Special Deception Read online

  Special Deception

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Copyright

  Special Deception

  Alexander Fullerton

  1

  Charlie poured himself two thick fingers of Black Label and added a little water. It hadn‘t been a bad day, for a Monday. He’d taken a firm order for a near-new Rolls — it was to have less than ten thousand on the clock and be either pale-blue or silver, but there’d be no quibbling over price — and sold a C-registered Porsche 928 S Automatic for £35,000. The Saudi princeling who’d ordered the Rolls wanted it by the weekend — some tart to impress, obviously — and Charlie had spent about an hour on the blower chasing up possibles; this had taken up the slack in the warm, Indian-summer autumn day, and he’d missed his usual skinful at the pub in Bruton Place, which in its way was also a source of satisfaction.

  Might kick the habit altogether if one really tried, he thought. He knew he wouldn’t. Didn’t want to, except it would be nice to believe it when one said ‘I can do without it, give it up tomorrow if I had to.‘ Saying this to Anne: not actually to her, not recently, but addressing her in his imagination, sometimes aloud when he was alone in the flat as he was now. The last time he’d tried to talk to her she’d hung up as soon she’d heard his voice, and another time she’d threatened that if he went on pestering her she’d apply for a court order.

  Probably would, too. He’d drunk half the Scotch, he noticed. He put the glass down. If you hung on to it you sipped at it without thinking. But it was astonishing how tough a woman could be, once she felt she had cause. Even Anne: sweet, lovely, ultra-gentle Anne.

  Once she felt really hurt, that was the thing. Once you’d drawn blood, hit the nerve.

  But — for ever?

  Staring at his buckskin shoes. From Trickers in Jermyn Street. Long legs out straight, pale grey against blue carpet. Props of up-and-coming spiv, adulterer and piss-artist. Strange to recall that so short a time ago the same shanks had been encased not in lightweight flannel but in camouflage pattern, tattered DPMs — rain-soaked, filthy…

  Happy days, hough he’d barely known it at the time. Hadn’t paused to think about it. He sighed, quoted mentally Fools, for I also had my hour… Like that other bloody donkey. His glass was empty… He reminded himself, But you blew it. Everything that had ever really mattered, for — nothing… He was staring into the bottom of the glass, thinking this without the least understanding of his own actions — which of course made them impossible to explain, let alone excuse, although he’d tried a few times — and also thinking about getting up for a refill, when the door-answering device buzzed. He pushed himself out of the chair, crossed the room and put his glass down beside the bottles on his way out into the hall.

  This would be Paula, he guessed. It was a bit early for her, but he wasn’t expecting anyone else.

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘Captain Swale?’

  Male voice. Charlie told it, ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Charlie Swale?’

  ‘Who wants him, for God’s sake?’

  ‘My name’s Knox. You don’t know me, but — well, it’s sort of official, in a way, I can’t explain over this—’

  ‘Inland Revenue, or Customs and Excise?‘

  ‘Neither.’ A pause. ‘I’m not trying to sell a car, either. May I come up?’

  Charlie pressed the button to release the catch on the street door. ‘Second floor, turn left.’

  Selling some damn thing, he guessed. Insurance, time-share… But he’d said ‘official’. He paced to the window, stood gazing down at greenery through the gaps in it at the slow swirl of evening traffic. His own reflection misty in the window-pane: darkish, dark eyes, the planes and angles of his face still well defined although there was padding on the bones which hadn’t been there a year ago. Mostly in the mind’s eye, this; the window glass showed only a ghostly outline, and the fatcat look was in is imagination because he was uncomfortably aware of it — of having been both a soldier and an athlete and of having converted now into Homo Westendus Repulsivus.

  Success, some people called it.

  Doorbell.

