‘So come on, Jenner,’ continued Flanagan, ‘tell us. What the hell went wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily, taking a drag from his cigarette. ‘The Colombian, Fellano, was fucking us about. He was really paranoid. I think he may even have had half a sniff we were police.’
‘Then why on earth did you split up from Vokerman?’
‘You know why I split up from him. Because I wasn’t going to show Fellano the money until I saw the gear, and the gear wasn’t there in the room. That’s the way it works in these sort of things — in case you didn’t know.’
‘I know exactly how it fucking works, Jenner!’ snapped Flanagan, his expression darkening until his face was almost puce. ‘That’s why I run SO7. But it wasn’t in the plan for you to split up, was it? You were meant to take the money up to the room with you in the first place. Why didn’t you do that?’
‘I didn’t want him thinking he was dealing with a couple of amateurs. If we’d gone waltzing in with the cash, that’s what we would have looked like. They would have suspected something. I told you that when we were planning it. We would never have got hold of the drugs.’
‘And we wouldn’t have had five dead bodies strewn round the airport, dozens of petrified civilians, including one in intensive care, and half the world’s media coming down on us like a pack of fucking wolves.’ Flanagan’s face grew redder as he spoke, something that thanks to his lanky frame gave him more than a passing resemblance to a matchstick. I thought that he’d better watch himself otherwise he was going to be joining the civilian in intensive care.
‘This is the first time one of my ops has ever gone wrong,’ said Stegs firmly, holding Flanagan’s gaze.
‘And go wrong it certainly fucking did. You only need one mistake when it’s as big as that.’
‘It’s easy enough criticizing when you’re stood watching everything from a safe distance. It’s a lot harder when you’re out there on your own. Ninety per cent of that cash was counterfeit. If they’d checked it carefully enough, we’d have put ourselves in even more danger.’
‘Don’t make excuses, Jenner. You didn’t follow procedure, and because of that you put yourself, your colleague, the targets. . the whole operation, in jeopardy. And, as a direct result, it all ended in. .’ He chewed around for the right word. ‘Tragedy.’
‘Bullshit! I did what I thought was right. I wanted to get evidence against the target, and that was the only way I could do it. It wasn’t my fault that someone decided to rob us in the middle of it all. If they hadn’t turned up, none of this would have happened.’
The two men continued to stare at each other, the tension between them growing. It had been there since the meeting had started. That’s what I meant about Stegs being a maverick. He didn’t follow procedure; he improvised — on this occasion, with alarming results — and it made him enemies. I could see why he’d done it, and I understood his explanation. If he and Vokes had simply gone in there with the money, they might have been rumbled on the spot as undercover police, too eager to make a purchase. And, to be fair to him, if the robbers hadn’t turned up in the car park, we almost certainly would have got the result we were looking for. I doubted that this would be enough to save him, though.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tina fixing him with an expression of scepticism. She’d never liked him, one of those instinctive dislikes she hadn’t got round to explaining, and it made me think that Stegs really was a one-man band, always on his own against the world. In other words, perfect scapegoat material.
Malik spoke next, his tone calm and even as always, his question one that had also been bugging me. ‘Just after you split up from the two Colombians in the car park, Fellano made a call on his mobile. Do you have any idea who he might have been phoning?’
Stegs shook his head.
‘The reason I ask,’ Malik continued, ‘is that at almost exactly the same time, one of the Colombians in the room received a call on the hotel phone. At the moment, we don’t know what was said, because the individual taking the call didn’t say anything to the caller, but as soon as it ended he became very irate, and, according to our translator, told his colleague that there was a serious problem. They then became far more agitated, and we believe they manhandled Vokes over to the bed.’
‘I thought you had cameras in the room.’
‘We had two cameras in there,’ answered Malik, ‘but it was a big place and they were pointed at the desk to cover the transaction. So there was a blind spot round by the bed. After the call, they heard the shots and decided to bail out, but they finished off Vokes first. Quite why, we’re not sure. And for some reason he didn’t give his codeword.’
‘I’m surprised that when the shooting started out in the car park you lot didn’t go in anyway,’ said Stegs, looking first at Malik, then at Flanagan.
‘SO19 were in the room within twenty seconds of the first shots being fired in the car park,’ said Leon Ferman, a powerfully built black man who looked like he didn’t take criticism lightly. ‘And within thirty, both suspects were dead. How much faster would you have wanted it done?’
‘Fast enough to have saved him,’ said Stegs drily.
Ferman started to say something else but Malik put up a hand to stop him. ‘It’s OK, Leon,’ he said, and Ferman reluctantly quietened. ‘The fact remains, Stegs, that he didn’t give the signal, and we had absolutely no idea they were going to shoot him. SO19 were in the rooms directly on either side, as you’re fully aware, and were given the order to go in as quickly as possible. It’s a tragedy that it wasn’t quick enough, but there was nothing we could have done about that.’
The operation’s handlers — Flanagan, Malik and Ferman — had been watching events unfold from a room some way down the corridor from the one where the meeting had been taking place. Tina and I had been in there too, along with the translator and several other technical staff, and we’d seen near enough everything, bar the final bloody denouement, which had taken place off camera. Because the operations room had been on the other side of the hotel from the car park, and the shooting out of immediate earshot, it had only just been picked up on the surveillance tapes. As a result, there’d been a momentary delay before the order to go in was relayed by Ferman to the SO19 team, a delay that had proved fatal. However, it was difficult to know what could have been done to prevent it. Our operational incident room had deliberately been located some distance from where the deal was going down, because having that many people so close, particularly when we had the tapes of what was being said playing in the room, would have aroused too much suspicion.
Flanagan, though, clearly knew that plenty of people were going to be hunting for mistakes, and would probably find at least some, so he was following the politician’s standard philosophy of blaming someone else. ‘So, you had no idea why Fellano could have made that call, or who he was calling?’ he demanded, the suggestion clear that he thought Jenner must have known.
‘Of course I didn’t. Why would I?’
‘Nothing was discussed?’
‘No.’ Stegs stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Look, I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to insinuate, but all I was trying to do was nail one of the bad guys. It fucked up, the whole thing fucked up, and I lost a good mate. .’ He paused for a moment as if that particular piece of news had only just fully arrived in his consciousness. ‘But it can’t be my fault that a bunch of blokes I’ve never seen in my life suddenly turn up out of the blue, pull shooters, and stage an armed robbery right in the middle of the op. Someone should have spotted them a mile off. Why didn’t that happen? And why did they get a chance to start shooting?’