FOUR

THE TRAFFIC WAS backing up behind the roundabout that led down to Wandsworth bridge. Thick clouds were lying low over the Thames, shrouding the city in a dark, heavy gloom. A way out of my troubles, Matt was thinking – that’s what Alison had said. Right now, I’m not in any position to turn offers down.

There was no choice. He had to see what she had to say. But it wouldn’t be a simple way out, of that he felt certain. It wouldn’t be safe either.

He pumped the accelerator on his Porsche Boxster and pulled out into the roundabout. He could see Alison’s metal-blue Audi TT just ahead. The Holiday Inn sign was plastered against the skyline, sitting next to a B&Q superstore, a BP garage, and a McDonald’s. Matt swerved the car around the bend moments before an orange light turned red.

I might as well get some fun out of this car. I won’t have it much longer.

He pulled up in the car park of the hotel. Very Five, reflected Matt, taking the Porsche down a gear. The spooks generally met in anonymous, corporate locations, as if they were just computer salesmen. It was part of the routine, a way of throwing their targets off the scent, keeping every operation at a safe distance from the organisation itself. If they invited you to the Thames House headquarters, you knew the conversation didn’t matter.

I thought I was through with these kind of games.

When he’d left the Regiment after ten years of active service, Matt had vowed to himself that he would never go back. He’d seen enough violence and risked his life enough times. His appetite for danger was sated. Lots of his mates had become bodyguards or mercenaries, but after a spell working for Stroller, Matt hadn’t wanted to do that.

If you were going to kill people it had to be for a cause, not just for money.

‘Nice car,’ said Alison, suddenly appearing next to him, a playful smile spreading across her lips.

Matt noticed the way the wind caught her hair, blowing it away from her face. Beautiful, he reflected, in the same way a leopard is beautiful: sleek and slender and perfectly groomed. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

‘Shame it’s going to be repossessed by the finance company next week.’ Alison turned smartly towards the entrance of the hotel.

Keep swallowing, man.

He followed her into the Holiday Inn. The lobby was nondescript, with pale blue carpets and a standard wooden desk, the kind of space you might see in a thousand different hotels around the world. ‘Room 262,’ Alison said to the girl at reception. ‘They’re expecting us.’

They remained silent in the lift. Then Matt followed Alison down a corridor and they stepped into the room without knocking. The bed had been pushed to one side, and the desk had been placed next to the window. The curtains were drawn, and only a desk lamp was illuminating the faces of two men sitting either side of the desk.

Matt looked into their eyes. The first man was about fifty, with greying hair combed across his head to disguise a bald patch. He wore a charcoal grey suit, with a pink silk tie and a checked shirt with silver cufflinks. The second man was maybe forty-five, with brown hair that looked as if it could use a trim and ears that stuck out too far from his head. He wore a blue suit and a striped tie, probably from a school. Neither of them smiled or even looked at him.

Let’s call them Pinky and Perky, thought Matt: Pinky for the guy with the tie, Perky for the younger guy with the scruffy hair. He knew enough about Five and the way it operated to know that he wasn’t going to be given their names. Never mind. It wasn’t as if he was ever going to add them to his Christmas card list.

I’m back. I’d better start getting used to it.

‘These two men are going to ask you a few questions,’ said Alison, her tone cold and businesslike. ‘I’ll be down the corridor. You’ll see me again when they’ve finished.’

Matt looked for somewhere to sit down but they seemed to have forgotten to provide him with a chair. Forgotten? No. If there wasn’t a chair, that was because they wanted it like that. They didn’t want him relaxed.

They want to see whether I can still handle pressure.

