The Hijack (16 page)

‘If this is so big, why me? I mean, this isn’t exactly my job description.’

‘Right now our intelligence resources are stretched thinner than they’ve ever been in our history. Wonderful though remote viewers may sound in theory, they are greatly flawed. Much of their information cannot be accurately decoded. It’s often misleading. On average they’re rated at six per cent accuracy.Your rating as a field operative for instance is ninety-two per cent.What you see and report back is real and usually easily verifiable. But the six per cent the remote viewers give us that is successfully decoded is worth the fortune it costs the CIA to run its psychic department - according to them at least . . . These recent viewings are related to the tanker. That’s what this particular viewer has been concentrating on ever since it was attacked . . . And that’s why you are here.’

Sumners had done a good job stroking Stratton’s ego and expectancy back into shape.There was some importance attached to the assignment and it was interesting.

‘He’s here then, in England?’ Stratton asked.

‘Yes.’

The two men faced each other in the dark street, neither sure of where they stood in this most unusual and possibly ridiculous task. All their years of training in their respective disciplines had not prepared them for an operation like this.

‘Okay,’ Stratton finally said. It was bizarre, but why not? What else was going on?

Sumners took a photograph from his pocket and handed it to Stratton. It was a headshot. The man appeared to be in his late fifties, had short grey hair and was refined looking. Sumners took the picture back after Stratton had studied it for a few seconds.

‘He’s described as sensitive with occasional unstable tendencies but not violently so. He’s also paranoid and perhaps even schizophrenic.’ Sumners took a package from his coat pocket and handed it to Stratton. ‘Cell-phone and charger. My numbers are programmed into it as well as others you might need. There’s also five thousand pounds expenses money, a credit card and your MI6 ID. The routine hasn’t changed. Expenses must be justified, all fares economy and I’ll need receipts for anything over five pounds. He’s at the Victory Club under the name of Gabriel Stockton, room 534.’

‘The Victory Club?’ Stratton asked. It was a hotel around the corner from Marble Arch, a basic discount hotel for currently serving and former members of the British military and their families.

‘Where did you expect us to put him up? Claridge’s? He’s expecting you tonight. I’ve reserved you a room next to his. I look forward to hearing from you.’

Sumners turned and walked away.

‘How come he’s expecting me when you didn’t know I’d take the job?’

‘I must be psychic,’ Sumners said without looking back and walked past the entrance to the pub and disappeared around the corner.

Stratton frowned and then weighed the package in his hand, his mind already searching ahead. He was used to automatically planning as many aspects as he could of a new assignment immediately after a briefing, and sometimes during it, but this one left him with little else to contemplate other than how to get to Marble Arch.

He pocketed the package and headed down the street, his philosophical old self surfacing once again. There was never a dull moment in MI6.

 

Stratton’s taxi pulled up outside the Victory Club, half a block from the corner of Edgware Road, and he climbed out and handed the fare to the driver.

‘Can I have a receipt, please?’

The taxi driver handed him a blank receipt and drove away.

‘Good evening, sir,’ a cheerful Eastern European in a doorman’s uniform bid Stratton as he opened the front door for him. Stratton returned the greeting as he walked inside and headed for the reception desk.

After checking in, Stratton walked around a corner to the elevator, stepped inside and pushed the fifth-floor button. A few seconds later, he exited the elevator on the fifth floor and headed along the corridor, passing a dozen or so rooms bearing brass plaques dedicating them to an assortment of British regiments, until he reached room 534.

He placed his ear close to the door but couldn’t hear anything, no television or movement.

He knocked.

A creaking sound suggested someone was getting off a bed, then came a voice: ‘Who is it?’ a man said with a hint of an American accent.

‘It’s Stratton.’

‘Who?’

