Agent of the State (6 page)

‘Because he’s highly surveillance-conscious and disciplined, following a strict routine.’

‘Until today, apparently,’ said Weatherall, turning her attention to updated surveillance images scrolling through the other screen. ‘He’s not carrying any bags. But he
is
wearing a quilted jacket, yes?’

‘A Puffa jacket, correct.’

‘Loose fitting. And what can you tell me about that, about his intentions?’

‘Well, to be honest, he did nothing unusual before he left the address.’

Alice interjected again. ‘ETA for the firearms team three minutes, rendezvous point the builders’ yard corner of Fentiman Road and Vauxhall Park.’

‘Thanks, Alice.’

Suddenly there was video of Jibril on the right screen. ‘Did you have sight of him all the time?’ asked Weatherall. ‘I mean continuously?’

‘Not every second, no.’

‘Quite. And certainly not inside the flat while he was getting dressed. There’s something around his waist, don’t you agree, Brian?’

Weatherall turned to Brian Perkins, one of the two uniforms she had brought with her. Perkins was Silver, her rostered deputy. Weatherall was a firm believer in deputies: they provided a convenient ditch to shovel the blame into when things came unstuck. A superintendent in Public Order Branch, Perkins found himself sitting beside Weatherall because he was on call that day for any critical incident. Beside him was Bronze, last in the chain of command, a fresh-faced chief inspector from Colindale, who already wore the look of fall-guy-in-waiting. Perkins opted for safety. ‘Difficult to tell. It’s a possibility.’

Weatherall swung back to Fargo. ‘Why did no one brief me about this operation?’

‘I can’t say, ma’am.’

‘I saw Mr Kerr tearing off somewhere early this morning. He is aware, presumably?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Definitely.’

‘So why isn’t he here?’

‘He’s mobile.’

‘Who’s in command on the ground?’

‘Mobile and on the ground, ma’am.’

‘He’s also supposed to be a manager. Tell him I want him in here.’

In the confines of the room Fargo felt the explosion of breath on his cheek. ‘He was on the way back when we got the alert. Went straight to the plot.’

‘Then get him on the link.’

Fargo turned to Alice, but she was already transmitting. ‘Alpha from Zulu, receiving, over?’

Kerr’s voice crackled back: ‘Go ahead.’

‘I have Gold for you.’ Alice flicked the comms to speaker.

Kerr was cruising along Effra Road, parallel to Brixton Hill and a few hundred metres from the plot. Traffic from the mainset crowded his thoughts because, in addition to Channel Five for the surveillance operation, he was also monitoring other Central units on Channel Eighteen as he awaited the call from the leader of the firearms teams, blue-lighting from their headquarters in the City. The Tactical Firearms Branch, known as CO19, had teams on standby 24/7. They were known as Trojans and used the call sign ‘Challenger’. The Trojans responded to any incident involving a firearm or deadly weapon and were routinely called upon to assist in counter-terrorism operations.

Weatherall came through on Five. Her voice was brittle, several notes too high, leaking anxiety into the calm stream of surveillance messages. ‘What’s going on down there? What are you doing there? Why the priority?’

The echo made Kerr cautious because it showed she was on the speaker. ‘Because of the provenance and the sourcing.’

‘But he’s done nothing for three days.’

Later, Fargo would tell Kerr of his astonishment at this. Weatherall had just suggested Jibril was carrying a bomb under his coat, but now she was suggesting he was low priority. Many of the new bosses camouflaged their inexperience by bullying the experts down the chain. ‘Aggressive indecision’ was how Kerr described it.

Now Jack Langton’s deep Geordie voice broke in: ‘Back-up three minutes from the plot.’

‘Received, confirm your units are carrying,’ said Kerr.

‘Yup.’

Kerr checked the time. The rest of the Red team, summoned by Langton to provide emergency support, had made it from Leyton in fourteen minutes. ‘Gold, I’ll call you on the landline.’ Kerr pressed the speed dial without a pause. ‘Jack, do you have the location, over?’

‘Still heading south on the eighty-eight towards Stockwell Underground, we have the bus in view. Melanie with him.’

