David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (26 page)

       
“So we’re dealing with
two supposedly impossible things,” the Deputy DG said, without interrupting the
even rotation of the clip. “A canister in a room where there should be no
canisters.
And
caesium
in a
canister, when all the
caesium
in the country is
apparently accounted for elsewhere.
There definitely was
caesium
in the canister?”

       
“Yes, sir,” Melissa
said. “The lab’s confirmed it.”

       
“Can we assume it was
connected to the current threat against the government?” he said.

       
“I never like to assume
anything,” she said. “But that does seem reasonable.”

       
“What have you done
about it?”

       
“The container was
removed for inspection, and the
caesium
is now under
guard at an army facility. A replica was put in its place in the vault,
complete with an invisible tracking device, and a wireless surveillance camera
has been installed which is independent of the hospital’s joke of a system.”

       
“Those are good moves,”
Chaston
said. “But the room was checked on the night of the
robbery. It was definitely empty. Photos were taken. I’ve seen them. There were
no canisters. So how could there be one last night?”

       
“Someone put it there,”
Melissa said.

       
“When?”

       
“Sometime after the photos
were taken.”

       
“That’s not helpful.”

       
“That’s as specific as
we can be, right now.”

       
“Why was it put there?”

       
“A couple of reasons, I
guess. One - can you think of a better place to store radioactive material than
a specially designed and secured vault? And two - it’s the last place anyone
would think to look.”

       
“But you thought to
look.”

       
“To be fair, Commander
Trevellyan
did. I thought he was insane, at the time. It
never would have occurred to me.”

       
“So what happened? Some
unidentified group had stolen some
caesium
, needed
somewhere to store it, heard about our break in, and figured the room at St
Joseph’s would be free? That’s ridiculous.”

       
Melissa shrugged.

       
“It is ridiculous,” I
said. “And it’s not what happened.”

       
“Where did the canister
come from, then?”
Chaston
said.

       
“St Joseph’s, itself. It
was stolen from the hospital.”

       
“No. Four canisters were
stolen, and they were all recovered.”

       
“That’s what you were
meant to think.”

       
“It’s true. We have CCTV
footage.
Scientists’ reports.
And
hospital documentation.
All the material was recovered. It’s a proven
fact, Commander.”

       
“What if there were two
thefts? One covering the other.”

       
“What does that mean?”

       
“Let me show you.”

       
I waited until Arthur
Hardwicke was watching, then pulled two pound coins out of my pocket and place
them on the table.

       
“See these coins?” I
said. “They’re my containers of
caesium
. They’re safe
in my vault. Now, Melissa, could you pass me a piece of paper, please?”

       
Melissa looked dubious,
but she did as I asked.

       
“This is actually an
official hospital document,” I said. “It confirms the total number of coins. It
says there are two. OK so far?”

       
Everyone nodded.

       
“Oh no,” I said, sliding
the two coins away with my right hand. “Look - the
caesium
is being stolen. And the CCTV camera in the hospital garden – the one in
the garden, notice, not the one outside the vault door - is recording the fact
that both coins have been taken.”

       
I slid the coins a
little further, and covered them with my right hand.

       
“Now where could they
be?” I said. “No one knows. The thieves have made a clean getaway. But wait.
The Security Service intervenes, and brings them both back.”

       
I lifted my right hand
and slid the coins back to where they’d started.

       
“Here they are, safe and
sound,” I said, picking up the piece of paper again. “Let’s just check with the
records.
 
Yes - both the coins accounted
for.”

       
I picked one of them up
and bit it gently with my front teeth.

       
“Now the scientific
analysis has been done,” I said. “And they haven’t been tampered with. So, we
definitely got back everything that was stolen.”

       
I slid them across the
table to
Chaston
.

       
“And from now on, we’ll
keep them at our back-up site,” I said.

       
Chaston
looked at me and scowled.

       
“What does that prove?”
he said.

       
“That you were looking
in the wrong place,” I said, lifting my left hand and revealing a third coin.
“What about this one?”

       
“Where did it come
from?” he said.

       
“I stole it a while ago
and kept it with the others. But then, a fireman accidentally took a chunk out
of my door with his axe. I knew there’d be an inspection, and I couldn’t risk
being caught with the extra when the technicians showed up to do the inventory.
So I needed a diversion. And quickly.”

       
“OK, stop. You’re theory
doesn’t hold water. The third coin couldn’t have stayed there the whole time
because we know the raiders completely cleared out the vault. I already told
you, we have photos.”

