David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (32 page)

       
“I think it’s pretty
obvious, don’t you?” he said. “An interrogation? A punishment? An execution?
Take your pick.”

       
“What makes someone do
this?” Melissa said.

       
The technician just
shrugged.

       
“I mean, what makes a
person capable of doing this?” Melissa said. “Are they uniquely twisted? Or is it
something in their blood?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When Melissa told me another progress meeting had been scheduled for
the following morning, I started to worry. I could see an abyss opening up at
our feet, and another fruitless NATO exercise – No Action Talk Only, as
one of my old instructors used to say – lying in wait for us in its rocky
depths. But when I reached Thames House and made my way upstairs to our usual
meeting room, I found my concern was premature. Only Melissa and Jones were there.
The others were spread out across London, following through with their various
actions from our previous session. The meeting was being replaced with a
conference call, apparently. Which would have been doubly fine if they’d
thought to tell us before we’d done battle with the morning’s traffic.

       
Melissa reached across
and pulled the spider phone to our side of the table so she wouldn’t have to
raise her voice when she spoke, but for the first twenty minutes she needn’t
have bothered. The others had been busy, and had plenty to say about the gaps
they’d found in the security arrangements at the Houses of Parliament. The
revised precautions they were implementing. The discussions they were having
with the Queen’s protection detail, and the difficulty of persuading her
bodyguards to change their existing procedures.

       
The only area where
limited progress had been made was in investigating the group that
Leckie’s
informer had penetrated. None of the existing
network of informers could throw any light on them, and GCHQ had been unable to
uncover anything on any phone networks, email, or
internet
interactions that Melissa hadn’t already found out. So when she did finally get
the chance to report, the satisfaction of having uncovered how the
caesium
was stolen was outweighed by the disappointment
that the only two people definitely known to be involved had been killed.

       
“This is very worrying,”
Hardwicke
said when Melissa had relayed the last of
her information, speaking for the first time and nearly deafening everyone with
a blast of background traffic noise as he took his phone off mute. “The fact
that another batch of
caesium
is in the wrong hands
is extremely serious. But panic will serve no one’s interests - other than the
wrongdoers.
Chaston
?”

       
“Here, sir,” Melissa’s
boss said.

       
“If the bath is
overflowing, what’s the first thing you do?”

       
“Turn off the tap.”

       
“Correct. So, now that
we know the procedure has been compromised, there are to be no further
transfers of hospital waste until further notice. Take care of that, will you?”

       
“Sir.”

       
“We’re making good
progress on most fronts, but there is zero room for complacency. The existing
precautions are good. We’re making them better. But in a day’s time, they’ll be
tested. We need to pass that test. And our efforts to penetrate the suspect
group - they need to be redoubled. Also, I want to know why GCHQ hasn’t turned
anything up about the additional material we now know to be out there.”

       
“I’ll chase them up,
sir,”
Chaston
said.

       
“Good. Wainwright?”

       
“Sir?” Melissa said.

       
“Our deceased friends
from the hospital? Good work uncovering them. Now, stay on that tack. It’s
clear that Sole recruited
Shakram
, but who recruited
Sole? Did it happen before he worked at the hospital, or once he was there? Who
was his contact? How did he get his instructions? I want the link back to al-
Aqsaba’a
nailed down and clearly understood.”

       
“Yes, sir,” Melissa
said. “And sir? Another thing occurs to me, coming out of what we found.”

       
“I see. What is it?”

       
“Well, they stole two
separate batches of
caesium
. After the business with
the fire, they stored it in two separate places. Or maybe it was always kept
separate. But my question is, does this mean they’re aiming for twice the
damage? Or are they going after two separate targets?”

       
Or was someone trying to divide our efforts to stop them?

       
No one spoke for over a
minute. Even the traffic noise from Hardwicke’s location seemed to reduce in
volume while Melissa’s suggestion hung in the air, waiting for someone to
acknowledge it.

       
“We should consider that
a viable possibility,” Hardwicke said, finally. “Everyone is to factor it into
their activities. Any other thoughts?”

       
No one responded.

       
“Right,” the DG said.
“Next call - same time tomorrow. Same number. In the meantime - good luck.”

       
Melissa reached out to
hit the disconnect button then shoved the spider phone away from us, across the
table

       
“What do you think?” she
said.

       
“We’re in good shape,”
Jones said. “I’ve already started pulling records. By lunchtime we’ll know all
there is to know about Stewart Sole. Family background. Bank records. Financial
profile. Employment history. Everything. Have no fear. Whatever the DDG asks
for, we’ll have it.”

       
“Thanks, Tim,” she said.
“Good initiative. David, what’s your take?”

