Читать книгу Rough Justice - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 8

There was no place President Jake Cazalet wanted to be more right now than this Nantucket beach, the sea thundering in to the shore in the strange luminous light of early evening, the wind tasting of salt.

The President had been delivered there by helicopter from the White House only an hour before, and here he was, walking with his favourite Secret Service man, Clancy Smith; his beloved flatcoat retriever, Murchison, dashing in and out of the incoming waves.

‘He’ll need a good hosing,’ Cazalet said. ‘Silly old boy. You’d think he’d have learned by now that the salt is bad for his skin.’

‘I’ll see to it, Mr President.’

‘I’ll have a cigarette now.’

Clancy offered him a Marlboro and flicked his Zippo lighter, which flared in the wind. Cazalet smiled. ‘I know, Clancy, what would the voters think? It’s the curse of old soldiers.’

‘We’ve all been there, Mr President.’

‘Harper on communications as usual?’

‘Yes. The only other person in the house is Mrs Boulder, cooking dinner.’

‘Amen to that.’ Cazalet smiled. ‘I love this place, Clancy. Iraq, Afghanistan, our friends in Moscow – if we can call them that – they could all be on another planet when I’m here.’ He sighed. ‘At least until that damned helicopter picks us up and deposits me back at the White House.’

Clancy’s cellphone rang and he answered, listened for a few moments, then turned to Cazalet. ‘Blake Johnson, Mr President. He’s arrived back from Kosovo sooner than he thought.’

‘Well, that’s great. Is he coming down?’

‘By helicopter. And he also ran into General Charles Ferguson, who was passing through Washington on his way to London after some business at the United Nations. He thought you might like to meet with him, so he’s bringing him down, too.’

‘Excellent.’ Cazalet smiled. ‘It’s always good to see Ferguson, find out what the Prime Minister’s up to. It’d be interesting to get his take on Blake’s report, too.’

They continued walking. ‘I thought Kosovo was history, Mr President,’ Clancy said.

‘Not really. After what the Serbs did to them, they want their independence. The Muslims are in the majority now, Serbs the minority. It’s still a problem. The Kosovo Protection Corps the UN set up in 2004 is still operating – troops from various countries, a British general coordinating the situation – but when you get into the back country, things happen. There’ve been reports of outside influence, rumours of the presence of Russian troops.’

‘And they were always for the Serbs,’ Clancy pointed out.

‘Exactly, which is why I decided to send in Blake to scout around and see what’s happening.’ There was the sound of a helicopter in the distance. ‘That must be them. We’d better get back.’

Cazalet called to Murchison, turned to the beach house, and Clancy followed.

Blake and Ferguson sat together on one of the leather sofas beside the open fire, the coffee table between them and the President. Clancy served drinks, whisky and branch water for both of them. Cazalet toasted them.

‘Here’s to both of you. It’s a real bonus having you here, Charles.’

Ferguson said, ‘You look well, Mr President, and you, Clancy.’

‘We get by,’ Cazalet said. ‘How is the Prime Minister?’

‘I saw him three days ago and he seemed to be coping. Iraq hasn’t helped, and Afghanistan is a major problem. There’s combat of the most savage kind there – we haven’t seen its like since the hand-to-hand fighting against the Chinese on the Hook during the Korean War. Most of our infantry and paratroops are nineteen or twenty. Boys, when you think about it. They’re winning the battles, but perhaps losing the war.’

Cazalet nodded, remembering his time in Vietnam. ‘War has always been a young man’s game. So, tell me – what did the Prime Minister send his private security adviser to the UN for? Can you tell us, or is it for his eyes only?’

‘I can certainly tell you, Mr President. I’m keeping an eye on the Russian Federation. I sat in on two committees also attended by Moscow and Iran. Supposedly, they were trade delegations.’

‘Why am I laughing?’ Cazalet asked.

‘I listened, drifted around. Putin was the name on everyone’s lips.’

‘What would you say he’s after?’ Cazalet raised his hand. ‘No, let me put this in another way. What’s his purpose?’

‘I need hardly tell you, Mr President – to make the Russian Federation a power in the world again. And he’s using the riches of Russia’s gas and oil fields, networked throughout Europe as far as Scandinavia and Scotland, to do it.’

Blake said, ‘And once Europe signs up, if he wants to bring them to heel, all he has to do is turn off the taps.’

There was silence. Cazalet said, ‘He knows he couldn’t win anything militarily. One of our Nimitz aircraft carriers alone, plus its battle group, is the equivalent of the present Russian navy.’

‘And we certainly have enough of them,’ Blake put in.

Ferguson said, ‘He wouldn’t be so foolish as to imagine he could take those on and succeed.’

‘So what is he after?’ Cazalet asked.

‘A return to the Cold War,’ Ferguson said. ‘With certain differences. His personal experiences in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq give him considerable insight into the Muslim mind. Extremist Muslims hate America in an almost paranoid way. Putin recognizes that and uses it.’

‘How do you mean?’ Cazalet asked.

‘The favourite weapon of the IRA was the bomb, and the influence of the IRA on revolutionary movements throughout the world has been enormous. Only a handful of years ago, they virtually brought London to a standstill, blew up the Baltic Exchange, almost wiped out the entire British Cabinet at Brighton.’

Cazalet nodded. ‘So what’s your point?’

‘Putin wants disorder, chaos, anarchy, a breakdown in the social order, particularly with countries dealing with America. In instructing his intelligence people to cultivate Muslims, he is actually getting them to do his dirty work for him. The terrorists’ favourite weapon is the bomb, too, which means increased civilian casualties, which means a growing hatred of all things Muslim. We hate them, they hate us – chaos.’