  He was slightly on the alert as he twisted the knob and opened the door from the side, not from directly behind it. Old precautionary habit lingering, despite awareness that having been out of the swim for a while now it wasn’t likely that any of the entrenched enemies of the realm would still consider him a worthwhile target. But you couldn’t be entirely sure: and they liked their targets soft…

  Knox wasn’t swarthy, but at first sight you wouldn’t have taken him for Anglo-Saxon either. If he’d walked into the showroom, Charlie would have had him down or an Arab. Except for the light-blue eyes: and until he spoke — Scottish overlay on standard English. Age about thirty, height about five-ten, black hair and a moustache. He put his hand out: ‘Bob Knox. I’m a Royal Marine, rank of captain. Actually — in confidence — Special Boat Squadron, and it’s the Squadron’s business that brings me here.’

  *

  ‘Our researchers tell us you were a troop commander with 22 SAS in the Dhofar campaign. Where you (a) distinguished yourself in various actions and (b) acquired fluent Arabic, now a business tool when flogging Bentleys to Arabs.‘

  ‘You’ve done some homework. Except for the “distinguished” bit.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘Mucked in like everyone else. But — sure, I was out there from ’74 until we had them running, in ’76. I was barely weaned then, mind you. But I did another stint after that lot, and buffed up the language.’

  The SAS had played a key role in winning Sultan Qaboos’ war against the communist ‘People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen’ and ‘People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman’, and Charlie Swale as a very young SAS lieutenant had enjoyed practically every minute of it.

  ‘One had to learn Arabic, you know. There was a lot of chatting up, as well as soldiering. What’s sometimes referred to as the “hearts and minds” campaign? And we had Dhofari irregulars with us, firqats, one had to be able to communicate.’

  ‘Fairly rugged conditions, the mountain fighting?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so…’

  Sooner be there than here. Right now, this minute, put the clock back… He’d almost started saying this aloud, checked himself as the words began to form. One spoke too often without thought — revealing too much, allowing the Achilles’ heel to show. Looking down at his glass, deliberately not touching it, reflecting that the drink problem then had been the basic one of keeping water-bottles full. Military problems had been the only kind Charlie had been aware of, in that period. He looked up: ‘We use to say — about the “hearts minds” thing — “once you get ’em by the balls, hearts and minds’ll follow”.’

  Knox smiled. He was several inches shorter than Charlie and maybe twenty pounds lighter, but if he was SBS you could bet he was as tough as old scrap-iron. Young for the rank, too: since a captain in the Royal Marines was equivalent to a major in the Army. He’d accepted the offer of a Scotch, pouring it himself and making it about half-strength by Charlie’s standards.

  Charlie said, ‘I didn’t get a chance to forget the lingo, because, as I said, I was back in the Oman later for nearly two years,
instructing… What kind of help are you looking for? Translation, interpreting?’

  ‘Rather more.‘ Knox leant forward, forearms on his knees, hands clasped. He hadn’t touched his drink since sipping it once and then putting it down. Watching him, waiting for an explanation, Charlie was vaguely conscious of something not quite right, slightly disturbing in some way. He lost the feeling as Knox said quietly, ‘We want you with us on — well, on a rescue mission, you might call it. Guy to be extracted — Middle East. Any chance you could take some time off, help us out?’

  Traffic growled outside. Inside the room, silence. Charlie, staring at his visitor, wondered if he’d heard right, if he dared believe he’d heard what the guy had just said. If it was real, there could only be one reason for it, he realised — the fact his Arabic was as good as it was. That made a little sense: but even so…

  Staring back at the pale, bright eyes, thinking, It‘s a hoax…

  For a year now he’d felt like a pariah: he’d kept his head down, dreading chance meetings with old friends. He hadn’t set foot inside the Special Forces Club, and in his own goldfish-bowl of a showroom in Bond Street he had a horror of some former colleague passing and spotting him: ‘Charlie! What the hell—’

  But they wouldn’t need to ask. They’d all have known, a year or more ago. He could imagine it, in SAS squadrons all over the world: ‘Hear about old Charlie Swale?’

  He asked the Marine, ‘Did they tell you why they threw me out?’

