Who Dares Wins Read online

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to. I just tried to ignore it for a couple of days. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking about it. The story was far-fetched, but he sounded convincing. At least, he sounded as though he had convinced himself. So I called him back. Arranged to meet again, somewhere we could talk more privately this time. He asked me for some money – a couple of hundred pounds.’

  ‘Didn’t that make you suspicious?’

  ‘Not really,’ Clare replied. ‘Everyone thinks their story’s worth something and most people think it’s a lot more than that. I also got the impression that he really needed the money. We arranged to meet at a country pub, out in the sticks somewhere. That’s where he told me everything he knew.’ She tapped her finger on the document. ‘Everything that ended up in there. Look, could I have a glass of water?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

  The woman stood up and turned her back to him. As she took a glass from a kitchen cabinet and filled it with water, she spoke. ‘So are you going to tell me your name?’ she asked, clearly trying to sound bold, but unable to hide the tremor in her voice.

  ‘Sam,’ he replied.

  ‘And what part of the military are you in, Sam?’

  She turned to face him and drank deeply.

  Sam didn’t reply. Clare nodded, as though his silence had confirmed a suspicion of hers, then took her seat once more.

  ‘In the article,’ she resumed, ‘I call them “red-light runners”. In fact, that’s what Bill called them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘People like himself. People MI5 are targeting. From what he said, they’ve been on the lookout for thrill-seekers. Danger merchants. The kind of young men who would run a red light without a second thought. Long story short: Bill told me that MI5 have ways of identifying people like this. It’s amazing really, the kind of information they have on all of us. The red-light runners, they all fit some kind of . . .’ She searched around for a phrase. ‘Psychological profile. They look at the obvious things, of course. Criminal records, employment history. But smaller stuff, too. Speeding fines to judge their attitude to risk, supermarket club-card points to draw a picture of their lifestyle. Air miles – the kind of person they’re looking for is more likely to have visited Ibiza than Vienna, if you know what I mean. They use all this information to draw up a profile of people willing to take risks. And willing to be groomed.’

  There was a noise. Clare’s head shot round to see what it was.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Sam told her. ‘Just the house creaking. Carry on.’

  Clare took a moment to compose herself. ‘Bill was terrified,’ she continued. ‘He kept referring to a job, something the security services wanted him to do. He never told me what it was, but it was enough to give him second thoughts about working for them. He was on the run, hiding from them.’

  ‘If he’d gone dark,’ Sam asked dubiously, ‘what was he doing talking to you?’

  Clare shook her head slightly. ‘That’s what I couldn’t work out. At first I thought it was just the money. I mean, the kid had to eat, you know what I mean? But then maybe I thought it was more than that. I think perhaps he was gambling that if he spilled the beans and it appeared in the national press, it would embarrass MI5 into shutting the operation down.’

  ‘The guys from Five,’ Sam muttered, ‘don’t really do embarrassment.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ she replied. ‘It was difficult for me to back any of this up. It was all down to Bill’s word and I wasn’t even sure how much I believed him. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was very, very frightened of being found out. That led me to believe that there was at least something in what he was saying. And whatever it was that the security services were asking him to do, it was something bad.’ She looked straight into Sam’s eyes. ‘Something one of these red-light runners would baulk at.’

  For some reason, the stare she gave him made Sam feel deeply uncomfortable.

  ‘Go on,’ he told her.

  ‘That was the last time I saw Bill. We spoke on the phone once or twice, when I wanted to ask him a question or check a fact. I wrote my article sitting at this table. I didn’t show it to anyone. I didn’t even mention it to anyone. To be honest with you, I didn’t even think it would see the light of day. I thought it would be laughed at.’

  ‘So why did you carry on writing it?’

  Clare stuck her neck out slightly. ‘Because I believed it,’ she said. ‘I believed, at least, that some of it was true. My plan was to show it to the powers that be, to gauge their reaction to what I had written.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clare replied, her Irish accent suddenly light and dancing. ‘I did that all right.’ She stared into the middle distance, as though remembering something that left her numb. ‘I did that all right,’ she repeated.

  ‘And what happened?’

  Clare frowned. ‘It sounds a bit stupid, doesn’t it? Giving everything you’ve got to the enemy, I mean. But actually I wasn’t being all that dumb. The way I figured it, they could do one of three things. If it was all a load of rubbish, they’d just ignore it. I’d have been stymied if they’d done that, to be sure. If it was true, they could either deny it – that’s what I was hoping for – or slap a DA notice on it.’

  A DA notice. Sam stretched out and picked up the document. He read the front page again.

  ‘So that’s what they did.’

  ‘Sure,’ Clare told him. ‘That’s what they did. With bells on. I don’t know how much you know about DA notices, Sam. The MOD uses them to suppress information that might compromise national security. It’s a voluntary code, not the sort of thing they can actually enforce. Not legally, anyway. But my editor would never print something that had been suppressed under a DA notice. It’s just the way it works.’

  Sam dropped the document back down on the table.

