Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘Don’t be an idiot.’

‘For a guy who had his dick hanging out half an hour ago,’ Bethany said, ‘he’s got a gob on him.’

‘Just tell me about Poliakov,’ Danny said, changing lanes to get ahead more quickly. ‘I can’t guarantee your safety, so if you have intel that needs sharing, now’s the time to share it.’

A moment of silence. O’Brien frowned. Taciturn. Unsure of himself. He looked back at the neon light. ‘Fine,’ he said, with great reluctance. ‘I’ll tell you about Poliakov.’

SEVENTEEN

‘Poliakov’s an FSB agent, but I guess you know that, right?’ The General didn’t wait for Danny to confirm or deny. ‘He came to me with certain information.’

‘Wait,’ Danny said. ‘He came to you?’

‘That’s what I said, Einstein. He was blowing the whistle on the Russians. Hard intel about the Kremlin’s collusion with the Oval Office. It’s hardly a secret that I’m no fan of the President, so he figured I was the guy to approach. He figured right.’

‘No,’ Danny said. The General was obviously lying. ‘I read a transcript of your conversation with Poliakov in Crete. You gave him intel on the movements of the Zero 22 unit in Syria. I read it with my own eyes.’

‘You read it wrong. Or you read what somebody wanted you to read. Zero 22 was the SAS operation, right? Poliakov told me the Russians were going to ambush it and that they’d had the intel from the White House. I couldn’t act on that information. If I had, if I’d warned the British, the Kremlin and the White House would have known there was a leak. Couldn’t do it. Poliakov’s intel was too big. Had to accept that there’d be some collateral damage.’

‘That collateral was my unit mates,’ Danny said. It was a task to keep his voice level.

Silence.

‘You were on the op that was compromised in Syria?’ the General said.

Danny nodded.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ the General said. He spoke the platitude with a bland expression.

‘That all you can say?’

‘What’s your name?’ the General asked.

Danny didn’t reply.

‘I’m a goddamn five-star general in the United States Army. You think I can’t find out your name?’

‘Danny Black.’

‘Okay, Danny Black. In case you didn’t notice, I just lost three good men to a couple of Russian hoods. They’ve got wives and families, too. Not to mention that this psychopathic bitch was a split second away from killing me. So spare me the victim act, huh? Truth is, Poliakov’s intel is bigger than all of us. If I had to compromise Zero 22 again, or put my men in the line of fire, I’d do it.’

Danny breathed deeply. Felt the air travel into his lungs and back out again. Forced himself to stay calm because he knew anger was no use to him. ‘So what was it?’ he said.

‘Poliakov’s intel?’

‘Right.’

‘The deepfakes,’ the General said, as if that explained everything. Danny glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and saw that he was smiling. ‘You don’t know about the deepfakes, right? You were just passing on a message from London.’

The bustle of Amman was all around them, but they were on a fast-moving northbound flyover. There was no sign of police and no indication that they were being followed yet Danny couldn’t relax. ‘The Regiment is picking us up in the desert,’ he said. ‘Close to the Israeli border. We’re going to have half the Jordanian police force looking for us, not to mention the Wagner Group. I’m going to do my best to get you out of here alive, but there’s no guarantees. If this intel is so important, you should tell me what it is now, in case you don’t make it out.’

‘You’re a smart guy, Danny Black. I’ve met a few of you boys from Hereford and I can’t say the same for all of them.’ He leaned back in his seat, and all of a sudden he was no longer a scared target fleeing from danger. He was the alpha male who had wasted no time hitting on Bethany in the hotel bar. It occurred to Danny that it took a special kind of self-confidence to go from being naked, tied up and humiliated to this. O’Brien was not a guy to let stuff get in his way. He cleared his throat. ‘Collusion between the Oval Office and the Kremlin, that’s no big story, right? The Russians helped the President get elected in the first place, they encouraged him to withdraw support from NATO and Europe. Sure, we haven’t seen a smoking gun, but we all know it’s been happening.’

Danny said nothing. He was a soldier, not a politician.

‘What we didn’t know, what nobody knows, at least not publicly, is the extent of it. Our president has developed a taste for power. I guess that when you have more money than you can spend in several lifetimes, your appetites become more rarefied. Fortunately for the United States, the founding fathers predicted just such an eventuality. They wove certain checks and balances into the US constitution. No president of the United States is permitted to serve more than two four-year terms.’

The General obviously liked the sound of his own voice. But he was talking, that was the main thing. Danny kept quiet and let him continue.

‘Of course, you tell an autocrat that he’s not allowed to do something, you can be pretty certain he’ll start trying to find a way to do it, right? Look at that ex-KGB jackal in the Kremlin. The moment his tenure as president comes to an end, he fixes his sights on the post of prime minister and starts increasing the scope of prime ministerial authority. He frames it as the will of the people. It’s how tyrants work. Bit by bit, they chip away at the structures intended to prevent the abuse of executive power. Bit by bit, they whip the people up into a frenzy of paranoia. They tell them that their livelihoods and their safety are under threat by external forces. Think Hitler and the Jews. They persuade them that the only solution is more authoritarianism. It’s a seductive message. It works. History tells us that the result is never happy.’

‘Poliakov,’ Danny reminded him.

The General nodded. ‘Poliakov’s your regular FSB careerist. But when he found out what the Kremlin and the Oval Office were plotting, it was too rich even for his Russian blood. He came to me because he knew I was a vocal critic of the President, and because I might be in a position to do something about it.’

‘About what?’

The General pointed at Bethany. ‘Can she be trusted?’ he said.

Bethany was staring straight ahead. She showed no sign that she was even listening to the General, nor did she react to his question in any way. ‘Yeah,’ Danny said. A short answer, because the long one was complicated and couldn’t be spoken out loud.

‘Okay then. This is what I believe to be happening. The Oval Office is planning what I can best describe as a right-wing coup. To do that, the President needs a scapegoat, and the Kremlin is helping him make one. There will be a terror attack. My understanding is that it will take place on the fourth of July. That’s an important day for us Americans. Independence Day, right? A terror attack on the fourth of July is like, I don’t know, bombing Buckingham Palace on the Queen’s birthday. It’s an affront to all patriots. And patriots, or at least those who make a song and dance about how damn patriotic they are, they’re the President’s base. They’re the ones who will be most outraged, and most susceptible to what comes next.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Danny said. ‘If the Americans know there’s going to be an attack, what are they doing to stop it?’

‘You’re not listening, soldier. They don’t want to stop it. They’re making it happen. They’re actively manipulating known jihadists. Funding them. Planning the whole damn thing. And then, when the outrage is at its highest, and the President has addressed his rallies, and the crowd are baying for Muslim blood, that’s when they release the deepfakes.’