  ‘Something about a drink problem.’ Knox’s glance flickered towards Charlie’s newly empty glass and away again. He added. ‘I didn’t make the enquiry myself. Now my brief’s to see how willing or unwilling, fit or unfit you might be. I’m being open about this — hope you don’t mind, but there’s no point being shy about it, is there?’

  Charlie shrugged. The Marine went on, ‘Enquiries were made, at higher levels, but as I’m to be the team leader it’s left to me to make this contact. I gather you’re running a very successful business, and using your Arabic pretty well all the time. You look reasonably fit — give or take a few days’ hard work — and you have experience of operating in mountainous country. He drew a breath. ‘Which seems to cover most of it. You can take it as read, there’ll be no liquor around once we kick off, so if that’s too much of a drag for you now’s the time to say. Otherwise — what d’you think?’

  He was still struggling with the idea that the Regiment must have recommended him to them. At least, they couldn’t have told them not to touch him with a forty-foot pole: which is what he’d have expected.

  ‘Where’s it to be? Libya?’

  ‘You’re interested, then?’

  Knox’s eyes shone in his dark face. Like blue glass, reflecting light. Charlie nodded: feeling primarily surprise, but also pleasure, as well as the beginnings of a whisky-glow. Despite some qualm somewhere… But this was reinstatement of a kind: if the SBS of all people — that secret, ultra-professional hardcore of Royal Marine commando underwater experts, long-range penetration artists — if they, having checked him out in Hereford, could pay him the compliment of asking him to join them on some clandestine mission…

  ‘What about your business? Could you take a few weeks off?’

  ‘Sure. I’m not totally independent, I have backing from the big boys down the road and they take a piece of the action. They set me up, more or less — I took the idea to them and they fell for it and luckily we’ve prospered. There’s a guy who’d keep an eye on things for me; doesn’t talk much Arabic, but for just a short absence — ’He checked the flow. ‘How long?’

  ‘Tell ’em three weeks.’ The eyes held his. ‘What d’you do for exercise, Charlie, when you’re working here in town?’

  ‘Squash and swimming, at the Landsdowne.’ He asked again, ‘It is Libya, I suppose?’

  ‘I don’t know about pay,‘ Knox explained. ‘That sort of thing’s up to the powers in MoD, they’ll want to find some precedent or—’

  ‘I wouldn’t be offering myself as a mercenary. I’ve been doing well lately, and — well, frankly, having been given the order of the boot — OK, having fucking well disgraced myself—’

  ‘That’s not how your people seem to see it.’ Knox spoke evenly, talking facts, not concerned with judgements or palliatives. This was Charlie’s feeling, hearing it… ‘You ran into a personal problem that threw you, and took refuge in—’ He pointed ‘—that. Not commendable, but you’d just come out of a very tough spot, you’d lowered your guard — right?’ He shrugged. ‘Happened to better men than you or me. Your blokes went by the book because they had no, but I gather you were spoken of rather warmly. Dhofar — Falklands — then that last effort…’

  It held together: despite the degree of surprise, the suggestion of a magic wand. He must have talked to the Regiment — someone must have — since there was no way he could have known about that last job. And the lingering sense of unreality: well, he thought he’d pinned it down, the irritation which in recent minutes had bugged him and which he hadn’t been able to identify. It was this man’s eyes, the coldness in them: that was all it was, and you couldn’t pass judgement on people for how they happened to look. Charlie’s overriding feeling was still — naturally enough, he thought, in the circumstances — an element of fantasy, fantasy such as in the past year he’d come to indulge in deliberately, letting his mind run loose after a few drinks — before a few more deadened it — treating himself to a mental replay of events so edited that he was not as criminally stupid as in fact he had been. That particular scenario he’d rewritten in his daydreams time and time again, right through to the fade-out of a happy ending.

  Then one woke up: knowing that daydreaming was as near as one would get to any ending that wasn’t sickening. But this, now — this was a new scenario altogether: could be a new start!

