It was cold out. Icy cold. Will drew several deep, shaky breaths and relished the feeling of the freezing air piercing his lungs like an icicle. He looked around him, then hurried down the road and randomly round a corner, soon finding himself lost in the area around the back of Millbank. He knew what he was looking for and it wasn't long before he found one.
As he entered the Morpeth Arms, a warm fug of air hit him; but the sensation gave him no comfort like it once did. He was in here for a reason. He approached the deserted bar and beckoned the bored-looking barmaid. 'Vodka,' he told her. 'Double. No ice.'
The first drink warmed him up slightly, but it didn't calm him. Nor did the second. Only when he had downed three large vodkas in quick succession did he even begin to feel remotely soothed after the shock he had just received; and it was only after the fourth, handed to him by a now slightly alarmed looking barmaid, that his hands stopped shaking.
It was all too much to process. In the past hour he had been forced to relive his family's murder; he had looked upon the face of their killer; and he had been handed the opportunity to seek retribution.
But retribution wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he needed. He needed oblivion.
He ordered himself a pint and set about trying to forget.
Don Priestley looked at the Director General of MI5.'That was a shitty thing to have to do, Lowther,' he said.
Pankhurst shrugged, as if what had just occurred had barely affected him. 'Nothing like as bad as what will happen if we don't get our hands on Ahmed. We can't have another 9/11, Don. London won't tolerate it. I won't let it happen.'
'You really think this guy is our best bet?'
'I've done my homework, Don. I've spoken to people, asked around. When Will Jackson was in the SAS, he had a reputation. He was the soldier everyone wanted. You've seen the missions he's led — Iraq, Sudan, crucially Afghanistan. You've heard of Gray Fox?'
'Yeah, thanks, Lowther. I've heard of Gray Fox. 'Of course he had. Formerly known as the US Army Intelligence Support Activity unit, Gray Fox was headed up by Delta Force, but worked closely with the Seals, the SBS and the SAS. And he'd read about Jackson's exploits with the unit in Iraq. According to his file, they'd received intelligence that a group of six suicide bombers were planning a hit in Baghdad. Jackson had led a surveillance team, dressed up in Arab gear, that had followed all six bombers back to a house in the Iraqi capital and all the information they had pointed to the likelihood that they would be strapping up and getting ready to leave within the hour. Raiding the house would have been a dangerous option, because all it would have taken was one flick of a switch and both the bombers and the Gray Fox team would have gone up like a bonfire. Yet they couldn't risk letting them back out into the capital.
Jackson's solution had been high-risk. He and his team had staked out the place, posting Regiment snipers all around the house. If a single sniper had been compromised — a distinct possibility in that hostile territory where, if just one Iraqi passer-by had suspected something, the alarm would have been raised — the bombers would have known they were there. Moreover, the shooters had to hold their nerve until all six bombers were out of the house and in their sights.
Against the odds, Jackson's team had managed it, killing all six men at the same time before they could warn each other or go out and do their bloody work. They'd made a little piece of SAS history that day. Priestley had heard that even Delta Force had a grudging respect for the success of the operation and that was like praise from Caesar.
But that was in the past and from what he had seen, Will Jackson wasn't the same any more. 'Lowther,' Priestley said. 'I agree that back in the day he was the man. But now? He's a mess. Has he got any fight left in him? Christ, I don't blame the guy. Look what's happened to him. But you can't put someone like that into the field of war. If you can't trust any of your guys, why don't I just get Washington to send Delta Force in?'
Pankhurst's lips went thin. 'You'll excuse me for pointing out, I hope, Don, that the last time Delta Force and the SAS were on active service in Afghanistan, it was the British special forces who fared rather better.'
Priestley fell silent.
'Will Jackson was in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002,' Pankhurst continued, implacably. 'He led a four-man unit behind enemy lines and reconnoitred there for two weeks, sending regular updates on al-Qaeda positions. The day he was called back to base, the unit was spotted by two scouts, who shot and badly wounded one of the unit. Will Jackson hunted them down before they could report back, killed them, hid their bodies where they wouldn't be found, then single-handedly carried his wounded colleague back to base in the midsummer heat. You might think he's a mess, but he's skilled, well-trained, resourceful and — most importantly — he has a reason to find Faisal Ahmed.'
Pankhurst let that sink in before continuing.
'He reacted to the news about his family much as we thought he would. I'll concede I didn't expect him to walk out, but I've had psychometric reports done by three of our top analysts. He'll come round. He wants to find Ahmed just as much as we do; he just doesn't know it yet. If I'm wrong, you can bring in your people. You'll have my full support. But I'm not wrong, Don. You'll see.'
Priestley looked unconvinced. 'I sure hope so, Lowther,' he said with a sigh. 'I sure hope so.'
The afternoon passed in a blur of booze and self-loathing. Will swallowed pint after pint, but the more he drank, the more the images from the morning flashed before his eyes. His wife and daughter, cold, dead. Faisal Ahmed, his unfeeling eyes staring confidently out. Part of Will wanted to hunt the guy down, to look him in the face, then put a bullet in his head. But another part of him — the greater part — wanted to run away back to Hereford. Back to the graveyard, where he could weep and be alone with his grief.
The pub started to fill up. He was on his fifth pint — or was it his sixth? — when he noticed the woman who had taken the bar stool next to him. She wore a smart grey business suit, had a drink in front of her and was toying nervously with a cigarette.
'Bloody smoking ban,' she smiled at him.
Will grunted and took another sip from his pint.
'Just been stood-up,' she said, before adding, rather quickly, 'Not by a boyfriend. I was meant to be interviewing someone. I'm a journalist.'
'Right,' Will replied, a bit ungraciously.
She smiled at him again. A pretty smile. 'I'm Catherine, by the way,' she blurted out. 'Kate. My friends call me Kate.' Her hair, Will noticed, was cut into an attractive brown bob and it flickered appealingly over her cheek as she put her head to one side. Nice, but his instinct was to keep himself to himself. It was almost inbuilt in him to be immediately suspicious of anyone talking to him without a reason.
'Look,' he said, 'I don't want to sound rude, but I've had a bit of a weird day and I don't really feel like shooting the shit.' He gulped at his drink.
'Weird day?' Kate gabbled. 'Tell me about it. I woke up this morning, and — ' She faltered. 'It's no good,' she said. 'I've got to have a cigarette. Fancy one?'
Will looked at the packet of fags on the bar. He hadn't smoked for years, but all of a sudden he found he had a craving for it. 'Yeah, all right,' he murmured.
A small smile of satisfaction flickered over Kate's face and it didn't go unnoticed by Will. She put her coat on and he escorted her to the door.
They stood outside in silence, tobacco fumes billowing from their nostrils in great clouds. Kate stamped her feet against the cold and she finished her cigarette long before Will. They were just turning to go inside when there was a shout. The alcohol had made him woozy, and Will didn't catch what it was, but he certainly understood its implication. Before he knew it, three men in their twenties — brash young city types, clearly drunk, still wearing their suits, but with their ties loosened as much as their tongues — were jostling around Kate, laughing lewdly. All the confidence Kate had shown in the pub seemed to disappear, and she shrank away.