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  ‘Hello? Dougal?’

  And MacIntyre’s whole body groans as he puts the mobile phone to his ear. And prepares to explain himself to FSLCNS. The First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff. How the hell did Dalia get that number? Who is she? More importantly, who is she working for?

  He must hold nothing back. Dalia. The computer. The schematics of the software that the Pentagon had finally coughed up.

  He knows he has to own up to every last thing. Purge every last piece of information from his memory. Then throw himself on their mercy. With just the thinnest thread of hope that the magic of encryption might still save him . . .

  That morning, by the time Dougal MacIntyre had snivelled the first lines of his mea culpa, three other things had already taken place.

  First. A brief, anonymous call from a brand new pre-pay mobile phone alerts emergency services to a break-in at one of the depots handling refuse collection within the Borough of Richmond (this was Weasel putting on his best Essex-boy accent). A police car attends, finds five men in arm and leg restraints, lying on the main garage floor but in no great state of distress. Quite comfortable, all things considered. Their heads are resting on little airline pillows. And each man has a 250ml Ribena carton in front of him with the little straw already punched through. Nice touch. None of the men offers any significant clues. Their masked attackers seemed well drilled and professional. Two of them were carrying handguns, which, from descriptions, sound like a pair of 9mm Browning Hi-powers. Common enough. Aside from the guns, the threat of violence was implied but definitely not used. All communication was through a series of flip charts on which their orders were pre-written. Who Has The Truck Keys? No sense of panic or tension. You Won’t Be Tied Up For More Than Two Hours. Disciplined.

  Of course, the use of handguns kicks the whole thing up a level, and, as a scene of crime is formally set up, the first-responding police officers are tasked to secure CCTV coverage. Neither of them is surprised – given how meticulous things had been so far – to discover the depot’s five static and two dome cameras have been disabled. As had, late last night, the two borough cameras that covered the approach roads to the depot. These guys are good, the older policemen had acknowledged, almost approvingly.

  The rubbish truck itself would be discovered almost a day later. Parked on the ground floor of a deserted factory in the Dagenham dockside, on the other side of London. Because the site is to be demolished within the next twenty-four hours – the explosive charges are being fitted as the police arrive – all local CCTV cameras had been removed.

  Second. A large brown envelope is dropped into a postbox on London’s Oxford Street. First-class stamp. Untraceable, and completely shorn of any forensics. Marked for the attention of the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff at the Ministry of Defence offices in Whitehall. Re: Dougal MacIntyre’s Laptop is stencilled in small letters on the top left corner of the envelope. The letter inside spells out a demand for the payment of £315 million over three years (equivalent to less than one per cent of the annual defence materiel budget, it points out). In return, the laptop.

  The content and layout of the letter are striking. Those who first read it at the MoD are chilled by the intercutting of the demands with passages from something called (rather blandly) Army Doctrine Publication Volume Five. Basically the armed forces’ bible. They quickly realise they have a problem on their hands . . .

  Military Covenant: Soldiers will be called upon to make personal sacrifices – including the ultimate sacrifice – in the service of the Nation. In return, British soldiers must always be able to expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they (and their families) will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service . . .

  Then the letter goes on to say . . .

  ‘£157,500,000, being half of the money required, to be divided as follows: 50 per cent to Help For Heroes, the balance equally between three organisations. The Soldiers Sailors and Air Force Families Forces Help, the Army Families Federation and Women’s Royal Volunteers Services.

  ‘. . . Of all the forces that influence the battle spirit of the soldier, his morale is the most important. Morale is a state of mind. It is that intangible force which moves men to endurance and courage in the face of hardship, fatigue and danger. It makes each individual in a group, without counting the cost to himself, give his last ounce to achieve the common purpose.

  ‘The remaining half, £157,500,000, to be divided equally between the following eleven organisations: The Royal British Legion, Seafarers UK, the Army Benevolent Fund, the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, the Royal Naval Association, British Limbless Ex-Service Men’s Association, Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society, Royal Air Forces Association, Forces’ Pension Society, War Widows’ Association of Great Britain and Veterans Scotland.

