Traitor Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Also by Duncan Falconer

  The Hostage

  The Hijack

  The Operative

  The Protector

  Undersea Prison

  Mercenary

  Non-fiction

  First Into Action

  Traitor

  DUNCAN FALCONER

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2010

  Copyright © Duncan Falconer 2010

  The right of Duncan Falconer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to

  real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 2222 6

  This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  To Paul Whittome One of the toughest men I have the honour of knowng

  1

  Stratton dropped a tea bag into a mug and filled it with boiling water from a kettle. He pulled up the sleeves of the tatty old rugby shirt he wore and scraped some diced carrots from a board into a crockpot of meat and other vegetables. As he added some of the water a sound outside caught his attention. He brushed a strand of dark hair from his face and looked through the window. A pheasant, flapping its wings to negotiate the tall hedgerow bordering the back of the garden, landed on the grass, which was coated in thick frost.

  Stratton took a piece of bread and quietly unlocked the back door, opening it just enough to toss out the crust. It landed close to the bird which looked at it. The sudden chirp of a mobile phone in the kitchen spooked the pheasant into flight.

  Stratton shrugged as he watched the bird crash over the hedge. ‘Sorry, mate. I tried,’ he muttered, closing the door. He picked up the phone from the breakfast table and pressed the receive button. ‘This is Stratton.’

  ‘Mike here.’

  ‘Morning, Sergeant Major,’ Stratton said, as he stirred the crockpot. ‘Don’t tell me that rubbish car of yours has broken down again and you need a lift.’

  ‘No. I’m at the office . . . and I need you in here asap.’

  Stratton checked his watch. It was still early. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And put your supper in the fridge. You might be eating out tonight.’

  The line went dead.

  Stratton looked at the crockpot. Things had been fairly busy of late but despite the current cold weather he hoped he wasn’t going anywhere hot and sandy this time. He was growing tired of the Middle East and of Afghanistan in particular.

  He unplugged the pot and placed it in the fridge. ‘Tomorrow, hopefully,’ he said to it.

  Stratton walked into his bedroom and took off his shirt. His strong back bore several livid scars, a couple of them looking as though they’d been made by bullets. He pulled on a clean T-shirt followed by a thick fleece and walked to the hallway, taking a well-worn leather jacket off the coat hook. He paused at the front door to feel his pockets, checking that he had his phone, wallet and keys. Satisfied, he left the house.

  Stratton slowed the open-top Jeep on the approach to the heavily guarded SBS camp in Hamworthy, near Poole on the Dorset coastline. At the entrance barrier he lowered the scarf wrapped around his face and handed the armed soldier his ID.

  The soldier placed the card in an electronic reader and Stratton punched in a code. The man handed back the ID, raised the barrier and Stratton drove through the centre of the camp, the icy wind pulling at his tousled hair. The place was like a ghost town and had been pretty much since the invasion of Afghanistan. He turned into the headquarters car park to see half a dozen cars, just one of them covered in frost. He wasn’t the only early bird to arrive that morning. He climbed out and headed towards the main administration building, a squat two-storey modern structure. Half a dozen mud-caked men in shorts and T-shirts came running across the rugby field that stretched to the far perimeter of the camp.

  ‘Hey, Stratton!’ one of them called out on seeing him. ‘A minute, guys,’ the man said to the others who seemed happy to take a breather. He headed over to Stratton. ‘No workout today?’ he asked, out of breath, his face pink, steam rising from his head and powerful shoulders.

  ‘No time for such luxuries, Chaz old mate. Some of us have to work for a living.’

  ‘No kidding. I’m enjoying my first quiet week in ten months.’

  ‘You’ve nothing on at the moment?’ Stratton asked, fishing.

  ‘You’re looking at the entire standby squadron,’ Chaz said, indicating the others. ‘Six of us for the whole world.’

  ‘Overworked and understaffed.’

  ‘When has it ever been anything else, mate? Maybe I’ll catch you for a beer later on. Blue Boar around seven sound good?’

  ‘If I don’t turn up it’s nothing personal.’

  ‘Roger that. Okay, lads,’ Chaz called out. ‘Let’s finish with five times up the ropes, hands only, no touching the ground on the bottom. Take care,’ he said to Stratton as he set off after the others.

  Stratton felt a twinge of guilt at not having done any physical exercise that morning. He had been looking forward to a long run, these being his favourite conditions for a cross-country jog: the air crisp and bracing, the icy ground crunching underfoot. Tomorrow, he promised himself, then wondered immediately if that was wishful thinking.

  He made his way past the large chunk of Gibraltar rock that served as the SBS’s memorial to fallen comrades, a brass plaque with many names inscribed on it affixed to its face, and pushed his way in through the HQ entrance. A soldier behind the reception counter gave a nod as Stratton swiped his ID card across a keypad that unlocked an inner door.

