Killing Ground

Chapter Nine

'I turn to the issue of organized and international crime. The international scene is developing with increasing pace and we cannot afford to get left behind. Borders are coming down, trade is expanding, financial markets and services are becoming integrated. In short, we are no longer an island protected by the sea from unwelcome influences…'

So, you got the message, sir, and about time. The Country Chief eased back in his chair. It was a chore of his work that he should attend the set-piece speeches of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But he'd get a good lunch, and over lunch he'd have the opportunity to bend the ear of people who were useful to him, and he was out of London, and in spring the gardens at Bramshill College, which hosted senior men's courses, were rather fine.

'… We should be in no doubt that organized crime will exploit every opportunity, technological advance or weakness in order to expand. Organized crime, with its international links and quasicorporate structures, is responsible for flooding the streets with dangerous drugs, undermining financial systems, and, by the sheer financial muscle it has available, it is a real threat to the integrity and effectiveness of the rule of law and is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated…'

Good to have you on board, sir. The Country Chief looked out of the window, at the view of the daffodils and crocuses in flowered islands in the lawns, and around the lecture room. The guy from the National Criminal Intelligence Service was listening, and impassive. That was the guy who had told Ray, a year back, that there was no Sicilian La Cosa Nostra problem in little old UK. About time they grew up and joined the real world.

'… There is the question of the role, where appropriate, of the Security Service, and the future involvement of the Security Service in matters which have historically been the responsibility of the police. There is great strength in exploiting fully the experience, methods, powers and potential of different agencies in tackling common problems. The challenge is how to take advantage of diversity without creating confusion…'

Hey, come to Washington, sir. Come and see the 'confusion' when the FBI and the CIA and the DEA and the ATF and the Revenue and the Customs get their noses onto the same scent. Come and see the catfight when the agencies get to hunt the same target. He knew the guy from MI5, a languid dick of a guy, sitting a row behind the NCIS man. Always looking for new territory. Take my advice, sir, keep the bastards at arm's length.

'… Time is not on our side. I do not think our current structures allow us to punch at our full weight and the status quo will not serve us well in the next century. Our European and, indeed, world partners will run out of patience if we do not evolve a one-stop- shop approach to their involvement with us. I hope we will develop an appropriate mechanism to do justice to this formidable challenge. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.'

Spoken like a man, sir, because patience was certainly wearing thin. Put bluntly, and Ray liked to speak his mind, he thought he found in little old theme-park UK a quite stunning complacency. He could have pointed to specialized police units that were starved of resources, to the Customs and Excise investigators who were driven by the culture of statistics, to the financial institutions in the City who blandly ignored the matter of dirty money. He applauded politely.

Time for coffee.

He was in the queue and talking banalities with a man from Drugs Squad.

'Morning, Ray.'

The guy from S06 was beside him.

'You were looking for a word. How you doing?'

'Coffee's usually pretty revolting. Let's walk and talk.'

The Country Chief, good ears, caught the snap in the voice of the detective superintendent.

'You go without, please yourself. I'm taking coffee.'

So he stayed in the queue, made his point, had his cup filled, balanced it on the saucer and walked to the door. The detective superintendent was ahead of him. They went across the wide hallway and out onto the driveway where the chauffeurs waited with their bullshit cars. He liked to say that DEA had a 'blue-collar' mentality, and chauffeur-driven black cars didn't fit the work ethic he believed in. They walked on the lawns and skirted the daffodil clumps and the crocus carpets.

'Nice time of year. So what can I do for you?'

The detective superintendent was smiling, but malevolent. 'Just something that crossed my desk. You have an agent called Axel Moen on your staff-'

'Wrong.'

'I beg your pardon?' The smile had shifted, the face had hardened.

'Put in one-syllables,' the Country Chief spoke slowly as if to an idiot child, emphasizing while his mind ratcheted, 'I do not have anyone of that name on my staff.

Does that settle your problem?'

'An agent with DEA accreditation named Axel Moen.'

'We have around twenty-five hundred special agents, can't know all of them.'

He never lied. He could divert, interrupt, head off, but he would not lie. He knew, from his deputy who had been to Lyon, that quite the most memorable twenty minutes of the Europol conference had been when Garcia, FBI out of Moscow, had put down the Brit from S06. The man's throat was tightening, and the veins were up on his forehead.

'Did you know that a special agent, Axel Moen, travelled down to Devon a bit more than two weeks ago?' 'Maybe I did.'

'Where's he out of?'

'Is that your business?'

'Don't fuck me around.'

'If it's your business, he's out of Rome.'

'Working with your facilities?'

'Maybe.'

'With your knowledge?'

'Maybe. I'd kind of like to catch the next lecture.' The Country Chief threw the dregs from his cup down onto the grass. The lawns around them, between the islands of daffodils and the carpets of crocuses, had just been given their first cut. The dew damp flecked his shoes. 'What's your concern?'

'He went to the home of a young girl, a schoolteacher.'

'Did he?'

'She had received an invitation to go and work for a Sicilian family/

'Had she?'

'Her parents say that your man, Axel Moen, pressured her into accepting that invitation.'

'Do they?'

'The man who has offered her employment has just travelled to the UK under false documentation.'

'Has he?'

'You want it, you'll get it. We reckon you are running some sort of anti-mafia job. We reckon you have trawled round for someone to do the sharp end for you, and you've got your sticky fingers on some poor girl.'

'Do you?'

'You have taken it upon yourselves, you arrogant bloody people, to pressurize and then send a small-town girl to Palermo for some bloody operation you've dreamed up.

Who've you cleared it with?'

'Among your crowd, I don't have to.'

'You are running some naive youngster, filled with crap no doubt, down in Palermo.

So help me, I'll see you-'

'Should have listened to what your fat cat said. Your world partners will run out of patience. Maybe they already have.'

He remembered what Dwight Smythe had said. The words rang in his mind. 'He elbows into a small and unsuspecting life, a young woman's life, and puts together a web to trap her, and does it cold.' He remembered what he himself had said: 'And maybe we should all clap our hands and sing our hymns and get on our knees and thank God that He didn't give us the problem.' He looked into the flushed anger of the Englishman's face.