Stratton wondered if someone had already screwed up and forgotten to give the guy his name. ‘Stratton. I was told you were expecting me.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘One second,’ the voice eventually said. Stratton could hear more movement. A moment later the door was unlatched and opened wide enough for the man to look out. Stratton recognised him from the photograph though he was taller than expected, perhaps an inch or so on top of Stratton, his hair had more silver in it and he had a far more distinguished look in the flesh.

Gabriel studied Stratton with what appeared to be suspicion for an inordinately long time.

‘Stratton?’ the man asked, looking unsure.

‘That’s right,’ Stratton said as he looked at both ends of the corridor, checking to see they were alone.

Gabriel opened the door and Stratton walked into the simply decorated room which was barely large enough to allow anyone to move around the double bed without scraping the walls. It had a small television on a swivel bracket bolted into a corner close to the ceiling, a dresser with an electric kettle, two cups and tea and coffee and a tidy en-suite bathroom with a bath, sink and toilet ergonomically fitted into the most confined of spaces. Stratton stood in the gap between the room entrance and the bathroom as Gabriel closed the door behind him, locked it and remained standing, apparently not quite finished with his examination of Stratton.

‘Everything okay?’ Stratton asked, forcing a smile, doing a bit of inspecting himself. Gabriel was conservatively dressed in a wool jacket, striped shirt, plain tie, wool trousers with a razor crease and brown brogues. He looked like a schoolteacher. His build suggested he had been athletic in his younger days but not any more. Everything about him, the cut of his cloth, hair, fingernails and neatness of his belongings suggested he was meticulous. He looked tired though, his eyes red and sunken, the lids blinking lazily indicating a thirst for sleep, and they flickered in harmony with his gravel voice as if sensitive to the coarseness of it.

‘You’re British military intelligence?’ Gabriel said, more a statement of doubt than a question.

‘And you’re Gabriel,’ Stratton said, ignoring the attitude and putting it down to paranoia. ‘You settled in all right?’ Stratton asked, practising his polite tone. ‘How was your trip?’

‘Tiring. I don’t like travelling.’

‘London can be a zoo.’

‘I’ve been here before,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m not much of a fan . . . Excuse me,’ he said, looking Stratton in the eye as he took a pace towards him. Stratton moved aside and Gabriel walked past and into the bathroom where he packed his toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and comb into his ablutions bag, and walked back into the bedroom to the window where he collected more of his personal effects and placed them into a small holdall.

‘I take it we’re going right away?’ Gabriel asked as he picked up a pair of slippers off the floor and put them carefully into the bag so that the soles were uppermost and not touching any clothing.

‘Going where?’ Stratton asked as he watched Gabriel pull a quilted jacket on having apparently decided they were indeed leaving.

‘They didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I told them this morning and nothing’s changed,’ Gabriel said sounding irritated.

Gabriel was obviously not the friendliest of people. Stratton wondered if this was his permanent mood or if a night’s sleep would reveal a more gracious side to him. As for the information Gabriel had given ‘them’, Stratton could only wonder what he meant.

‘Why don’t we sit down and talk for a moment,’ Stratton suggested. ‘Get to know each other a little. Whatever it is you told them you can tell me,’ he continued, waiting for Gabriel to sit on the side of the bed before he took the seat by the door.

Gabriel remained standing looking unsatisfied with Stratton’s suggestion, or perhaps it was the patronising tone in which he spoke to him. ‘I can’t work here,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t like being away.’

‘Away from where?’

‘Virginia. I work better there.’

‘You live in Virginia?’

Gabriel gave him a look as if Stratton should have known the answer. ‘You
are
from MI6, aren’t you?’ he asked in a superior tone difficult to hide because that is how he felt. This thug was not what he had been expecting. He had imagined a man in a suit for a start, or at least a jacket and tie, not in what looked like nylon trousers with zipper pockets on the sides, boots of some description and a leather jacket that appeared to have survived World War Two. Gabriel suddenly wondered if there might have been a misunderstanding and that this man was simply a driver or escort.