Kerr could hear Weatherall’s insistent ‘Hello’ on the mobile. He cut the mike and spoke into the hands-free, his brain automatically processing the operational traffic.

‘Ma’am, this man’s total inactivity is the reason we have to treat this as urgent. He’s spent three days dry cleaning.’

‘What?’

‘Being evasive, trying to draw out surveillance. This morning he broke the pattern and we believe he’s out to do business.’

‘What do we know of his contacts?’

‘Nothing. That’s the point. That’s why I’m heading this up.’

‘Your job as a manager is to be here in the ops room, briefing me.’

Melanie’s voice crackled into Channel Five. ‘He’s off, off, off, and crossing the road. I’m with him, plus Red Three.’

‘Ma’am, can you stand by? I have to deal with this.’ Kerr cut the call without waiting for a reply. ‘Go ahead, Mel.’

‘He’s seen a northbound bus and he’s running hard for it, number two heading back towards Vauxhall station. He’s going in the opposite direction. Now heading north, repeat north, towards Vauxhall. This guy is totally paranoid. I’m dropping off.’

‘All received. Jack, he’s retracing his route, can your guys take this?’

‘Red Four, I’m on it.’ Red Four was a young linguist, fluent in French and Arabic, who had just been accepted for a post in the international-liaison section. His mike stayed open as he sprinted for the bus. ‘He’s going up . . . top deck . . . Shit, I need a mobile unit.’ They heard the officer banging on the door to the bus, and speaking to the driver. ‘Cheers, mate.’ Kerr realised he must have flashed his warrant card, not ideal for a surveillance officer. Then the breathless voice sank to a whisper: ‘I’m on.’

‘Good work,’ said Kerr, ‘and we need your exact location, so listen up, all units.’

The voice murmured back against the traffic noise. On the crowded bus, Red Four would be just another Brixton schizo whispering to himself. ‘South Lambeth Road, junction Lansdowne Way, heading north.’

‘All units, I want containment around Kennington Lane, Nine Elms and Albert Embankment,’ said Kerr. ‘And Vauxhall Bridge in case he takes us over the river. If you think he’s got his sights on Westminster, tell us. I don’t want anyone being shy. Link man at this time is Red Four.’

Kerr’s vehicle filled with twelve voices organising themselves along the route in staccato bursts. There was no need for call signs from people who worked together twelve or even twenty-four hours a day because each knew the other like family. Kerr redialled. ‘You wanted background, ma’am. The MI6 head of station in Yemen gave him to us Sunday afternoon, on the hurry-up.’

‘Not through proper channels, you mean?’

‘It was urgent because the target was about to travel.’

‘So without clearances, in other words.’

Kerr felt a stab of vulnerability: Weatherall was already looking for a way out if things went wrong. She was on what Alan Fargo called the ‘scapegoat shoot’, the survival sport of choice for any aspiring big cheese. Further down the line, Kerr calculated, he was going to need heavy-duty back-up from Joe Allenby in Yemen. For the present, he fell back on operational fundamentals: go with what you see. ‘I believe we need to develop this, ma’am,’ he said. ‘You’re getting as much as me. He’s all over the place, plus his erratic movements on the street over the past three days. It’s either counter-surveillance or the guy’s nuts. I go for the first. I believe he’s going for a meet.’

‘Or to make an attack.’

‘No, there’s been no preparation.’

‘But he’s wearing something under that jacket,’ Weatherall said, performing another somersault. ‘There’s something round his waist. Could be a bomb.’

‘No, I’ve checked with Steve Gibb in the observation post. Nothing abnormal about his clothing when he left the address. We need to let him run.’

‘And
I
have to minimise the risk.’

Channel Eighteen came to life. ‘This is Challenger One. I have two Trojan units at the RVP in Fentiman Road. We’re ready to deploy. Sit-rep, please.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kerr. ‘Change to Channel Five for current status. Subject is in South Lambeth Road north towards Vauxhall station.’ Kerr turned back to the phone. ‘Ma’am, the Trojan firearms teams are on standby at the rendezvous point and I need a moment to check this out for you . . . Melanie, Jack, any signs subject is carrying, over?’

