The Falklands Intercept (7 page)

The car drove at top speed from the station and Jacot arrived in Lady Nevinson's Number 10 office a few minutes before 11 o'clock. He expected her to quiz him
urgently
about Cambridge. Instead she kicked off with ‘Do you remember in the 1970s those vigilante films starring Charles Bronson?' Lady Nevinson seemed to be in a beneficent and chatty mood and the whisky would follow soon thought Jacot.

He replied, ‘Yes, of course. They were a huge hit at school. Michael Winner directed. Bronson was also in those other staples of preparatory school life in the 1960s and 1970s
The Great Escape
and
The Dirty Dozen
.'

She picked up the decanter, poured two glasses of whisky and slid one across her desk to Jacot. ‘Winner is mainly known as a restaurant critic these days. People forget how powerful his films were in their day. You are younger than me Jacot and so you probably can't remember the sense of breakdown that the adult, or recently become adult, world experienced in the early and mid 1970s. Bit like today really. People had little faith in the system and so vigilante films of all kinds touched a chord. Shame he never got round to directing a Bond film. It might have been fun.'

Jacot had known and worked for Lady Nevinson for nearly two years. They shared many attitudes and got on well. But they were not intimates or even friends. Curiously, since the start of the General Verney affair they had grown closer. They were both in on the same secret. Indeed, if in truth she wasn't sharing Jacot's findings with anyone else or rather she wasn't keeping the prime minister in the loop, they were co-conspirators of a sort. He realised that he didn't know much about her beyond her entry in
Who's Who
.

‘I don't know how they went down at your dingy prep school but they went down a storm in diplomatic circles even in far-off lands. I read French at Newnham and spent a year at the Sorbonne as part of my degree and so I spoke and speak it fluently. I passed the Foreign Office exam rather well.' She looked up at him. ‘As you would expect.'

Jacot smiled. He wasn't at all sure that she had been making a joke. Getting to know someone was one thing, understanding their sense of humour quite another. Like many senior civil servants he had met she was proud of academic achievements long ago. The first class honours degree and the high place in the civil service exam still mattered to her in her early 60s.

Lady Nevinson continued, ‘I spent a few months in London and was looking forward to my first posting which I assumed would be Paris. I had it all worked out. But my first posting was, inevitably looking back, Viet Nam. In the Seventies I spent much of my time
in Indo-China. We watched Winner's films at the embassy. Oh those old film nights with a slightly cranky projector and intervals when the reels were changed. The embassy
servants
would bring drinks and the most wonderful cocktail eats – small chow we called them. Every time I see Michael Winner on TV or advertising something the films and the memories come right back.

‘I was posted as a young Third Secretary in Saigon in 1972 just after Cambridge. Had a great time. Most of it in the famous Continental Hotel, where all the journalists and senior American officers congregated. ‘Hung out' they called it. Some young officers too. The most glamorous were not the soldiers but the US Marines. They had an impressive swagger and nice manners to boot. They were also fighting a different style of war to the US Army, much more the sort of thing our troops had tried in Malaya some years before. Anyway, they seemed to have thought about war a little whereas many of the army
officers
seemed obsessed with ‘free fire zones' and Agent Orange. It really was like
something
out of Graham Greene. I was young and clever and not bad looking. Things were great.

‘And then the Americans began to withdraw and the whole thing fell apart rather quickly in April 1975. I had been dispatched up country to see what was happening and got back too late to be evacuated. I was lucky to get back to Saigon at all in fact. I had been in Da Nang which fell pretty easily and had then got caught up in the hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring south. There was panic and despair. I got swept along to a small town called Xuan Loc where the South Vietnamese army made an extraordinary last stand. The South Vietnamese infantry division that held the town for eleven days was despised by the Americans for its poor discipline and cowboy attitude. In the end it fought with astonishing energy to the end. Few others did. They were charming too and made sure I got out well before the town fell and was transported safely to Saigon. I shall remember till the day I die saying good-bye to them. They didn't know where their
families
were. They weren't especially enamoured of the South Vietnamese regime. Many of them were personally disreputable, black marketeers and so forth. But they loathed communism and would rather go down fighting than live under it. Some of them got away in the end but not many.'