  ‘. . . Soldiers accept an open-ended commitment to serve whenever and wherever they are needed, whatever the difficulties or dangers may be. Ultimately it may require soldiers to lay down their lives. Implicitly it requires those in positions of authority to discharge in full their responsibilities and their duty of care to subordinates . . .

  ‘Each organisation’s fixed sum shall be split into three equal payments: the first to be paid on the first working day of next month, and then two remaining payments in twelve and twenty-four months’ time. Payments shall not be recouped by deductions against any other existing commitments to soldier welfare programmes, and cannot be set off against extant financial or material support for any of these groups.

  ‘. . . “Courage, you know, is like having money in the bank. We start with a certain capital of courage, some large, some small, and we proceed to draw on our balance, for don’t forget courage is an expendable quality. We can use it up. If there are heavy, if there are continuous calls on our courage, we begin to overdraw. If we go on overdrawing we go bankrupt we break down” – Field Marshall Sir William Slim . . .

  ‘This financial arrangement, this new-found support for these organisations and charities, shall be announced to the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Defence no later than a fortnight from today. It can be dressed up in whatever manner is most expedient. But it must be an irrevocable commitment to provide new funding to the amount of £315 million from the Treasury’s Urgent Spending Budget.

  ‘. . . Soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon’s much-quoted dictum that in war “the morale is to the physical as three is to one”. The actual arithmetical proportion may be worthless, for morale is apt to decline if the weapons are inadequate, and the strongest will is of little use if it is inside a dead body. But although the morale and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible, the saying gains its enduring value because it expresses the idea of the predominance of morale factors in all military decisions . . .

  ‘Three days from now you will receive proof that the TrueCrypt encryption has been broken. Be ready.

  ‘Signed. Ward 13.’

  A woman steps out of a black London taxi and enters a hair salon just off the Euston Road. She enters with long auburn hair and leaves just under ninety minutes later with it very sleek, a wet look, short and black. On leaving, Dalia first walks to nearby Russell Square. Stops to cross herself in front of the small memorial to the victims of the bus bomb on 7 July. Then she turns back on herself, sets off, secure in her new disguise, strides getting longer and longer, to St Pancras and the next train to Brussels. And onwards.

  Dalia settles back in her first-class seat and watches absentmindedly as the urban sprawl of north London silently whizzes by. The champagne helps unwind the tension within. She closes her eyes and, not for the first time, contemplates the magnitude of the debt she is trying to repay.

  As the sunlight ripples across her closed eyes, filling her mind with bursts of reds and yellows, her thoughts ease back to a different time. Full of darkness and fear. Before she was Dalia, when her young, scared life had been saved by Tristie
Merritt . . .

  ‘Wake up.’ She hears the words. But the tone and voice miss her altogether. Her mind is screwed. The previous night she’d stolen three Valium and four Co-codamols. Hoping it might be enough to ease her away. Take her out of this place for good.

  So in her drugged-up fugue, she assumes what she hears is the sound of Enoch Potts come to take his revenge. Come to sit on her bed. His cold hands and fetid breath. Come to dig the sharp end of one of his keys into the small of her neck until she relaxes, takes her hands off her chest, opens her legs and receives him as if he were her lover. The sweaty, matted hair on his back and shoulders . . . There is a reason she is alone in this special observation dormitory. No one can hear her. Slowly she opens her eyes.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Screw you, she decides. I won’t wake up.

  She turns over and buries her face into the pillow. Do what you want. Hurt me. Kill me. Just make it finish. Let it be over. At least the drugs mean she is close to oblivious to what is about to happen. Among the girls, there’s been talk of chair legs and crowbars. Of bleeding that just won’t stop.

  ‘It’s Tristie . . . will you please bloody wake up. And get dressed.’

