Bolt Action by Charlie Charters Read Free Book Online

gurgled with delight, saying it again, softly. ‘A one, a two, a five and four frigging zeros.’
    Tristie’s first panicked reaction had been, Put the Money Back.
    ‘ Put it back??! Tristie, excuse my English, but are you fucking crazy? This guy calls us Money For Old Rope, and you want to give it back?!’
    And, of course, Ferret was right. They didn’t. And in the Caymans, Piglet picked up the banker’s cheque ninety minutes later: £ 1.25 million. An hour after that, he was off, on a scheduled flight to the Bahamas. (Army humour . . . the guy is Piglet because he is the scion of a wealthy family of Jewish traders. Reubens. His father allowed him to use one of the family’s long-dormant and untraceable Cayman Island accounts, have it renamed Ward 13 Operating Funds.) Piglet then banked the cheque in a brand-new Bahamas account, and suddenly the whole thing was in business. Ward 13. This half-crazy, half-stupid idea had become reality.

Operation Macchar, minus eighteen days
    US Embassy
    Diplomatic Enclave
    Islamabad, Pakistan
    F irst impressions: the CIA station chief in Islamabad is bald, shiny bald. And even with a nose-guard’s broad frame, he looks seriously overweight. And when William Lamayette frowns somehow the whole of his scalp and fleshy neckline frowns with him, folding into ridges and gulleys that speak of anxiety and tension. There is something about his intensity, the way he sucks up the pressure of the job, that reminds people of Colonel Kurtz, the Brando character in Apocalypse Now . Then there is the unusual get-up. For tonight’s cross-examination with Washington he’s wearing a specially tailored black cotton salwar kameez. Not typical Agency office-wear, but damned comfortable nonetheless.
    Some whisper that, like Colonel Kurtz, he is already insane. Only forty-eight years old, they tut, as if real CIA people couldn’t be losing their marbles until they were at least fifty-five. As to Lamayette himself, it’s soul destroying to feel that he is the only person taking all this seriously.
    ‘Jeez. You’d think these screwy bastards might have a handle on what their frigging generals were up to.’ Lamayette blows a thick stream of cigarette smoke to the ceiling. Frazzled. His hefty back and shoulders carrying his bulk distort his body to an upright turtle shape. ‘Bit of command and control wouldn’t goamiss in a country with a goddam nuke bomb. I’ve flushed away turds . . . small pebbly turds, and each one with more smarts than some of their staff officers . . .’
    On the US end of this tirade, the Agency’s director of the National Clandestine Service, the spook arm of the CIA, interjects. Sensing this discussion needs to be brought back in hand.
    ‘Listen, Bill . . .’ The NCS director’s name is Krandall Meyers. He speaks smoothly. ‘You haven’t given us enough to put this Khan thing top of anybody’s list, let alone the president’s. No way is he picking up the phone to the Pakistani president or prime minister on this. So what, General Khan’s people might have made some silly threats. We don’t even know what he’s threatening to do. So. I’ll say it again: have you got anything on Khan? What he might be up to?’ Long pause. ‘Anything?’
    Lamayette looks aghast at the fascia of the telephone, its fancy screen, electronics, flashing lights, and riles at the smooth but very pointed, slippery-simple question from Washington. ‘What the bloody hell do you think, Krandall?’
    It would take just under three seconds for his words to process through the encryption software, bounce about through outer space and then be reassembled on Meyers’s desk.
    Let’s see what you make of that . . .
    Lamayette knows he looks a wreck of a man. Pushed to the edge by the sheer excesses of the job. And the tragedy is that after almost three years, he’s only now beginning to understand how things work here. Not that this hard-won sense of wisdom is providing any particular insight