She looked wistfully out of the window overlooking Downing Street. ‘By the time I tipped back up at the embassy our ambassador had already left for the airport. Famously, he travelled in a silver Jaguar and the pictures were broadcast across the world. The British Ambassador leaving was felt to be a key moment. It was my fault. I wasn't
frightened
but I felt on my own and wondered what would become of me. A young French diplomat, Gilles Navarre, who was a close friend, came up trumps. To be fair the Americans would have got me out. They are good like that. But I certainly felt safe once I had reached the French Embassy.

‘I always felt a little sorry for the Yanks. They had a rough time of it – 58,000 of their young men were killed – they got little thanks for trying. Many were from poor
backgrounds
.
Needless to say urban blacks were ‘over-represented' as the modern politically correct jargon would have it. Basically, the poor blacks and poor whites did most of the fighting. Some were volunteers, others conscripted. Most tried to do their duty. Some were extraordinarily brave. There were a few shirkers no doubt but they were rare in the front line. Until the late 1960s the army and the marines were impressive fighting forces – well led, reasonably motivated. I liked the GIs and their young officers up to a certain rank were good and cared about their men. Or at least the ones I met.

‘The further away from Saigon you got the better the American soldiers were. It was in Saigon itself that I developed an abiding dislike of the senior American military, their State Department and above all the CIA. Everyone in air-conditioned offices and pressed uniforms or smart Brooks Brothers suits working out how to claim extra allowances and having a good time. All revelling in the fact that they were at war. Except they weren't. They were enjoying the prestige and appurtenances of war without ever risking their own necks. Indeed they were sending young men into harm's way and asking them to do stuff that they had never had to do. Obviously not the senior officers who had fought in the Second World War and Korea, but most of them hadn't.'

‘So you don't like staff officers either Lady Nevinson', interjected Jacot with a smile. ‘The Blackadder effect you might call it. They are necessary you know. I am one
technically
. Most of the really big cock-ups in war are as a result of poor staff work. If Captain Nolan or Lord Cardigan had been to a proper staff college we wouldn't have had the Charge of the Light Brigade.'

‘Oh I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.' She almost blushed. ‘And I loved all things French – including the men although some of them were a pain. Later I spent some time in Bonn and then Berlin. I found I liked and admired the Germans too. Our
disagreements
with them seem so strange now.' She looked at Jacot ‘I had forgotten to English public school boys the Germans remain something out of a pantomime.'

‘Actually I am a great admirer and speak a little of the language after three years in the Rhine Army.'

She continued unperturbed. ‘All in all it meant I never fell under the American spell. You saw the television pictures.'

‘Yes I did as a teenager living in Hong Kong. And we realized all was not going well as our flights out from school took longer the further south the North Vietnamese
penetrated
. I can remember in the early days the BOAC pilots pointing out the site of Da Nang which is somewhere in the middle. By the end we were taking the long route round the South China Sea.'

She poured more whisky for them both, got up from her desk and walked to her office windows again. ‘I've seen what it looks like – leaving in a hurry and beaten or too exhausted to carry on. Saigon was a frightening place in the final days and hours. Weird things happen. The world gets turned upside down. For instance money became absolutely worthless – even dollars, or perhaps especially dollars. The only currency that
was any use at buying a passage on a boat or an aircraft was gold. Krugerrands were popular. We Brits have done it ourselves time and time again. We got out of India just in time. Palestine. Too many places, culminating in our scuttle from Aden. As the
helicopter
carrying the last British governor of Aden out to a waiting warship lifted off from the grounds of government house the rebels burst in and began looting it. And yet we cannot help going back. It's in the military, political and diplomatic DNA.'

She was in full philosophical flow. Jacot sipped his whisky. It had been a long day but he admired her and respected her judgment, mostly.

‘How do you extricate a lost army? Nobody really tried to get our people out of Singapore in late 1941. They were left to defeat and their fate. At least after that disaster we didn't have the generals appearing on television every five minutes telling us how the battle for Singapore was a ‘journey'. I bet that's the sort of thing the Roman generals, unworthy descendants of Caesar, were saying just before their game was up. “Emperor, the defence of Rome is a journey.” Colonel Jacot where do you get these people?'

