The Mentor

STEVE JACKSON

The Mentor

Dedication

For Karen, with love.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One: Dead Flowers In Her Hair

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Part Two: The Third Choice

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Part Three: Babylon’s Burning

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Fifteen minutes till showtime.

Waiting doesn’t bother me, never has. It comes with the territory. Killing time … yeah, I’m good at that. The room is oppressive and smells of disinfectant and piss, rented by the hour rather than the day and not much bigger than the bed. There are no Gideons in the bedside drawer, no mints on the stained pillows. The mattress is lumpy and covered with a dirty grey sheet. No duvet. The headboard is screwed to the plasterboard wall to stop it banging, the screws going in at all angles. Paper-thin curtains hang raggedly across the window, the hint of a floral pattern barely visible; tracings in pink, red and green. A garbage-strewn alleyway can be glimpsed through the crack. There’s no wardrobe, no chest of drawers, no point, really. You come to a place like this to fuck or die.

I’ve rented the room for two hours and paid in cash. The desk clerk was caged behind the wire mesh and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a baseball bat or a gun hidden back there. A shock of electrified white dreads hung halfway down his back and a fat joint was clamped between his bluing lips. Late sixties or early fifties, difficult to say. He was staring through the sweet-smelling smoke at a black and white portable, screwed-up bloodshot eyes taking it all in. On the screen, Arnie was waving a big gun. Half man, half cyborg … come with me if you want to live! The clerk took the money and shoved a key through the slot without turning from the TV.

‘Uhm,’ I said. ‘A friend … a female friend. She’ll be, er, turning up shortly. Could you send her to my room?’

The clerk turned slowly, took a long drag on his joint and gave me a look as if to say what the fuck do you think this is? The motherfuckin’ Hilton? He exhaled and grinned through the smoke, his teeth yellow and gold. ‘Sure thing, mon,’ he said. Still grinning, he turned back to the TV. He’d looked at me for all of two seconds; looked but didn’t see. The man on the other side of the mesh was already forgotten. Just another horny white businessman indistinguishable from the dozens of horny white businessmen he sees each and every day.

A glance at my watch. Eight minutes to go. Further down the hall, a whore is earning her next fix. Moaning and groaning and on the home straight now, telling the punter what he needs to hear: he’s a bad, bad boy … and sooo big. I ignore the noise, boot up the laptop. A click and a purr as the fan spins to life. I type in the password, fingers click-clacking across the keyboard. Hacking into London Underground’s main computer system, I quickly access the security cameras. The screen shows a grainy CCTV image of a crowded platform: Leicester Square. It’s a realtime feed, the picture coming via satellite through my mobile, into the laptop. There are three cameras positioned to give a complete view of the platform, and with a single click I can bounce between them. It’s amazing what you can do with technology.

Rush hour is in full swing, the station crowded with suits. White faces, black faces, yellow faces. The colours vary but the expressions are the same: tired, stressed and bored. A train pulls in and the crush on the platform momentarily eases. The doors shut, then open again to let another couple of businessmen squash inside. I’m not sure who the lucky ones are. Those whisked away by the train or those left behind.

Within a minute the platform is crawling again. I scan the faces, searching for the girl. Everywhere I look little dramas unfold … haikus of humanity. A Pakistani in a crisp suit is standing near an exit, briefcase in hand, laptop bag slung over one shoulder. His tongue subconsciously moistens dry lips, eyes making love to every square inch of the woman in front. She senses something, turns suddenly. His head jerks away too quickly and a slender smile slides across her lips. She runs a hand through her short mannish hair, secretly flattered by the attention. I click to another camera. A backpacker is moving through the crowd like an astronaut, in slo-mo, the gravitational pull of the platform sucking him down. A rucksack is strapped to his back; greasy hair tumbles over his shoulders. He’s wearing cut-off denim shorts; there are piercings in his ears, nose and lip. The one word logo on his T-shirt says it all: LOSER.

The deal was for the whole sum up front, all two million of it, the fee non-refundable. It’s the only way to do business. That half now, half later nonsense is strictly for amateurs. It crosses my mind she might bottle it. Wouldn’t be the first time an op had gone tits up at zero hour. I tell myself to be patient.

Seconds tick by, slowly turn into minutes. I know what they call me behind my back: a dinosaur. They mean it as an insult, but I don’t see it that way. The word dinosaur has its origins in Greek. Deinos meaning terrible; sauros meaning lizard. Terrible Lizard. People should choose their words more carefully.

