No Immunity

By Alan Hunt

November, 2003. The British Ambassador in Buenos Aires, Mark Wordsworth, is murdered on the eve of talks with the Argentine Government about the Falkland Islands. Were terrorists responsible? Or are there others who might have gained from Wordsworth’s death? 
His deputy, Jeremy Hawkins, hated him. But what of his widow, Ann, and her former lover, Julian De Crespigny, now Head of Foreign Office Personnel? Or Wordsworth’s successor, the apparently deeply devout William Grant? Also unclear is the role of the reclusive businessman, Angus Sterling, whose fortune is riding on a South Atlantic oil concession under threat from the negotiations. The police in Buenos Aires and London have made little progress when another death muddies the waters further. 
Adam White, Assistant Head of Security in the Foreign Office, sets out on his own independent enquiry under the watchful eye of his boss, James Carter. The trail takes Adam in search of the truth to Argentina and Chile and back to London before he makes his final, fateful return to Latin America. But Adam has not revealed everything about his past to his anxious lover, Alison Webster. What was his connection to Wordsworth..? 
Authoritative and gripping right up until the final shocking denouement, this debut novel by former diplomat Alan Hunt combines action and danger with perceptive insight into the nature of love and human fallibility. No Immunity is a riveting novel that will appeal to all thriller fans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781783066445

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Hunt is a former British diplomat who served in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and East Asia. He was Director of the Oxford University Foreign Service Programme for seven years and is now a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Copyright © 2014 Alan Hunt

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1783066 445

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For Meredith

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This story takes place in a fictional world between 2003 and 2004. It features recognisable places, institutions and titles (although the latter have, where feasible, been slightly changed), but the events and characters are imaginary: any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental.

The histories of Argentina and Chile, to which characters in the novel from time to time allude, are a matter of record. But nothing in this narrative bears any relationship to any person at the time in public service in either country.

ACH 27 November 2013

Contents

NOVEMBER

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

JANUARY

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

FEBRUARY

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

MARCH

CHAPTER 19

NOVEMBER

CHAPTER 1

The British Ambassador in Buenos Aires normally walked to work. The security experts in London disapproved of this practice and had sought to convince him of its dangers, but Mark Wordsworth was a stubborn man and had resisted all efforts to alter his chosen routine.

The ambassador lived in a fine, early twentieth century villa just off El Libertador, the chaotic, multi-lane avenue which linked the centre of the federal capital of Argentina to its well-heeled northern suburbs. The villa had extensive gardens, which were graced with majestic palms and mauve-blossomed jacaranda trees. From their branches came the repetitive, melodic song of rufous-bellied thrushes, intermingled with the imitative calls of mocking-birds and the occasional sharp cry of a great kiskadee, as it broke cover with a sudden flash of yellow and black plumage. At the far end of the gardens, largely masked by the thick foliage of the trees, stood a four-storey building, whose architectural style had been characterised by the previous ambassador as ‘late modern neo-vandalistic’. It was to this building, the British Embassy, that Mark Wordsworth strolled each day after he had breakfasted on the terrace, looking out on to the residence gardens.

The garden walls were high enough and sufficiently well-guarded to deter an attack on the ambassador at ground level. But the experts said that the duration of the walk, three minutes, was too long for him to be exposed to a possible assassin with a high-powered rifle located in one of the high-rise buildings in the vicinity. They insisted that Wordsworth vary his times of departure each day and avoid taking precisely the same route across the garden. Even when he humoured them in these matters, they left Wordsworth in no doubt that they would far prefer that he leave his residence by the front door, get immediately into a bullet-proof car and be borne round a series of side streets to the front entrance of the embassy. Wordsworth had felt obliged to ask them to get things into perspective – this was 2003, not the Argentina of the seventies; and, even if fear of al-Qaeda had come to dominate the consciousness of all Western governments, there were more obvious terrorist targets.

On this particular morning in early November, however, the ambassador was obliged to forsake his pleasant walk through the gardens. He had a very early appointment at the Foreign Ministry to finalise plans for high-level talks which were scheduled at the end of the month. He had therefore agreed with his political counsellor, Hawkins, that they should travel together in the Jaguar direct from the residence. He had kept the briefing papers, exceptionally, overnight in his private safe and now he removed them and placed them in his briefcase, which he locked with a key attached by a chain to his belt. He called a cursory farewell to his wife, who was lingering over her coffee on the terrace, and went down a set of stairs to the entrance lobby. Hawkins was not yet there and Wordsworth looked with irritation at his watch. This was an important meeting and he could not afford to be late.

The doorman, Miguel, came towards him and said, apologetically: "Disculpe, Excelencia. Mr Hawkins has just telephoned to say he has been delayed and will meet you at the Foreign Ministry."

