Steve Jackson - The Mentor

With a mark like that Aston wasn’t surprised to find himself assigned to Production and Targeting, Counter-Proliferation. The PTCP had been set up to stop countries like Iraq and Iran getting hold of weapons of mass destruction. What he didn’t expect was to end up working as Mac’s assistant. Mac had asked for him personally – something he got a buzz from pointing out to George. Robert Macintosh was a legend, one of the unsung heroes of the Cold War. He’d been H/MOS, the head of the Moscow station, when the Soviet Union disbanded. After that he’d been appointed H/VIE. The Vienna station was one of MI6’s biggest, not because Austria was of any interest, but because the country was ideally situated to spy on Russia and the Middle East, the arms trade, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On his first day Aston turned up bright and early, eager to make a good impression. Mac turned up even earlier.

‘You’re going to have to do better than that if you’re going to get one over on me.’ The man behind the desk smirked, sharp blue eyes twinkling.

It was Halliday mark II.

Aston flicked between the 24-hour news channels. There was only one story; that there were no ad breaks showed how big it was. All the reporters were giving Oscar-winning performances, all of them acting as though they’d seen the horrors up close and personal. Black ties and suits pulled out of mothballs for the occasion, they were shocked, appalled, sickened. Aston tried to reconcile what they were saying with what he’d witnessed in those claustrophobic tunnels, but couldn’t get the two to match. Their words and pictures fell pathetically short of the mark. Depending on the news channel the death toll ranged between two hundred and five hundred. But these were just numbers – cold, hard statistics that meant nothing. A person couldn’t be reduced to a number. The people who’d died had been husbands and wives, sons and daughters, children. They had loved and they had been loved. And now they were dead, and for those left grieving nothing was ever going to be the same again. Those reporters didn’t have a fucking clue.

‘Hey, you’re back,’ said a husky voice from the sofa. Laura sat up and pushed a hand through her rats’ tails, dragging the strands away from her sleepy face. ‘What time is it?’

‘Almost three.’

Laura tiptoed over, careful to keep her heels off the cold wood, dragging the duvet behind her. She curled up on Aston’s lap, all eight stone and five foot five of her, pulling the duvet across them, snuggling into his chest. She fitted perfectly. He shifted to help her get comfortable, kissed the top of her head. She lifted her face and they kissed properly.

‘Where have you been, Paul? I tried to phone but I kept getting your voicemail. I couldn’t get you on your mobile, either. I’ve been worried.’

‘I’m sorry. By the time I got your messages it was too late to phone. Work’s been manic today.’

She noticed his hands, picked them up and examined them, frowned as she rubbed her fingertips over the Elastoplast. ‘What happened?’

‘Would you believe it, I tripped and fell. How’s that for clumsy?’

‘Looks painful.’

‘I’ll live.’ Aston smiled at her, saw the tears. Without thinking he wiped them away with his thumb. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

Laura used the edge of the duvet to wipe her face. Even though it wasn’t cold, she pulled it more tightly around them. ‘You remember my friend Becky?’

He tried to place the name, and shook his head.

‘We went through teacher training together. She was at Trish and Simon’s wedding.’

A spark went off in his head. ‘Yeah, I remember. She’s okay, isn’t she?’

‘She’s fine. It’s her brother, Martin. He gets the tube from Leicester Square. Same time every night. She hasn’t heard from him …’ her voice faltered.

‘Oh Jesus, Laura.’

‘Poor Becky. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. I would have gone to see her. But there was no way I could get there …’ Laura rambled on, words and sobs mingling together. Aston let her talk and when she finished he held her close, felt the dampness seeping through his shirt.

‘How was work?’ Laura asked.

She was changing the subject, and that had to be a good thing. While she’d been talking his mind kept flashing up pictures of the dead baby. So he told her about the problems they were having in New Zealand, and how it was a complete bastard dealing with anyone over there because of the time difference, how you either had to hang around till nine in the evening or get up at some ridiculous hour of the morning. It no longer surprised him how easily the lies came. All part of the job. He took it for read that he’d open his mouth and the lies would all be lined up waiting to spill out. He occasionally wondered how healthy all those lies were for their relationship.

‘… a complete nightmare of a day,’ he concluded, and at least that much was the truth.

‘Poor baby,’ Laura muttered into his chest. She was almost asleep. A light rain began tapping on the window pane; far in the distance came the first rumble of thunder.

It only took a couple of hours for the media to christen the atrocity. Sky News, the tabloid of the TV news stations, did the honours. During the seven o’clock round up the anchorman referred to the Leicester Square bombing as 18/8, and the name stuck. The tabloids used it the next day, and it didn’t take long for the broadsheets to follow suit. Of course, BBC News and CNN weren’t far behind. 18/8 HUNDREDS DEAD, was the screaming headline on the front of the Sun the next morning, the typeface so large it took up the whole page. The story stretching across a dozen pages was big on sensational pictures – bodybags being carried out of Leicester Square, shocked survivors looking dazed and confused, grim firefighters with dirty faces – but light on words. At least, light on any words of substance. There were inches galore of speculation, eyewitness accounts, tales of bravery, but not much in the way of facts. Even now there was little to say on the subject, and certainly nothing that hadn’t been said a thousand times already. Almost two weeks had passed since the bomb attack. Autumn was rapidly approaching, the evenings closing in and the days getting cooler, and they were still no closer to nailing the bastards responsible for the atrocity. Sitting at his desk on the fifth floor, staring at his computer screen, Aston was painfully aware of this.

Fact: The bomb detonated at 5.21 p.m. on Friday, August 18th.

Fact: Another woman had died overnight, pushing the official death toll up to two hundred and sixty-two.

Fact: The manpower working on this one was unprecedented. MI6 had pulled every spare man, MI5 had done the same, so had the Met.

Fact: Two weeks on and they didn’t have shit.

It was so bloody depressing. Not to mention stressful. The internal phone rang and Aston picked it up with a sense of foreboding.

‘Get your arse in here now,’ Mac barked.

Before Aston could say anything the line went dead. Sighing, he picked up his notepad and pen and walked the dozen steps to Mac’s office, a distance as long as any last journey to Old Sparky.

Mac was pacing; wearing out rug, as he liked to put it. He’d been wearing out a lot of rug recently. As head of the PTCP he’d been right in the firing line. Under normal circumstances, Mac was as cool a customer as you were ever likely to meet. However, these circumstances were far from normal and he was definitely showing the stress. There were a few more lines, wrinkles that enhanced the rugged lived-in look of his face; his neat hair had a few loose telltale strands that could only come from nervous fingers. And more than once Aston had caught his boss with the top button of his shirt undone and the tie pulled down a fraction of an inch; something unheard of in the days before 18/8. The signs were subtle but they were there if you knew where to look.