Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (19 page)

“
I don’t like
murderers getting off scot free, so I’m going to give you a leg up
on your investigation.” He scooped a forkful of lamb and noodles
into his mouth and chewed slowly, clearly savouring the taste.
Downing a good mouthful of the house red, he continued.

“
Shouldn’t
really, you know. Red wine is one of the worst things for my
stomach. Anyway, let me tell you a story.” The MI5 man finished the
last mouthful of food, set down his cutlery and placed his elbows
on the table. He leaned in and spoke quietly, conspiratorially
even.

“
MI5 and MI6
are widely misunderstood, mainly because of the films and TV series
that show spies in a very adventurous light. Not so in reality.
Over ninety per cent of our people are desk bound, here or abroad.
They gather information, analyse it and decide if there is any
threat to us, or to our allies.

I wouldn’t say
this to anyone else but it’s all a bit of a sham, really. The
mystique and the fiction surrounding Five and Six help us to
maintain our budgets and give the impression that our spooks have
their hand on the tiller. We keep our jobs by persuading the
country that we are all safe as long as the security services are
keeping the terrorists at bay. I have no idea why the public
believe it. We couldn’t even control the IRA during the 1970s, and
there were only a handful of them just across the Irish
Sea.

Truth is, we
usually find out about terror threats and terrorist acts on CNN or
Sky News, same as you. We had four guys, full time, running
contacts in Eastern Europe, shelling out bribes to get the
specifications of the Ukrainian Hand Held Rocket launchers sought
after by Al Qaeda. They came up with nothing. Last August, an
edition of Jane’s Defence Weekly published the full specs,
capability and weaknesses. We now have an annual subscription that
gives us all fifty two copies a year for a hundred and ninety six
quid.

Don’t get me
wrong. Five do a good job, but we have a handful of analysts.
Jane’s alone have a hundred and thirty correspondents around the
world. CNN, Fox, Sky and BBC News have thousands. If we’re being
realistic, who is likely to get the news first?”

Dee couldn’t
work out whether she felt any more or less safe after hearing
Boyle’s rant.

“
For your
information. Miss AD 34792, does not exist. Neither the initial nor
the number relate to any individual in our employment, past or
present.”

Both Dee and
Scott looked puzzled. Either Boyle was lying, or, the MI5 email was
nonsense.

“
AD is code
for ‘avoid disclosure’ and 34792 is the finance code for funds
spent under the ‘special operations’ budget. The Special Operation
Group was disbanded when the Labour Government realised they would
not be getting back in.

The partial
fingerprint you found probably belongs to Gillian Davis, formerly
Special Operations, UK and Europe. She was predominantly a field
operative and her file is marked ‘HVA-S/O’. Before you ask, it
stands for High Value Asset – Strategic Control/
Offensive.”

“
Are we
talking a Licence to kill? Did she have a 00 rating?” DS Scott
joked. Boyle wasn’t amused.

“
Paul, Dee –
I’m being serious here. In essence, High Value Assets are used to
carry out assignments that save British or Allied lives. They may
take out the charismatic head of a terrorist organisation, hoping
that it can’t function without his military or religious
leadership. If they’re right, then numerous squaddies’ lives can be
saved because close engagement with that group never becomes
necessary.

Your suspect,
Gillian Davis, was strategically controlled whilst in the service;
that means that someone handled her, someone from very high up in
the command structure. That someone must have had the power to
order her to act offensively on behalf of the UK government. Then,
once ordered, she was free to kill or maim personnel and destroy
enemy assets or reputations at her discretion.

She could not,
however, decide her own targets. An HVA-S/O who picked their own
target or ignored orders would be severely disciplined and may well
not make it home.”

There had been
a lot to take in. Dee had promised herself a dessert, but now
didn’t feel in the mood.

“
How sure are
we that the print belongs to this Gillian Davis?” she
asked.

“
Well, the
partial print alone will convict no-one; it has fewer points of
comparison than we need to convince a judge. But add that to the
fact that your man was taken down by a very professional female
with a rare chemical or venom of some kind - typical spook
behaviour, by the way - and you have Gillian Davis.”

“
Has she used
this method of killing before?” DS Scott wondered out
loud.

