Stephen Leather - Dead Men

She wiped away her tears with her left hand. ‘I felt so bloody helpless,’ she said.

‘He had a knife, Charlie,’ said Shepherd.

‘If it had been you, you’d have done some flashy kung-fu stuff and taken it off him,’ she said.

‘Not if he’d cut my throat from behind,’ said Shepherd. ‘And we never did kung-fu in the SAS.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘I was throwing books at him, for God’s sake. How pathetic is that?’

The towel around her right hand was soaked with blood. Shepherd lifted her hand from her lap and held it at shoulder height. ‘You did medical training in the SAS?’ she asked.

‘The basics, but I was never a medic,’ he said. ‘My speciality was hostage rescue as part of CRW,’ he said. ‘Counter-revolutionary Warfare. I was trained for putting rounds into people rather than patching them up afterwards.’ In the distance Shepherd heard an ambulance siren. ‘Here they come,’ he said.

‘I need to make a call,’ she said.

‘It can wait,’ said Shepherd.

‘No, it can’t,’ she said. ‘As soon as they see two dead bodies and the state of me they’ll call the police and we can’t have that.’ She held out her right hand. ‘Let me have my mobile.’

Shepherd went over to it. ‘It’s broken,’ he said. ‘Use mine.’

‘They’ll keep a record of the call and I don’t want your name in the frame.’ She pointed to her husband’s body. ‘Give me Graham’s.’

Her husband’s mobile was in a leather holster clipped to his belt. Shepherd pulled it out and gave it to her. She nodded at the desk. ‘Hide the gun,’ she said. She tapped out a number with her thumb, brow furrowed. Shepherd stood up and went over to get the UMP. ‘Thinking about it, Spider, it might be best if you get as far away from here as you can,’ she said.

Shepherd took the Tube to Knightsbridge and wandered around the Harrods food hall for ten minutes to check that he wasn’t being followed, then took a circuitous route through the surrounding streets to the red-brick mansion that housed the Special Forces Club. He pushed open the door, signed in at the reception desk in the hallway and headed upstairs. Yokely was already at the bar with a vodka and tonic.

‘Your usual?’ asked Yokely.

Shepherd nodded and the American ordered a Jameson’s with soda and ice, then went over to a quiet table in the window. It had been at the Special Forces Club that Shepherd had first met Yokely. Shepherd dropped into a winged leather armchair. ‘What’s so urgent that I have to be dragged out of the bowels of the American embassy?’ asked Yokely.

‘It’s done,’ said Shepherd.

‘What’s done?’ asked the American.

‘Your man. Hassan Salih.’

‘Dead?’

‘Very.’

Yokely raised his glass in salute. ‘Well done you. Details?’ Shepherd told the American everything, only pausing when a white-jacketed waiter brought his whiskey. When he’d finished, Yokely was grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘And Charlie?’

‘She’ll be okay. She’s in hospital. I’m going to see her after this.’

‘Tell her I was asking about her, will you?’

‘You should pop around yourself,’ said Shepherd.

‘I was never one for flowers,’ said Yokely. ‘And, frankly, we’re not that close.’

‘What about her husband’s funeral? Will you go to that?’

Yokely’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dan, I’m picking up a vibe here.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘There’s no vibe,’ he said. ‘I just can’t help but think that if you’d warned Charlie of the danger she was in, her husband might still be alive and she wouldn’t be in hospital.’

‘Trust me, if we’d warned her the killer would have just bided his time and eventually killed them both.’

‘And maybe gone after you, too?’

‘I told you before, I’m very hard to get.’ He sipped his vodka and tonic. ‘What about you? Where do you go from here?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Do you ever wonder what the world’s coming to, Dan? Down the john, that’s where we’re headed. Unless we do something about it.’

‘By “we”, who do you mean exactly?’ asked Shepherd.

‘You and me,’ said Yokely. ‘And those like us. We’re the only ones who stand between what we have and anarchy.’

‘That’s the job of governments. I’m a civil servant, working within government guidelines.’

‘Do you think your government is up to the job?’

Shepherd threw up his hands. ‘Who knows?’

‘I know,’ said Yokely. ‘The answer is, no, sir, they are not. You only have to read the papers to know that. You saw what happened to those sailors and marines who were taken hostage by the Iranians. Paraded in front of television cameras, saying they were sorry to have offended their Iranian hosts. Whatever happened to “Name, rank and serial number”? The Iranians are responsible for half the deaths in Iraq and they made the Brits look as if they were in the wrong. Your government’s weak and they’ve reduced your armed forces to a shadow of what they used to be. They’ve hamstrung your cops with rules and regulations and brought in so-called human-rights legislation that means terrorists and murderers can’t be deported, no matter what atrocities they’re planning to commit. I’m offering you the chance to make a difference, Dan. A real difference. To fight on the front line against the real villains in the world, and to fight on their terms.’

‘To kill them, you mean?’

‘If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes,’ said Yokely. He leant forward and stared at Shepherd with his pale blue eyes. For the first time Shepherd realised the American was wearing contact lenses. ‘Anyone close to you ever die of cancer?’

Shepherd shook his head.

‘You’re a lucky man. With all the bullshit about terrorist attacks and Aids and airplane crashes, you know what people die of?’

‘Cancer,’said Shepherd. ‘Cancer,strokes and heart disease.’

‘Damn right,’ said Yokely. ‘And cancer’s the big one. My father died of colon cancer. He was a big man, big and strong, but before he died I could carry him to the bathroom like he was a kid.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Shepherd.

Yokely waved away Shepherd’s comment, as if it were an irritating insect. ‘My sister died of breast cancer a few years ago. Fought it right to the end. She let the doctors cut her, pour poison into her veins, zap her with radiation and she still died. Cancer’s a bitch. It puts everything else into perspective.’

Shepherd wasn’t sure where the conversation was going.

‘The thing about cancer is that it starts small, a single rogue cell. But once that cell has grown and spread and the tumours have taken hold, it’s too late to do anything about it. The trick is to take out the single rogue cell. Take it out before it becomes fatal.’

Realisation dawned. ‘I get the analogy.’

‘So you understand the logic?’

‘I understand that there’s a difference between a human being and cancerous cells. And I understand there are laws, and above laws there’s morality.’

‘Where’s the morality in flying airliners into office blocks, Dan? In chopping the heads off aid workers? Blowing up commuters?’

‘If we go down to their level, they’ve won,’ said Shepherd.

‘That’s what they want you to think,’ said Yokely. ‘That’s one of the great lies. The idea that because we meet fire with fire we’re somehow the poorer for it. That’s crap. All that matters is that our way of life continues, and we have the right, the God-given right, to do whatever’s necessary to preserve it.’ He shook his head. ‘Your talents are being wasted, Dan. What has the lovely Charlie got you doing now? Protecting IRA assassins? You do see how incongruous that is, don’t you? Back in the eighties, if they’d caught you in Northern Ireland they’d have pulled out your fingernails, broken your legs and put a bullet in the back of your head.’