Borrowed Time

‘In spite of the wishes of my contemporaries, I must say I’ve thrived.’ Flynn waved an arm at the shelves and machinery ranged behind him. ‘I’m in charge these days. I’m one of only three men at Langley with all-level access to the files. If you forget how many lumps of sugar you take in your coffee, give me a call, we’ll have a record of it here somewhere.’

‘I’m chasing a favour, Josh.’

‘I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d call.’

‘A man by the name of Paul Seaton. He was —’

‘An employee of this agency,’ Josh cut in. ‘I knew him reasonably well, for a time. What do you need to know?’

‘Background stuff, leading up to the time he took off and became a bandit.’

‘You on to him for something?’

‘I could be, with luck. Just in case the luck holds, I’d like to know as much about him as I can.’

‘I could tell you most of it from memory,’ Flynn said, ‘but let’s be professional about this, right? I’ll call up the file. One second, Mike.’

It took four seconds. Flynn studied the printout, nodding.

‘OK. A summary of the known career of Paul Elliot Seaton, who will now be forty-three years old.’ Flynn put down the summary and looked directly out of the screen at Mike. ‘From the time Seaton left college he put himself at the disposal of people with power, the kind of power he knew he could never generate himself. He was open about his technique — he once told me his motto for getting on in life was “Find the engine you need and hitch a ride”. Anyway, Paul was preeminently physical, he wasn’t hampered by a conscience. He worked as errand-boy and muscle for several small and medium-sized politicians until an opportunity came along to join the CIA.’

‘Who gave him the opportunity?’

‘It was a recommendation from a grateful relative of our first director, Allen Welsh Dulles.’

‘He did somebody a big muscular favour.’

‘I’d guess so,’ Flynn said. ‘The job he got here carried no guarantee or likelihood of promotion, but Paul Seaton got to do harm, and he got to carry a prestigious ID that showed he was a legitimate employee of the Agency. For three years he was a happy young man. Then in 1977 Jimmy Carter arrived, and he directed a fresh administration to put tight controls on the clandestine activities of the CIA. A month later Paul Seaton was out of a job.’

‘How did he get involved with the mujahedin initiative in Afghanistan?’

‘Well, he wasn’t a lot more than a dogsbody around here,’ Flynn said, ‘but one or two people at the Pentagon kept records of those boys from Langley who’d distinguished themselves in situations calling for, quote, effective physical action, unquote. Seaton had drawn attention to himself for some of the things he got up to in Cuba and Chile, and so, within a month of getting his can kicked out of the CIA, the former gofer-bodyguard-enforcer-saboteur had himself a new job with the military.’

‘Did you see him at that time?’

‘Once. While he was doing his three-month training at a government facility in the Ozarks. I went there with a pair of our covert operations people for a briefing on Project Kandahar, as they called it. I spoke to Seaton for a couple of minutes. He was full of himself, full of the mission ahead. He was mustard-keen to get over there and start teaching bodily assault and slaughter.’

‘He was the man for the job,’ Mike said, then quickly added, ‘or so I gather.’

‘Yeah. When I asked the fellow in charge just what it was that Seaton and the others were training to do, he said, “They’re gonna teach one group of Neanderthals how to exterminate another group of Neanderthals, in the interest of maintaining a balance of power consonant with the needs and purposes of the United States.”’

‘But Seaton didn’t shape up the way they imagined he would, right?’

‘He’d been in Afghanistan only three or four months,’ Flynn said, ‘when he discovered an inborn leaning to fanaticism. He also found he had an aptitude for the life of a brigand. After the end of his tenth month in Kandahar, he severed all contact with the military.’

‘And what do you know about his present activities?’

‘Nothing. There have been rumours he’s into drug running, hill banditry, kidnapping, all the usual stuff villains get up to in the stretch of territory from Kabul to Chittagong. Nothing has ever been substantiated, and frankly he doesn’t fall within our sphere of interest.’

‘Well, you’ve been a help, Josh. I owe you one.’

‘Now I’m boss I can let you run it up to three you owe me. Then you have to pay it off in wine. Let me know if you get anything new on Seaton.’