       
“I know. But there’s
something you didn’t see. While
everyone was distracted by
the four guys on the tape who carried off the exact amount that was supposed to
be there
, I put my fifth guy to work. He took the other suit and used it
to hide the balance of the
caesium
- the stuff I’d
stolen some time before - until the vault had been checked and photographed.
Then he put it back.”

       
Chaston
was leaning forward now, and I could see he was chewing on his lower lip.

       
“How much of this is
fact?” he said. “And how much is guesswork?”

       
“It’s mainly guesswork,”
I said. “But can you think of a more likely explanation?”

       
“Not off the top of my
head.”

       
“I think a more
important question is, how did they do it?” Melissa said. “The earlier theft.
Assuming there was one.”

       
“Well, nothing was
physically taken at that time,” I said. “The theft was basically done on paper.
They changed the amount of
caesium
people expected to
be there, not the amount that was actually there. So, the key must be the way
the records are kept.”

       
“OK. So, if someone
changed the records, we should be able to trace that.”

       
“I would hope so. I’ve
had experience with inventory falsification before, and what usually happens is
that fraudulent entries are hidden behind real events. You told me St Joseph’s
is some kind of hub for other hospitals, where they concentrate the contaminated
waste, or am I making that up?”

       
“No. That’s right. I
told you that.”

       
“Which means the most
vulnerable moment would probably be when the deliveries were being made. My
guess would be, someone didn’t record everything that came in.”

       
“How often?”

       
“I don’t know. It could
have happened once, with a whole batch. Or it could have happened over and
over, with a tiny bit skimmed off each time. Although that way, they’d need
someone to suit up and transfer it into their extra container, which might complicate
things. It would depend on who was cooking the books for them, I suppose,
because they’d want as few people involved as possible.”

       
“Do you believe the
first attack on the vault was unconnected, then, Commander?” Hardwicke said.

       
“No sir,” I said. “I
don’t believe it was some kind of precursor, as we originally thought. It was
the catalyst. It made the second attack necessary. But this in turn was not
designed to remove any
caesium
. It was undertaken to
cover up the fact there was too much.”

       
“And this excess
quantity was acquired through some kind of false accounting?”

       
“Yes sir.”

       
“Of which you’ve had
previous experience in unraveling?”

       
“Some, sir.”

       
“Good. In that case, I’d
like you to look at how this strange form of theft was carried out. And more
importantly, by whom.”

       
“Of course, sir.”

       
“Now
Trevellyan
,
given the other news we uncovered yesterday, and the imminence and scale of the
threat, one might expect this task to carry a lower priority. One would be mistaken.
You understand why, I take it?”

       
“I do, sir. The way in
which the second attack was launched reveals not just
a
knowledge
of hospital practice. It requires knowledge of MI5 procedures,
as well.”

       
“Good man. But wait.
There’s more. If your theory is correct, it completely negates our assumption
that we have tabs on all the
caesium
in the country.
More could have been stolen through the same method. It could be in terrorists’
hands already. They could be strapping it to a bomb as we speak. So. It’s imperative
that we find out who did what, when, and with how much. Is that clear?”

       
“Yes, sir.”

       
“Good. Wainwright will
help you. Now. Let’s return to the other matter. The threat. This informant
stated that the result of the planned attack would be to bring down the
government. Is that correct?”

       
“Yes sir,” Melissa said.

       
“I find that rather
strange.
To bring down the government.
How could they
hope to achieve that? Look at 9/11.
The London Tube bombs.
The Falkland Islands, and so on.
Politicians are fairly
adept at using such things to gain popularity, not lose it. Why would it be
different this time?”

       
No one spoke for over a
minute, and in the silence all eyes were drawn to Hardwicke’s relentlessly
spinning paperclip.

       
“What if the government
was known to be aware of a threat?” Jones said, eventually. “But did nothing to
avoid it. Or responded in such an incompetent way they lost the public’s
sympathy?”

       
“But we haven’t received
any threats,” Melissa said.

       
“No,” Hardwicke said.
“Not yet. But there’s still time.”

       
“Time?” Jones said.
“Let’s approach things from that angle, instead. The timescale. Three days,
yes?”

       
“That’s what the
informer told me yesterday,” Melissa said.

       
“So, two days now,”
Jones said. “What’s happening over the next two days?”

       
“Oh,”
Chaston
said. “Wait a minute. Melissa, let me ask you
something. Is there any way the informer could have said ‘close down,’ rather
than, ‘bring down?’
”

       
“No,” Melissa said.
“Definitely not. I heard him say ‘bring down.’”

       
“But what kind of state
was he in?”
Chaston
said. “He was in the process of
betraying his comrades, wasn’t he?”

       
“He was,” Melissa said.
“And he’d just been shot at, so you could say he was under a fair bit of
stress.”