Stratton could sense Gabriel’s discomfort with him but he was no stranger to being underestimated because of his looks. ‘I was brought on to the job in a bit of a hurry,’ Stratton said. ‘They told me a little, but who better to tell me about the job than you?’ He now wished he did know more about Gabriel and thought it was unlike Sumners not to brief him thoroughly, but since he had not, there was probably a reason behind it. Still, it had made his introduction appear amateurish. ‘Why don’t we take a moment and you can tell me everything I need to know.’

Gabriel frowned, disappointed this man was to be his ‘assistant’, but he was used to disappointment in this business. His own intelligence agency did not impress him at the best of times, and although he had never worked with the British before he did not expect they were likely to do so either. If this character was anything to go by, the Brits looked like they would prove to be dismally worse. When he heard British intelligence was sending over one of their people to assist him, he assumed he would be like the type he had met in abundance at CIA HQ, Foggy Bottom,Virginia. Normally he had nothing to do with the ‘labourers’ as his department referred to the CIA’s regular field agents. They occasionally sat in on meetings, usually in the form of familiarity briefings at the wacky spooks or psychic department, part of the tour for new agents. They came in all shapes and sizes and nearly always smartly dressed, but Gabriel had never met one like this before. He was not what Gabriel would have described as a big man, by American standards, although he did have an aura of toughness about him. Add to that his battered leather coat, dishevelled hair and a day’s growth on his face, overall, his look was unkempt to say the least. There was something else about him though, something Gabriel had never been so keenly aware of in a person before, agent or otherwise, not at first glance. If he were pushed to describe it, he would have to say there was a darkness around the man that his forced smile could not disguise.

‘Why’d you come to England then?’ Stratton breezed on. ‘If you work better in Virginia, that is?’

‘Too much interference. I couldn’t see clearly. Distance shouldn’t make a difference, but location sometimes does . . . my location . . . Sometimes where you are, the atmosphere and surroundings, are not conducive . . . The danger is here, anyway. I know that. This is the best place to be.’

‘Danger?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘What danger?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I mean, is it—’

‘I don’t know,’ Gabriel said, cutting him off brusquely as he went back to packing his things. ‘As soon as I got into the taxi at the airport and headed into London, I saw the air base as clearly as if I was there myself.’

‘What air base?’

‘I told them all about the air base,’ Gabriel said, looking at Stratton with unguarded suspicion. ‘What
do
you know about me and what I do?’

‘Look . . . I just came in from the outside. There wasn’t time for a proper brief. Let’s just accept I know nothing about you, what you do, or what this is all about. In fact, I don’t really have much of a clue what my part is supposed to be in this operation.’ If that’s what it is, he thought to himself. ‘So can we just cool it a little and accept I know nothing?’ Stratton’s sullen, unmoving eyes remained fixed on Gabriel’s.

Gabriel could sense the Englishman was no pushover and decided he liked being here as little as Gabriel did. If the Brits worked anywhere near the same way as the agency, they were stuck with each other, for the time being at least, and so to that end Stratton had a point. Gabriel was aware he was acting irritable and short tempered but he was never very good at dealing with pressure even when he was aware of all the mitigating circumstances. He was not naturally an ill-tempered man and did not like feeling that way.

Gabriel took a breath and made an effort to bring himself down. ‘I saw an American air base,’ he said, somewhat slower and calmer than he had been speaking previously. ‘I’m certain of that. There was a large wood nearby, a forest I should say. Soldiers use it. There are open spaces in the woods and I could see soldiers with guns and in combat fatigues.’

Stratton suddenly felt awkward listening to Gabriel as if he was providing serious information. It was one thing to try and accept that there were people who could see things as if they were able to transport themselves to another place on the planet, but to actually have to communicate with one as if everything they said was a fact made Stratton feel self-conscious, as if he was having a conversation with a mad person just to humour them.

‘You’re saying this American air base is in England?’ Stratton asked, ignoring his discomfort and doing his best to take this seriously.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, why? Why they put it in England?’