The stocky former SAS staff sergeant who manned the reception desk grinned at him as he signed in. ‘Nice day for it, sir.’
‘Nice day for what, Sandy?’ asked Shepherd.
Sandy shrugged. ‘Whatever you had mind, sir.’ The ‘sir’ was ironic – there were no ranks in the club.
Shepherd scanned the names of those who had signed in that day. ‘Mr Yokely not arrived?’
‘Yokely, sir?’
‘American.’
Sandy raised one eyebrow. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Mr Yokely doesn’t sign in.’
‘Really?’
‘Far too important for that, I’m told,’ said Sandy.
‘Seriously?’
‘Security issue. The committee okayed it so I put up with it. You know what the Yanks are like – scared of their own shadows half the time.’
Shepherd chuckled and headed upstairs.
Yokely was standing at the bar, nursing a vodka and tonic. When he saw Shepherd, he said, with a faint southern drawl, ‘I always expect you to abseil in through the window.’ He was in his late forties with short grey hair and thin lips that looked cruel even when they curled into what passed for a smile. He wore a chunky college ring on his right hand, a dark blue blazer, a gleaming white shirt and the same blue tie with black stripes that he’d been wearing the last time they’d met almost a year previously. The shoes were the same, too. Black leather with tassels.
‘Thanks for coming, Richard.’
‘You were lucky I was in town,’ said Yokely. ‘Jameson’s, soda and ice?’
‘Thanks,’ said Shepherd.
Yokely smiled and Shepherd realised that the American wanted recognition for having remembered his drink. He didn’t rise to the bait. His own memory was virtually faultless, but he figured that the American had simply made notes of what had happened at their last meeting. He seemed the type to keep a file on everyone he met.
Yokely glanced at his wristwatch – a Rolex Submariner, the fiftieth-anniversary edition with the green bezel. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he said. ‘A chopper’s waiting to take me up to Prestwick. I’m supposed to meet a flight from Afghanistan and then I’m off to Cuba.’ He snorted. ‘Pity the CIA doesn’t give frequent-flier miles.’
‘Rendition, they call it – right? Taking suspects to countries where torture isn’t illegal?’
Yokely grinned wolfishly. ‘It isn’t called torture, these days. It’s coercive interrogation. And don’t go all holier-than-thou on me because it was you guys who invented rendition, way back in 1684.’
‘I assume there’s nothing I can say to stop you telling me the story?’ said Shepherd.
Yokely’s grin widened. ‘Torture was outlawed in England in 1640, but it stayed legal in bonnie Scotland until the Act of Union in 1707. Now, in 1684 you guys had a suspect and a less than co-operative witness to the attempted assassination of Charles II. They were shipped north of the border and, as a direct result of information obtained under torture, the suspect was tried, convicted and executed. Rendition worked for you then and it works for us now.’ He ordered the whiskey for Shepherd, then motioned to a sofa in a quiet corner. They walked across to it and sat down. Yokely swirled the ice in his glass. ‘I’m guessing this isn’t social,’ he said.
Shepherd was sure Yokely knew why he’d asked for the meeting, so the American must be relishing the opportunity to make him sing for his supper. ‘Geordie Mitchell,’ he said. Yokely pulled a face.
The barman brought the whiskey and Shepherd waited until he had gone back to the bar before he went on. ‘He’s just been taken hostage in Iraq.’
‘Ah,’ said Yokely. ‘He’s one of yours, is he? According to the TV, he’s a civilian contractor.’
‘He left the Sass a few years back.’
‘And I guess he’s not shouting about his special-forces background, under the circumstances. The government seems to be keeping that information under its hat, too.’
‘They’re not doing much.’
‘Not much they can do,’ said the American. ‘You see what they did to that journalist? Just a kid. Father had money, would’ve paid anything to get the boy back, but they weren’t interested. It’s not about money.’
‘What is it about?’ asked Shepherd.
‘They want us all dead,’ said Yokely, flatly. ‘They want us all dead or they want us on our hands and knees praying to Allah five times a day. To them that seems a reasonable request. Hell, they figure they’re saving our souls.’
‘You believe that?’
Yokely took two gulps of his drink. ‘I’m not sure what I believe any more, other than that we’re right and they’re wrong. A world run by Islamic fundamentalists is not a world I’d want any part of. If the roles were reversed and it was the mad mullahs in charge, I’d probably be setting off bombs myself. I’d kill to protect my way of life, no question.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Hell, I already have done. You too.’
The American was watching Shepherd over the top of his glass. Shepherd didn’t react to the barb. Yes, Shepherd had killed, but not to protect an ideology. He’d killed when he was in the SAS, as a soldier on military operations. He’d killed as a policeman, to save others. But that was his job: it was what he was paid to do. It had nothing to do with ideologies. Shepherd had only met Yokely once, but he knew the American regarded the war against terrorism as a holy crusade, which he was prepared to win at any price.
‘So, what do you want from me, Spider? The US government isn’t going to go in to bat for a Brit. Not that it would do any good if they did. Your best bet would be to find him an Irish grandmother.’
‘He isn’t Irish,’ said Shepherd. ‘If anyone’s going to help Geordie, it’ll be us.’
‘Us?’
‘His friends,’ said Shepherd, quietly.
Yokely’s eyes narrowed. ‘A dangerous road to go down.’
‘That’s for us to worry about,’ said Shepherd. ‘We need intel, and we can’t get it here.’
‘But I’m the oracle so you’ve come to me?’
‘We just need information.’
‘What sort of information?’
Shepherd drained his glass. ‘Another?’ he asked.
‘You trying to keep me in suspense?’ said the American. He lifted his glass. ‘Vodka and tonic with all the trimmings. I keep asking for lime but they give me lemon.’
Shepherd went to the bar for fresh drinks. When he returned he sat down and gave Yokely his glass. ‘What do you know about the Holy Martyrs of Islam?’ he asked.
‘As little as you do, I’d guess,’ said Yokely. ‘The names these people use mean nothing.’
‘When the Lake boy was taken, your people must have looked into it.’
‘Johnny Lake was a journalist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Plus the stories he was filing weren’t going down well in the Oval Office.’
‘So the government didn’t care?’
‘They cared, of course they did. The boy’s father was a heavy hitter, with friends on Capitol Hill, but there’s a limit to the resources they can put into one missing kid. Don’t get me wrong. They looked. And they looked hard. But, so far as I know, no one had ever heard of the Holy Martyrs of Islam.’
‘We need to know where Geordie is and who’s got him. We’re analysing the video, and we’ll be talking to his employer so we can gather basic intel on what’s happening on the ground. But we need higher-level intel. Electronic traffic and satellite imagery.’
‘Sounds like you’re planning a war,’ said the American.
‘We’re just mapping out our options,’ said Shepherd.
‘You find him, then what?’
‘We’ll cross chickens and count bridges when the time comes,’ he said. ‘Can you help?’