There was silence. Cazalet sighed and turned to Clancy. ‘I really could do with another drink. In fact, I think we all could.’

‘As you say, Mr President.’

Cazalet said, ‘After that, I could also do with some good news, Blake. Somehow I doubt I’m going to get it.’

‘Well, Kosovo could be worse, Mr President, but it also could be better. The United Nations troops are in place, but Bosnia intends to hang in there for as long as possible. The Serbian government in Belgrade has been urging the Serbs in Kosovo to boycott the November elections.’

‘And what’s the Muslim opinion on that in Kosovo?’

‘The memory of what the Serbs did in the war, the shocking butchery of the Muslims, will never go away. The Muslims want total independence, nothing less. And there are outside influences at work, which aren’t helping the situation.’

‘Such as?’ Cazalet demanded.

‘Well, when you go out into the boonies, you find villages, market towns that aren’t exactly twenty-first century, very old-fashioned people, Muslims on the whole. When I travelled to that part of the country, I found interlopers close to the borders. Russians.’

There was silence. Cazalet said, ‘What kind of Russians?’

‘Soldiers in uniform, not freebooters.’

‘Can you describe them? Which unit, that sort of thing?’

‘Actually, I can. The ones I met were Siberians. I know that because their commanding officer identified himself as a Captain Igor Zorin of a regiment called the Fifteenth Siberian Storm Guards. I checked them on my laptop, and the unit exists. It’s a reconnaissance outfit, special ops, that sort of thing. They were apparently based over the border in Bulgaria, and their mission was to visit a village called Banu that was supposed to be a centre for Muslim extremists crossing the border and creating merry hell in Bulgaria.’

Ferguson said, ‘This fellow Zorin, did you find him on the regimental roster?’

‘Oh, yes, he was there all right. But here’s the interesting thing – just as I was checking him out…he disappeared.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My screen went blank. He might as well never have existed.’

There was a pause. Cazalet said, ‘Something you did, perhaps? You know what computers can be like.’

‘No, Mr President, I swear to you. What happened in Banu was shaping up to be pretty nasty and I witnessed it – and they clearly wanted no record of it.’

Ferguson nodded. ‘But except for your word in the matter, there’s no proof. Accuse the Russian government, they’ll simply deny it ever happened. I see the game they are playing.’

‘The cunning bastards,’ Cazalet said. ‘Somewhere in the Bulgarian mountains is a unit that doesn’t exist, commanded by a man who doesn’t exist named Igor Zorin.’

Blake said, ‘Actually, not quite, Mr President.’ He turned to Ferguson. ‘General, do you by any chance know a British Member of Parliament named Miller – Major Harry Miller?’

Ferguson frowned, ‘Why, was he involved in some way?’

‘You could say that. He shot Igor Zorin between the eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘And he’s a Member of Parliament? What was he doing there in the first place?’ Cazalet demanded.

‘He was doing what I was doing, Mr President, checking out things in the back country. We met by chance at a country inn about twenty miles from Banu. We stayed overnight, got talking, and each of us discovered who we were. Decided to carry on together the following day.’

Cazalet turned to Ferguson. ‘Charles, this Major Harry Miller, do you know him?’

‘I know of him, but keep my distance, and by design. You know what I do for the Prime Minister – with my team, we provide a distinctly hands-on approach to any problems of security or terrorism. Most of what we do is illegal.’

‘Which means you dispose of bad guys without troubling the rule of law. I’ve no trouble with that, it’s the times we live in. Blake does the same for me, as you know. So what about Major Miller?’

‘I don’t fraternize with the Major, because I try to keep out of the political side of things, and he has a political relation ship with the Prime Minister. Before he became a Member of Parliament, though, he was a career soldier in the army, Intelligence Corps, retired some years ago.’

‘Quite a change,’ Cazalet said.

‘You could say that. He became an Under-Secretary of State in the Northern Ireland Office, a desk man helping to develop the peace process.’

‘A troubleshooter?’ Cazalet asked.

‘Exactly, but since the changes in Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister has found uses for him elsewhere.’

‘Again as a troubleshooter?’

‘The Prime Minister’s eyes and ears. Sent to Lebanon, Iraq, the Gulf States – places like that.’

‘And Kosovo,’ Cazalet said. ‘He must be quite a guy.’

‘He is, Mr President. People are very wary of him because of his privileged position. Even members of the Cabinet tread carefully. He is also modestly wealthy from family money, and married to a lovely, intelligent woman, an actress named Olivia Hunt, Boston born. In fact, her father is a Senator.’

‘Good lord,’ Cazalet said. ‘George Hunt. I know him well.’

There was silence now for a while and then Cazalet said, ‘Blake, old friend, I think it’s about time you told us exactly what happened in Banu that day.’

Blake reached for the shot glass in front of him, swallowed the whisky in it and leaned back. ‘It was like this. It was lousy weather, Mr President, and I’d just about had enough of it. I was driving myself in a jeep through a forest and over miserable terrain, and towards evening, I came to an inn near Kuman. The landlord appeared, and we were making arrangements for my stay when suddenly another jeep appeared out of the forest and the rain. It gave me quite a turn.’

‘Why was that?’

Blake considered. ‘It was strange, strange country, like some old movie taking place in Transylvania. There was rain, mist, darkness falling, and suddenly the jeep emerged from all that. It was kind of spooky.’

He accepted another whisky from Clancy, and Cazalet said, ‘Major Harry Miller?’

‘Yes, Mr President. I hadn’t expected anyone, not in a place like that, and there he was at the back end of nowhere.’

Cazalet nodded. ‘Tell us what happened, Blake, as you remember it, the whole business. Take your time.’

‘I’ll do my best, Mr President.’ Blake sat back thinking about it and suddenly, it was as if he was there.