I click between the cameras, scanning the crowd, checking the faces against the photo lying next to the laptop. A heavily pregnant Arab woman is standing beside the chocolate machine. She’s glowing, radiating a righteous light. Her head moves from left to right, searching for the best place to stand. She presses towards the middle of the platform. The crowds part to let her through, like they know she’s something special. She treads carefully, hands resting on her bump, moving with the waddle of a woman whose waters could break any second. She’s smiling at the businessmen as they move out the way, smiling at women who are obviously mothers. They keep giving her sympathetic glances. Poor thing! Pregnant in this heat, that can’t be any fun! She shrugs and smiles. What can I do? A telepathic conversation taking place between the members of an organisation every bit as mysterious as the masons.

She stops near the yellow line and her eyes flick to the digital display hanging from the roof. The next train is due in one minute. She turns her head and for a brief moment she’s staring directly into the lens. Even in monochrome she looks glorious. Barely out of her teens with long dark hair and exotic skin. There’s no tension in her face, no regret in those dark, smoky eyes; she’s perfectly at peace with herself. Her lips are moving as she silently recites verses from the Koran to herself. **STAND BACK TRAIN APPROACHING**, flashes the sign. The train pulls in, the doors slide open. A tidal wave of bodies spews onto the platform and I lose sight of her. A heartbeat later the screen becomes a blizzard. If I didn’t know better I’d suspect a technical fault.

If I didn’t know better.

PART ONE Dead Flowers In Her Hair

We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

C.S. Lewis

1

Paul Aston slammed the phone down and kicked back in his chair. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he muttered under his breath. What was her problem? So he was working late. News flash: long hours came with the territory. She already knew that, so why was she acting like it was a big surprise? The phone went and he tried to ignore it. Probably Laura ringing back to tell him to go to hell. Conditioning got the better of him and he snatched it up, said a cautious hello.

‘Hey, Paul.’

‘Thank God, a friendly voice.’ Georgina Strauss was most definitely a friend first and a work colleague second, and that was unusual; in this business you tended to cultivate contacts rather than make friends. They’d gone through the Intelligence Officer’s New Entry Course together, the IONEC in MI6 speak. MI6 loved its acronyms, as Aston had quickly discovered. When he first started it had been like learning a new language.

‘Look, Paul, got to be quick. A bomb’s gone off in Leicester Square tube.’

‘Shit,’ he breathed into the mouthpiece. He checked his watch. The middle of rush hour. ‘How many dead?’

‘No idea. Too fucking many.’

‘What happened?’

‘Our guess is that it was a suicide bomber. They marched onto the platform and blew themselves to bits.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Didn’t I say it was only a matter of time before something like this happened again? For once I hate always being right. So what about all those lessons that were supposed to have been learnt after 7/7, eh?’ She sighed and Aston could imagine her sitting there shaking her head. ‘This is so fucked up, Paul.’

‘Fucked up … that doesn’t even begin to cover it.’

‘You owe me,’ George said, and then she was gone.

Aston hung up and took the Batphone from his shirt pocket. The Batphone was always on, always charged; he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without it. Before he could flick it open, it started vibrating and chirping. He didn’t need to check the caller ID. Only one person had this number.

Mac jumped straight in without so much as a hello. A barrage of questions to make sure he’d heard the news, testing him out on the whats and wheres, and then he let rip.

‘Okay, so what the fuck are you sitting there with your thumb jammed up your arse for?’

‘You caught me on the way out the door.’

‘I hope you’re not trying to bullshit me.’

‘No, sir.’

A snort that could have meant anything, then: ‘I want you there straightaway. I want to know everything that’s happening. You got that? Everything.’

Aston made a face at the mobile. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Aston.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t use the journalist alias.’

Aston hit the street running; by the time he’d jogged over Vauxhall Bridge his shirt was soaked through with sweat. The evening was humid, the air heavy and moist. He stopped on the other side of the river to catch his breath and glanced back at MI6’s HQ. The elaborate architectural style had more than a touch of the Middle East about it; it was easy to see why the media had christened it Babylon-on-Thames. The cost of the building had run into nine figures and from the outside it wasn’t apparent where the money had gone. It was the things you didn’t see that cost the money. The elaborate anti-bugging devices, the bombproof walls, the triple glazing. The fact that five floors of the building were hidden beneath ground level.

The city was in chaos. All tube services had been suspended, so everyone had headed to the surface to get a cab or a bus. The roads were gridlocked and the air was alive with sirens, horns, arguments. Everywhere Aston looked he saw panic and confusion. Nobody had a clue what was going on. The PM had been assassinated, Buckingham Palace had been nuked … the mutterings Aston heard as he headed for Leicester Square ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. He stopped running, sweat trickling down his back. If he ran to Leicester Square in this heat he’d have a stroke. There had to be a better way.

