Free The Vengeance Man by John Macrae Page A

dumped everything on you. If they could have got a bunch of Air Marshals  to call it 'pilot error' they couldn't have been more obvious.”
    "Why?  What's all the fuss?  I really don't understand.  I thought I did a good job”
    "Oh, you did.   In the States Langley and the National Security Agency  are cooing like doves over the communications stuff you brought back: they are drooling over it. Director GCHQ has even been thanked by the Foreign Secretary personally, " he added dryly.
    "GCHQ?  Cheltenham?  What did they have to do with it?"
    Peters smiled; "It's the old thing isn't it?  Everyone likes to take the credit - but nobody's around to take the blame."
    "So I flog my guts out---literally---across the border inside Iran to get classified signals stuff and Cheltenham's chairwallahs take the credit?  And leave me to take all the blame?   I can’t believe it. It wasn't even their op.   I don't understand it."
    He looked at me sympathetically.  "No. I don't expect you do." He looked  at Tony.  "Didn't Tony tell you the story?"
    I muttered something about embarrassment in the Cabinet Office. Peters grinned.  "Embarrassment? That's an understatement.  After the questions in Parliament,  some of the suits wanted to bring charges against you.  The Attorney General even wrote to the Minister, demanding that some action be taken against you. And the Sigint boys couldn't exactly stand up and say, 'It's all right, he's really a hero because he's given us the key to read all Iran’s tactical codes and ciphers, can they?  No, you've got to disappear for a bit, until the fuss dies down. You do understand that, don't you?"
    I nodded, dumbly.  He went on.
    "The bottom line is that the MOD, under pressure from those media freaks and pooftahs in Number Ten wants you fired. Now .  Mainly because they're being squeezed in the media over deniable operations, and HMG's image does not include deniable operations nowadays. Especially ones for our American friends. Bad for the PM’s image. After that Libyan fuck up the PM is a bit sensitive, apparently.  Something to do with our supposedly ethical foreign policy, apparently.  Whatever that   may be," he added dr y ly.  "The rumour is that the PM has even had to lie to the media about you, and he is mightily pissed off.  Especially as the press know bloody well what went on – or think they do. Something to do with his squeaky clean image, I am given to understand by those who deal in these exalted matters.  And what with these Five and Six narks spreading their revelations all over the Internet, and the press still sniffing around for the big story that will prove that the government are a bunch of corrupt chancers playing poodle to the White House, you can see that we are none of us Whitehall's favourite organisation.  And you are most certainly not their favourite son. By a long chalk."
    I suddenly realised that Director Special Forces was risking his neck for me. If what he was saying was true, then many another senior officer would have washed his hands of me.  Senior service officers with an eye on the future were notoriously disloyal - except to their own careers.  You only had to look at some of the creeps who made it to the Army Board.
    He went on;   "…Most of Whitehall would just like to drop you down a big hole and pretend that you never existed.  The only thing that's keep i ng them back is the knowledge that I have insisted that you are given a fair hearing; and that means publicity.  They don't like that." His gaze ran to the window and the little puffy white clouds high up.  "Not even the Attorney General.  A court martial would attract publicity. And they aren't keen on publicity; it's the wrong kind, apparently. And we still have some friends in the media who would kill to get their hands on a story about the SAS doing stuff off the record for spin-doctors inside Number Ten who’re really running the country on behalf of the