       
I didn’t answer straight
away. Not because I didn’t have an opinion.
But because I was
at a crossroads.
I was convinced we were facing a serious threat.
Caesium
was missing, people had been killed, and more were
going to be if the right steps weren’t taken in the next twenty-four hours. The
snag was, as far as I could see, Melissa and her colleagues were on the wrong
track. So, I could either do what my control wanted me to - stand back, wait
for the carnage, and see whether either of the people in the room with me had a
hand in it. Or I could try and stop the train from crashing, and worry about
handing out blame when everyone was safe.

       
In the end, it wasn’t
too hard a choice.

       
“I admire your
brown-nosing instincts, Tim,” I said. “You’ll go far. But for now, Melissa, you
need to call your boss. Tell him Hardwicke’s barking up the wrong tree. There’s
a threat, but not to the opening of Parliament.”

       
“You can’t be serious,”
she said. “They’ve found a dozen ways the place is vulnerable. And the problem
with the fire sprinklers? If al-
Aqsaba’a
could feed
in dissolved
caesium
and trigger the system? There’d
be nowhere to hide. Everyone in the building - the Queen, the MPs, the Lords,
everyone - would be fatally contaminated.”

       
“How much
caesium
would that take?”

       
“I don’t know. Why?”

       
“Because this is where
they’ve gone wrong. They were looking for a target on a
scale
which
matched all the
caesium
stored at St
Joseph’s, because that’s what they thought al-
Aqsaba’a
was trying to steal. Now we know they were never after that much. So, if the
weapon is different, it follows the target is different.”

       
“Not necessarily. What
if there’s a way to control where the radioactive water comes out? The system’s
bound to be broken down into discreet circuits. Then they could target the
Queen directly.
Or the PM.
Or whoever they like.”

       
“That’s...”

       
“And we don’t know that
they want to kill everyone, anyway. Maybe the chaos that any degree of
radioactivity would cause would be enough for them.”

       
“Melissa, no. You could
come up with any number of possibilities, but the logic doesn’t hold up. You’re
starting with an answer, and working back to a question. Things don’t work that
way.”

       
“Have you got a more
plausible suggestion?”

       
“No. That’s why we need
everyone to stop chasing after something that isn’t there, and help find the
real target.”

       
“Don’t forget what
Leckie’s
guy told us.”

       
“I’m not. But all you
can really take from him is the timescale. The rest - to bring down or close
down the government - that’s too ambiguous. We’ve got to start again, and this
time not lose sight of the facts.”

       
“What facts?”

       
“That the original plan
called for two small amounts of
caesium
, and that al-
Aqsaba’a’s
M.O. to date involves focused, high value
objectives. Not huge public spectacles which depend on weapons they don’t even
have.”

       
“No. I’m sorry, David.
None of this is convincing me. They could have been planning to add the two
lots of
caesium
together. They could have been moving
both lots to the same place, and got disturbed half way through. They could
prefer storing them separately, keeping their eggs in separate baskets. And by
now, they could have a completely different means of attack lined up.”

       
“You’re grasping at
straws. This makes no sense.”

       
“And nor does throwing
the baby out with the bath water.”

       
I didn’t respond for a
moment. Her reluctance was making me uneasy. Could she really not grasp what I
was saying? Or did she have another motive for not warning her people they were
on the verge of a huge mistake?

       
“OK,” she said, after a
few moments. “Look. I am prepared to expand the parameters of what we’re doing.
A little. Assuming you’re both prepared to put in a few extra hours?”

       
“Absolutely,” Jones
said, nodding his head. “Count me in. Whatever you need. We should be sure
about this.”

       
“Good,” she said. “But
I’m not calling
Chaston
. Not yet, anyway.”

       
“Why not?” I said.

       
“Tim, could we have the
room for a second?” she said.

       
“No problem,” Jones
said, getting to his feet and heading for the door. “I need the bathroom
anyway.”

       
“Look, I didn’t want to
discuss this in front of him,” Melissa said, once Jones was safely out of the
room. “But think how this would look. I’m already under the microscope. My
loyalty’s being questioned, as it is. What would happen if I started arguing
for us to pull away from the one plausible target we have?
One
that everyone else, from the Deputy DG down, has bought into?
They’d
think it was sabotage.”

       
“But they’d be wrong,” I
said. “Are you ready to see people die to save your own career?”

       
“No.
Of
course not.
And I will make the call.
But only when we
have something tangible to point to as a reason.
Some solid proof.”

       
“Good. So let’s get on
with finding some.”

       
“We will. We’ll look
into Stewart Sole as ordered, obviously. If we’re really lucky, that might even
throw up something we can use. But assuming it doesn’t, we need a second string
to our bow.”

       
“
al
-
Aqsaba’a
, itself. That’s where we should be looking.”

       
“
Chaston
has a team already doing that. There’s no point in duplicating effort. We
should look somewhere else.”

       
“I don’t agree.
Chaston’s
people are looking to tie al-
Aqsaba’a
to a scheme that in all likelihood doesn’t exist. They’re chasing shadows. We
should go after them too, but from a new angle.”

       
“How?”

       
“Let me ask you
something.
Leckie
. Can he be trusted?”