Judgement Read online

  The ruse had been taken up as a running joke by the squad, and his boots became a zoologist's treasure house, to be emptied religiously every morning. He remembered that Joao—with the coward's pack-animal response to the disadvantaged—had been the main culprit. Only the dour giant Luiz had refused to take part in his humiliation.

  But at least the ex-Somoza Guardsman had promised him a gun on the next tour; he would be able to take part in the attacks, rather than having to hang back to witness only the aftermath. He relished the thought of handling one of the big heavy Colts, and the dream of perhaps one day owning an M-16 made him squirm with pleasure.

  Far above, in the brightly coloured world of the macaws and spider monkeys, it started to rain. Water, funnelled by the leaves, fell as big, heavy drops onto the khaki caps of the men shouldering through the darker world beneath. The ceaseless dripping became painful within minutes: they could not bear to wear helmets in the stupefying heat and humidity of the forest floor, and so had developed a simple, if bizarre, solution. They brought out the metal dishes they used for food and put them on their heads, holding them in place with one hand as they pushed aside the vines and air roots with the other. The noise of the drops falling on metal made a strange discordant tinkling sound, like a child randomly hitting the tones on a xylophone.

  They continued to trudge through the mud, the air heavy with the smell from decaying plant matter. By the dim green light seeping in through the canopy Tomas could just make out banks of mist. Sometimes there was the flickering of marsh gas, so faint that he could see it only on the periphery of his vision. It seemed to populate this jungle underworld with phantoms that stalked their small group, and every now and then monkeys would suddenly scream and flee, gibbering through their aerial pathways.

  The forest was always a malevolent place. When the squad were far from their targets, some atavistic instinct would make them bunch together; when they were tracking, they spread out in a V-formation, ten men strung out across 200 metres of forest. It was at times like that—when, for minutes at a time, the men adjacent to him had vanished—that Tomas’s nerve had been tested the most.

  Joao, covering his damaged eye, still straggled behind the rest of them. As the men began to leap heavily over a turgid stream, he let out a tremulous moan, and Ernesto responded with a loud, sustained fart. Laughter broke the sullen spell and, for a while, seemed to ward off the menace of the forest. The men started to talk and joke, and even crusty old Luiz brought out the canteen of medicinal rum.

  Three of the younger men had been nudging each other and whispering. They began to walk a little faster and soon caught up with Tomas. Juan Vasquez, the oldest, his fat face a multicoloured blotch from his sweat-smeared camouflage paint, slapped Tomas hard on the shoulder.

  'You ever had a woman, Tomasito?' he mouthed in a mock whisper that could be heard in Columbia.

  'Of course, don't be ridiculous,' Tomas waved a hand dismissively but felt his face grow hot under the war paint. The squad roared and clustered round him, banging on his makeshift helmet and goosing his backside. Tomas flinched and was steeling himself for one more variation on this well-worn joke, when Luiz came to a sudden halt, lifting a hand for silence.

  Everyone froze. Above the jungle's usual cacophony came the sound of a large body of flowing water.

  The men whooped and struck off in the direction of the river, Luiz in the lead, Tomas following close and intent on getting as much distance between himself and the others as he could. They had barely gone ten metres when Luiz stopped with a yell: he stiffened, his arms flying out from his sides as he spun drunkenly, the back of his left hand catching Tomas across the cheek.

  Tomas yelped with surprise. Luiz crashed back against the trunk of a Juari palm but stayed upright. Tomas heard the soldiers behind him scramble for cover and he dropped into a crouch beside the palm. Close up against Luiz he felt the spasms running through the man's legs. Looking up he saw the man's eyes open very wide and a red line appear across his throat just above the level of his shoulders.

  Tomas blinked with surprise but the spectacle wouldn't go away. The line grew to about five centimetres long, then opened like a mouth, a loop of bright red tissue poking its way through. Finger-wide rivulets of blood started to flow down Luiz’s neck, and he shivered hard, but stayed stationary as though pinned to the tree. Macabre gurgling sounds came from his mouth, and his face turned a deep red, tears filling his eyes.