  She is someone flat out of hope. She can’t bring herself to look towards the voice. Too frightened that she’ll be let down again. Tristie is three years older, which is like for ever in this demented world. She’s also on the outside now. They all know her story . . . from the Holyhead train station, into care in Gwynedd, a succession of foster homes, then back into care. The ugliest stories.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ she whispers, moving close to her face so she can see her by the pale moonlight in the bleak, wood-panelled room. She sees her smile at her. Her honest open face. Brilliant smile. Offering comfort.

  She takes Tristie’s hand and she leads her noiselessly through the long passageways. She is sure part of her knows where they are going . . . but she is conscious only of her body being just a jumble of bones, tugged along. Following Tristie.

  Enoch Potts looks shocked to see them. His mouth forms a perfect O shape, the size of an apple. The light beaming off his shiny head and crimson cheeks. He throws at them a huge pot of Vaseline that he’d been holding as they burst in. That seems to really irritate Tristie. She stalks across the room and backhands him so hard he tumbles over a futon. Goes down in a splay of dressing gown and pyjamas.

  Ten minutes later and Potts has finished writing his confession. On several sheets of A4. Handwriting a little jerky, but clear enough. What he can remember of the dozens of faceless little souls he had interfered with. The Freemasons. The police. The whole sickness.

  She remembers the long and broad, blue industrial flame from Tristie’s butane torch, how she would let it play over what hair remained on Potts’s head. So he could feel the heat and smell the crisping of his scalp. And boy, did it help him write . . .

  Now all they have to do is end it. They’re both wearing surgical gloves and it had taken for ever for her to focus enough on the ends of her fingers. ‘Your choice,’ Tristie had said to her. ‘But my advice, we have to finish this. We tried doing the right thing . . . but the right thing obviously wasn’t right enough.’

  Her head is still feeling all messed up. She sees Enoch Potts in front of her. Hanging upside down. His eyes pleading with her, his mouth firmly taped up. Little dark scorch marks up the side of his head, the neck and shoulders sagging on the floor, hands tied off behind his back. His face turning nicely purple as the blood flows downwards. Potts is hanging upside down underneath a long gym bench that they’ve placed over a desk in his head-of-care, deputy warden study. His feet wiggling furiously, but the duct tape still holding tight.

  She takes the long hunting knife from Tristie and suddenly it’s very clear what she has to do. And it gives her a thrill to know just how long Potts will be in pain; gravity and the flow of blood will see to that. Even more of a thrill to know that when the police come the next day, no doubt they’ll want to drug-test her. Then they’ll realise she would never have the wit to do what she’s doing now . . .

  The day after the heist – Operation Macchar, minus twelve days

  Outside the village of Elton

  Derbyshire Peak District

  Whiffler, Button and Tristie are in the low-ceilinged kitchen of a little seventeenth-century gritstone farmhouse that was rented with the first slab of cash they ‘earned’. Ward 13’s first income. A white Rayburn keeps the place snug. Twenty-three acres of grassland and larch wood separate the house from the nearest minor road to the south; immediately to the north, east and west, is the uninviting craggy upthrust of Cratcliffe Tor. Feels very cut off, therefore secure. ‘Decent OPSEC,’ Shoe had grunted after walking the perimeter.

  Ferret, Piglet, Shoe and the Weasel had left this morning for RAF Lyneham to meet an incoming plane carrying the body of a sergeant major with 3 Para. A legend among legends, apparently. A random mortar dropping out of the sky into a mess tent in one of the rear camps in Afghanistan. Another almost unnoticed death; yet another huge hole opening up in a handful of lives.

  There had been an unreal tension in the air this morning as the boys thought this through. Readying their medals, shining up their shoes, ironing the creases from their lumpy Civvy Street suits. This was a sort of displacement activity as the thought rumbled through their collective consciousness: was it better to die than live some kind of twilight, caged existence?

