Agent of the State (31 page)

‘Karl Sergeyev, you are pissed, you can hardly see straight, and you look and sound ridiculous.’ Olga stood in front of him, drying her breasts and underarms. ‘And you think I want to screw your new boss, is that it? You think I am that crazy?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Karl, rubbing his temples in pain. A couple of the older guys from Special Branch days with grown-up kids and tolerant wives had stayed till chucking-out time. He had bought double shots of vodka for two of the locals from Ashburn House round the corner and then, from habit, almost caught the last train to the home he had shared with Nancy.

‘Don’t be such a big cry-baby,’ said Olga, vigorously towelling her hair. She walked away and he heard her flick the kettle on. ‘And don’t forget who got you your stupid job.’

The little man in Karl’s head went to work with a hammer again as he bent to put his shoes back on. There was a dried spattering of something on the toecaps: why did vomit always look like tomato skins? He downed the last of his coffee and whipped his jacket off the back of the chair. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘Go find Tania,’ came the shout from the kitchen, like a bullet. The door slammed as she switched the hairdryer to top speed.

Thirty-five

Wednesday, 19 September, 11.34, Berkeley Square, Mayfair

Three days after the Sunday-afternoon meeting at his apartment, Kerr summoned the team for another secret update away from the Yard. One thing was certain: as he moved against the establishment, association with John Kerr would become toxic. It made him acutely conscious of the need to protect his gifted officers, who were laying their ambitions on the line.

Six days after the bombings the media were still cranked into Doomsday mode. Spurred on by Finch and off-the-record MI5 briefings, reporters were speculating that the explosions were the first in a new series of planned Al Qaeda attacks by terrorists embedded in the UK. And because a climate of fear was good for security budgets, the message ringing out from New Scotland Yard and Thames House was not if, but when.

Everything Kerr’s team was unearthing convinced him that Ahmed Jibril, the man Finch had released as an innocent, was one of those embedded, perhaps the prime suspect, with the suicide bombers disposable cannon fodder. The energy Philippa Harrington and his own bosses used to condemn him only served to strengthen that belief. And the cryptic note left for Jibril by Julia Bakkour propelled suspicion into conviction: ‘Suit delivery 4.30 on day instructed. Fitting in Afghan shop not Saudi. Await confirm call.’

To Kerr and Alan Fargo, unravelling this message took absolute priority with the first code recovered from the water heater in Jibril’s tiny kitchen: ‘13 + ED-TA - 4’. They shared the same conviction: Justin had recovered two linked operational instructions giving notice of another pre-planned terrorist attack. And they assumed that the trigger for this attack would be Omar Taleb, the man who had called Jibril minutes before he left the safe-house on the day of the suicide bombings.

Fargo had secretly circulated Taleb’s name to contacts in intelligence agencies throughout Europe, but with no result. He had searched every legal directory he could lay his hands on in Europe and the Middle East, but nowhere did the name of attorney Omar Taleb appear. Gaps in knowledge were anathema to the head of Room 1830. They always increased his anxiety, and he knew the time remaining to prevent more bloodshed might be very short. Fargo had already circulated the note to each of his team individually, asking for urgent ideas, to see if they came up with the same possibilities. There was one common thread in their feedback: ‘suit fitting’ was the type of code terrorists often used to trigger attacks.

One of Kerr’s neighbours in his Islington apartment block was head of business-space investment at a classy property company in Mayfair. It took a single call that morning for him to make one of his ground-floor meeting rooms available to Kerr, no questions asked. The company was based in Curzon Street, less than twenty metres from the old MI5 headquarters, and the contrast to the Yard could not have been starker. The complex was low-build, clean, modern and minimalist, all glass, stainless steel and black wood, with fresh coffee, sparkling water and Diet Coke laid on in meeting room G3.