The cyclist was dressed in a suit and the crash helmet made it look like he had a metallic blue alien skull grafted onto his head. He was riding along the gutter, squeezing between the kerb and a convertible BMW. The driver had killed the engine, resigned to being there for the long haul, fingers tapping anxiously on the steering wheel as he listened to a news bulletin. The cyclist drew level. Aston grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bike, sent him tumbling to the ground. He picked up the bike, jumped on and charged along the pavement, shouting at people to get out of his way.

He’d just passed the National Portrait Gallery when he saw his first survivor. The girl was in her mid-twenties and covered from head to toe in dust, as if frosted with grey icing sugar. She was sitting on the kerb with her knees hugged tight against her chest, rocking back and forth, focusing on nothing. Aston cycled on, passing more survivors. All of them had the same dead eyes, that same thousand yard stare. Some were crying, some were injured. They were cut and bruised, confused. Blood stained their faces, their clothes. An icy feeling settled in Aston’s stomach as he realised these were the lucky ones.

Then he heard the screams. Cries of anguish mingled with cries of pain, a full-on symphony of suffering that got louder the closer he got. He wanted to block his ears, wanted to turn around and ride as fast as he could in the opposite direction, anything to get away from that terrible noise. Instead, he let his training kick in. From here on he was Detective Inspector Stuart Bromley. One of the Met’s finest. There was no way DI Bromley, hardened by years of seeing the worst humanity could dream up, would run away. Aston got off the bike, propped it up against a lamppost, brushed the creases from his clothes. Handling the fear was easier when you were pretending to be someone else.

He turned a corner and stepped into a living nightmare. All the usual suspects were there. Cops, firemen and paramedics were beavering away on one side of the hastily erected barriers. Journalists, TV reporters, photographers, cameramen and rubberneckers were trapped on the other side. It was like stepping onto a movie set … except this was no Hollywood fantasy. His senses overloaded, slamming into the red. Colours, sounds and smells seemed sharper, more defined. Vehicle engines revving, orders being barked out, the screams and cries of the injured, red and blue lights throbbing on top of ambulances and police cars like a migraine, the excited voyeuristic murmur of the crowd, that dirty London smell coated with a thin layer of puke and cinders.

Aston pushed through the crowd, moving as if he owned the place. He almost smiled when a couple of the more seasoned hacks started firing questions at him. No comment, he fired back. That was the thing with cover. As long as you believed – really believed – you could fool almost anyone.

A PC manning the barrier stopped him, told him he couldn’t come through. Aston didn’t say a word. He drew himself up to his full height, pulled out his ID, flipped it open and thrust it an inch from the PC’s nose. Indignity personified. There was no way the ID wouldn’t pass inspection. Central Facilities had got it from the same place the Met got theirs. The PC muttered an apology, shifted the barrier and let him through. The media was still trapped on the other side. Mac had been right. The journalist alias wouldn’t have got him very far. He turned away from the barrier and marched towards the station entrance, dust kicking up from the heels of his shoes.

2

An old man wearing a neck brace was strapped to the gurney, a bright red blanket covering his body. His wrinkled face was twisted with pain, grime and blood filling the age worn crevices, ivory hair streaked black and crimson. He was calling out a name, over and over – ‘Helena, Helena, Helena!’ – his voice surprisingly strong considering his condition. There was the hint of an accent, something Mediterranean. Was Helena one of the dead? The paramedics pushed on three and the wheels folded away as the gurney slid inside the ambulance. They jumped in behind, pulled the door shut. The ambulance shot forward, siren wailing, and within seconds another had rolled up to take its place. Two paramedics were already waiting at the kerb with the next victim.

Aston did a quick 360 degrees. For the moment this was the medics’ show; the survivors took priority and everything else could wait. The police were nothing more than glorified security guards; there to keep the newshounds at bay, to keep the peace. The DI Bromley alias had got him this far but it wouldn’t take him much further. The only people going in and out of the station were paramedics and firefighters. He did another surreptitious 360 degrees, looking for the angle. There was always an angle. Aston made a mental note of where the PCs were. Uniformed police didn’t worry him: easy to spot, easy to bullshit. CID was a different story. Detectives were born with the curiosity gene and the last thing he needed was to find himself answering a load of awkward questions.

A huddle of suited detectives had set up shop by a news stand opposite the station entrance. They were acting big and talking animatedly, hands emphasising the more important points. Aston walked off in the opposite direction, putting some distance between them, all the time looking for that angle. Another ambulance screamed past, siren wailing. It pulled into the middle of the road to go around the line of fire engines parked at the kerb, the driver thumping at the horn and scattering a couple of firemen out the way. Aston stopped, watched for a second. All the action was centred around the lead fire engine; nobody was paying any attention to the one at the back.