  Fascinated, Tomas watched as the loop got bigger, then one end came suddenly free and the top six inches of tongue flopped forward onto Luiz’s chest, like some obscene necktie.

  Tomas jumped to his feet and stepped back quickly, just as he heard the sound of something ripping to his left. Turning, he saw Vasquez stagger out from behind a hirtella bush. He had been slit from neck to groin, a great mass of yellow belly fat pushing his skin apart.

  Tomas gawped in horror as a torrent of red and purple guts and lungs cascaded out, to be caught in Vasquez’s own cupped hands. The man seemed almost to be weighing them, his face a mask of disbelief, in the moment before he toppled forward onto the forest floor.

  Shots rang out and men screamed. Tomas, looking dazedly round for the source of the gunfire, heard the unmistakable sound of the spring release on a Claymore mine coming open. Twenty feet away he saw Ernesto suddenly stand upright and jerk his head round to look in terror at his own backpack. Then, with what sounded like a great wet cough, Ernesto's chest exploded, showering Tomas with blood and fragments of cartilage that stung his face.

  Tomas fell to the ground, whimpering. He cringed, waiting for the soft thud of a bullet tearing through his own head. It seemed to take years for the cries and moans of the others to die away to silence. When at last he lifted his head, there were no signs of life in the crumpled bodies around him. Then he caught sight of the flies already swarming over the length of Luiz’s exposed tongue.

  He stifled a scream with immense effort and began to reach out, as stealthily as he could, for Ernesto's aged M-16 just three feet away, its muzzle impaling the mud where it had been thrown by the blast. He had just eased it out when he caught sight of movement on the periphery of his vision; Joao had poked his head out from behind the trunk of a banana tree.

  They looked at each other in mute horror, then Joao lurched out from behind the tree, dashing off through the forest towards the river.

  Tomas tensed, expecting a bullet or bomb to bring the man down, but nothing happened.

  By the time Joao had disappeared from sight Tomas had already made up his mind. He would risk anything rather than remain alone in this jungle with the dead.

  Casting aside the weapon, he got to his feet and ran for his life.

  CHAPTER 1

  Langley, West Virginia

  Leith cajoled the MGB into what passed for its top gear and incautiously floored the accelerator. He gritted his teeth as the clutch spun with a plaintive whine, then watched balefully as the the tinny little Japanese number he’d had pretensions of overtaking accelerated painlessly away. He could imagine his mechanic, a dour little man who specialised in automotive exotica, suck hard through pursed lips, then whistle sadly.

  I got news for you Bobby boy, he’d say, and its all bad.

  The clutch had been telling him its problems for months, but he hadn't listened. Now he was stuck with an ancient foreign car, with a top speed of forty miles an hour, and getting slower every day.

  He swung off the George Washington Parkway and leisurely headed up the tree-lined approach road to the main gate. The trees were a breathtaking flame red in the mid-autumn sun, and so changed from the lush summer greens that Leith imagined for a brief second he was on another planet. If the MGB had been operating properly he would be hitting seventy at this point, and more concerned with avoiding the crazed multitudes that jogged to work than admiring the scenery. Maybe this way was the way to travel after all, he reflected; slow and regal. But halfway down the drive, his fingers had begun to tap at the st
eering wheel.

  The black guard looked disdainfully at the hood of the mud stained MGB, then brought his eyes up to look at Leith without making any effort to alter his expression. Leith wafted his pass at him with what he hoped was a condescending air, and took great pains not to spin the clutch as he drove into the parking lot of the most recent building on the twenty-one acre site.

  He manoeuvred his big six-foot frame out of the driver's seat, then started out across the lot, vaguely aware of the motion-sensitive security cameras swivelling to follow him. He tried not to think about these or any of the other security measures he skated through each morning but, somehow, he never quite succeeded; it was like getting into a plane—thoughts of a crash would always be there somewhere.