The news angered Wordsworth, but did not entirely surprise him. Hawkins was not by nature an early riser and had proved unreliable in the past. Wordsworth had already had to warn him once about his unsatisfactory performance. He made a mental note to administer a further reprimand when they returned to the embassy after the meeting.

The doorman had opened the house door and was now pulling back the wrought iron gates in the exterior boundary wall. Looking through to the street, Wordsworth could see the waiting Jaguar. A few pink petals, shaken free by the light breeze, had fallen on to the car roof from the lapacho tree that stood immediately within the residence walls. The driver, Alfonso, was waiting by the open passenger door. Wordsworth calculated that it would take him, at most, four seconds to move from the house to the car and perhaps a further second to get into the car and close the door. Despite his generally insouciant approach to security he had to acknowledge that, compared to his normal routine, this morning’s procedure ought certainly to shorten the odds against a successful assassination attempt. With this thought he stepped out of the house and walked through the gates.

Wordsworth was a historian and well acquainted with the law of unintended consequences. As a young undergraduate at Cambridge he had written what his tutor had described as a masterly analysis of the actions of the main protagonists in the period immediately before the First World War – all intended to deter the enemy from resorting to military action, yet all contributing, in practice, to the inevitable outbreak of hostilities. He was also an essentially cerebral being, with little time for sentiment; the only humour that appealed to him was irony. So when the bullet hit him his immediate thought was that the security people would have a hard job explaining themselves back in London. The bullet struck him high on the right side of the chest, spinning him round so that he looked, momentarily, into the terrified face of the doorman, before his legs collapsed under him and he fell backwards on to the pavement. I must hang on to the briefcase, he thought, noting with detached interest that he felt no pain. He heard someone shouting and a further shot. Then the sun was blocked by a figure leaning over him. "Es el mío, creo," said the man, pulling the briefcase from his slack grasp. Curious, thought Wordsworth, not an Argentine accent. Much further north, somewhere in the Caribbean, probably. Then he felt the barrel of the gun at his temple.

CHAPTER 2

Alison Webster looked at her shivering, yawning reflection in the bathroom mirror and grimaced. As she confronted that fractionally too large mouth, the slightly crooked nose and the eyes which were undeniably a shade too close together, she wondered, not for the first time, why she had been blessed with her father’s looks and her mother’s temperament. Her mother was beautiful, but a shrew. Her father was, putting it generously, rugged, but he had the heart of an angel. The only person Alison knew who could match her father for good humour was Adam.

Thinking of Adam made her feel momentarily weak. It also made her focus on the business of getting ready. If they were meeting immediately after work she had to be sure that she at least started the day in reasonable shape. She showered, carefully dried her short, brown hair and then spent half an hour applying her make-up, until she was satisfied that she had done the best she could with nature’s endowment. Luckily, her skin was not too bad and she had a reasonable figure, although she had to watch her hips. She was twenty-eight, healthy and gainfully employed. She was also going out with a man who not only tolerated her moods but made love like a barbarian. Things could be a lot worse.

Alison put on black tights, a white, high-collared blouse and a charcoal grey suit. As she fastened her pearl earrings and adjusted the matching single string of pearls at her neck, her thoughts turned from Adam to the working day ahead. There were major corporate customers in from New York and she would be tied up with them all day, trying to iron out a particular tax issue they had encountered in their UK investment that had not been properly explained to them in advance by their accountants. Alison reflected on the fact that the law firm for which she worked probably made more money unravelling problems created by other so-called professional advisers than out of any other aspect of their business.

From her third-floor one-bedroom flat Alison could just see the early-morning rush-hour crowds pressing into Earls Court tube station. They all looked well wrapped up and some were carrying umbrellas. Alison swallowed the last piece of her toast and gulped down her coffee, before zipping up her boots and swinging a heavy woollen cape around her shoulders. She picked up a small attaché case and double-checked its contents: a copy of the relevant tax legislation; some neat, hand-written notes; a palm-top computer; a ball-point pen; a half-consumed packet of mints; a pack of tissues; a make-up bag; a change of underwear and a toothbrush. Then she wound a Burberry scarf around her head and went to work.

* * *

Please don’t go, not yet. The young woman’s thin, pinched face was deathly pale in the early morning light filtering through the filthy windowpane of the basement flat.

I must, he said, feeling helpless, as he always did at the moment of parting. We’ve an emergency at the office.

The girl did not seem fully to understand what he was saying. When will you come again? she said, sitting up and clutching the sheets around her skinny frame.

You should be all right for a while, Janet, he said. Call me any time if you’ve a problem.

You’re a good man, Adam.

Any time, Janet. I mean that.

