Infiltrator

Chapter 01

He had left the car off to the side of the road, where hopefully they wouldn’t see it. The night was sultry. Sweating, he ran as hard as he could along the dusty track that serviced the Argentinian coastline. He was only a mile from the border with Uruguay, a border that split the middle of a tidal inlet. He could reach the fishing community that he was familiar with—small, but quiet at this time of night. His plan was to steal a fishing boat, a local one, small and inconspicuous. With darkness having fallen, only the single light shining from the boat would show its passage.

Franco Manfrin was a man almost out of time. If he could reach the other side, if he could get to a fishing port in Uruguay, then maybe his life would continue. He’d steal away even further. They would look after him once he got there, wouldn’t they? After all, Godfrey had put him here. The tall Englishman who had found him, a not-so-chance meeting in a cafe in Buenos Aires, Godfrey had hired him to infiltrate.

What a tale he’d found during his work, but there was no time to think about that now. He carried it all in his head. He’d contacted by the usual drop method, a direct message to Godfrey requesting an urgent meeting. Of course, he wouldn’t get Godfrey at first. He would get one of the lower-ranking officials, one of the British agents who simply sat and watched and ran the local networks. From there, once they heard what he was going to say, they would escalate quickly up the chain.

They’d fly him to the UK, or at least somewhere safer. He’d spend days in a debriefing room just to make sure that they’d egged everything out of him. Of course, they’d be cross-checking to make sure he hadn’t been fed lies. Or that he hadn’t turned. He hadn’t.

The dust continued to rise as he ran, and he thought he could hear cars in the night. Out here amongst the trees, it was usually so quiet except for a possible engine in the distance; the river beside him was also quiet, languid. He hoped the channel would be the same. He wasn’t the greatest fisherman and had only ever been on a boat in his early years, sailing for his father. But tonight, he would have to sail for his freedom.

Boats weren’t difficult, were they? Certainly not the operation of them. You just started the engine, turned the radar, steered where you wanted to go. It was when the water got high, he worried. Nervous when the waters chopped here and there, pushing against the boat. In the dark, he’d have to navigate, but again, all he needed was a compass to point east. When he got to the other shoreline, he would head north or south, and find a port that’d be the one he knew.

Sometimes he wished he carried a gun, but that would be too suspicious. He tried to appear a bumbling fool, a threat to no one, and that had allowed him to get close. He appreciated how he could look inconspicuous. Often he appeared as that person in the background, the one nobody pays any attention to because, frankly, they’re not capable of anything. Well, Franco was. Franco was very capable. If he could just find himself on the other side of this tidal inlet, he would be home free. He would’ve broken up one of the most damaging terrorist threats to Britain that had ever been known.

His shirt clung to him. The sweat from his body left it soaked, but Franco ignored that and cut off the road and the dusty stones until he was deep in scrubland. He was more used to city streets, happier operating there, but here was his bid for freedom. They were on to him. Finally, they’d broken him down. They’d seen that he wasn’t the bumbling idiot he made out to be. Franco Manfrin, in some ways, was a genius, but they’d realised it. That was why his greatness was in doubt.

A little branch caught him in the face. Franco brushed off the sting and kept his legs pumping. He ducked around this tree and that, and eventually saw the wide expanse of the river ahead of him. Directly across was the Isla Juncal, an island that occasionally would disappear when the tide was high and flooding. In the weak moonlight, he thought he could see land. The most important question, though, was where was he on the banks of the Argentinian side?

He strode close to the river, looked left and looked right, and then headed north. It was round the corner, maybe three hundred metres away, but they were the longest three hundred metres of his life. He half expected to round the corner to see nothing there, but he saw the little jetty and three fishing boats. One was small and single person, and looked more easily handled than the other two.

Franco untied the mooring ropes, threw them onto the middle vessel, and jumped on board. He felt the boat rock slightly and took a moment to steady himself before entering the tiny wheelhouse. The keys were still there because no one here would take a boat. He was out in the middle of nowhere. His heart breathed a sigh of relief as the engine spurted into life.

Franco turned the wheel, steering his little boat towards the Isla Juncal. He would round it on the south side, and from there, he could stay straight, whatever straight was. He would reach the Uruguayan side close to a familiar jetty. The key thing wasn’t the jetty; it was the fact that he could jump into a taxi. All of six hundred yards beyond the jetty, there was a small town. Around this hour, some bars would still be open, still a lure for taxis to be waiting. Once in a taxi, he’d go to Montevideo and run into the British embassy.