“
Possibly.
The opposition don’t usually send us post mortem results. But a
quick look at her profile might help.”

Boyle reached
into his inside pocket and withdrew a sheet of A4 paper, folded
into three. He unfolded it to reveal the black and white picture of
a pretty fair-haired girl and lines of closely printed
text.

Dee and Paul
Scott read the sheet together, each holding one side of the
paper.

“
Hell’s
teeth, you’re good, Boyle. You need to get back to the Met. We need
guys like you. She has a BSc. in Chemistry, with honours, no less,
and a Masters in Forensic Chemistry! So, we let a pretty young
chemist loose on the world’s bad guys. Man, the glass ceiling is
well and truly shattered. It’s equal opportunities for all at
MI5.”

“
It does look
damning,” Dee contributed. “But what will you do if the police pick
her up and her bosses start looking for the leak?”

“
Don’t sweat
it, Dee. Her former boss - let’s just call him Barry - heads up
internal investigations and he couldn’t find a leak in his own
underpants. He fell from grace just before they shut down the
special operations team. It seems that he authorised the
destabilisation of that guy,” - he pointed to a picture on the
front page of the Times - “when he was running for his party’s
nomination.” The picture portrayed an imposing African American man
shaking hands with the Chinese Prime Minister, whilst standing at
the White House Podium in front of the Stars and
Stripes.

Dee and DS
Scott uttered the same expletive in unison.

***

It was late in
the evening when DS Scott finally returned Dee’s call, which he had
promised he would as they left the restaurant.

“
Dee, the
address we have on file for Davis is useless. The local
constabulary say that it’s a former gamekeeper’s lodge in the
grounds of a big house near Basingstoke in Hampshire. There are
dozens of people called Gillian Davis around the country, and
Facebook lists forty-six in London alone, none of whom look like
our girl. I’m sure we’ll find her, but it may take some
time.”

“
OK, Paul.
Let’s just hope we find her before MI5 do, otherwise she’ll never
see the witness box. The likelihood is that she will find herself
in a box of the terminally enclosed kind.”

“
You’re
probably right about that. We’ll work as fast as we can, but if
your computer genius - what’s his name?”

“
Simon?”

“
Yeah, that’s
him. Simon. If Simon can work his database magic while we’re doing
the legwork it would really help.”

“
OK, Paul.
He’s on the case as of now!”

***

Simon left
Dee’s office with his instructions. There would be hundreds of
women named Gillian Davis around the country, but it was likely
that he would find only one with her qualifications and skills, and
only one with her stunning good looks.

He sat down at
his console and ordered in pizza. He would work through the night,
grabbing what sleep he could in one of the office sleeping pods at
the end of the corridor.

Simon looked
like a geek, but a smartly dressed geek. Vastrick had standards
that applied to all, even the oddball IT types. Simon had a degree
and several other qualifications that suggested he could make any
computer sing and dance or recite a soliloquy of one’s choosing.
That description was not too far from the truth. The young analyst
typed in the name Gillian Davis, and ran his first combined
high-level search which interrogated the White Pages, the Electoral
Rolls and the Registers of Births and Marriages. His enquiry
returned over two hundred premium results. These were women of all
ages who matched the input data exactly.

Simon clicked
on the left hand bar of the results page and typed in Gillian
Davis’ age, then ticked the box +/- 5 years. The results were
instant, and the list narrowed to twenty-three premium
results.

He was just
five minutes into his ‘overnight’ search when he clicked on ‘show
only results with photos’.

There were
only five results, but he was quite certain that the person he was
looking for was showing at number one. Just to make sure, he
clicked on the hyperlink. It was her; there was no doubt in his
mind. Gillian Davis MD of Celebrato Cards was shown receiving the
Young Business Leader of the Year award at the London Chambers of
Commerce dinner in 2008, and the photograph captured the same
alluring face he had seen on the black and white print which Norrie
Boyle had supplied.

In another
twenty minutes the young analyst had found another six photos of
the suspect, including one of her being awarded a Prize for
Chemistry, along with an old press article from the Times,
explaining that the British Olympic Committee had ruled the young
Gillian Davis out of the National Rifle Team due to a recurrent
shoulder injury.

