation the reason we ended up with a shootout, as the papers put it, at an American depot?’ the Police Commissioner asked him.

Cavendish gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I wish it wasn’t but, yes, that was the reason there was a shoot out.’

Butler frowned. ‘I find that a little flippant,’ he told Cavendish. ‘There must be a convincing reason why you were there. And why on earth were the Americans involved?’

Cavendish bridled at Butler’s assertion that he was being flippant, but held his tongue; the last thing he wanted here was a slanging match and point scoring over other security departments.

‘The reason my men ended up at the American depot was because they were following a suspicious cargo which we believed contained drugs.’

Faulkner butted in. ‘What on earth was your department doing investigating drugs?’ he asked testily. ‘We have a dedicated drug squad for that very purpose. Why weren’t we informed?’

‘It wasn’t so much as the drugs we were interested in,’ Cavendish replied, ‘but the result of where those drugs were going, and who is behind the operation.’

Faulkner made a guttural sound in his throat. ‘Hmmph! Come to my office, Cavendish and I’ll give you a list of known dealers a mile long.’

‘Do they deal in arms as well?’ Cavendish put to him. ‘And do they deal in child pornography, trafficking young children for the delectation of men in high places? Do they put this country’s security as risk because they are involved in one of the vilest, vicious, demonic and lucrative operations?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ Butler asked; his mouth twisted into a grimace.

Cavendish glanced at him and then back across the table to the Prime Minister.

‘This is not a drug cartel that smuggles drugs into our country for the sake of making money,’ he said sharply. ‘This is an organisation that trades under the protection of very powerful men who hold positions of authority in politics, the armed forces and terrorism.’ He was holding their attention now. ‘They bring drugs into our country, sell them on and use the money to buy arms which they ship out to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They use young girls as ‘sweeteners’ so that these twisted men can use them for their own purposes.’

‘Where are they buying the drugs from?’ Faulkner asked. ‘We’ve just about destroyed all the poppy fields in Afghanistan.’

Cavendish gave him a withering look. ‘The drug harvest in Afghanistan is extremely healthy. The annual crop is worth about one hundred million pounds. A lot of that funds the weapons traffic.’

‘I was under the impression, Sir Giles,’ interrupted the Prime Minister, ‘that we had all but secured those provinces where we operate and halted all drug production.’

Cavendish looked askance at the Prime Minister. ‘Then you sources are unreliable, Prime Minister. Perhaps your information is deliberately false. This continuous rotation of drugs and guns is a fact and is kept going by men in high positions of authority.’

‘Preposterous,’ declared Butler. ‘We would know about it immediately. Our men out in Afghanistan are without question the most dependable and reliable.’

Cavendish looked at Butler, but before replying he stole a quick glance at the Prime Minister. Directing his eyes back to the Police Commissioner, he said, ‘Our soldiers in Afghanistan are underpaid, under- equipped and undermanned. They rely heavily on human intelligence in the field which comes from some Taliban commanders, when it suits them,’ he added, ‘and from local Afghan tribal chiefs. Our soldiers cannot be in several places at once, and they are often led to believe that the poppy field they destroyed a year ago is no longer producing when the fact is the farmer is still growing the poppies and the drug factories are making pure heroin.’

‘What you are implying, Cavendish,’ Faulkner said, ‘is that there are corrupt men at the top of the chain. Do you have any proof of this?’

Cavendish shook his head. ‘Unfortunately I cannot always deal in proof; it’s something that our department sees very little of. Even with facts, we often have to use them in trade-offs; tit for tat exchanges. Promises made by one party to another. Someone wants his name kept out of it so is willing to sell his soul. We can only stop this corrupt practice by getting at the heads of the chain and cutting them off. That is what we were trying to do at the American depot at Feltwell when the whole thing blew up in our faces. And I assure you gentlemen, it was no-one’s fault but mine.’

‘There’s no need to fall on your sword, Sir Giles,’ the Prime Minister told him abruptly.

‘Why did this have to involve the Americans?’ Butler asked Cavendish.

‘Because the Americans are involved,’ he replied simply. ‘It’s really them who are calling the shots.’

‘What do you mean the Americans are calling the shots?’

‘They have the scope and the size to hide an operation like this within the parameters of their own, legitimate operations,’ Cavendish told him.

‘But you’ve no proof.’ It was a simply stated fact, and the Police Commissioner seemed confident now that Cavendish’s explanations were based largely on supposition and wishful thinking. ‘And they could only run a clandestine operation with the knowledge and connivance of some very, well placed men.’

‘Precisely.’ It was all Cavendish said because the Police Commissioner had simply reiterated what he had been trying to tell them all along.

The Commissioner realised what he had just implied and the expression on his face changed. It was like he finally understood the solution to a problem that had been dogging him for some time, only in this case it wasn’t a problem that he alone could solve.

‘Sir Giles,’ the Prime Minister said, breaking the slight impasse. ‘I am seeing the American Ambassador later today along with Commodore Deveraux, the Military Attache. I need something to tell them, but I also need something to ask them. If you cannot furnish me with something positive, it looks like they will be asking the questions and I will have to provide the answers.’

Cavendish shrugged his shoulders. ‘In that case, Prime Minister I can only ask you to tell them what you know.’

‘Which is precisely nothing without facts,’ the Prime Minister commented.

Cavendish nodded. ‘Exactly, but you could labour the point about Chief Master Sergeant Danvor Grebo going missing after wounding one of our police officers and shooting dead one of his own American comrades.’

‘I must say that’s hardly a senior rank to be considered as a man in high authority,’ Faulkner put in. ‘I understood from what you have been saying, Sir Giles that you were looking for men in high places.’

Cavendish turned to face Faulkner. ‘Chief Grebo is a logistics man. He has attained the highest, non- commissioned rank in the American Air Force. It gives him an element of power and control. Four nights ago Grebo shot and wounded one of my operatives. He is a dangerous man. He is also the cousin of Milan Janov; a man who we believe is heavily involved in drugs and people trafficking. The more we look into the connections between individuals here, the worse it becomes.’ He then spoke to the Prime Minister.

‘I would ask you, Prime Minister to be very circumspect during your meeting with the Ambassador and Commodore Deveraux.’