Agent of the State (38 page)

‘Of course. No probs at all.’

‘Usual sensitivities apply, Mickey, naturally,’ murmured Canning, inclining his head to emphasise the gravity of the mission. ‘Can you make an excuse to your wife at such short notice?’

‘Totally, Sir Theo.’ Canning sensed a physical expansion in Baines as he absorbed the importance of his role: he actually seemed to be flexing his biceps. Canning sensed he was the worst kind of police braggart, for whom secrets and indiscreet whispers lurked cheek by jowl. Stories about his vanity and sexual harassment of young female analysts over rum and Coke in the Thames Barge were legion.

‘I want you to drive your own car and travel out through Dover,’ the chairman continued, ‘returning with the truck through Hull. Under no circumstances are you to call this office. For cover I want you to register three days’ leave, in case anyone is foolish enough to ask. Understood?’

‘Crystal.’

‘Thank you again, Mickey,’ said Canning, knowing he was seeing Baines for the last time. ‘This will not go unrecognised.’

Canning left the office as soon as Baines had gone. It looked like rain, so he took his umbrella. For crash calls Canning used Hyde Park because its openness made close-quarters surveillance impossible, and there were so many options for the approach. He took the Tube from Pimlico to Green Park, changing to the Piccadilly Line for the one stop to Hyde Park Corner. He entered the park, walked briskly west along Serpentine Road and carried on under the bridge, tracing the northern perimeter of Long Water. It was a tried and tested route. He timed things to reach his destination at 14.07 exactly.

‘Sorry, boss, hot intel,’ said Fargo, bowling into the Fishbowl with a glance at Kerr’s regular Monday pile of duty sheets and a wink at Melanie, ‘but I think you’re going to find this interesting.’

Kerr felt refreshed, having snatched a few hours on Sunday to rest and recover. As he had promised Robyn, he had called Gabi to invite her for lunch at one of the many pasta restaurants near the market. It was mid-morning but she sounded sleepy and began to gabble excuses about having other plans. He made it easy for her, apologising for the short notice.

Kerr had spotted Fargo out of the corner of his eye at the entrance to the main office, tieless with his sleeves untidily rolled up, hurrying along from 1830 with the padlocked security envelope he used for transporting secret documents around the office. ‘More paperwork. Nice,’ said Kerr, drily, as Fargo squeezed into the spare seat.

‘You heard about the missing child?’ said Fargo. ‘Eleven-year-old Sara Danbury, politician’s daughter, snatched after a dance class?’

‘I caught the headline,’ said Kerr, with a glance at Melanie.

‘Home Office is stirring the shit. Claire Grant’s been kicking the chief constable, demanding personal updates.’

‘So why should that have you sprinting out of 1830?’

‘You’re being a bit slow today, guys,’ said Fargo, nodding at Kerr’s desk again, ‘but I’ll let you off because it’s admin day. Grant is police and security, right? So what other office would that make her minister for?’

Melanie got there a second before Kerr. ‘Not counter-terrorism?’

‘The ultimate authority for Jibril’s entry visa,’ said Kerr.

Kerr had the blinds up today, so they sat in silence for a few moments watching the activity on the other side of the glass wall, assimilating what Fargo was saying. ‘OK, so Claire Grant’s been making herself busy,’ said Kerr, eventually, ‘and her name pops up twice on our radar . . .’

‘. . . the same day . . .’

‘. . . in different contexts. So what you’re giving me, Al, is what we call a coincidence.’

‘A linkage, which is what you pay me to make.’

‘But still conjecture, not fact. I mean, what are you saying here?’

‘I’ve been kicking things around and I’m still not absolutely sure,’ said Fargo. ‘But I suppose I’m asking you both to look at what we have.’ He stared at his hands for a moment, collecting his thoughts. ‘We have all this weird cover-up stuff around Ahmed Jibril, with a special UK entry visa authorised by one of Claire Grant’s offices. And you’re investigating the disappearance of a young girl from that house in Marston Street. Jibril’s flat and the house have a connection to Syrian extremism going back years. Now another girl goes missing and who do we find sniffing around the crime scene?’