Reception had five visitor passes made out for them in false names invented by Kerr. They arrived separately. Melanie was first, businesslike in a charcoal grey suit and white blouse, ready for another meeting that afternoon. Justin turned up five minutes later in his customary denims, trainers and woollen ski hat: even pulled low over his ears, it did not quite cover the plaster protecting his head wound. Langton came straight from the surveillance plot in East Ham and sat in his motorcycle leathers with the helmet on the ash-wood table, the unzipped top spilling down over his waist.

Kerr was late. Since spotting the surveillance outside Theo Canning’s headquarters, he had slipped back into the dry-cleaning methods he had routinely deployed as an undercover officer years before, taking a circuitous route from the Yard. He spotted nothing suspicious, but was not reassured. The surveillance was either very good, or the watchers knew he had checked their vehicle on the Police National Computer and were holding back. Either would be bad news.

The only absentee was Alan Fargo, who rang Kerr from 1830 when they were already assembled. Kerr thought he sounded anxious, or just excited. He told Kerr he had just taken a call from Islamabad and was awaiting results on a couple of important leads, but would definitely be along. He wanted Kerr to keep everyone there until he arrived.

Langton reacted instantly when Kerr reported Willie Duncan’s claim the previous evening that A4 surveillance were covering Jibril. ‘That’s bullshit, John,’ he said, his leathers squeaking and farting on the chair as he leant forward. ‘Jibril’s only left that safe-house twice since release. If Willie’s A4 teams were anywhere near we’d have flushed them. So why is Willie standing in that church lying to you?’

‘Perhaps I took him by surprise. Maybe he got the MI5 spin all wrong. Whatever, we stay with it, Jack.’

‘Sure.’ Jack looked at the others. ‘And now we’re all dying to hear about your river trip.’

Kerr popped a Diet Coke and shot a glance at Melanie. ‘Guys, you’re not gonna believe it.’

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in King Charles Street stretches from St James’s Park to Whitehall, a fading white monument to an era when Britain ruled the world and international borders were decided over whisky in Pall Mall clubs only a stroll away. As John Kerr walked the team through his meeting with Kestrel on the Thames, culminating in his agent’s bizarre escape, Alan Fargo was hurrying there across St James’s Park, in hot pursuit of his best lead yet.

The previous winter Fargo had spent a month assisting the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Counter-terrorism Policy Unit, omitting to hand in his photo-pass when he returned to 1830. Fargo was acquainted with the warren of haphazard offices, staircases and corridors converted into open-plan offices, and friendly with the custodians who protected them. As he reached the top of Clive Steps he took the laminated pass from his pocket and looped the distinctive blue ribbon around his neck. The pass bounced off his stomach as he hurried through the arch into the inner courtyard, originally designed to accommodate horse-drawn carriages but now abused as a car park for the privileged. The custodian by Reception told him it was long time no see, and flashed him through.

Fargo checked his watch: 12.03. The policy unit held a weekly meeting at eleven-thirty each Wednesday in one of the conference rooms, lasting exactly one hour. This gave him a window of twenty minutes tops.

The department had about eight staff spread out in a jumble of disconnected offices on the second floor. Fargo’s objective was tucked away in a separate room in the roof, reached by its own staircase. Access was through a heavy oak door with its original brass handle, protected by an old-fashioned four-button coded lock. Fargo was banking that no one would have thought to change it.

To reach his old office Fargo had to walk to the other end of the building nearest the park, then climb two flights to reach a landing almost two metres wide. It would take him six minutes, which left him only fourteen to find what he needed and get away.

The corridor to the right of the staircase led to the department’s small conference room, where Fargo was relieved to see the ‘Engaged’ sign on the door. Beside it, a short staircase led to a kind of attic, which housed the document room; once committed, there was no other way out. The staircase took one turn back on itself, concealing Fargo from the main corridor, and the locked door was less than a metre from the top step. The combination was 5231. Puffing from the climb, he had to make two attempts because the buttons were so worn, and the door handle had lost traction through a century of use.

