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  In the SAS, Carter rarely socialised with the other guys, preferring to spend his downtime reading books or at the gym while they bonded over pints in the Hereford boozers. His fellow Blades regarded him as something of an unknown quantity. An outsider. Not really a team player, some of them whispered behind his back.

  That was bullshit. He knew how to work in a team as well as the next guy. He just wasn’t interested in going out on the piss once the job was done.

  In the close-knit world of 22 SAS, Carter had soon discovered that his lack of allies had worked against him.

  His actions at the siege in Mali should have been the crowning glory of his Regimental career. But the knives had been out for Carter almost as soon as he’d returned from his medal presentation in DC. He was a warrant officer class 2, one of the most senior non-commissioned men in the SAS, but he suddenly found himself being given the shittiest jobs at Hereford.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out that someone had been stitching him up behind the scenes. Trying to sabotage his career. He knew who was responsible. Brathwaite, the British ambassador to Mali. The bastard had vowed to destroy Carter’s career. Now he was making good on his threat.

  Eventually, Pete Boulding, his squadron sergeant major, had taken Carter to one side and given him the heads-up.

  ‘You’ve dropped a bollock here,’ Boulding had said. ‘Word is, they’re out to get you. Just keep your head down, ride the wave, and you’ll be in the clear before long.’

  Holding his tongue didn’t come easily to Carter. He had a reputation among his fellow Blades as a straight shooter. Never a corporate player, Carter had no time for the bullshit of Regiment politics. He didn’t butter up the top brass, never towed the party line and always told it exactly how he saw it.

  That attitude had pissed off a lot of people. Particularly the higher-ups. The head shed did not take kindly to soldiers who questioned the wisdom of their orders. They wanted conformists. Guys who could be lions in the field, but sheep when they were back at the camp. It didn’t matter if you were right – if you spoke out and dared to criticise, you were automatically the enemy.

  In the wake of the Bamako attack, no one had taken his side. Carter had no close friends at Hereford; none of the lads had been willing to put their heads above the parapet. The only person who might have realistically defended him had left the unit years ago.

  Which is why he now found himself working in Chile on a dead-end training job.

  Maybe if I’d been willing to play the office politics game, Carter reflected, things might have turned out differently.

  The bosses at Hereford would have been looking out for me, rather than trying to stab me in the back.

  They might have given me a slap on the wrist, maybe, but they sure as fuck wouldn’t have tried to ruin my career.

  He helped himself to another swig of lager.

  Every so often, he caught sight of Fabian Vargas sneaking inside the house. Each time, he followed the same routine. The kid crossed the lounge and headed down the hallway, in the direction of the ground-floor bathroom Carter had passed on the way in. A few minutes later he returned to the patio, buzzing with nervous energy.

  Vargas and his two muckers had some kind of a system going on. Vargas went first. Garrido and Zamorano stayed outside, laughing and necking double measures of Chivas Regal. Then Vargas would swagger back over to the table, and the two other guys would make the same trip to the bathroom. They repeated the routine every fifteen or twenty minutes.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were doing.

  Carter drained his beer, stepped through the French doors and made a beeline for the kitchen. He grabbed another bottle from the rack of drinks on the island countertop, prised off the cap.

  He was about to head back to the lounge when he saw Vargas junior standing in the kitchen doorway.

  The kid stood there for a long beat. Watching Carter. His pupils were the size of poker chips. His hands were restless, Carter noticed. The guy couldn’t stand still. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Sweat ran down his puffy face.

  All the telltale signs of a coke fiend.

  The kid laughed and said, ‘What do you think, gringo?’ He indicated the surroundings. ‘Nice place, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Carter said tonelessly. ‘Great. Very impressive.’

  The kid drained the rest of his Chivas, set the glass down and held out his right forearm, showing off the rose-gold watch strapped to his fat wrist. ‘Look, man. See this? Fucking Rolex. Genuine. Forty thousand American dollars.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Carter said.