‘Your name is Matt Browning,’ said Pinky, looking down at the notes on his desk. ‘Thirty-five years old, two years out of the Regiment, served with distinction for ten years. Saw action in the Gulf, Ulster, Bosnia and a couple of other places that seem to have been mysteriously deleted from the files because the British Army wasn’t officially supposed to be involved. Chechnya, Indonesia.’ He paused, shifting to another sheet of paper. ‘A tough soldier, exceptionally steady under fire, fantastic endurance, but takes things personally. Short-tempered. Sometimes prone to excessive violence, even by SAS standards.’

Matt looked at the man closely, but could read nothing in his expression. ‘I know my record, thanks,’ he said curtly. ‘I’ve no apologies. Sometimes violence is the only language people understand.’

‘Not officer material,’ said Perky, looking down at the notes on his desk. ‘Good sense of leadership, popular with the men and decisive in combat, but not easy to control. He doesn’t always see the bigger picture, nor always understand about putting the interest of the campaign above the interests of his own men. Doesn’t always listen to advice from his superiors. Doesn’t learn from his mistakes.’ He paused, looking up at Matt. ‘Would you say that was a fair assessment?’

Matt shrugged. ‘I’m out of the Regiment,’ he replied. ‘I assess myself these days.’

‘We’re going to read out a list of words,’ said Pinky. ‘I want you to give us your first reaction to each one. OK?’

‘Fine,’ said Matt, shifting his weight from one leg to another. ‘Shrink school. I know the drill.’ He glanced down towards the small stack of flash-cards that Perky was pulling from his briefcase. At about the time he had left the Regiment a bunch of moronic management consultants had been hired to start testing the men’s aptitudes and ambitions. It was all rubbish, according to most of the men, and Matt agreed with them – their main ambition was not to get killed, and you didn’t need some consultant examining you to tell you that.

This stuff is fine for regional sales managers at Vodafone. Fighting men don’t need it.

‘Money,’ said Perky.

‘Control.’

‘Hope,’ said Pinky.

‘Children.’

‘Blood,’ said Perky.

‘Food.’

‘Anger,’ said Pinky.

‘Fools.’

‘Desire,’ said Perky.

‘Safety.’

‘Greed,’ said Pinky.

‘Stupid,’ said Matt.

Both men looked down at their notes, and made a series of marks on the papers spread out in front of them. Then Perky picked up his mobile and called up a pre-recorded number. ‘You can come back in now,’ he said. ‘We’re finished.’

Matt relaxed. ‘Did I pass?’

‘We’re here to ask questions,’ snapped Perky, ‘not answer them.’

Matt briefly imagined meeting the man in a dark alley, thinking about the marks his fist would leave on his jaw.

‘Our assessment is that you’re psychologically impaired,’ Perky continued. ‘Maybe that’s why you never got the promotions you wanted in the Regiment.’

Matt shrugged. ‘Impaired?’ he said sharply. ‘I’ve noticed that you two couldn’t find your way out of a dark room without someone coming to rescue you. I’d call that thinking pretty straight.’

‘As we were saying,’ Pinky leant forward on the desk, ‘lacks respect for authority. No direction in life. No moral compass. Lacks socialisation.’

‘Right,’ said Matt, grinning. ‘I thought moral flexibility was what Five was looking for these days.’

Behind him he heard Alison at the door, and he turned to watch her as she walked back into the room. She glanced towards the two men, nodded, then looked towards Matt. ‘We’re about to explain a mission to you,’ she said. ‘You might be interested, you might not be. Either way, I want you to understand that everything we are about to tell you is confidential. If you walk away, forget everything we say. Understood?’

Matt nodded. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘I might be out of the services, but I’m still a loyal citizen.’

Alison returned one of her old smiles, the type Matt had seen in Spain but hadn’t seen here in London: a smile that spoke of warmth and interest, not simply manipulation and control. ‘OK,’ she said softly. ‘Great.’

Pinky took a Toshiba notebook computer from his case and set it out on the desk. ‘You probably already know that the greatest security threat we face, indeed all the developed nations face, is al-Qaeda,’ he began. ‘We are fighting them in lots of different ways, shutting down training centres, rounding up sympathisers, stopping the flow of weapons. But one of the ways we are fighting them is financial.’