Walking as though he was born to be there, Aston passed the firemen, passed the first three engines. He stopped level with the last one, glanced back at the firefighters. They were all looking the other way, paying no attention to him. He pulled the door open and jumped up into the cab. Had to be quick. No telling how much time he had. There was a ton of gear in the cab: bright yellow helmets, face masks, bulky jackets, axes, respiration equipment, all the good stuff he’d need to pull this one off. Heart pounding, Aston grabbed one of the jackets, pulled it on. A little long in the arm but it would do. He pulled on a pair of trousers, found some boots, took a torch from the shelf and stuffed it into the deep jacket pocket. A sound outside. He stopped dead, listening; said a quick prayer that whoever was out there would stay out there. The scratch of a match, a long, deep inhalation, an even longer sigh. Aston twisted his head so he could see into the tall side mirror. The boy was no older than nineteen, tall and gangly like a baby giraffe. The uniform looked all wrong on him. It was too big, as though he still had some growing to do before it fit properly. The boy had taken off his helmet and placed it by his feet. Head pitched down, staring at the floor, he brought a cigarette to his lips, fighting to keep his hand still. And then he threw up, vomit splattering his boots. Jesus, was it really that bad down there?

Aston timed his departure with the second bout of retching. While the boy was busy losing his lunch, he quietly let himself out the other side, climbing down onto the pavement and gently pushing the door closed behind him. He put on the helmet, glanced in the side mirror to check he looked the part. Almost, but not quite. He bent down and scooped up some dirt from the gutter, smeared it on his face. Walking was tricky to begin with, but he soon got the hang of it. Now he knew why firefighters walked with that macho swagger; it was the bulky trousers that did it. A deep breath as he drew level with the lead fire engine, praying he wouldn’t be challenged. His luck held. Everyone was too busy with their own problems. Confidence growing, he headed for the station entrance, passing a couple of policemen who didn’t even give him a second look. Like Mac said, pulling off a disguise was all about getting into someone else’s shoes; getting under their skin.

The station foyer had been turned into a triage ward, dozens upon dozens of stretchers covering the cold, hard floor. Halogen lamps flooded the area with their sterile glare, generators thud-thud-thudding in the background. Aston looked around in disbelief. It was like something from the First World War. Doctors in bloodstained butcher’s coats flitted from patient to patient, assessing each one, categorising them, making life and death decisions in the blink of an eye. They worked on the ones with the best chance of survival; those who didn’t make the grade were quickly stretchered away to make room for those who did. Nurses flitted around like some rare breed of ivory butterfly, settling down momentarily to fit an IV, to give an injection or a painkiller, to offer some words of comfort. They worked efficiently, their movements economical and precise, their fear hidden behind training and procedure. The sounds and smells from outside were more intense in here, as though reality had been ratcheted up another couple of notches. The noise worked into Aston’s brain, shredding synapses, putting his teeth on edge. Screams echoed off the tiles, the volume creeping past ten. Underpinning this was a lower pitched rumble that was somehow worse – moans groans crying voices pleading for help whispering voices begging for an escape from the pain please please please anything to take the pain away – a bass counterpoint to the hideous melody. The stink was worse than the noise. The stench of shit and puke dominated, stealing what little oxygen there was from the heavy air. There was another smell too, a clean smell that seemed completely out of place: the antiseptic aroma of hospitals. The combination made Aston want to throw up. It was all too much, all too real. The hopeless cases had been moved next to the ticket booth, where a priest in a grey cassock was trying to provide comfort to people past hearing or caring. He was clutching his crucifix so tightly his knuckles were shining. His salt and pepper hair, usually so neat for Mass, was standing on end, a nervous hand pushing it in all directions. Aston watched the priest kneel beside a stretcher. It was difficult to tell if the victim was male or female, young or old. The face was ruined: ugly, moist and black. The priest’s lips moved, mouthing incantations in Latin. Dead words in a dead language for someone who would never see another sunrise. He crossed himself then leant over and closed the corpse’s eyes. A look of disgust spread across his face and he frantically wiped his hand across the front of his neat grey cassock, leaving a nasty dark smear. He jumped to his feet, visibly shaken, spun around to see if anyone had noticed. Aston looked away quickly, leaving the priest alone with his embarrassment, and as he turned he caught sight of the body bags. They were piled up in a dark corner, hidden in the shadows. There had to be a couple of dozen of them. Probably more. And this was just the start.