  Clare closed her eyes and pinched her forehead. ‘It happened about a week ago. I sent my article to the Home Office for them to comment on it first thing in the morning. About four hours later there was a knock on my door.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘a ring on my bell, I suppose. But you know what I mean. I answered it. There were two men there. They said they were from the Government and asked if they could come in.’

  She paused before continuing weakly. ‘I should have asked them for identification,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t. I don’t know why. Suppose I thought I was probably on to something. I let them in and we came back in here. That’s when I realised something was wrong.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there was another man standing by the back door. They didn’t seem surprised to see him, so he was obviously one of them. The damn door was locked when I answered the bell, I’m sure of it. So I don’t know how he got in.’

  Any number of ways, Sam thought, but he kept that to himself.

  ‘There was one man who was older than the others,’ Clare carried on. ‘He wore a big black raincoat, even though it was a fine day outside. Looked like someone’s granddad. Well . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Not my granddad, anyway, but someone’s. Sort of posh. Polite. I didn’t like it. He sat down where you’re sitting now. The other two just stood by the doors. The old man didn’t tell me his name. None of them did. But he sure as hell knew mine. He told me that they were going to search my house, take away my computer, any notes I had. And then he told me to forget everything I had heard about this . . .’ She raised her fingers in the air to indicate quotation marks. ‘This “red-light runner nonsense”.’

  Clare’s words were tumbling from her mouth now. Sam had the impression that she felt somehow relieved to be unloading them.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t really take it lying down. Occupational hazard, I suppose. If it was such nonsense, I asked him, why was he coming to my house to intimidate me? He didn’t say anything, not at first. He just handed me a picture.’

  Clare passed her hand across her
face. The memory of that picture, whatever it was, was clearly traumatic.

  ‘It was Bill,’ she whispered. ‘Although I could only just recognise him. He was lying on the ground. He was dead. His legs were pointing in different directions and one side of his face was all mashed up. There was blood all around.’

  She sobbed suddenly, loudly. ‘It was awful.’

  Sam let the woman take her time.

  ‘The old man held the picture in front of me for a long time,’ Clare continued. ‘A minute at least, maybe two, before he spoke. I’ll never forget what he said, not as long as I live. “A terrible accident, Clare. It could happen to anyone, and it would be a dreadful shame if it happened to you. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Then he told me again to forget everything about what I’d written. And he told me that if I ever saw him again, it would mean I was in a whole load of trouble.’

  A silence fell on the room, and a coldness. Clare pulled her cardigan more tightly around her shoulders.

  ‘I’ve barely left the flat since it happened. Only to buy food. I keep seeing things from the corner of my eye. I keep imagining I’m being followed. And now you turn up on my doorstep. Holy Mother, are you surprised I’m so frightened?’

  Sam looked steadily at her. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not surprised at all.’ He glanced beyond Clare to the kitchen door. ‘You said you keep seeing things from the corner of your eye. Is that you, or do you think they’re really there? Do you think you’re really being watched?’

  Clare shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  Sam considered that for a moment. Then, without a word, he stood up and headed out of the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t go!’ Clare shouted. He turned to look at her. ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ she added weakly.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Sam told her. ‘Just wait there.’

  He explored the flat in the darkness. Towards the front, off the main corridor, there was a lounge. This was the room he’d seen from outside with wooden blinds. He edged towards them, lifting a gap in them with one finger, and peered out. All was quiet on the street. No movement. No people. He let the blind fall closed again and allowed himself a moment in the darkness.

  Who the hell had posted this article through his letterbox? And was Clare telling him the truth? The only way he could be sure was by forcing it out of her, but the woman seemed so brittle she could snap. In any case, forcing things out of frightened women wasn’t what he’d signed up for. And whatever the truth, Clare was certainly frightened. She certainly believed at least some of what she was saying. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. At least for now.

  Sam walked back down the corridor, passing Clare’s bedroom on the right-hand side. Even in the gloom he could see the unmade bed that had been left in a hurry, the nightclothes strewn on the floor. Back in the kitchen, Clare was weeping again, her head buried in her hands. Sam walked round her, checked through the blinds of the back door, then spoke again.

  ‘Who else knows about this?’

  It took a moment for Clare to stop sobbing. ‘No one.’

  ‘I mean it, Clare. Friends. Family. Boyfriend. Someone you called because you were scared.’

  She shook her head. ‘On my mother’s life. I didn’t want anyone else to be in danger. Jesus, I wish I’d never started any of this. They weren’t messing with me, Sam. You know how you can tell, when someone’s stringing you along. That old man, he’ll have me killed if he thinks I’ve told anyone about this. I know he will. You’ve got to keep it a secret – you can’t let anyone know you’ve been here.’

  Sam walked up to her. He perched himself on the table and put a hand on her slim shoulder. ‘Remember what I told you?’ he asked. ‘That if I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. Well the same goes for them. If they wanted you out of the way, they wouldn’t bother playing with you first.’ And then, quietly, ‘Look at your friend Bill.’

  She looked up at him with wide, scared eyes. ‘Do you know who they were?’

  Sam paused before answering. ‘I think they were MI5.’

  A silence.

  ‘Think about it,’ Sam continued. ‘Your man was on the run. You alerted the security services to his whereabouts and a few hours later he was dead.’