Simon hoped
that Dee had not left for home. He had taken less than thirty
minutes to do what Dee had thought would take a day. In forensic
computing you got lucky occasionally, finding the right data at
first pass rather than at the hundred and first pass. It was a bit
of a fluke, really, but Simon wouldn’t be telling his boss
that.

Chapter
29

The Aldwych,
London. Tuesday 9:40am

Tim used his
usual method of accessing the disused tube station, entering via
the Aldwych before descending down a narrow, and seriously
claustrophobic, steel staircase. At the bottom of the stairs lay a
small passageway, around two metres in length, leading to an old
wooden door. The staircase and passageway were only just wide
enough to accommodate a well-built individual; anyone seriously
overweight would be likely to become stuck.

The old wooden
door had a modern lock to which Tim had a key. He opened the door
and, before stepping down onto the track, he looked to make sure
that the safety bar was in place. Without that bar the third and
fourth rail would be live. Unlike other railway systems, the London
Underground has four rails. The first and second are in the lines
or tracks which carry the trains. The third rail is next to and
above the rail, and carries a direct positive current of four
hundred and twenty volts. The fourth rail is laid between the
tracks and carries the returning current of negative two hundred
and ten volts DC. Together these lines give six hundred and thirty
volts of traction. The third rail is a real risk to anyone walking
in the tunnel if it is live, and most engineers walk down the
tracks to avoid it, even when they know it isn’t
energised.

To add to the
risk, this old section of the Piccadilly Line had a cast iron
lining, rather than the concrete lining of later tunnels.
Naturally, electricity will pass into and along cast iron, given
the chance. Because a continuing charge in the cast iron lining is
dangerous and because it would lead to corrosion, the third rail is
placed sufficiently far away from the lining to prevent any chance
of the walls becoming live.

Tim had no
need to worry about all of this because the safety bar was in
place, cutting off the electricity to this section of the tunnel.
He wouldn’t have been tempted to use this route if that had not
been the case; one minor slip on the track bed and he might easily
make contact with the third rail, which carries more kick than the
electric chair used for executions in the USA.

The agent
walked toward the lights which illuminated the most recently
abandoned platform, sporting the traditional underground plaque of
a red ring split in two by a horizontal blue line bearing the
single word ALDWYCH. The lighting here was not particularly bright,
as the platform was lit for emergency use only, but it was enough
to allow him to see what he was doing. As he climbed onto the
platform he looked around. It was like entering a time capsule.
Although this platform had closed to the public in 1994, it had
been earmarked for closure for so long that it had not been
considered for a full refurbishment since the commencement of the
Second World War, which was good news for various filmmakers who
had used it on occasion when they required the backdrop of an old
wartime tube station for their latest drama.

Tim climbed
half a dozen wide tiled steps leading to a tiled circular tunnel
that served as a corridor to the lower lift lobby. He walked a few
yards along the shadowy corridor until he could see the two unused
lift shafts, their gates welded closed, and the spiral staircase
leading up to the entrance lobby. To his left he observed a dark
passageway, which ran in a left hand curve for a hundred meters
before literally hitting a brick wall. Beyond that brick wall lay
the original parallel platform which had opened in 1895 and closed
just a few years later in 1917 due to lack of patronage. The
platform, which bore the station name of STRAND on its underground
sign, had been reopened briefly during World War Two to provide
safe shelter for the City’s artworks and its people, but as Tim
passed the entrance to the dark chamber he calculated that it had
been resealed for over sixty five years. Since 1946 there had been
only one access point to the abandoned Strand Station platform, and
that was via the cover of the unused lift shaft in the ground level
lobby. The tactical support teams who used the station platform,
abandoned in 1994, for anti terrorist training would often compete
to see who could rappel to the1917 platform and climb back to
ground level quickest. MI5 and the SAS won the unofficial
competition, with the occasional policeman or emergency responder
coming a close second. Back in 2002 Tim had managed the
seventy-foot descent and climb in just over five minutes, way
behind the record. He shivered as he recalled the fetid, damp odour
of the platform, the cloying darkness, and the instant
claustrophobia of knowing all exits were sealed. It would make for
an eerie and uninviting tomb.