ground crunching underfoot. Tomorrow, he promised himself, then wondered immediately if that was wishful thinking.
He made his way past the large chunk of Gibraltar rock that served as the SBS’s memorial to fallen comrades, a brass plaque with many names inscribed on it affixed to its face, and pushed his way in through the HQ entrance. A soldier behind the reception counter gave a nod as Stratton swiped his ID card across a keypad that unlocked an inner door.
‘Morning,’ Stratton said, walking through the spacious empty lobby. He skipped up the stairs, went around the internal balcony landing to a corner office and paused at an open door to look inside.
A well-built grey-haired man in a plain uniform sat behind a desk by a window. He was reading something on the computer monitor in front of him.
‘Morning, Mike.’
Mike glanced up as Stratton walked into the room. He hit a couple of keys to close the screen, picked up a file and got to his feet. ‘I think you’ll like this one,’ he said as he came around the desk. ‘Hasn’t been done in over thirty years.’
‘What hasn’t?’ Stratton asked, eyeing him.
‘Think Buster Crabb,’ Mike said, tapping his nose and winking. He walked past Stratton and on out of the office. ‘They’re waiting for us in the ops room.’
Stratton followed along the landing, pondering the comment. Crabb had been an MI6 operative who’d disappeared while on a top-secret dive to investigate a Russian warship during the Cold War. Some believed he’d been a spy who’d taken the opportunity to defect. Others thought that Spetsnaz divers had killed Crabb while he’d been in the water under the destroyer. No doubt MI6 had the true account on file inside its vaults and might one day release it. Or not. Stratton took Mike’s point to mean that it was an underwater task, quite possibly against the Russians. Crabb had never returned home. That bit stuck in Stratton’s mind.
The two men headed down the stairs and across the lobby to another and more narrow set of steps, which descended to a large black steel door. Mike punched a code onto a keypad. The internal lock clicked and he pulled the door open easily on its heavily sprung hinges.
Stratton followed him into a small space hung with curtains of thick black cloth. With the door closed behind them Mike pushed the curtain aside to reveal a brightly lit spacious operations room. Maps, charts and flatscreen monitors covered the available wall space, providing all manner of global environmental, political and conflict data. Seated at a table and sharing a pot of tea were the SBS commanding officer, the operations officer and a civilian whom Stratton recognised.
‘Ah, Stratton,’ the CO said, taking a sip of tea. ‘How are you today?’
‘Fine, thank you, sir.’
The white-haired CO, although tall, had a mass to him, the result of younger days when he had regularly occupied a place in the navy’s rugby team second row. The scrum experience clearly influenced his manner, which was straightforward. ‘I think you know Mr Jervis,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. Good to see you again.’
‘You too, Stratton,’ Jervis said. He was not your typical London military-intelligence suit. In fact, neither did he dress like one. He looked scruffy compared with his colleagues in MI6. And he had a voice to match, coming as he did from the East End or south-of-the-river London - or so rumour had it. But Jervis was head of the intelligence organisation’s operations wing for a reason. Some referred to him as the brilliant mongrel - not to his face, of course, although maybe Jervis wouldn’t have minded the nickname as much as he might have made out on hearing it.
‘You know, I just realised something,’ the CO said. ‘Is Stratton in date . . . for diving? Didn’t you get shot in the chest a couple of years ago?’
‘And the rest of it,’ Mike muttered. ‘He’s in date, sir. He’d better be. He’s still getting paid for it.’
‘I should think so too,’ Jervis said, looking at Stratton and wearing one of his rare smiles. He was referring to a task he had run earlier in the year at a certain undersea prison. The other men in the room obviously knew of Stratton’s frequent loans to MI6 for specialist operations, in particular the CO who was required officially to ‘sign him off’ from time to time. None were privy to the missions themselves although there were always rumours. All had heard something about a