The voice droned.
He remembered Iyad, the true friend, who had given up his life that time could be bought, a proven fighter who never bragged. On their journey there had been long hours between them of valued silence.
'You must be thinking, Dean – natural you would – can Ricky Capel keep his mouth shut? You have no worries. Back home, we got police and they don't get a sniff on me. Up where I am, and I reckon I'm big enough, we have the spies that are supposed to go after high-value targets – they got bugs and tracker sensors and cameras so bloody small you can't see them. What they haven't got is me. Why? Because I'm sharper than them. They've never had me… Never been charged. All of that lot queuing up, after me because I'm a high-value target, and they haven't ever been able to lay a charge against me. I was in once, three years back, and was held for forty-eight hours, and a good half of that was in the interview room. I never said nothing. Four sessions, maybe six hours each. I took an eyeline on the floor and one on the ceiling, one on the table, one on the door. I said nothing, never spoke, but had a different eyeline each time. You should have seen them, Dean, and they were going fucking spare, believe it… You can rely on it, I don't talk, and I don't reckon you would – it's why we're friends, can depend on each other.'
In his mind, irritated by the voice, he recalled codenames given him and addresses too sensitive to be written down, and the words of the Book that he would use and the responses that would be made.
'You want to know anything, Dean, about sensors and bugs, cameras and audio, or phones – me, I never use them – then I'm your man to ask. I got a guy, clever little sod, and I pay him well, and he's ahead of their game – better than the spies. I know everything they put against me and how to block it. Didn't have an education but I'm not stupid – you've seen that. I aim to stay safe and anyone who's my friend will stay safe. It's why we've got the boat coming. An old trawler flogging around the fishing banks and putting in to port often enough for it to be familiar, clever that.
You're all right with me.'
He thought of the places he had been – while the voice nagged at him – and of the young men and the young woman, all martyrs, whom he had sent out on the road to Paradise, and their cheerfulness to him and their gratitude that they were chosen, and he had been long gone from Taba, Cairo and Riyadh when their pictures were put in newspapers with the images of what they had done.
'What I like about you, Dean, is that you show respect for me. And I'm telling you, it's two-way. I don't mean respect because I'm a big man. Most who give me respect back home, it's because they're frightened of me. Men I do business with, most of them, they give me respect because of fear. I'm not afraid of you, you're not afraid of me, but there's respect because we're equals and friends. Right now, when I get back there's a matter of respect – it's disrespect – to be sorted. That old bastard, Rahman, he didn't give me it, and he has a nephew, a flash little prick, and he's ready for a lesson in respect. Off the boat and I'll be working on i t… I got my cousins, I got people who watch my back, and will watch it when I sort out disrespect…'
He suggested, softly and soothing, that it might be the right time to make the radio link with the boat, and reached out, took a cold hand and squeezed it in reassurance – because he was the equal of Ricky Capel, his friend – and felt no guilt at the deceit.
'If you didn't know it, the weather out here is foul,'
Harry shouted at the microphone. The trawler shook, then cascaded into the trough. Walls of water climbed higher than the wheel-house windows, then hit a solid, ungiving mass, and the Anneliese Royal seemed to stop. 'About as foul as I've known it.'
For a moment she was dead in the sea and lurched to port. He clung, white-knuckled hands, to the wheel, and for endless seconds she seemed to go over, then the stabilizers dragged her upright. But at the limit of the trough a wave made a cliff face and she collided with it. He heard the boy, his grandson, cry out behind him in stark fear. Now Harry saw nothing beyond the windows as sheets of spray covered them, and rivers of the damn stuff would be sluicing on to the decks, weighing her down, and he could hear the roar of the weather and the engine's howl, and the distorted voice of Ricky Capel, and the questions coming more frantic… When was he going to be there? What time? Why so long? A rogue wave could come as one in ten or one in a hundred. A rogue wave could not be ridden by a trawler.
They went on through it and the wheel-house seemed to go dark, seemed as though night came, of blackened blue and green. Then they burst clear. Light where there had been darkness and the Anneliese Royal steadied and Harry knew he would not be pitched over on to the wheel-house plank floor. He loosened his hold on the wheel, and the sweat spilled down the nape of his neck and on his throat. He looked behind him, and the boy hung in misery from the rail round the wheel-house's sides, and the door to the deck had come unfastened in the impact and hammered backwards and forwards. The sea came in and cleaned some of the boy's sickness. Harry tried to smile, to find confidence for the boy, took a hand off the wheel and gestured that his grandson should get the door closed. Maybe it would be the last time he went out of harbour for Ricky Capel, maybe…
He depressed the switch.
'Don't know where you are, Ricky. Where I am it's force ten and gusting up to force eleven and sometimes it's cyclonic… Right, when are we getting there? I'm reckoning to be in the approach channel for German Bight and turning into Jade Approach at approximately twenty hundred hours local, and that'll put me off shore around twenty-two thirty – if the old girl's still holding together. It'll be a dinghy pickup, which'll be no picnic. I don't want any more radio traffic before twenty-one hundred, don't want the world to know, and I'll want a light signal from twenty-two thirty for the dinghy… Oh, Ricky, I'll have the guest suite ready… and, Ricky, I won't be hanging about, so you'll need to paddle out quick for the pickup – like I said, no picnic. Over. Out.'
'Give it to the Germans? Good God, no… absolutely not.'
The meeting was chaired by the assistant deputy director, Gilbert.
'Let the Germans in on the act – I can promise you
– and it will be pain and tears.'
He presided at the end of the table in a room set aside for conferences on the ground floor.
'If the bloody Germans are involved, their lawyers will demand access to every slip of paper, intelligence material, that we have. No way, not to be considered.'
Sandwiches, coffee, nibbles and jugs of fruit juice were at the side, and plates, cups and glasses had been brought to the table.
'We all know the German style. It's endless court cases, appeals that'll go into the next century, and weak-kneed determination to see it through. Forget them.'
Behind the assistant deputy director, sitting on six straight-backed chairs, was a line of stenographers.
Each was there to write up the contribution of their own man, and later it would be polished in that man's interests.
'Scrub the Germans out of it, and let us do our own thing.'
Present, four on one side of the table and facing Freddie Gaunt, were Dennis from the Security Service; Trevor of Special Branch in the Metropolitan Police; Jimmy, who was senior in the Norfolk Constabulary and would also watch over the Suffolk brief, and Bill, who did liaison between Special Forces at Hereford and Poole with Vauxhall Bridge Cross. All of them, on arrival, had chimed complaints about the short notice given them, and all had let it be known with force that they expected the inconvenience to be softened by a matter of genuine importance.