Something clipped off the top of the wheelhouse. It must have been a shot. Was that it? The boat was rocked slightly by the impact, but not enough to affect him. Franco ducked down in the wheelhouse and the window in the wheelhouse’s door blew out, glass spraying.

No! They’d seen him leave. They couldn’t have. Still, he was on a boat. As long as they didn’t follow.

He reached up to the control panel and switched off the single white navigation light at the top, but he could hear another boat starting. Shortly, as he looked behind him, he could see the faint outline of a bigger fishing boat coming for him.

Damn it, he needed to hold course. Thankfully, the inlet was not showing its strongest current, but looking at the Isla Juncal, he thought it to be small. Had the tide flooded? He hadn’t checked the tidal charts because he’d had to get out of Buenos Aires so quickly. Never had he looked back. He hadn’t waited for anyone, not even that rather pretty girl that he occasionally saw on a Friday night. He’d miss her.

Then something struck him. He was steering ahead for the corner of the Isla Juncal. If the tide was high, if it was flooded and there wasn’t much of the Isla Juncal, he’d have to steer on a wider course. How deep was the draught of the boat he was in? What clearance did he need from the silty mud below?

Franco did not know. He was in that precarious position of knowing of the possible dangers without having a clue or the information to work out whether they were truly dangerous. As he motored forward, his mind was suddenly taken from this distraction to a very prominent sound.

It was like a firework going off. That bit at the start, the fizz, and then he saw a steady rocket heading up to the sky. Franco turned around just in time to see the light missile hit the back of the boat. It had hit the water early, but what it did was cause enough of an eruption that the rear end of the boat collapsed and water started flooding in. Quickly, the little boat became submerged, and Franco jumped off the side and swam directly to the Isla Juncal.

He was in real trouble now. His mind raced. They had a boat, but if he could get to the island, they couldn’t berth, could they? On the island, he might even hide. Where? Where could you hide on an island like this? After all, it was flooding.

He tried to calm himself. Tried to remember to put in powerful strokes, not simply splash around. Come on, Franco, he thought. Come on! He could hear the boat behind him, but clearly, it was getting too close to the submerged island as the engine was cut. Ahead of him, he could see little bits sticking up, and a flash of moonlight showed him he was heading for the middle of the island.

Gradually, he felt like there was less water below, and he could put his feet down. He quickly pulled through the vegetation and emerged from the water, though his feet stayed submerged. The trees around him and the loose vegetation made it heavy going, and walking was slow.

Desperately, he looked back and he could see a light inflatable. With the engine whirring in the night, it would come close, a flatter hull than any of the fishing boats. They could come right in on that, hunt him down.

He turned and walked as hard as he could, for he couldn’t run in this watery mash. If he could get to the other side, maybe he could swim and maybe he would see a fishing boat. There were white lights out there. Single white lights that he could aim for. If he could get on one of them, would they still come for him? Would they kill him in front of other people? Who was he kidding? Of course they would.

There was a splash in the dark. It came from the left. Instinctively, Franco moved to the right, but then there was a splash from the right as well. Was there one behind? How many?

Franco never got to finish his thoughts. As bullets ripped into him from silenced guns, he tumbled backwards, writhing, but only briefly, before becoming still. The tide was still rising as his pursuers left him, the only corpse on the Isla Juncal.

* * *

Lobo Silva liked to fish at night. It was quiet, less of the chaos. He could also feel the water bobbing around, even on a reasonably calm stretch, such as he was on now. It was coming close to four or five in the morning, and he was passing by the north side of the Island Juncal.

It had been a decent night’s fishing, but fishing these days didn’t bring in the money that he needed. The payment from the other people, the British, was worth it despite the risks. The money had allowed him to buy a car, improve the house, and Juanita would need that.

She didn’t stay with him for his looks. If he was lucky, she might have liked his humour. Possibly she even liked the way he cooked, but mostly she liked the comfort she enjoyed from being with him. She enjoyed not being out on the street.

Lobo thought that the night was just about done. He’d taken on board almost three-quarters of the fish he wanted, but with his other work, the amount of fish wasn’t that important. He spun the boat round, heading for the Uruguayan side of the tidal inlet, and to the small port which lay beside his home. That was a laugh. A couple of jetties. It wasn’t like the bigger ports you saw when fishing further afield off the coastlines to the north of Uruguay or the south of Argentina. But it was home, and it would do.