  ‘Got one for each day of the month. All kinds of fucking watches, man. Rolex, Blancpain, Patek Philippe. Whatever. I like to mix it up, you know.’ Fabian Vargas tapped the face of his watch and grinned slyly. ‘Maybe once I have passed the training course, I make you a little gift. Make you happy. What do you say?’

  Carter forced a smile, the ambassador’s words ringing in his ears.

  Make sure you keep the general and his son onside.

  Vargas said, ‘Listen, I got something to show you. Something fucking cool.’

  ‘Not interested,’ Carter said. ‘Ask one of your mates. I’ll be leaving soon enough anyway.’

  Fabian Vargas shook his head and pointed a limp finger at Carter. ‘No. I want you to see it. I insist.’

  He spoke as if he was giving an order to one of his servants.

  Carter visualised his balled fist connecting with the kid’s face.

  ‘Trust me,’ Vargas continued. ‘You’re going to want to see this.’

  Carter sighed, considered the prospect of sitting alone in the lounge for the next hour watching shite TV, and figured whatever the kid was desperate to show him, it couldn’t be much worse than that.

  ‘Fuck it, then,’ he said, setting down his bottle. ‘Make it quick.’

  Vargas rubbed his hands together. His dilated pupils flashed with cocaine-fuelled excitement. ‘Come. This way.’

  He led Carter out of the kitchen, past the lounge, and beat a path down the corridor towards the front of the house. They hung a right at the marble-floored entrance hall, continued down a smaller passage lined with family portraits and artworks, and then stopped in front of a door on the left.

  Fabian Vargas wrenched the door open, flicked a light switch and gestured for Carter to enter ahead of him. A smile curled out of the corner of the kid’s mouth.

  ‘This is going to blow your mind,’ he said.

  Carter stepped inside a dimly lit study. A large mahogany desk dominated the middle of the room, with a throne-like chair behind it and a Chilean flag draped from a brass pole. A fitted bookcase ran down the length of one wall, the shelves crammed with leather-bound volumes. On the other side of the space, Carter noticed an AK-47 assault rifle fitted to a wall-mounted plaque. He saw a bunch of other stuff. Glass-front display cabinets containing memorabilia. Black-and-white photographs. Shadow boxes filled with medals and badges and ranks. More antiquated firearms.

  Not a study, Carter realised.

  A museum.

  To the left of the AK-47 a large portrait of Augusto Pinochet hung from the wall, dressed in an army jacket and jodhpurs.

  ‘My father’s office,’ Vargas said, a note of pride in his voice. ‘We call this the war room.’

  He gave Carter the guided tour, pointing out various items stored in the cabinets and elsewhere in the room. There was a presidential sash once worn by Pinochet, a semi-automatic pistol, a pair of dark glasses, two pairs of polished jackboots, plus a bunch of other stuff: a military cape, pens, watches, medals and awards, handwritten letters. Carter saw a ceremonial sword gifted to Pinochet by a foreign leader. Vargas even pointed out a comb rumoured to have been carried by the man himself, with strands of hair snagged on the metal teeth.

  A wave of revulsion surged up into Carter’s throat. This isn’t a museum, he corrected himself. This is a fucking shrine.

  Vargas said, ‘My grandfather once served under our great president. They were in the army together. He was one of the general’s most loyal officers. This was many years ago.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Carter lied.

  ‘Some people hate the president. Communists and traitors, who seek to sully his good name. Those of us who are true patriots, like my family, we honour the general’s achievements. He made our country strong again. He was a great man.’

  Carter said nothing.

  Vargas waved an arm at the AK-47 on the wall and said, ‘You see this?’

  Carter nodded. The kid went on, ‘My grandfather carried this weapon when he took part in the coup against the hated Marxists. Later, he served in the secret police.’

  Carter stared at the kid, anger clamping like a fist around his throat. He considered telling Vargas junior what he really thought about his father’s room of horror, then checked himself.

  In another corner, Vargas indicated a framed poster of a glass soda bottle.

  ‘Do you know why that is up there?’ he asked Carter.