  ‘Morning,’ Stratton said, walking through the spacious empty lobby. He skipped up the stairs, went around the internal balcony landing to a corner office and paused at an open door to look inside.

  A well-built grey-haired man in a plain uniform sat behind a desk by a window. He was reading something on the computer monitor in front of him.

  ‘Morning, Mike.’

  Mike glanced up as Stratton walked into the room. He hit a couple of keys to close the screen, picked up a file and got to his feet. ‘I think you’ll like this one,’ he said as he came around the desk. ‘Hasn’t been done in over thirty years.’

  ‘What hasn’t?’ Stratton asked, eyeing him.

  ‘Think Buster Crabb,’ Mike said, tapping his nose and winking. He walked past Stratton and on out of the off
ice. ‘They’re waiting for us in the ops room.’

  Stratton followed along the landing, pondering the comment. Crabb had been an MI6 operative who’d disappeared while on a top-secret dive to investigate a Russian warship during the Cold War. Some believed he’d been a spy who’d taken the opportunity to defect. Others thought that Spetsnaz divers had killed Crabb while he’d been in the water under the destroyer. No doubt MI6 had the true account on file inside its vaults and might one day release it. Or not. Stratton took Mike’s point to mean that it was an underwater task, quite possibly against the Russians. Crabb had never returned home. That bit stuck in Stratton’s mind.

  The two men headed down the stairs and across the lobby to another and more narrow set of steps, which descended to a large black steel door. Mike punched a code onto a keypad. The internal lock clicked and he pulled the door open easily on its heavily sprung hinges.

  Stratton followed him into a small space hung with curtains of thick black cloth. With the door closed behind them Mike pushed the curtain aside to reveal a brightly lit spacious operations room. Maps, charts and flatscreen monitors covered the available wall space, providing all manner of global environmental, political and conflict data. Seated at a table and sharing a pot of tea were the SBS commanding officer, the operations officer and a civilian whom Stratton recognised.

  ‘Ah, Stratton,’ the CO said, taking a sip of tea. ‘How are you today?’

  ‘Fine, thank you, sir.’

  The white-haired CO, although tall, had a mass to him, the result of younger days when he had regularly occupied a place in the navy’s rugby team second row. The scrum experience clearly influenced his manner, which was straightforward. ‘I think you know Mr Jervis,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir. Good to see you again.’

  ‘You too, Stratton,’ Jervis said. He was not your typical London military-intelligence suit. In fact, neither did he dress like one. He looked scruffy compared with his colleagues in MI6. And he had a voice to match, coming as he did from the East End or south-of-the-river London - or so rumour had it. But Jervis was head of the intelligence organisation’s operations wing for a reason. Some referred to him as the brilliant mongrel - not to his face, of course, although maybe Jervis wouldn’t have minded the nickname as much as he might have made out on hearing it.

  ‘You know, I just realised something,’ the CO said. ‘Is Stratton in date . . . for diving? Didn’t you get shot in the chest a couple of years ago?’

  ‘And the rest of it,’ Mike muttered. ‘He’s in date, sir. He’d better be. He’s still getting paid for it.’

  ‘I should think so too,’ Jervis said, looking at Stratton and wearing one of his rare smiles. He was referring to a task he had run earlier in the year at a certain undersea prison. The other men in the room obviously knew of Stratton’s frequent loans to MI6 for specialist operations, in particular the CO who was required officially to ‘sign him off’ from time to time. None were privy to the missions themselves although there were always rumours. All had heard something about a deep-sea operation involving Stratton and the Yanks but that was about it.

  ‘Oh yes,’ acknowledged the CO, who knew a little more than most. It was sometimes an odd position to be in, both for Stratton and the CO, when the subordinate knew more about what was going on than those further up the hierarchy.

  The CO glanced at Stratton. Something in the look gave Stratton pause for thought. It was the way the man looked away as Stratton caught his gaze. That was most unusual for the CO.

  ‘Right,’ the CO said. ‘To business, then . . . David.’

  The well-groomed young ops officer stood, smoothed his jacket on his slender frame and stepped lightly over to two large widescreen monitors. He touched the base of one. A satellite image zoomed in on the Black Sea, veering to the north of the mass of water and pushing in further to hold a position a few hundred thousand feet above a large harbour, its entrance at the centre of the screen.

  ‘Sevastopol,’ the officer announced. ‘Principal base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet. This is a ship-hull recording job. For the past few decades Six have carried out this kind of thing using robot cameras,’ he said, nodding to Jervis. ‘That’s not going to be possible this time.’