Something caught his corner of his eye, floating past in the sea. Had it been? Had that been a person? He spun the boat around, quickly manoeuvring back to where he’d been. Of course, the river moved. The body wouldn’t be in the same spot, and now the tide was retreating. The water wasn’t particularly choppy, and so he was reasonably confident that whatever he saw would be in the same area.

Lobo looked around. He was a vigorous man, built well, and the years of hauling fish had kept his muscles toned and his ability to combat fatigue at a high level. He cruised back and forward over the same spot three times before he saw the figure again.

There was a body. He pulled alongside before carefully reaching down from his little boat to pull the figure onto his deck. The man rolled facedown. Lobo wondered who he was. He was dressed in a shirt which was clearly soaked through from the river. There were trousers and plimsolls. He looked like a man of the city, not from here. He turned him over and then almost started backwards. That was him, the one that the British had shown him.

Chapter 02

Kirsten Stewart stood in front of the coffee machine at a medical facility on the edge of Inverness. It was little known because it dealt with people who had gone off the rails in a rather bad way. She never thought she would see someone she knew in here, but here Craig was. He had his legs blown off below the knee because of a half-botched rescue operation. He had escaped with his life, but Kirsten now thought that he would have been better dead. It would have been better for her, for all she got from him now was anger.

Craig had been an agent like herself, working for the country. As an operator, he was first class. In fact, he’d saved her life on occasion. They had fallen for each other, got together and had many a good time. In fact, they’d left the service to spend time together, only for past enemies to hunt them down and then for Craig to suffer his horrible injuries.

There was one man to blame for that, wasn’t there? Godfrey, the head of the service. Kirsten had to make her peace with that. She was going to be working for Godfrey, on an ad hoc basis, taking whatever she could, whatever she felt comfortable with, for she needed money.

It wasn’t easy for someone in her position to just roll back into her working past. She couldn’t pick up the phone to her former inspector, Macleod, and tell him, ‘Oh, I’m coming back.’ Not with what she’d done. She had saved the country quite a few times, but she had also learned how to kill. The truth was, she had changed beyond all recognition from the person he had sent to the service.

She took the coffee but almost spat it straight out. The machine looked old, not one of the modern ones that made that rather bland coffee, albeit one that took time. One where they ground the beans for you, doing the job of a barista with all the lack of skill and the lack of feel. Blandness crept in everywhere, she thought.

Having poured half of the coffee away, she walked back down the corridor to see Craig in his end room. Looking through the window, she saw him glance up and scowl. He said something. She didn’t know what, but she got the gist amongst the swearing. ‘Go away,’ was the message, although delivered with a much stronger expletive.

There was a tap on her shoulder, and she turned to see a friendly face. Craig’s doctor looked at her wearily, feeling her pain.

‘It’s going to be a long road and there are no guarantees,’ he said. ‘We’re doing what we can, but he has to learn to accept. He has to learn that . . .’

‘What we do,’ she said, aware that the doctor knew that Craig had come from the service, albeit not exactly what he’d done, ‘sometimes doesn’t leave that option open.’

‘I thought people like yourselves could adapt. I thought you were trained for that.’

‘Adapt to situations on the fly,’ said Kirsten, ‘but, Doctor, this is different. When you’ve been that good, when you’ve been that fast, when you’ve been able to climb up to the top of the mountain, to have it then taken away from you, . . . I don’t know if I would cope. At best, he’s going to have a desk job. He never was a desk man. He was a field operator.’

She stopped there, worried she might say too much. The doctor gave a nod of understanding, but he also looked rather bleakly through the window towards Craig. Kirsten turned; two fingers were being held up to her. She was being told to go away again.

‘He never swore much before all this,’ she said. ‘He was quite the gent.’

‘I am sorry,’ said the doctor, ‘but I didn’t come here to update you. I came because somebody is waiting for you.’

‘Waiting for me?’ queried Kirsten, raising her eyebrows. ‘Who?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t always get told the names of the people that arrive in this facility, but he’s quite important.’

Kirsten’s heart sank. She could do without any other hassles. All she wanted to do was go home, wrap herself up in a blanket and cry. She was losing Craig, really losing him, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.

‘If you come this way,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m sorry to rush you, but he said his time was short.’

‘Did he now?’ said Kirsten. It was better than standing there with Craig, anyway. She couldn’t handle looking through