Inside, six desks were crammed into an office large enough for two, built into the sloping roof. It was even more claustrophobic than he remembered. The stale air, desktops with locked screens, jackets on the backs of chairs, rucksacks and scattered papers were signs of very recent occupancy. At the farthest end, in a section beyond the far wall where Fargo had based himself, three secure steel cabinets with combination locks shared space with a photocopier and a shredder. The doors were closed, but Fargo guessed the locks would have been left ‘on the click’, a lazy habit that enabled the next user to open each safe with a single half-turn anti-clockwise.

The cabinet Fargo needed stood in the left corner, marked ‘UK Entry Documentation’. He switched the photocopier on, carefully turned the combination dial until he heard a satisfying click, and pulled open both doors. It was stacked with box files and loose folders, a memorial to the pre-computer age, with no reference to global region or date.

The photocopier was warming up noisily, masking any signs of activity from the staircase. He moved the boxes around until he found a ring binder marked ‘Yemen and Ethiopia’ hidden on the bottom shelf. The file was overfull, the rings forced apart so that a few papers became dislodged as he lifted it onto the nearest desk and riffled through. Fargo knew these were the papers flown back to London by diplomatic bag. Each document contained original handwritten notes of the entry-control officers at the embassies in Sana’a and Addis Ababa, with the visa decision marked at the foot. Batches of documents had been inserted in rough date order, with no alphabetical index. Fargo sprang the ring lever, removed some papers and worked back ten days.

He found what he wanted in less than thirty seconds. The document relating to his target was buried in a clump of regular applications and confirmed everything his contact in Islamabad had told him. It was a photocopied letter occupying three paragraphs on Home Office notepaper, initials only. Headed ‘Special Access Visa Authorisation (SAVA)’, it was a requirement for the issue of a student visa to Ahmed Mohammed Jibril, who would attend the embassy with his passport on Thursday, 6 September. There were unreadable initials where the authorising signature should have been.

The photocopier was ready. Fargo placed the letter on the glass, whipped it away as soon as the light went out and replaced it in the file. He stuffed the copy into his jacket and checked his watch: 12:19. He replaced the papers in the ring binder, squeezed it back into the bottom shelf and closed the doors, locking the combination with a gentle half-turn to the right.

There was laughter on the other side of the ‘Engaged’ sign as he hurried down the stairs, a warning that the meeting was breaking up early. The door flew open as he turned away down the corridor, releasing a swell of voices. He waited for someone to recognise him from the back and call his name, but instead the voices receded up the stairs.

In the broadest stretch of corridor, by the gallery bordering the Locarno Room, he speed-dialled Kerr. ‘John, I’m ten minutes away.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Can you hold onto them till I get there? Everyone needs to see this.’

While they waited for Fargo, Kerr asked Melanie what she had managed to find out about Pamela Masters, Kestrel’s former associate at MI5.

Melanie remembered everything by heart. Masters was in her late forties and single. Graduating in 1979 from Sussex University with a BA Honours in English, she had worked for a charity in Kenya for a couple of years before being recruited to the Security Service. After a period in F Branch, the MI5 section dealing with domestic subversion, in 1988 she had won a secondment to a newly formed joint team within MI6, then returned to Thames House for the rest of her career. Melanie confirmed she had resigned eighteen months ago to become a teacher at St Benedict’s Independent School for Girls, ten miles west of Windsor. Her recent appointment as head of English entitled her to occupy a flat in the school grounds.

‘What was the reaction when you rang her?’ asked Kerr.

‘Aggressive, refused to meet point-blank, told me to bloody piss off, her words not mine, and cut the call. So Justin and I are driving out to see her straight from here. Car’s parked outside. Oh, and she had a child, by the way. Lucy Ann, born 1991.’

‘Father?’

‘Not shown. She died in infancy,’ said Melanie, checking her watch. She collected her things together, tapped Justin on the knee and stood up. ‘And we have to get going. Can you tell Alan we’ll touch base with him later?’

They collided with Fargo at the smoked-glass door. He was in a rush, wearing a green ribbon this time, the visitor pass facing the wrong way, shirt front damp with sweat. ‘You have to hear this, guys,’ he said, corralling them back into the room. ‘Two minutes, then I’ll let you go.’