‘Al-Qaeda has a lot of money,’ said Perky, picking up the flow of the conversation where his colleague had left it. ‘Its roots are in Saudi Arabia, and that’s a rich place. But it has a lot of support right across that region. There are contributions coming from everywhere – Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia. That’s what makes them so deadly. Fanatics we can handle. Fanatics with cash are a different story. Overall, we estimate the organisation has at least five billion dollars at its disposal. They hide their money, and they are good at it. So it could be a lot more.’

Matt could feel his heart sinking. They hadn’t told him what the deal was yet. But they had started talking about al-Qaeda. Whatever it was, it was going to be dangerous.

‘Before September the eleventh, al-Qaeda kept its money hidden in offshore centres around the world.’ Pinky glanced towards Alison as he spoke. ‘The usual places – Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland. Mainly Switzerland. It’s got the best banks in the world, and the Arabs like Zurich and Geneva. The place is swarming with them.’

‘But after September the eleventh it started getting too hot,’ Perky continued. ‘The Americans started clamping down hard, particularly on the Swiss. They told them they didn’t mind the usual drugs dealers, Russian mafiosi, and tax dodgers who use their banks. They could all stay secret. But they wanted to know about the al-Qaeda accounts, and they wanted to shut them down. The Swiss didn’t have any choice. Either they played along, or Credit Suisse and UBS and the rest of them were going to get kicked out of Wall Street. They couldn’t afford that, so they had no choice. They had to start shutting al-Qaeda accounts down and seizing the money.’

Matt leant forward. ‘And the Americans decided to share all of this information with you because they love MI5 so much?’

‘No, they needed our help as well,’ said Alison. ‘A lot of al-Qaeda money was passing through the City of London as well. It’s a big money-laundering market, everyone knows that. We froze out what we could, but it’s in Zurich that most of its money is stored.’

Pinky looked towards Matt, a frown creasing his brow. ‘Al-Qaeda saw what was happening in Switzerland. They could see the heat being turned up, and they could see their accounts being frozen. The Swiss authorities tracked and seized about one billion dollars. Ever since then, al-Qaeda have been slowly moving it out.’

‘You’re saying even the Swiss don’t know where the money is?’ said Matt.

‘Al-Qaeda are smart,’ Alison interjected. ‘They hide it well. It’s all stored away in accounts nominally belonging to Kuwaiti or Pakistani or Jordanian businessmen. Nobody knows whether they exist or not. And not asking questions is the first principle of Swiss banking.’

‘Now they are clearing the money out,’ said Perky. ‘It works like this. An al-Qaeda Arab turns up in Zurich. He goes to the bank and withdraws say $25,000 in cash. Euros or dollars or Swiss francs, it doesn’t matter. He walks down the street to a jewellery store or a goldsmith and he buys diamonds or gold, pays cash, and stashes the goods away. Next day, another $25,000 from another bank, more gold and diamonds. The next day, the same again. By the end of the week that’s $125,000 turned into commodities. If there’s eight of them, that’s a million dollars. They spread it around as well, just so no one gets too suspicious or starts recognising them. Sometimes they get a train up to Munich or down to Milan and buy the gold and diamonds there.’

Matt listened closely. Five wouldn’t be sharing this information with him unless they wanted something very badly.

‘The CIA calculates that about a million dollars might have been taken out of the Swiss banks so far, and just about all of it has been turned into gold and diamonds,’ Pinky said. ‘You can see it in the prices. Both gold and diamonds are up this year. That amount of money going into a market has an impact.’

‘So what’s the point?’ said Matt. ‘What do they want the stuff for?’

‘To hide,’ said Perky. ‘They’ve realised that money kept in a bank is never going to be safe. Not when you are fighting a war against the United States. Eventually it’s going to get tracked down and seized. They’ll keep small amounts, carefully laundered. But not the big stuff. They want that somewhere they can keep their eye on it.’