* * *

James Carter laid the Argentine Federal Police photographs out on his desk to form a rectangle: six along the top, five down the side, thirty images in black and white. Four were different views of the front of the house, a French-style city villa in pale stone behind black iron gates. The latter stood ajar and some kind of banner hung from the spiked bars. There was a close-up of the banner, which bore the crudely scrawled words: ‘¡Las Malvinas son argentinas! MOVIMIENTO 2.4.1982’. There were three photographs of the Jaguar, taken from the street. The rest were of the bodies.

The two men had been photographed from every conceivable angle and distance, almost as though they had died repeatedly for the benefit of the photographer. Wordsworth lay on his back on the pavement, legs apart and arms flung wide, his head lolling in the gutter, like a drunk taking an impromptu siesta. There was blood on his face, under his head and all over his shirtfront. The driver, who had been shot in the throat, lay half in and half out of the car. His peaked cap had been knocked sideways but remained, comically, on his head.

James looked out into St. James’s Park. A fine drizzle was falling on the stragglers who were hurrying across the park to their offices in Whitehall. It was forecast to get colder during the day. When Ginny came home she would see that he had not advanced the central heating timer in anticipation. James began mentally to rehearse the fight they would have, but the telephone interrupted his thoughts. The Permanent Under-Secretary wanted a security situation report at her regular ten o’clock meeting. James called Adam White, his deputy.

Adam, can you pull together everything we’re doing about the Wordsworth assassination on one side of a piece of paper, please? I’ll need it by nine forty-five.

I can brief you orally much faster, if it’s all the same to you, said White. Ten years with the Foreign Office had not softened his Glaswegian accent, a fact which James found altogether admirable. Carter himself no longer betrayed any hint of his Lancashire origins, although he had made no particular effort to adapt the way he spoke. His accent had just somehow been eroded by constant exposure to the Oxbridge elite, which, in his early days, had still dominated the diplomatic service.

That’s as maybe, he said. But it’s for the Permanent Under-Secretary, so I’ll have it on paper, please.

James looked again at the reconstruction in the police report, based on the forensic evidence and the eye-witness accounts of the doorman and the residence police guard. The killer had been waiting down a side street on a motor cycle, emerging at the precise moment the ambassador stepped into the fatal no-man’s land between house and car. The killer had fired from a range of about four metres and had then dismounted and run towards where Wordsworth lay. The driver had tried to intervene and the man had shot him, before bending to put a bullet into Wordsworth’s head. Finally he had draped the banner on the gate and climbed back on the motorbike, disappearing down another side street. The residence guard had not even had time to get out of his police box.

James Carter had barely known Mark Wordsworth. He had briefed him on general security issues, as he did all newly appointed ambassadors. His impression then was that Wordsworth’s reputation for being aloof and unsympathetic was well deserved. Nevertheless the photos shocked him, and he felt a real surge of compassion for the driver. For a moment it actually obscured his anxiety about Ginny.

* * *

The Permanent Under-Secretary’s office had a different, superior view of the park. The vast room was filled with Victorian furniture and faded Persian carpets. Viceroys of India and long-dead royalty stared down from dingy, gilded frames at the assembled group of senior officials. An earlier Permanent Under-Secretary had tried to jazz up the decor with modern furniture and works by living British artists, but when Dame Gillian King had taken over she had quietly changed things back to how they had always been.

James had never fully understood how Dame Gillian had become Permanent Under-Secretary. She was highly intelligent (her affectionate nickname was ‘old laser-brain’) but if there was any steel behind her courteous, rather diffident exterior it was extremely well concealed. And in an era when Whitehall was dominated by resource accounting and asset re-cycling, she was far more at home offering ministers policy advice on the Middle East peace process, the future of NATO or the expansion of the European Union. The only explanation for her elevation which occurred to James was that, unlike her nearest rivals, she appeared to have no enemies. Being a woman had no doubt also helped.

Dame Gillian had evidently not slept much during the night. (But then none of us has, thought James.) Her face was grey and haggard, her eyes watery, but her voice was steady.

I’ll be brief because we’ve all got work to do, she said. I’ve just been with the Foreign Secretary. We’ve both spoken to Ann Wordsworth and she’s in very good heart in the circumstances.

I bet she is, thought James. It was an open secret that for years Ann and Mark Wordsworth had only been going through the motions.

I know that personnel are giving Ann all the help they can, continued Dame Gillian. Thank you for that, Julian. The head of personnel half-raised a chubby hand in acknowledgement. And Julian, let’s have a word afterwards about a memorial service. In the meantime, I wonder if I might just ask us all to pause for a minute in Mark’s memory.

The participants of the meeting all dutifully sat, listening to the solemn tick of the carriage clock on the Permanent Under-Secretary’s desk, and thought about Wordsworth.