  Hidden cameras would have picked up the number plate on his car as he came down the approach road. The images would have been digitised, and feature-extraction algorithms applied to identify the plates. By the time his car had reached the main gate, the dedicated transputer would have downloaded his image onto the guard's screen.

  Here and at the other security points, the card key scan at the door to his building would have been alerted instantly if his face had not matched the expected image: then a series of countermeasures would have swung rapidly into action. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines on the approach roads and sidewalks by the parking lots would have been armed. If he had made it into the building, gravity shutters like guillotines for giants would have sliced down, isolating him. Building Security guaranteed that the subject of any ID mismatch could not gain a further ten yards, no matter how fast or hard they moved. The CIA had at least learned something from the tragic lessons of the Eighties.

  After entering the building, he made his way along the drab corridors to room 1G3 in the section occupied by the Records Integration Division. Nancy looked up from her monitors, smiled sadly and shook her head. Leith's sartorial inelegance always seemed to be a source of concern for her and she leaned forward across the desk to get a better look.

  'My God, Bob. That crappy old cord jacket I'd learned to live with, but jeans! Give me a break!' She held her fingers to her brow and laughed lightly to herself.

  She was in her late thirties, and had a thin, rather pale face with high cheekbones under a rigid bell of strawberry blond hair. She seemed, like Leith, contented with her lot. Perhaps recognising a kindred spirit, she would often spring to his defence when he was menaced by the slicker denizens of Langley.

  He tried not to show any disappointment, though he knew now he had gone too far. The jeans were the final step in a carefully judged and stealthily actioned one-year plan to relax his own personal mode of dress. Getting into the CIA required neatness in dress and a permanent gloss of eagerness. Exceptions might be made if you were earmarked for deep cover in Colombia but that was about it. Advancement was unlikely without toeing the same line.

  Leith had made sure he was as spick and span as the others at the interviews and induction course and had maintained a high level of spruceness throughout six months of training and the subsequent eighteen months of probation. By then it had become clear that he liked his job a lot and that any advancement would probably take him away from the fascinations of the Dataface.

  There were only two things lacking: comfort and peace of mind. His strategy for achieving the former was simple. Suits and ties were gradually relegated to the back of his wardrobe, to be replaced by more casual shirts and jackets. He allowed his dark blond hair to grow a little longer and reduced the frequency with which he trimmed his centimetre-long beard. It had taken just over a year but he had always known that going from cotton trousers — no matter how casual — to jeans would be a quantum leap.

  'Thanks a lot Nancy. And a good day to you, too.' He turned into his section's open plan office. Slattery, Morgan and DeMarco were already in and drinking coffee. Slattery had one slender hip perched on the library desk while the other two were sitting flicking through the latest delivery of newspapers. Seeing Leith, Slattery did a stylish double-take then punched a hand into the air. 'Yeehah!' she yelled.

  Morgan and DeMarco looked up from their papers. Catching sight of Leith they began to moan and grimace.

  Slattery held out a long, delicate hand and the two men reached for their wallets. They made a big show of reluctance but eventually both crossed her palm with twenties. She straightened up, automatically smoothing out her tight black skirt, and walked towards Leith.

  'What the fuck is going on?' he said, slowly and clearly.

  Slattery smoothed out Leith's collar and smiled. He regarded this less as a sign of attraction than a put-down, even though he knew that women did find him attractive in a big and cuddly kind of way. Nevertheless, he liked being physically close to her for whatever reason. She was almost as tall as him and willowy. He guessed she was getting close to forty, but despite the twelve year age difference and her occasional frostiness, there was something about her which roused him. Perhaps it was the heady perfume she always wore.

  'You just made me some money, honey.' She brushed her hand across his shoulder as though removing dust then walked slowly towards her desk, wafting the bank notes between middle and forefingers.

  'Thanks a bunch, Bob, ' Morgan picked up the London Times. 'Now my old lady ain't gonna get her cataract operation after all.'