‘Yeah, but that’s because the victim is a prominent MP’s daughter and Grant’s expressing, I dunno, parliamentary solidarity,’ said Melanie.

‘Or Grant is involved in everything. She’s the link.’ Reddening, Fargo stood up to go, tucking his shirt into his trousers. ‘I’m just trying to put the jigsaw together,’ he said defensively. ‘Tell me, boss, do you have anything better?’

All three were relieved when Kerr’s phone broke the silence. He picked up on the first ring. ‘Kerr . . . He’s here with me.’ Kerr handed the phone to Fargo. ‘Islamabad.’

Fargo listened intently, pausing occasionally to scribble something on the corner of Kerr’s yellow notepad. ‘Thanks for letting me know . . . Yes . . . Cheers.’

He handed the phone back to Kerr and exhaled. Fargo’s body was beginning to warm the air in the cubbyhole, reminding Kerr of the moments in the bus just before the terrorist bombs had exploded. ‘Theo Canning told you Joe Allenby resigned, right? Well, someone gave him duff info. Joe is dead. A gardener found him in his car, parked in a lock-up with a hosepipe from the exhaust. Poor sod never even got out of  Yemen.’

Forty-six

Tuesday, 25 September, 09.16, Kentish Town

On Tuesdays, operations permitting, Kerr would take work away from the Yard in a secure briefcase to concentrate on a particular case without interruption, sneaking to one of Dodge’s safe-houses. That morning he needed a couple of hours to review the intelligence from Room 1830 in peace and unearth any clues about Ahmed Jibril that Fargo might have overlooked.

For additional reading Fargo had brought him the current
BG
, or
Blue Global
, a monthly bulletin produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Classified ‘Secret’ and printed on light blue paper, the
BG
laid out British security assessments on key countries worldwide. Membership was restricted to a numbered circulation list headed by the Queen and the Prime Minister. Weatherall’s SO15 Intelligence Unit received two copies, both addressed to Room 1830.

Kerr spooked the surveillance around ten-fifteen, as he was driving along Eversholt Street, just north of Euston station. A dark blue Nissan Almeira had been with him at least since Trafalgar Square, and each time he made a dry-cleaning deviation, the car was there when he rejoined the main drag. It was driver-only, and Kerr could see him speaking into a mike on the hands-free.

This time Kerr would not need a computer check to tell him the watchers belonged to the Anti-corruption Unit. As he anticipated, the traffic came to a standstill along Kentish Town Road, with cars parked each side of the roadway and buses scarcely able to pass each other. In the tailback from the red light just before Fortess Road he cut the engine, ran back two cars to the Nissan, and climbed into the passenger seat before the driver could react.

‘Shouldn’t you be out chasing criminals,’ asked Kerr mildly, ‘and keeping your doors locked?’

The driver was in his mid-twenties, dressed in jeans and black leather jacket, frantically checking his mirrors as he snapped the glove compartment shut to hide a miniature tracking screen. ‘What the hell? Piss off.’

‘DCI John Kerr,’ Kerr said, flashing his ID, ‘but you know that, don’t you?’ He pretended not to have noticed the screen, which told him they must have attached a tracker to the underside of his Alfa.

‘Get out of the car. Now!’

The driver looked vaguely familiar, but Kerr was searching for definitive evidence of police involvement. He spotted a Met Police time sheet, a mainset with a bog-standard serial number, and a chequered baseball cap for emergency ID tucked down the side of the seat. He checked the wing mirror. ‘Why is Anti-corruption following me?’ he demanded, watching a young woman in standard plain-clothes jeans and sweatshirt get out of a green VW Passat three cars back and begin urgently speaking to herself. ‘You and your lovely assistant, the one calling you up on her throat mike?’

The rubber-heeler tried to sound hard. ‘I’m telling you, leave now or you’re nicked.’

‘I don’t think your commander would want that,’ said Kerr, noticing the traffic ahead begin to free up, ‘not after all we’ve done for you.’ He got out of the car and ran round to the driver’s window. ‘But here’s something you can tell your bosses,’ he said to the startled surveillance officer, reaching in to remove the keys from the ignition. ‘Either put up, or get off my back.’

