Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

‘There’s a man who works for our company. I’ve not met him. He’s a sort of freelancer and gets hired out to corporations and governments, and to people with big bank balances. I don’t know if we can fix something. We say, out in Baghdad, that if ever we’re lifted, we’d pray this guy isn’t on another assignment, that he’s sent for. He has a gold-plated reputation – a nose for what to do and what angle to come in from… but I’ve not met him. Have to see what’s possible.’

The rain was across the face of the father and dripped off the cap’s peak. In the half-light from the kitchen window he couldn’t tell whether it was only the rain on his cheeks or tears too.

‘I’m going to make a call for you. It’s the best shout I can do. Your boy had time for me. I’ll let you know.’

His hand was gripped, held tight, as if Dean Weymouth was a lifeline.

‘I hear what you say, Dean. My dad, and your dad, my mother and your mother – just the same – and worried sick as yours and mine would be. To expect help from the boys in blue, well, that’s asking too much. Yes, I’ll ring. Are you resting up? Good to hear it. Look after yourself, and we’ll see you before you go south again.’

He was Roderick Johnstone. He opened a file on the screen of his computer. The abbreviation of his first name, and an exchange of one letter gave ‘Ruddy’. There was a duck with that name. He was known therefore, to his face and his back as ‘Duck’ and had been since school. Most casual observers of Duck rated him stereotypical: a mane of blond hair, a public-school education but few academic qualifications, a commission via the Royal Military Academy into a good cavalry regiment, a middling career, then into the outside civilian world, a pinstripe suit and a Mayfair office. Such observers would badly have misread the man. He had formed a private security company, had drawn around him a kernel of experienced men, mostly with the hallowed Special Forces background, had shown rare business acumen and had landed major contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did protection of property and personnel, and used UK nationals from the Regiment at Hereford, the Squadron at Poole and from the Parachute Regiment. He had built a reputation for the delivery of what he promised, value for cash and discretion. His payroll was small, but he was expensive, and clients queued for his services. Among illustrious clients, among those requiring total anonymity, was the Central Intelligence Agency, and Duck’s email in-box was filled with ‘sincerest thanks’ and ‘deepest gratitude’ and ‘top to bottom appreciation from those inside the loop here’, and on his payroll there was a hostage co-ordinator. He was searching that file.

Why did Duck bother with a matter so seemingly trivial?

Where were the rewards?

Would he involve himself in something so lacking in fact and intelligence?

There was about Duck a quirk of anarchy that had made him a second-rate soldier and an alpha-class business operator. He liked to say that ‘ordinary’ people used the same hand, same paper, same technique to clean their backsides as the self-appointed elite, and those that his teams protected were ‘ordinary’ – ordinary accountants, ordinary telecom engineers, ordinary electricity-supply managers, ordinary sewage-treatment technicians, ordinary advisers on hospital management – and his teams, too, were made up of ordinary people, as Dean Weymouth was, and had ordinary parents and…

Duck’s care for men such as Dean Weymouth, the men on whose backs – and guts – the company prospered, was utterly sincere. He valued them, listened to them and tried damned hard to stay loyal to them. His own company had not – thanking the good Lord – had an employee kidnapped. He’d met other CEOs, whose firms had. He understood the awfulness of it, and he had on the books a bloody good man. The file told him of a link that, sort of, confirmed the matter, something in his man’s past that would open Italian doors and guarantee co-operation of a sort. He knew what effect a kidnapping had on a family and an employer. There, but for God’s grace. Because Dean Weymouth had called him, he was – damn near – obliged to get involved.

He lifted the telephone again and dialled the number given him by the one-time Royal Marine.

‘Mrs Deacon? Hello. I’m Roddy Johnstone, but everyone calls me Duck. Dean Weymouth has just spoken to me, and explained your problem. Up front, Ground Force Security makes big money from governments, which sort of underwrites the costs when we deal with individuals. I want you to tell me what you know of your son’s situation – all the names and locations – because I might have someone who can help you. If your fears are founded, time is always against us so we should push on. But it’s your decision… Right, Mrs Deacon, begin at the beginning…’

Lukas ran. Just when the light had failed over the rooftops, he had come back to his apartment and unlocked the door. Dark in the hallway, and before he had switched on the ceiling light, he had seen the flashing red bulb on the telephone. He ran for the Solferino Metro station.

At the airport he would get downloads, but important now was speed and getting there. The bag, always packed with the few things he needed, was high on his shoulder. Pedestrians darted out of his path, as if realising that when a grown man ran at that speed he wouldn’t swerve to avoid collision. He hurried because he didn’t acknowledge complacency, and knew it travelled alongside failure. Lukas had been at Waco.

‘Where the shit/the fuck/the hell is this place – Waco?’ had been the chorus on the flight down from Andrews. They had half emptied the stores huts at the Bureau’s place in Quantico, among the forests, where the HRTs sat and waited for the call. The beepers had gone and the Hostage Rescue Team had scrambled, and filled more than one C-141 could carry. They believed there – except for the few who had been at Ruby Ridge – that they were the ‘invincibles’ and were given missions beyond the capabilities of other SWAT groups. Seven weeks at Waco, endless books read, stuck behind a Barrett. 5 calibre sniper rifle with 3000 feet per second muzzle velocity and a high hit probability at 1000 yards… and watching from a distance the fuck-up to end all fuck-ups, so many children killed in the fire, no medals, only inquests, and complacency stripped bare.

He went down the steps into the Metro station, and was still running.

Most had quit after Waco rather than face the interrogations, under subpoena, of the Office of Professional Responsibility. New snipers were brought into new teams. He would have quit if not for the creation of a Critical Incident Response Team, when the negotiators, profilers and Hostage Rescue heroes had to gather in the same room, even had to talk to each other. A new world and a new style of action, with a co-ordinator sitting at the end of a CIRT table. The job of the co-ordinator was to weigh the input of the negotiator, hear the profiler’s analysis, listen to the fears and demands of the ‘stormers’, then make a decision and live with it. He liked the job. Only decent thing that had come out of Waco, the fire and the deaths was the creation of the job, its culture and the responsibility that went with it.

He forced his way on to a train as the doors closed.

*

He had had to break off. He had cursed when his mobile had rung. Always – Castrolami’s belief – it rang at the least opportune moment. She was talking well. He would have kept her going all through the evening, changed tapes and not let her off the hook.

He took a call from Naples, from the palace, the personal assistant to the prosecutor.

Confused… a boy, English, aged twenty-seven, an adult-student English teacher, reported kidnapped, believed to be taken from via Forcella, named as Eddie Deacon. ‘What has that to do with me?’ Impatience shouldered out politeness.