  DeMarco crooked a finger at him. 'Come here you frigging bear.' He activated the library terminal and tapped in the section keyword as Leith came and stood behind him. He typed in a short code. The screen cleared, then came up with: 'Sweep. Jeans Implementation Date'. There were three names and three time periods of four days each. Leith noticed with dismay that the total time spread came to less than 20 days.

  'Hey, Leith!'yelled Morgan. 'What's big and hairy and about to reach escape velocity?'

  'Your ass,' cried three voices in unison.

  The laughter had died away by the time he'd poured himself a coffee.

  'The thing I've always admired most about you people,' he tapped out some Morse code on a sweetener dispenser, sending six little pills plummeting into the harsh brown liquid. 'The thing that I most respect, is your flexibility of mind. You're all free spirits, unshackled by convention, emancipated from the rigid confines of a deadening conformity.'

  'Tongue job, tongue job,' DeMarco was chanting.

  Shaking his head, Leith carefully carried his coffee across to his desk.

  Each desk occupied one of the quadrants around the central coffee table and library. The position of the desk in each quadrant was up to the occupiers: the absence of windows and the Faraday screening in the walls prevented any possibility of hostiles reading the contents of the terminal screens. Leith had moved his desk into the corner, the centre of the room at his back and to the left. On the desktop was a keyboard and flatscreen, with a second high definition display to the right. A dedicated server hummed quietly in a cabinet tucked below a window. Yellowed tables of common password formats and critical memory addresses were stuck to the wall with peeling tape. He rarely needed these nowadays, but had somehow never gotten round to taking them down.

  He had positioned several pot plants on a small table beside his desk, the restful curtain of green gaining him some privacy. It also allowed him to survey the rest of the room without being detected, unless the others looked very closely. Despite being the butt of more than his fair share of office jokes, Leith prided himself on living with a level of paranoia well below what was considered 'normal' for Langley. He used the central screen almost exclusively as cover when scanning Slattery's rear as she bent over the coffee machine.

  The only other personal object was a computer-generated image, printed out on a high-def laser printer and held in place with blue tack. It had the high structural density and real colour spectrum that made it look like a photograph: yet it lacked any recognisable form. It seemed to drive the fiercely analytical minds of the others to distraction, much to his delight.

  The other desks in the room were as neat
and clean as their occupiers. The only personal objects were a few tastefully posed photographs of the people they loved: Slattery's husband failing to look warm and open, DeMarco's kids nosing out of a swimming pool like a couple of dolphins wanting a feed, and a heroic picture of Morgan ascending a rock face in the Alleghenies. The overwhelming sense of normalcy the pictures projected bothered him on some deeply visceral level.

  He tapped in the section's code then his personal number, checking the text carefully before hitting the 'ENTER' key. An error at this stage would lock out his terminal until clearance was obtained, requiring an embarrassing consultation between Security and Nevis, his boss. The server was wired up to a powerful mainframe housed elsewhere in Langley that pillaged the files and databases of most of the major computer systems in the world, but it could only do so by being connected with the various global data nets, making it vulnerable to hacking in turn: to prevent any such attempts, one false password to their systems isolated the line and activated a software trace.

  Other security measures had to be negotiated. When Leith had joined, he had been required to provide ten personal questions and answers. One of these questions was randomly selected each time he logged on. This morning the computer seemed particularly concerned to know the colour of the toilet bowl in his house.

  He had just gained access when he heard the door to the reception area open. Stan Nevis walked in and gave a brief wave to the three staff he could see. He heard Morgan say: 'Good morning Stan,' then saw DeMarco get hastily to his feet and collar Nevis before he disappeared into his office.

  Nevis was only slightly taller than DeMarco, who claimed his compact frame to be the result of Sicilian stock. The Section head was not much older than Leith but radiated a sense of maturity beyond his years. He wore spectacles that were steel-rimmed but not overly severe, the dense black hair of his beard neatly trimmed and his dark suit well tailored but not flashy. Like the desk photos, there was an aura of wholesomeness about him that Leith found strangely oppressive.