Mike promised he would. He closed the conference connection. At the top of the notebook page he had filled while Flynn was talking he scribbled P. Seaton — background.

Soon, he thought, pocketing the notebook. Soon, you heap of garbage.

3 (#ulink_874130c6-2a84-5dc1-819c-50040744ebc9)

The following morning at 9:15 a message went out to all personnel of Task Force Three to attend a meeting in UNACO’s briefing room. Mike Graham was in a diner with coffee and the Washington Post when the pager vibrated against his chest. C.W. Whitlock got the message as he sat in his car in a street off Times Square, talking to a private detective he occasionally employed. Sabrina Carver heard the buzz of the pager where she had left it, resting on the ledge above her bathroom washbasin. She abruptly ended her telephone conversation with her mother, ran to the bathroom and read the terse message.

‘Bang goes the gym,’ she said, shutting off the last word, realizing she had started to talk to herself again. She had always believed the habit was harmless enough when she was at home, but lately she worried that it could spread to other places, or go really malignant and turn into a compulsion. She feared ending up like people she sometimes saw on the street and in stores, in deep conversation with themselves, detached and strange.

Bang went the gym, anyway. She had planned to go there at ten, do an hour, come back, shower, spend plenty of time getting dressed and made up, then have a long gossipy lunch with a school friend who was in town.

She could always go to the gym in the afternoon or the evening, so it was no disruption of the day, except that on a day when she was lunching out she liked to visit the gym in the morning, for then it felt like less of a misdemeanour to have dessert with her meal.

She got ready quickly and checked herself in the mirror. The dark gold Joseph Janard jersey suit was an extravagance she had been saving for the spring; it was still only February, a grey New York day, but she felt sunny enough to carry it. Her mother, born and raised in Paris, had told her never to forget that because she was blonde, relatively tall, and had a lot of French in her DNA, she could get away with clothes that would make most other New York women look downright silly.

A Cartier watch and a light brown Elégance wool coat across her shoulders completed the ensemble. She slipped her SIG P220 pistol into her purse and left for the UN.

As she came out of the elevator opposite the UNACO main entrance she saw Mike Graham ahead of her. She hurried and caught up.

‘What’s the meeting about?’

‘No idea,’ he told her. ‘But I hope it isn’t something that needs all of us.’

Sabrina waited for more, but that was all he said.

When they stepped into the briefing room Philpott and C.W. Whitlock were already there. Philpott was by the big ceiling-to-floor window that overlooked the East River. He was muttering testily to his mobile phone. Whitlock leaned patiently against the shiny panelled wall, arms folded.

“Morning, kids,’ he muttered.

Whitlock was the most versatile of all the UNACO agents, and the one most readily consulted by Philpott. He was a graduate of Oxford and a one-time officer in the Kenya Intelligence Corps. Philpott had personally recruited him into UNACO. They were often to be found together, although their closeness created no jealousy. Everybody knew Philpott was too much of a loner to have favourites.

‘You look stunning, Sabrina,’ Whitlock observed as she hung up her coat.

‘That’s what I was aiming for. I’m going straight to lunch after the meeting.’

‘You’re kind of overdressed for McDonald’s,’ Mike said. He sat down at the long central table and stared pointedly at Philpott, who was trying to terminate his call.

‘We’re going to the Arcadia,’ Sabrina said, sliding into the chair opposite Mike. ‘Special occasion. Me and Tania, an old friend from school. The last time we met she was very pretty, but I haven’t seen her in ten years so I have to assume the worst — she could be stunning. The haute couture is my best defence.’

Philpott ended the phone call and slammed the mobile down on the table. ‘That was the Secretary General’s office,’ he said. ‘UNACO is to be the subject of a techniques-and-procedures review. I resisted, but it would seem that somebody in Policy Control has a persuasive turn of argument — either that, or they’re blackmailing one of the under secretaries.’

‘They want to change the way we do things?’ Mike said.

‘At the administrative level,’ Philpott nodded. ‘It’s aimed at me. It’s personal. Just because I won’t play the good doggie every time Secretary Crane or one of his lesser vermin set foot in the place. However.’