  The cold eyes were on him, as if trying to read his thoughts. Charlie asked his visitor, ‘Am I right that it’s Libya?’

  ‘As it happens, no.’ Knox watched him reach for his own glass — empty — and then glance over, seeing the other practically untouched.

  ‘Setting me an example?’

  ‘Wrong again.’ Knox shook his head. ‘It’s just that I have to drive down to Poole tonight.‘ He checked the time, and scowled. ‘Starting in about half an hour, no later anyway… Charlie, one thing I have to put to you — I’ve been told to. In a nutshell, this won’t be any frolic. It could turn out to be very tricky, in fact, and if we foul up or run into bad luck — well, we could get ourselves greased, or taken prisoner which might be rather worse… It’s a job that has to be done, and we have to stick our leather necks out, but the point is you do not have to, it’s only your business if you want to make it so. If you don’t, this is the time to tell me, I’ll take my leave, and nobody’ll know or think any the worse of you, OK?’

  ‘Any worse than they think already.’ Charlie shook his head as he crossed the room. ‘Thanks for the warning, but you can deal me in, chum.‘ The neck of the bottle clicked against the rim of the glass as he added. ‘And I’m grateful for the invitation.’ Knox pushed himself up, stood at the window looking down into the darkening square, heard Charlie being careful with the water. He invited, without turning his head, ‘Any questions you want to ask?’

  ‘Same one.’ Charlie joined him. ‘Who’s to be rescued, and where from?’

  ‘You’ll get all that in plenty of time, Charlie. For now, let’s just say Middle East, leave it at that?’

  ‘Second question, then. When do we leave?’

  ‘Probably in about a week. I don’t know for sure yet. But I’ll need you full-time from, say, day after tomorrow. For some sharpening up, get the muscles working… Is one whole day — tomorrow — enough for you to tie up your business arrangements?’

  ‘I suppose. At a pinch.’

  ‘We’ll kit you up, of course. None of us’ll be using anything but civvie gear, incidentally. If we fouled up we’d be mercenaries and we wouldn’t kno
w who’d hired us, we would not be SBS — OK?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘First thing now is for me to report back. Then I think we’d better have you down in Poole.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘On second thoughts — no.’ The Marine shook his head as he turned his back on the window. ‘We’d better not have you down there. Security reasons, the chance it might link you with us, then they’d ask themselves Why Charlie Swale? Likely solution: Swale talks Arabic, that’s his obviously outstanding asset, and he’s dark enough to pass for an Arab, especially when he’s been in the sun a while. So what’s the SBS Squadron’s interest in Arabia?’

  ‘D’you really think the adoo could be trailing a reject like me?’

  Adoo being Arabic for ‘enemy’. Knox agreed, ‘OK, frankly, no. But as you were SAS, and left in rather unusual circumstances — well, you can’t be certain. And they know where we hang out, that’s more to the point. So, much as we’d like to entertain you chez nous, we’d better forgo the pleasure, if you don’t mind.’

  Charlie swallowed some Scotch. The glow inside him wasn’t the liquor working, though, it was the feeling that suddenly life might have some point to it again. He didn’t feel he deserved it, but it was there, as full of promise as a child’s Christmas. Out of the blue: a buzz, a stranger’s voice, and hey presto!

  Except for Anne.

  He said, ‘Returning one compliment with another, you don’t look so very non-Arab yourself.’

  ‘Because I am part Arab. My mother was Egyptian. My father was in the RAF, a sergeant at that time, when I was born, 1957, and — well, I was dragged up in Scotland mostly. In the house of an aunt, my Dad’s sister.’ He paused, then explained, ‘The old man was serving in Cyprus when they met. In ’55 — ’56 was Suez, wasn’t it… He met her in ’55, Cairo, and they got married in ’56. Later they split up, she remarried, I’d been in her custody but I was packed off to Edinburgh, and from Day 1 at nursery school I was teased relentlessly.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Charlie glanced sideways at the Marine. ‘You blokes get to the Gulf from time to time, don’t you.’