The Mentor. Steve Jackson
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It only took a couple of hours for the media to christen the atrocity. Sky News, the tabloid of the TV news stations, did the honours. During the seven o’clock round up the anchorman referred to the Leicester Square bombing as 18/8, and the name stuck. The tabloids used it the next day, and it didn’t take long for the broadsheets to follow suit. Of course, BBC News and CNN weren’t far behind. 18/8 HUNDREDS DEAD, was the screaming headline on the front of the Sun the next morning, the typeface so large it took up the whole page. The story stretching across a dozen pages was big on sensational pictures – bodybags being carried out of Leicester Square, shocked survivors looking dazed and confused, grim firefighters with dirty faces – but light on words. At least, light on any words of substance. There were inches galore of speculation, eyewitness accounts, tales of bravery, but not much in the way of facts. Even now there was little to say on the subject, and certainly nothing that hadn’t been said a thousand times already. Almost two weeks had passed since the bomb attack. Autumn was rapidly approaching, the evenings closing in and the days getting cooler, and they were still no closer to nailing the bastards responsible for the atrocity. Sitting at his desk on the fifth floor, staring at his computer screen, Aston was painfully aware of this.
Fact: The bomb detonated at 5.21 p.m. on Friday, August 18th.
Fact: Another woman had died overnight, pushing the official death toll up to two hundred and sixty-two.
Fact: The manpower working on this one was unprecedented. MI6 had pulled every spare man, MI5 had done the same, so had the Met.
Fact: Two weeks on and they didn’t have shit.
It was so bloody depressing. Not to mention stressful. The internal phone rang and Aston picked it up with a sense of foreboding.
‘Get your arse in here now,’ Mac barked.
Before Aston could say anything the line went dead. Sighing, he picked up his notepad and pen and walked the dozen steps to Mac’s office, a distance as long as any last journey to Old Sparky.
Mac was pacing; wearing out rug, as he liked to put it. He’d been wearing out a lot of rug recently. As head of the PTCP he’d been right in the firing line. Under normal circumstances, Mac was as cool a customer as you were ever likely to meet. However, these circumstances were far from normal and he was definitely showing the stress. There were a few more lines, wrinkles that enhanced the rugged lived-in look of his face; his neat hair had a few loose telltale strands that could only come from nervous fingers. And more than once Aston had caught his boss with the top button of his shirt undone and the tie pulled down a fraction of an inch; something unheard of in the days before 18/8. The signs were subtle but they were there if you knew where to look.
And it wasn’t just Mac who was under pressure. They all were. The attacks had come from all angles. The media had crucified MI6, laying the blame for the tragedy squarely at the feet of The Chief, who’d promptly shared that blame around as best he could. Then there’d been the questions raised in the House of Commons, a hundred and one little questions which all amounted to one big question: how could MI6 allow this to happen again? To make matters worse, the PM had come out smelling of roses. He’d pulled out his smartest black tie, feigned the right amount of sympathy, made all the right noises, and the media had lapped it up. Overnight he’d become the public face of the country’s grief, and in doing so his approval rating had soared. There was nothing like a good disaster to get the public on your side. What the public failed to realise was that the Government was responsible for funding MI6, and year after year those budgets had been getting tighter and tighter. And maybe if MI6 had the funding they had asked for then all this could have been prevented.
‘Bastard,’ Mac said.
Aston wasn’t sure which particular ‘bastard’ Mac was referring to. The PM was a favourite candidate, but there were a number of likely suspects: MPs, reporters, colleagues at MI6. Over the last fortnight Mac had raged about all of them. The only person who’d escaped was Grant Kinclave, The Chief, and Aston guessed that’s because Mac and The Chief were best friends. They went back a long way, had both earned their stripes during the Cold War – probably had matching school ties hanging in their wardrobes.
Aston slipped into the chair on the tradesman’s side of the desk, flipped open the notepad, and waited to be spoken to. When Mac was in this sort of mood it was best to agree when called upon to agree, make the right face shapes as appropriate, but for the most part it was wise to just shut up.
The office was furnished with utilitarian precision and dominated by a neat, uncluttered desk: the in- and out-trays were always kept at a manageable level, and the desk tidy was stocked with sharpened pencils and pens that actually worked (one of Aston’s duties; God help him if his boss ever reached for a pencil and found it blunt). Fish swum merrily back and forth on the flat screen monitor. The only personal touch was a small framed photograph next to the door. It had been positioned so you could see it from the desk. The picture had perplexed Aston to start with, but when he finally placed it, it all made sense. Orson Welles had made his famous ‘cuckoo clock’ speech in front of this big wheel in The Third Man. Not that Aston thought the Orson Welles connection was relevant. No, the connection was that the wheel was in Vienna, and Mac had been head of station there during the early Nineties, a posting that was the highlight of his career. This had surprised Aston. He’d never had Mac pegged as the sentimental type.
Mac stopped pacing and turned to Aston, seeing him as if for the first time. ‘Guess what they’ve gone and done now?’
Aston said nothing and waited for Mac to continue. ‘They’ could be anyone. The Government, the media, terrorists.
‘They’ve only called for my resignation … again. Bastards!’
Well, that narrowed it down. This was political, which meant he was here for one reason. To sit and listen while Mac blew off some steam. Aston flipped the notepad closed and settled back, all ears. If Mac was venting in that particular direction, then at least he wasn’t here for a bollocking. All that could turn in a heartbeat, though; Mac was a man of changeable weather. And to think, when he’d been assigned to work for Mac he’d actually gone out and celebrated. Working for the legendary Robert Macintosh, what an honour. If only he’d known then what he knew now.
‘Of course, it isn’t going to happen,’ Mac said. ‘And do you know why it isn’t going to happen?’
Before Aston could say ‘no’, before he even had a chance to shake his head, Mac was off again.
‘Because they can’t get rid of me. It’d be like getting rid of the ravens at the Tower of London. I go and this whole fucking building will crumble to dust, mark my words.’
The devil on Aston’s shoulder suggested that now might be a good time to point out that MI6 was bigger than one single person, that it was an organisation, which by definition meant it existed by virtue of the combined efforts of all those people in London and around the world who worked for it. The angel on the other shoulder vetoed this on the grounds that his next staff appraisal was imminent and a black mark from Mac wouldn’t do his promotion prospects any good. Promotion prospects, that was a laugh! If Mac had his way he’d have him working in servitude for the rest of his days. Face it, he was here for life.
‘Who the hell do they think they are? What do they know about the intelligence game? Absolutely fuck all, that’s what.’ Mac took a deep breath. Calm, calm, calm. Then he grinned the sort of grin that could charm the pants off a nun. The grin became a good-humoured laugh, the sunshine after the rain. ‘Storm in a teacup is what it is. By tomorrow they’ll be looking for someone else’s bollocks to nail to the wall. Okay, Aston, what’s new? Go on, impress me.’
Aston felt his heart sink and his stomach rise to meet it. Whatever he said next, it wouldn’t be impressive. How many different ways could you say you didn’t know shit?