At least, James assumed that was what the others did. He personally was in Caracas, fifteen years earlier. He was very drunk and dancing an impossibly complicated Latin American dance with the confidence only alcohol could bring. He was dancing with the new girl in Chancery. She was laughing and tossing her fair hair. You’re so funny, she kept saying. It’s so nice to meet someone funny. And then later, when they knew each other better, when she had seen him sober, she would say the opposite. You’re really serious. That’s what I like about you. I need someone serious in my life. But she did not really know what she needed. She was just looking for a man who was not Carlos, someone not passionate, romantic and spectacularly unfaithful. She thought she would be happy with somebody older, ordinary and reliable, and James had fitted the bill at the time. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be enough. Perhaps, who knows, if they had had another child…

James was conscious that Dame Gillian was speaking again. There are a number of operational issues which call for urgent decision, she said. These concern the overall security implications, the likely impact of all this on the talks with the Argentines and the related question of a successor for Mark. She turned to Carter. James, could you give us an update on security, please?

You’ve seen the telegrams, James said. But you won’t all have seen the detailed police report or the views of the intelligence agencies. It’s too soon to take a definitive view, but in the meantime we have to treat this as a politically motivated terrorist act. We’ve asked the Argentines for round-the-clock protection for the embassy and the British Council offices. They’ve also assigned two personal bodyguards to the Chargé d’Affaires and we’re looking urgently at the possibility of reinforcement from the UK. We’ve got one of our own people on a flight to Buenos Aires at the moment to liaise with the Argentine police and we’ve offered them assistance from Scotland Yard, which they’re thinking about. James paused and consulted his brief. We’ve also put out urgent guidance to all posts telling them to raise their security levels.

Any news yet on the briefcase? asked Dame Gillian. She knew the answer. It was her polite way of telling Carter he had missed something out.

No, said James. We’re assuming that the killer took it.

It would be very embarrassing if our negotiating position were leaked to the press – or the Argentine Government, if it comes to that, said Dame Gillian. What do we know about this terrorist group?

Nothing, James said. The Argentines say they’ve never heard of it. But these groups spring up all the time. It’s probably just a handful of madmen.

They may be madmen, said Dame Gillian, but their timing seems very calculated. Peter?

The director for Latin America, Peter Kandinsky, looked sombre. The mood in parliament is very touchy, he said. The government could face a vote of censure for even thinking about talks with the Argentines.

The Foreign Secretary was wondering whether the sensible thing might not be to put the talks off for a while, said Dame Gillian. Number Ten also seemed to be leaning that way.

But we need to tie up a package on fisheries conservation very soon now, said Kandinsky. And the oil companies are champing at the bit to get a full season’s drilling during the southern summer. If we can persuade the Argentines to make an unambiguous statement disavowing violence in support of their claim to the Falklands, we might just be able to square parliament and keep the press happy.

I agree we should do all we can to preserve the talks, said Dame Gillian. The Foreign Secretary will be speaking to his Argentine opposite number in two hours time. Let’s hope he can persuade him to say the right things.

Our other concern is that the embassy in Buenos Aires is under enormous pressure, said Kandinsky. If we’re serious about keeping the talks going, I really think we have to try to get a new ambassador there as soon as possible.

I agree, said Dame Gillian. Julian and I will put our heads together with you about this afterwards, Peter.

* * *

James Carter sat at his desk hacking his way through a pile of routine work. He knew that he should be concentrating on the assassination, but Adam White had it all under control and a lot of other things had piled up in the previous twenty-four hours which he could not simply ignore. There was a potential security risk among the junior staff in Moscow, a problem with the new strong room in Bangkok, a suicidal alcoholic in the Minister of State’s private office and a call for a new armoured car for Brasilia. On all these issues, and many more, James expressed a view, offered guidance, took a decision or sought higher authority. He had been doing it for nearly five years and hardly needed to engage his brain in the process. It was one more reason for Ginny’s disillusionment (I thought I’d married a future ambassador, not a pen-pusher). She’s right, of course, thought Carter. Head of security had been the only job available when they came back from Madrid and he had now been effectively shunted into a siding. It wasn’t really anybody’s fault – he had just got his timing wrong.

Adam White came in as James was reading through the implementation report of a security inspection they had, between them, carried out in diplomatic posts in Europe a few weeks earlier. White briefed James on the latest developments on Wordsworth. The Argentines had agreed to a reasonably forthcoming statement about non-use of violence and there was a chance the talks could be salvaged. There was still no trace of the Movimiento 2.4.1982, and the Argentine police had accepted the offer of help from Scotland Yard.

Personally I think there’s something very fishy about all this, White said, searching in vain with his little finger for a bit of his lunch that had got stuck behind his teeth. Carter watched him, fascinated. The Foreign Office was certainly not what it used to be, but then maybe that was not such a bad thing. White might look like a refugee from a 1990s boy band, but he was fast and clever, and irrepressibly good-natured. As far as James was concerned, Adam White had the ideal credentials to be his deputy.

They’ll find them, James said. The Argentines know what they’re doing. They just need time.

White shook his head. "I’m not