‘Problem?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just, you know, the past is a different country. You can’t go back, can you? I left the Met to join SOCA and left SOCA to go to Five. It’s going to feel strange going back to where I started.’
‘It wasn’t that long ago. But if you’ve any reservations, any reservations at all, let me know.’
‘No, it’s all good.’ He nodded. ‘Really. It’ll be interesting to see how the Met’s been getting on without me.’ Shepherd smiled. He wasn’t worried about working with Sam Hargrove again. In fact he was looking forward to it. He’d enjoyed working for Hargrove in the Met’s undercover unit in the days before it had been taken over by SOCA, and there had several times over the past few years when he’d considered giving his former boss a call.
‘Why don’t you sleep on it and if you’re not keen you can let me know tomorrow?’
‘I don’t need to,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’ll be fine. It’s not as if I’m rushed off my feet, is it?’
‘There’s a lot of waiting, that’s true,’ said Button. ‘But I’ve made it clear to Sam that if you are co-opted your Five work takes absolute precedence. If Chaudhry or Malik need you, you drop everything.’
Shepherd nodded and sipped his wine, watching her over the top of his glass. She almost always referred to the men by their family names, almost never as Raj and Harvey. He wondered if it was deliberate and that she was distancing herself from them. And that made him wonder how she referred to him when he wasn’t around. Was he Dan? Or Spider? Or Shepherd?
‘What?’ she said, and he realised that he must have been staring.
He grinned. ‘Nothing, I was just wondering if Jimmy Sharpe would be involved. I haven’t seen him for months but the last I heard was that he was doing some undercover work with the Met.’
‘Well, if he is, give him my best.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be going, I’ve a stack of emails that need answering and I’ve a conference call with Langley in a couple of hours.’
Shepherd slapped his forehead. ‘Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something. I was supposed to Skype Liam.’ He groaned. ‘They’re not allowed to use their laptops after eight. I’ll have to call him tomorrow.’
‘How’s he getting on at boarding school?’
‘Loves it,’ said Shepherd. ‘His grades are improving and he’s really into all the sports. He’s started rock climbing, and that’s something I used to do as a kid so hopefully we’ll get in a few climbs together at some point.’
‘It’s funny how quickly they adapt,’ said Button. ‘My daughter always wanted to go to boarding school. There were a few tears the first week she was away, but these days she can’t wait to get back. It’s a teenage thing, I guess; they’d rather be with their friends.’
‘It works out really well for me,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can take him out any weekend if I want and they’re very relaxed about midweek visits. I try to Skype him every evening but this whole Pakistan thing has meant that I haven’t spoken to him for a week.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I spoke to him just before I went away, but obviously I didn’t say where I was going, just that I was working and that I probably wouldn’t be able to use my phone or computer. The Yanks were so paranoid they took everything off me as soon as I got to their airbase. They didn’t give me my phone back until I was boarding my plane this morning and by then the battery was dead.’
‘He’ll be okay. He’s used to your absences.’
‘It’s not him I’m worried about,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m the one that misses him, not the other way round.’ He drained his glass. ‘At least I don’t have to nag him to do his homework; the school’s doing a better job of that than I ever did.’
He stood up and showed Button to the door.
‘I’ll get Sam to call you, then,’ she said, heading downstairs before he had time to worry about whether to shake her hand or accept a peck on the cheek.
Shepherd watched the battered black Golf GTI pull into the car park and drive slowly around before parking in the bay furthest away from the M1 motorway. London Gateway services, between junctions two and four north of the capital, was perfect for clandestine meetings. It was a place full of transients: everyone was a stranger and everyone was on the way to somewhere else. London Gateway was just a stopping-off point for a coffee, a toilet break or an expensive and badly cooked meal. Businessmen with mobile phones glued to their ears, chav housewives shepherding unruly broods towards the bathrooms, bald-headed white-van drivers chewing gum and knocking back cans of Red Bull, they all remained the centre of their own universes and showed little if any interest in the people around them.
Miles to the south, moored on the Thames in the centre of the city, was the museum warship HMS Belfast. Shepherd had read somewhere that the warship’s guns were aimed so that their shells, if fired, would fall directly on to the service centre. It was a nugget of information that his perfect memory kept locked away for ever, but for the life of him he had no idea why the centre had been targeted, and could only assume it was a comment on the drab architecture. Or maybe someone had once eaten a bad sausage roll there.
Shepherd climbed out of the Volvo, a three-year-old model from the office pool. He locked the door and walked over to the Golf, whistling softly to himself. He had a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and he kept his head down. He tapped on the rear window of the car and the two men inside jumped as if they’d been stung, then they relaxed as they recognised him.
Shepherd opened the rear door and got in. ‘Harvey, when are you going to get yourself a decent motor?’ he asked, clapping the driver on the back.
‘This, it’s a classic, innit?’ said Malik. It was cold in the car and both men were bundled up, Chaudhry in his duffel coat and Malik in his green parka jacket.
Shepherd pulled on the handle to close the door and it threatened to come away in his hand. ‘It’s a piece of shit,’ he said.
‘So how about your bosses pay for a new motor, then?’ said Chaudhry. ‘There was a reward for Bin Laden, wasn’t there? Twenty-five million bucks. How about sending some of that our way, John?’
John Whitehill was Shepherd’s cover name. It was the only name they would ever know him by. ‘I’ll ask, but the Yanks are taking the credit,’ he said.
‘Yeah, but they know the information came from us, right?’ said Malik, twisting round in his seat.
‘What do you think, Harvey? You think we’ve been shouting your names from the rooftops?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Malik, his cheeks reddening. ‘But Obama knows, right?’
‘Of course Obama doesn’t bloody well know,’ said Shepherd. He ran a hand through his hair, trying not to lose his temper. He forced himself to smile. ‘If the President knew then at least a dozen other people would know, and Washington leaks like a bloody sieve. All the politicians are hand in glove with the media so it wouldn’t take long for the info to go public and then the two of you would be well fucked. I presume you don’t want your names splashed across the New York Times.’
‘But someone knows, right?’ said Malik. ‘We get the credit, right?’
‘We know, Harvey. That’s what matters.’
‘And who is “we”, exactly?’ pressed Malik.
Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked quietly.
‘I’m fine,’ said Malik. ‘I just want some reassurance here that someone else isn’t taking credit for what we did. We found Bin Laden. We found the man the whole world was looking for. And we told you and then the Americans went in and killed him. And nowhere do I hear that it was anything other than an American operation.’
‘Which is what we want. That sort of disinformation keeps you safe. What do you want, Harvey? You want to go and shake hands with Obama in the White House and have him tell you how proud he is?’
‘What I want, John, is a piece of the twenty-five-million reward that the Americans promised.’
‘That was up to twenty-five million,’ said Shepherd. ‘If they do pay it then it’ll be split among everyone involved.’