As the driver hesitated, Kerr dropped the keys into the nearest drain, trotted back to the Alfa and drove off. Horns surged and lights flashed behind the surveillance vehicle as Kerr accelerated into the clear road.

He turned into a side-street, parked behind an unattended truck with Newcastle registration plates, and checked the underside of his car. He found the tracker within seconds, exactly where he had expected it to be. It was a magnetic device known as a ‘lump’, the type Jack Langton and Justin had consigned to the crusher years ago. Kerr couldn’t believe the officers’ stupidity in following him so closely when they could have relied on the signal from the tracker. He quickly removed the device, clamped it to the underside of the truck and drove off, doubling back around Parliament Hill Fields towards Kentish Town Road.

The safe-house was in the roof of a three-storey villa just off the high street. It had a small living room and bedroom with tiny kitchen and bathroom, but it was cleaned regularly and there was enough frozen food to last a couple of days.

Kerr unlocked the briefcase, set his laptop on the living-room table, made a mug of black coffee and organised his papers to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof.

He worked on the time-specific operational material first, then picked up the
Blue Global
. He scanned the key political judgements about the countries most susceptible to terrorism, particularly from Al Qaeda, and depressing summaries of reverses in the Middle East. In the Appendix there was a Foreign and Commonwealth Office summary of live political issues under consideration by its Europe Department. There was a paragraph on the state of the euro and farming subsidies, an assessment of continuing economic instability in Greece, and a section on what officials judged might be a crucial milestone in Turkey’s long, faltering journey towards full EU membership.

He spent the next forty minutes skimming the regular batch of routine confidential threat assessments, circulars and intelligence briefings. There was a critical status review of Contest, the British government’s international counter-terrorism strategy, and a domestic security paper from MI5.

It was only when he broke off to make more coffee that bells started ringing in his head. Had he been in his office at the Yard, swamped by the daily frenetic email and telephone traffic, it was unlikely he would ever have made the connections. He flicked off the kettle and raced back to the table, riffling through the
Blue Global
Appendix until he found the section on Turkey. Marked ‘Secret – UK Eyes Only’, it was a single paragraph disclosing discussions scheduled for Monday, 1 October, in London between British ministers and senior EU officials to assess Turkey’s political and economic prospects within the enlarged European Union. But it was the heading that really grabbed Kerr’s attention: ‘Europe Department – Turkey Assimilation’, followed by a bracketed FCO link ‘ED-TA’.

He needed Fargo to help him make sense of things. His friend picked up on the first ring. ‘Al, I think I just unravelled ED - TA,’ said Kerr. ‘Check out your
BG
, page fifty-three in the Appendix. Look at the header.’

He heard rustling, then a low whistle as Fargo skimmed the text. ‘And Jibril’s code is “ED - TA minus four”. If that’s an operational order, four days back from the first of October sets the next attack next Thursday. Is this all about scuppering Turkey in Europe?’

‘An attack linked to Turkey gives the press all weekend to sabotage any EU aspirations. If we’re right about this, we have less than forty-eight hours,’ said Kerr.

‘And these talks are secret,’ said Fargo. ‘So, are we saying they blackmailed Attwell for the date?’

‘I think it’s likely, yes.’

‘Right.’

Kerr heard Fargo take a deep breath. Then there was silence as both men absorbed the implications. Kerr’s mind was suddenly a kaleidoscope of competing thoughts. They whirled him from his rescue of Melanie at Hackney, through Robyn’s information about children trafficked for sex and the terrible image of child rape in Knightsbridge. And when those images faded he found himself wrestling to explain why a Home Office minister should show such personal interest in the kidnap of a young British girl. Every lead, from Jibril’s safe-house to the fate of several young girls, to the compromise and blackmail of Robert Attwell, took him back to Marston Street. And when the churning stopped and his mind settled, he realised there was a gap.

‘While you’re on, Al, did you get the readout on that Russian’s call log?’

‘Yeah, an hour ago but I didn’t want to disturb you. Most of it confirms what we already knew from Karl. Calls into the Russian trade delegation in Highgate, a couple to the London embassy, one incoming from Moscow while he was resting up at the Dorchester. Sorry to disappoint you, John, but there’s nothing startling about Anatoli Rigov.’