‘The diamonds and gold are being hoarded for a few days, then taken in vans down to the north Italian or the French coasts,’ Pinky continued. ‘They are loaded on to boats, then taken out across the Mediterranean to the Middle East. The stuff is picked up by al-Qaeda and driven out to safe locations. It could be anywhere – the Saudi desert, the Atlas mountains in Morocco, along the Nile delta, somewhere in Iraq or Iran. The point is, nobody is going to see it again. The Americans aren’t going to track it down, and nobody’s going to freeze the account. It’s safe.’

‘And the beauty of gold and diamonds is that they are both the world’s oldest, most internationally accepted currency,’ Perky interrupted. ‘You can walk into any jewellery shop in the world and get cash for either. Instantly. No questions asked.’

‘Al-Qaeda can keep their money safe for when they really need it,’ Perky continued. ‘And there’s nothing we or the CIA or anyone else can do to touch it. The Moroccans or the Iranians aren’t exactly going to let us go in and start searching around for it.’

‘Thanks for the lesson in global economics and financing terrorism,’ said Matt. ‘But where do I come in?’

Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, Matt knew the answer. Alison turned to look at him, brushing away a lock of blonde hair that had fallen across her face. ‘We want you to steal their money.’

The coffee tasted good. Matt swilled it down quickly, keen for the caffeine to kick into his bloodstream. He looked towards the window. In the distance he could see the Thames winding eastwards, a barge chugging slowly through the fading light of the afternoon. Across the road he watched a young couple emerging from B&Q with tins of paint under their arms. Ordinary suburban life. Just what he’d been planning.

There must be lots of honest, safe ways of making a living. It’s just that none of them seem to suit me.

Alison had suggested they take a ten-minute break. Matt had walked back down to the lobby and bought himself a coffee from the bar. He needed a few minutes to himself. What he thought of the proposition, he couldn’t yet say.

Whatever I decide, one thing is for sure – this time is the last time. The pay-off will have to be good enough that I’m out of this game for ever.

He swilled back the last of the coffee and took the lift back up to the second floor. Alison was already waiting in the room with Pinky and Perky. Matt looked directly towards her. ‘So what’s in it for me?’ he said.

‘We want to cut off the money to al-Qaeda,’ she replied. ‘It’s the most effective way to hurt them. They can plot all they like, but any really big terrorist spectacles are always going to be expensive. Without money they are nothing, just angry Arabs waving placards.’

Pinky looked up and scrutinised Matt’s face, perhaps searching for signs of weakness or indecision. ‘We have flows of intelligence reports coming through,’ he said. ‘We could identify one of the boats shipping the gold and the diamonds across the Med. Our proposition is this: we put together a small group of men, highly trained men like yourself. We give them the information, the practice and the equipment. They go out and hit the boat.’

‘Our sources tell us that each boat contains at least thirty million dollars,’ Perky said. ‘They travel across the Med from Italy, usually with a crew of about six al-Qaeda men on board. They are always armed, but they aren’t trained to special forces standard. Nothing you couldn’t handle. Five would give the team all the technical training necessary to take out the boat, and all the specialist equipment. You’d get all the logistical help you needed.’

‘When the job is done, you’d get to keep the money.’ Pinky cleared his throat. ‘No questions asked. Our interest is not in collecting al-Qaeda’s money, and we don’t care what happens to it. We just want to make sure it’s not under their control any more. The thirty million is your pay-off for the mission. Even after it’s fenced, that’s got to be worth ten million or so. Ten million dollars between five men. You can do the maths yourself. Not bad for a week’s work.’

‘Think about it.’ Alison took a step closer to where Matt was sitting. Her eyes locked on to his, peering down at him, the expression hovering between sympathy and a challenge. ‘It’s the perfect crime. Lucrative and patriotic.’