  Carter didn’t reply.

  Vargas said, ‘They used the same bottles. My grandfather and his colleagues. To torture the Marxists. They were inserted in places on the human body that would cause the prisoner intense suffering.’

  Carter felt sick.

  ‘My grandfather made sure the prisoners were shown the bottle first,’ Vargas added. ‘Before the interrogation began. That way, every time the prisoner saw a commercial on the TV or the radio after their release, they would remember what had happened to them.’

  Carter had seen enough. He tore his gaze away from the poster and turned to leave. Vargas quickly shifted across, blocking the doorway with his corpulent frame. Carter could smell the whisky on the Chilean’s breath, mixing with the aroma of stale cigar smoke.

  ‘You don’t like what you see?’ he challenged.

  Carter clenched his hands into tight fists. ‘Get out of my fucking way.’

  Vargas grinned and stood his ground. The kid was wired. Sweat leached out of his skin, beading his forehead.

  ‘This is my family,’ he said. ‘This is who we are. You don’t fuck with us. We’re not the kind of people you want to mess with. You understand what I’m saying, bro?’

  ‘I understand that you’re a useless cokehead.’

  Vargas wagged a fat finger. ‘You should show me some more respect, gringo. I’m going to be in charge of the Pumas one day. I could be a useful friend.’

  Carter snorted. ‘You’re a drug addict and a time-waster. You’re not fit to run a brothel, let alone a Special Forces unit.’

  Vargas’s expression darkened. He took a step towards Carter and jabbed a fat finger at his chest.

  ‘Listen real good, OK? My father is close friends with the President. One word to him, and you’re on the next plane back to your piece-of-shit country.’ His lips stretched into a vile grin. ‘Who knows? Maybe we’ll bring in some Americans next time instead. They know how to treat people like us.’

  Something inside Carter snapped. All the pent-up frustration and rage of the past four weeks, the petty humiliations, the dull routine of life at the range and the knowledge that he was teaching some deeply unpleasant people how to kill, suddenly exploded in his chest. He grabbed hold of Vargas’s index finger and bent it sharply backwards in a single clean move, snapping bone.

  Vargas screamed in pain.

  In the next instant Carter dipped his head down, tensing his muscles as he pushed himself off his feet, momentum driving him forward as he aimed for his opponent’s face.

  There was a dull crunch as Carter’s forehead smashed into the soft flesh of the coke fiend’s nose.

  Fabian Vargas stumbled backwards, blood gushing out of his collapsed sinuses. Carter launched himself at the kid, stamped on his foot and followed up with a flurry of quick jabs to the ribs and chest. Vargas tried to counter with a wild right hook. The coke he’d shoved up his nose had boosted his confidence, but it had done nothing for his fighting ability. Carter read the move easily. He parried the kid’s ragged punch and struck him again with a sharp blow to the chin, knocking Vargas off his feet. He fell away with a groan, arms pinwheeling, then landed on his back a few inches from the doorway.

  Carter stood over his floored opponent, shoulder muscles heaving up and down.

  He’d done a serious number on Vargas. The kid was writhing on the carpet, pawing at his face and calling out for help. Blood streamed out of his crushed nose. He wasn’t going to be snorting any nose candy for a while.

  Carter heard voices in the hallway. The urgent pounding of footsteps. Medel burst into the room. He took one look at Vargas, spared Carter a quick glance, and then dropped down beside the kid to inspect his injuries.

  A few seconds later Langton, General Vargas and a handful of other guests came rushing inside. One of the maids gasped in shock. Medel shouted at someone to fetch towels and water. The kid groaned nasally.

  The general’s eyes narrowed to the width of coin slots. His face trembled with barely concealed rage.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ the general demanded.

  ‘He assaulted me,’ Vargas moaned. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘Shit, my nose . . . it hurts so bad.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Langton hissed. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  The general shot Carter an evil look. ‘Explain yourself.’

  You don’t fuck with us, the kid had said.

  We’re not the kind of people you want to mess with.