  ‘But . . .’ Clare looked shocked. ‘I never told them. I never once said where he was.’

  ‘You didn’t need to.’ He walked to the table and pointed at the telephone number scrawled on the document. ‘Did you speak to him on that phone number?’

  She nodded mutely.

  ‘Five would have had your phone records up in about ten seconds flat,’ Sam told him. ‘As soon as they narrowed down the possible numbers for your man, they’d have kept tabs on them. The minute he made a call, his phone became a tracking device. All he had to do was dial out for a pizza and the spooks would have had his location. Easiest thing in the world.’ He didn’t add that he’d done it himself before now.

  Clare was shaking her head. ‘You mean . . . you mean it’s my fault.’

  ‘You didn’t kill the guy,’ Sam said.

  ‘But I . . .’ She became breathless. ‘I . . .’

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘But . . . you’re really telling me that the British government murdered Bill?’

  He stared at her. As he sat there on the edge of the table in this strange flat with a woman he’d never met before, the memory of the previous day’s briefing filled his mind. The rough, grainy photographs of the targets. The picture of his brother. And the Ops Sergeant’s stark warning. Your targets are British citizens. They’ll be speaking English. That shouldn’t distract you from the job in hand.

  A silence. Sam stood up and looked again through the blinds.

  ‘Why are you here, Sam?’ Clare asked suddenly. ‘Who gave you this copy of my article?’

  Sam sniffed. ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘You said you were in the military. Care to elaborate?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But you knew about the training camp. The one in Kazakhstan.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘And you seem to know more about how MI5 work than the average joe.’

  ‘You need to stop thinking so hard, Clare.’

  Out of the blue, she slammed her hand down on the table. ‘I need to know what’s going on!’ she announced with sudden spirit. ‘Holy Mother, half an hour ago I thought you were going to kill me. I think I deserve an explanation, don’t you?’ She paused and caught her breath. ‘I’m not stupid, you know. You’re in the military and you deal with MI5. In my book that makes you special forces. Right? Right?’

  Sam stayed quiet.

  ‘Damn it!’ she exploded. There was a fire in her now that he hadn’t expected. All of a sudden she was no longer the frightened woman who had wept uncontrollably. She stood, then strode over to him, her arms raised and her fists clenched. ‘Tell me what’s going on!’ Sam blinked, then realised she was actually going to try to hit him in the chest in fury.

  He grabbed her slender wrists. Her eyes flashing, Clare struggled, but without success. Sam kept hold of her and for the second time he smelt her perfume. He pulled her towards him and felt her breasts pressing lightly against his torso. She was warm. Almost comforting.

  The struggle stopped and they stared at each other. Clare was blushing faintly. Maybe it was the anger; or maybe, Sam thought, it was something else. Her breathing trembled. Sam knew what it meant. He knew how easily some women would give themselves up to a man they thought could protect them.

  He knew, even as he spoke, that he should keep his mouth shut. That sharing what he knew could lead to trouble for both of them. But his natural caution had been replaced by other emotions. ‘I’m SAS,’ he said. Calm. In control. ‘An operation has just been ordered. We’re to deploy to the training camp in Kazakhstan and neutralise all the British citizens there. Looks to me like you’ve opened up a can of worms. Five have got a covert network across the c
ountry. It’s started to spring a leak so they’re shutting it down. Permanently.’

  Clare drew away slightly. ‘Neutralise?’ she asked. ‘You mean . . . kill?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘Kill.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Twenty.’ He felt his face tensing up as the image of Jacob, bearded and rough, passed into his head. ‘Maybe more.’

  Clare breathed deeply as she assimilated the information. Sam noticed that she didn’t pull her wrists away from his hands.

  ‘I still don’t know why you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘I still don’t know what this is all about.’

  ‘It’s about someone trying to warn me.’

  ‘What of ?’

  Sam knew he shouldn’t tell her. He knew he should keep it to himself. But he could feel her warm breath and could sense that she was looking at him through different eyes. And anyway, maybe she was right. Maybe he did owe her some sort of explanation.

  ‘One of the targets,’ he said quietly, ‘is my brother. And if anyone thinks I’m going to go out there to put a bullet in his head, they can think again.’

  *

  She had stopped asking him questions soon after that. She’d stopped crying too. But she hadn’t stopped looking at him, that look which was a mixture of apprehension and something else. It was edging towards morning when Clare slipped into her bedroom, leaving Sam sitting at the table, the lights dimmed almost to nothingness, the document and his gun laid out in front of him. She wanted to be alone, she said. She wanted to think. That was fine by Sam: he knew she wouldn’t want to be by herself for long.

  It was a Regiment tradition to laugh at Five, to take the piss out of the suited goons who turned up at HQ with a slew of orders and an unwillingness to get their own hands dirty. Civil serpents, they were called. Fags. Tossers. And a lot more besides. But beneath all that, away from the bravado and everything that went with it, there was at least some sort of respect. The Security Service was secretive; it was difficult to understand; it had sent the Regiment on operations that most people would find morally dubious. But nobody doubted that they were on the same side.