  Yes. Better to be out of everybody’s hair in one clean hit, better than pulling down your loved ones with injuries and anger, and that eternal sense that the best of your life was behind you. Out of the army, there would be little to show but a nothing deal from the MoD. And if that didn’t permanently screw you up, then reading the newspapers certainly would, being full of £120,000-a-week-Wayne-Rooney this, and £135,000-a-week-Frank-Lampard that.

  Tristie never had the benefit of much loyalty in her childhood. Who was her father? Where was Mother? She could never have imagined in a thousand years finding happiness in a structure as regimented as the British Army. So, not surprisingly, she had wanted to add to the MoD letter a coda from the army regulations that specifically addressed the importance of loyalty. She had felt this intensely when, for the first time as an officer and (most unusually) as a woman, she had been asked to lead men trained in the use of lethal force, and she saw them placing their faith in her, looking to her for answers:

  Loyalty ties the leader and the led with mutual respect and trust. It goes both up and down. It transforms individuals into teams. It creates and nourishes the formations, units and subunits of which the Army is composed . . . Those who are placed in positions of authority must be loyal to their subordinates, representing their interests faithfully, dealing with complaints thoroughly, and developing their abilities through progressive training.

  It reminds Tristie of the first time, lump in throat, she had seen the Remembrance Day march-past at the Cenotaph. The second Sunday of November, and suddenly sliding down her cheeks were tears of pride and sadness. How emotional it was to see such collective pride, the belonging, created and nourished by loyalty flowing up and down the ranks, yet at the same time to realise such incredible loss and sacrifice. People willing to give their lives to protect her. Her? She wanted that belonging. And a small seed was sown . . .

  That’s why she gets on with these people. Button, Piglet et al. Her sort of people. All with problems and dramas of one degree or another in their lives. Yet, for all that, for all of their shortcomings, following a simple and predictable code. These are people who run towards danger. Not away from it.

  Sure. You make adjustments to your expectations. Army conversation about the wider world can be limited. Reading matter is more pictures than words, and in terms of cuisine British Army Meals-Ready-To-Eat beat any other store-bought food combination.

  But these are people who won’t let you down.

  The question Whiffler had for Tristie was this: ‘Imagine you’re a female
Jack Bauer. You’ve got sixty seconds, and you have to pick one man to screw, or the world’s going to explode. Who would you pick?’

  ‘Am I giving or receiving of this joyous gift?’

  Typical. In her experience, Paras in particular, but non-coms in general, have three lines of conversation: shagging, drinking and fighting. And then shagging again. Working in the Det – where their primary mission was deep, covert surveillance – Tristie had lost track of the number of times she was buttoned down in watch posts, stake-outs and hides, unable to move. Trapped in earnest, whispered discussions. Celebrities You Fancy But Shouldn’t. Ugliest Munters Slept With. Worst Accidents Involving Own Testicles.

  Whiffler’s freckled face frowns and he quickly runs a hand through his spiked gingery hair. ‘Receiving . . .’ He leans on the other side of the marble-top eating area, holding on to one of the heavy beams, like an orang-utan.

  ‘And how long am I staring up at the ceiling for?’

  Whiffler grins. ‘That’s all in the choice. If you choose me, for instance . . . ‘ And Button hoots with laughter at this. ‘Just for argument’s sake, of course. I’d be hammering away for hours and hours.’

  ‘Would you now?’ Tristie sounds a bit distracted, because she is. Multitasking. ‘All of this hammering away, sounds to me more like a punishment.’ While she’s having this conversation she’s actually trying to concentrate (her hair under a surgeon’s cap and a gauze face mask on). The man from the ministry’s laptop is open, with all but one of the screws holding the keyboard together now undone. The laptop is plugged in, still in sleep mode, and the hardware buried within still feels warm to the touch.

  ‘So . . . who is it going to be? To save the world?’

  She looks into Whiffler’s eyes and gets a very strong sense he’d like nothing more than to hear his own name. As if. Button is watching too, munching slowly on an unbuttered slice of white bread. Intrigued. ‘First, can I say officers do not normally enter into discussions like this . . .’