  The screen image zoomed in closer, following the main channel into the harbour and heading south along a finger of water. After a few moments it paused and focused its bird’s-eye view on a naval ship moored stern-on to a jetty, several other vessels parked tightly either side of it. The ops officer touched the adjacent monitor and it displayed several close-up shots of the same vessel taken from the jetty itself. It was battleship grey and had the feel of a military craft yet it was void of armaments: no rocket platforms, no deck ordnance. Instead the design was stealth, the angular superstructure bristling with dishes, antennae and other complex-looking communications-technology features.

  ‘The Inessa,’ the ops officer said. ‘For the aficionados among us that was the name of Lenin’s mistress . . . It’s Russian navy. We’re not entirely sure what its precise purpose is. It may have more than one. There’s evidence to suggest it’s a mother ship for submersibles, manned and unmanned. Other evidence indicates it’s a surveillance ship. Mr Jervis believes it is far worse. The Inessa may aid in the delivery of chemical and biological weaponry . . . Our task? To photograph the underside of it.’

  The CO gave Stratton another glance, which the operative did not return though he could sense the man’s eyes upon him. The CO was far from being a dramatic type and Stratton wondered what his concerns were.

  ‘And why can’t the technical people do this?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Technology may be advancing every day,’ Jervis said. ‘But it will never replace human input.’

  A moment’s silence followed for them to digest that small pearl of wisdom. They waited to see if Jervis, the most senior person present, had anything to add to his own comment. He sat there impassively.

  ‘The Inessa has so far defeated all attempts to visually record her hull bottom,’ David continued. ‘She has a device on her underside that MI16 has euphemistically termed a disrupter, a powerful combination of sonar, electronic jamming, microwave and sound waves. Two recording devices used against it already in operations have yielded nothing. In fact, the disrupter wrecked their electronics.’

  ‘For the purpose of this briefing,’ the CO interrupted, ‘which, as you know is recorded, I should mention something we talked about before Stratton’s arrival. I understand we don’t know what this disrupter will do to a man?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the ops officer said, glancing at Jervis.

  ‘Much the same thing, I expect,’ Jervis said in an off-hand manner. ‘This will be our first attempt, so no one really knows.’

  The soldiers in the room all had the same thought - Jervis was a cold bastard. The others glanced at Stratton for any reaction since it was pretty obvious who the man was intended to be.

  Stratton’s gaze flicked to Jervis who was studying the screen images. The operative switched to Mike who could offer nothing more than a sympathetic raise of the eyebrows. The CO looked at him and again Stratton chose to ignore it. There always seemed to be something in each operational task briefing that caused angst. Experience had taught him to keep quiet until the end when he would have the full picture.

  Jervis finally spoke. ‘In our attempts to understand this unique system we’ve discovered occasions when the device is switched off,’ he said. ‘Our boffins at Sixteen believe that operating it in shallow water causes a bounce effect that would be detrimental to the equipment on board the ship itself.’ Jervis nodded for the ops officer to continue.

  ‘The ship never sails anywhere except in deep water in order to keep the disrupter operational. The Inessa is also obliged to turn off the disrupter in Sevastopol harbour because of the density of sonar surveillance and security systems in operation. Those same systems prohibit us from mounting an effective surveillance task while she’s in port. The Ines
sa’s disrupter is therefore kept in the standby mode until the ship has left the harbour. The captain can turn it on as soon as he has passed the mole. He appears to make a habit of taking the vessel as close to the northern mole as he can. The seabed there is less than a metre below propeller depth. The logic seems to be that if he can’t use the disrupter until the ship’s clear of the mole he’ll opt for the shallowest point. The turbulence created by the vessel is too great to position a robot. A team of Spetsnaz shadow the ship and they have been seen inspecting the shallows after she has passed this point. They appear to take every precaution. We believe the only solution is to send a diver in, someone who can react quickly to a changing situation, record the data and get out of there before the Spetsnaz arrive.

  ‘We have carried out a survey of the seabed, where the Inessa likes to pass,’ the ops officer went on, touching the screen, which zoomed in to an area just beyond the end of the mole. ‘It’s uneven, made up of large rocks. MI16 has come up with a harness that can be bolted to rock. Theoretically, a diver should be able to attach himself to the harness and operate a recording device while the vessel passes overhead. When it’s gone he disconnects and gets out of there.’ The ops officer looked around at them. ‘That’s the task in general detail.’

  ‘What tests have been carried out with this harness and recorder?’ the CO asked. ‘Has anyone actually tried this before?’

  ‘I had a moment with the chap from MI16 who’s here,’ the ops officer said. ‘I understand they’ve carried out several satisfactory trials.’

  The CO looked at Stratton. ‘What do you think?’

  Stratton tried to visualise the operation. ‘It’ll depend on the kit, sir. There’ll be a lot of turbulence. But if it’s been done . . .’