Ian Rankin - Westwind

‘Whose?’ Her voice was soft and feminine.

‘Martin Hepton’s.’

The laugh was cavernous beyond her slender frame. She went to the desk and lifted an attaché case onto its surface. The locks clicked, and she pulled the case open. Inside was the most lethal-looking handgun Dreyfuss had ever seen. It resembled a heavily modified target pistol, with a long shining silver barrel. There was a sight in another compartment of the case’s moulded interior, and she fixed this along the pistol. Then she closed the case again and brought a plastic carrier bag out from the bottom drawer of the desk, placing it over her left hand, which was now grasped around the carved butt of the gun. It didn’t quite look as though she were merely carrying an empty bag, but the gun was sufficiently disguised. She touched the fingers of one hand to the scald marks on her face. Finally, wordlessly, and on silent feet, she walked to the door, opened it and left, closing it behind her.

Dreyfuss looked at Villiers, who appeared impressed by the performance. ‘Where’s Jilly?’ he repeated.

‘She’s safe. For the moment. Why don’t we sit down? I’m sure there are questions you want to ask. We have a little time until Harry returns. Fire away.’

Dreyfuss sat on the chair Harry had been using. Villiers, however, remained standing, leaning against the far wall next to another door.

‘Okay,’ said Dreyfuss. ‘What’s COFFIN?’

‘An easy one to start with. Very well, let’s take COFFIN’s lid off.’ Villiers smiled at his own joke, but Dreyfuss remained unmoved. Villiers’ face lost its humour. ‘COFFIN, Major Dreyfuss, stands for Combined Forces International Network. It has an interesting history. I myself was unaware of it until quite recently. By then, COFFIN had decided it needed a few agents in the field, people who couldn’t be traced back to it. People, in other words, outwith the armed forces. Eventually they came to me, and were able to introduce me to Harry. Really, she’s the more...’ he seemed to search for the right word, ‘ professional of the two of us. But I’m afraid we’re very lowly figures, comparatively speaking.

‘COFFIN came about by accident,’ he continued. ‘You see, generals don’t always agree with their governments, and they command more respect from their men than do politicians. Well, a lot of generals — from the United States, the other NATO countries, even a few of the non-aligned states — got together and found that they had a good deal in common. More in common, in fact, than they did with their own countries’ leaders. So they started to swap information, intelligence, that sort of thing, all very informally, very sub rosa . That seemed to work to everyone’s advantage, so they started trading all kinds of things.’

‘What kinds of things?’

‘Oh, tactics, armaments, maybe even a few men for certain special missions. Of course, no one ever questioned orders, and so no one ever knew that the generals were doing more and more off their own bat, without anyone else knowing about it outside the forces themselves.’

Dreyfuss whistled, trying to sound impressed. Damn it, he was impressed, ‘But how could you hope to keep something like that secret?’

‘Easily enough,’ said Villiers, warming to his subject. ‘For one thing, who did they have to hide it from? A few men from the MoD and the more investigative of our journalistic profession. But the thing was so big — is so big — that virtually no one can see it! That’s its beauty.’

‘Then why the need for a burial?’

‘Look around you, Major Dreyfuss.’ George Villiers paced the floor like an actor of old. This was his big soliloquy, and he knew it, but to Dreyfuss he was all amateur dramatics. Amateur dramatics or no, he still held the Beretta. And while he held the gun, Dreyfuss could do little but listen.

‘American defence strategy is forward-thinking,’ Villiers was saying, ‘forward meaning Europe, so as to prevent war on American soil. The American generals weren’t happy about the enforced pull-out. It’s all down to trust, and they weren’t about to trust a civilian Britain not under the US umbrella. Anything might happen. We all might become bloody Europeans, and it’s a short step from there to Euro-communism. They decided it wasn’t right . So it was decided that a base was needed, an underground base, away from prying eyes. RAF Buchan was chosen as the intended site. It has a surveillance system, a few dozen staff and even a couple of silos.’

‘Silos?’

‘Nuclear silos, Major. Built when Britain was expecting to play host to American missiles.’

Dreyfuss’ throat was suddenly very dry. ‘Are there missiles, too?’

Villiers nodded eagerly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that amazing?’

‘It’s impossible.’

‘Oh no, I assure you that it is fact . The missiles were already here. Instead of dismantling them, our cousins merely moved them around, stripping off a bit here and a bit there, then rebuilding new missiles from pieces of the old. Simplicity itself. After all, they already had more missiles here than anyone knew about.’

‘But why do you need silos?’

‘For the first strike.’

‘What?’ Dreyfuss’ head spun.

‘Buchan is merely the UK base. There are others dotted all over Europe. They are the centres of attack for a series of forthcoming coups, apparently by the armed forces of each country, but in reality by COFFIN. Soon after that, we launch the missiles.’

‘But why, for God’s sake?’

Villiers laughed. ‘I took you for an intelligent man, Major. Think about it. Can you see Eastern Europe accepting such a series of coups so close to their borders and — if you’ll excuse the pun — their satellites? No, they’ll be forced to attack. But they’ll be too late. We’ll have hit them first!’

‘This is mad.’

‘No, it is completely sane, Major.’

‘You’re saying nobody’s noticed any of this?’

‘Buchan is isolated, as are the other chosen bases. The fact that the troops were pulling out gave the perfect cover for some excavation and building work. There was already a small underground chamber there, to protect the systems against nuclear attack. We disguised a building programme as a dismantling programme. The Scots are a wonderful nation, Major. They keep themselves to themselves, and so long as no one’s interfering with them, they’re happy to turn a blind eye to most things.’

Dreyfuss nodded. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t hope to hide the construction work from the skies?’

‘Exactly. Which is where Zephyr came in. I must say, the generals proposed a simple but ingenious idea. Tap into the surveillance satellite, and you can transmit anything you like. So that’s what they did.’

‘But I was on the shuttle that launched the pirate satellite.’ It was a comment, nothing more. Dreyfuss was still looking for a chance to wrest the gun away from this insane man.

‘Indeed you were,’ Villiers said, smiling again. ‘There was little that could be done about that. The mission had been planned for ages. The US pull-out was supposed to be amicable. To have suddenly announced that a Briton was no longer to go up in the shuttle would have been more than a mite suspicious.’

‘More suspicious than blowing the shuttle up?’ Dreyfuss felt queasy now, thinking of how heartlessly the crew of Argos had been dispatched.

‘Yes.’ Villiers seemed surprised by the question. ‘I mean, shuttles do crash, don’t they? Anyway, the generals made Zephyr work for them, rather than against them, which is a brilliant strategy. Of course, having decided that a Briton must go up, COFFIN had to be sure that the least capable member of the shortlist was chosen.’ He was really enjoying himself now. He waved the gun across Dreyfuss’ body, then up and down from head to toes. ‘So there was the least risk of your seeing anything suspicious and reporting those suspicions back to Earth before the crash-landing. It all worked well enough, except that you survived the landing. At first, everyone thought you had amnesia, and decided to allow you a lease of life. And by the time General Esterhazy realised what a threat you really were, it was too late. You’d gone. And now here you are.’