‘The way he sprinted across the road I’d say no way,’ said Melanie.

‘This is Jack and I agree . . . stand by. All units, subject is off, off, off, and on foot. South Lambeth Road, still heading north, junction with . . . looks like Wyvil, repeat Wyvil, Road on the left, possibly going for Vauxhall Tube or Overground, Red Four remaining on the bus.’

There was the growl of a motorcycle. ‘I’m covering from Vauxhall station and standing by,’ said Langton.

Kerr spoke into his mobile. ‘Did you get all that, ma’am?’

‘Yes, and I’m not reassured, not at all. I want to know every movement.’

Kerr’s phone went dead, then Weatherall’s voice crackled into Channel Five. ‘Any officer, this is Gold. How far is this man from Vauxhall station?’

‘This is Jack. At the rate he’s walking I estimate four minutes plus.’

Kerr shook his head and spun the Alfa into Wandsworth Road.

In the ops room, Weatherall sat still, seemingly frozen with indecision. Then she turned to Fargo. ‘I’m going to need my Andromeda file.’

‘But he’s not armed, ma’am,’ said Fargo, leaning forward and opening the drawer in her console, ‘and not carrying anything.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ said Weatherall, flicking through the pages. Andromeda was the police strategy for taking out a suicide bomber, a policy that, as an assistant commissioner had once quipped to an incredulous journalist, ‘does what it says on the tin’. It changed the rules of engagement and was routinely described as a licence to kill. Police preferred ‘interdicting’ to ‘taking out’, and insisted on ‘incapacitate’ in place of ‘kill’. But in 2005 at Stockwell, less than a mile from the present operation, the tragedy of Jean Charles de Menezes had shown there could be only one outcome from such a strategy.

In horror, Fargo realised that Weatherall was seriously considering shooting their only lead. He felt the eyes of Alice and the two other comms operators on him, and knew they were all sharing his fear: the real risk of that catastrophe being repeated. Yet, to his side, Weatherall seemed blithely unaware of the implications. As she ran her finger down the menu of options, she might have been choosing a takeaway.

‘What do you think, Brian?’

Perkins leant forward, elbows on the console, shirt stretched against his gut, and stared down at his desktop. Beside him, the boy of a chief inspector had rolled his chair back against the wall. Fargo could already hear the sound of shit being shovelled.

For the first time silence enveloped them all. It was the moment of truth. ‘Brian?’

Perkins was scratching the back of his hand. ‘I think we should stop him.’

‘Challenger One,’ said Weatherall, into the mike.

‘Go ahead.’

‘I want you to . . .’ she began, then hesitated. ‘I want you to . . . Don’t let him get to the Underground.’

‘Gold from Challenger One, repeat, please. Are you directing Trojans to interdict, over?’

‘I said he must not get onto the Tube.’

‘Gold, what are your orders?’

‘It’s perfectly clear,’ she said, ‘so do whatever is necessary.’

‘Roger that, we are mobile and have visual.’

‘Gold, no way.’ Kerr’s voice crackled back immediately. ‘We need to let him run. It may not be the Tube. He may be taking the Overground. We have him contained and he’s our only lead.’

‘All received, John. Stand by,’ said Fargo, on Weatherall’s behalf, picking up on his friend’s urgency. Fargo knew about John Kerr’s involvement in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell, and was convinced the tragedy still troubled him. He also recalled Weatherall had studied the summary of the inquest into that terrible morning in 2005, which recorded Kerr’s detailed evidence. He felt deeply for his friend as he waited for Weatherall’s response. Could she be so lacking in wisdom as to override the judgement of the man who had actually been there?

Weatherall was looking to her right, but Perkins was examining his hand. Fargo counted seven seconds while she hesitated again and, as she lost control in a sea of ambiguity, he scrawled furiously, making sure he captured every word. ‘No. As you were, Challenger One,’ she finally blurted out. ‘I can’t take the chance he may be a suicide bomber.’

Kerr’s voice hit the room like a punch. ‘This is John Kerr. All Trojan units, stay back. Repeat, stay back. Jack, Melanie, bump him.’