  Carter said, ‘It’s his fault. This cunt started it. He’s been on the cocaine all night, making threats and acting like the class idiot. He had it coming.’

  The general looked towards his son. Medel handed him a white towel and the kid pressed it to his nose, staunching the flow of blood. ‘Is this true, Fabian?’

  The kid shook his head groggily. ‘I was just showing him your collection. That’s all, I swear. Next thing I know, he hits me. Shit . . .’ He clamped his eyes shut against the pain.

  ‘Good God, man.’ Langton looked apoplectic. ‘What in the hell were you thinking? Have you gone completely mad?’

  Carter shook his head furiously. ‘This twat’s lying. He’s a cokehead, for fuck’s sake.’

  General Vargas was glowering at him. ‘You dare to strike my son, and then accuse him of being a liar? A decorated young officer, first in his class? This is an outrage!’

  Carter ground his teeth. He knew it was pointless to argue his case. There was no way the general was going to take the word of a British soldier over his own flesh and blood.

  The urgent buzz of a ringing phone broke the silence. Langton fished out his handset from his trouser pocket. Frowned at the number. He looked up at Carter and flared his nostrils.

  ‘Get out,’ he hissed. ‘For Chrissakes, man, get out.’

  Carter stood his ground for a long beat and stared daggers at the ambassador. He wasn’t surprised that Langton had taken sides with the general.

  The lucrative contract.

  Hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for Whitehall, potentially. Langton wouldn’t hesitate to throw Carter under the bus to salvage the deal.

  A few paces away Garrido and Medel were helping Fabian Vargas to his feet. The kid winced in pain, weeping softly as Medel examined his broken finger.

  ‘Leave, you bloody fool,’ Langton repeated. ‘Go home. We will talk later.’

  His phone was still buzzing.

  Langton muttered a curse under his breath. Then he gave his back to Carter and walked into the corridor to take the call. Carter brushed past him and quick-walked down the hallway towards the front door. Behind him, Langton was talking in a muted voice to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  Sod them.

  Sod them all.

  The valet was already waiting at the entrance with his car keys. Even as he fired up the Land Cruiser and pulled away from the front drive, Carter knew that his career in the Regiment was over.

  Langton would get straight on the blower to Hereford. Nutting a general’s son in his own house was bound to cause a diplomatic uproar back home. They’d stick Carter on the next flight to London. The training package would be cancelled. Probably the big arms contract too. They might even charge him with assault.

  Either way, he would be thrown out of the Regiment.

  Carter had served nine years as a Blade. Nine years of hard fighting in some of the most hostile places in the world. Getting the job done.

  Now my career is finished, he thought bitterly.

  So much for keeping my head down.

  Three

  Carter stayed angry for the short drive back to his rental apartment in north-eastern Santiago. Home. For the next few hours, at least. His pad was on the fifth floor of a whitewashed block, a fifteen-minute stroll from the British embassy. One of the older buildings in an area of aggressive development. The district was chock-full of gleaming skyscrapers, chain hotels and sushi restaurants. The grand nineteenth-century homes, run-down bars and high-rises were disappearing, slowly submerged beneath the steel-and-glass tide of progress. The same story the world over. The old giving way to the new.

  I know the feeling, Carter thought.

  Ten o’clock at night on a Thursday in early April. The streets were quiet. At this hour, the temperature was somewhere in the low single digits, and the few pedestrians were wrapped up in more layers than a wedding cake. Carter steered the Land Cruiser down the blacktopped ramp at the side of the residential block, dumped the wagon in the underground car park and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor.

  Carter had nothing to do but wait for the call from the embassy. Ten o’clock in Santiago was one in the morning in the UK. Langton would stay at the barbecue for a while, trying to patch things up with General Vargas before making the call to the Hereford duty officer. There would be a brief discussion with the head shed. Concerns would be aired. Conduct called into question. Following which he would be summoned to the embassy. There would be a brief formal conversation with the military attaché. Someone would hand Carter a ticket for the next available flight back home. He doubted anyone would miss him.