‘To be fair, Lady Nevinson I think the man who talked about “a journey” was an Air Marshal.'

‘Well, the Romans were lucky that they didn't have an air force.'

‘Lady Nevinson the government which we serve has decided that we are going to stay in Afghanistan until 2015. I understand it's probably now going to be 2014. It's a democratic decision taken by parliament. “Period” as our American allies would say. It's above my pay grade I know but whatever anyone might feel about the way the current government does its business no one can say that it's not keen on getting us out of Afghanistan. It appears to come from the very top.'

She was certainly in a strange mood but he had some sympathy. If you were a cog in the machine as Jacot was you wrote your paper or gave your advice and went home for supper or out to a party. And when it was time to sleep, you slept well enough. But if you were at the top there was never any rest and the implications and ramifications of your advice must haunt your off duty hours. In a way it was not so bad for politicians. Huge egos and extraordinary drive are par for their course. But it was different for Mandarins. It must be particularly hard for the individuals at the pinnacle of the intelligence establishment. Worse for Lady Nevinson.

‘Everyone wants the troops out now. My God I am happy not to have sons.'

‘But we don't have conscription.'

‘No, Colonel Jacot but I have some understanding of the male psyche. The thirst for glory is a powerful motivator. I saw it in Saigon. I know I have just been rude about the whole American military establishment and made fun of the legions of desk warriors in their air-conditioned portakabins. But many of the young officers I met wanted to go to war, fighting in the Mekong Delta was integral to their view of themselves and their
masculinity
. Every generation is the same and British or rather English youth is especially prone to this. My view is that it is a hangover from Empire lingering in the English public
schools. Do you know Jacot I went up to your old school Harrow a few years back to give a talk on diplomacy? Nice dinner, nice boys, nice setting. But the room I spoke in appeared to be a mausoleum to the war dead of both wars but particularly the Great War.'

‘Well that's hardly surprising as the whole complex was built as a war memorial. I think many families felt very strongly at the time about their lost sons and brothers – some lost husbands too of course. The great public schools suffered very badly. Disproportionate numbers of young officers were killed. If you want to feel impending tragedy, have a look at photographs of Speech Day at Harrow in 1912 or the Fourth of June at Eton that year. All the boys that you see in those photographs were born between 1894 and 1899. All would reach military age during the war. A fifth would die in action. Many more wounded and many more permanently marked by their experiences. Imagine the heartbreak.'

She turned away and sighed. ‘Just as we have finished one bloody war there could be another one on the horizon.'

Jacot slipped away quietly from the room. It had been a strange conversation. She was clearly sounding him out on something. He wondered what exactly.

Lady Nevinson's ex-military driver grinned as he got into the car. ‘You'll make the last train and I've arranged a taxi for you at Cambridge. Her ladyship has been working very late. I think there's a flap on about the Falklands.'

‘I understand that you have no official status here but that you have been sent down from the Cabinet Office to oversee things'. The Cambridge Coroner wasn't at all what Jacot had been expecting. Tall, expensively and well dressed in a Savile Row suit and wearing an Old Wykehamist tie, Professor Michael Livesey looked more like a traditional university don than a pathologist who worked in a basement. But there was an unexplained note of hostility or possibly disdain in his voice.

‘Exactly, Professor Livesey. You don't have to see me or answer any of my questions. I am not part of the investigating team but it would be helpful. I should make clear that although I work in the Cabinet Office I am neither a political appointee nor a career civil servant. I am a military man who now works for the National Security Adviser, Lady Nevinson. I am a servant of the Crown, not any political party.'

Livesey smiled. ‘Of course, of course, I'm sorry. To most people Cabinet Office means the political side of the government. Bad reputation under the last lot and little better today. Is your office close to the deputy prime minister's?'

They both laughed. ‘And I consider it my duty to help you and Lady Nevinson out. It's not often that the Regius Professor of Pathology gets asked to carry out a post mortem, although I do them from time to time to remain current.'

‘What can you tell me about the body?'

Livesey frowned. ‘Strange, really strange. General Verney appeared to be in pretty good health. Obviously, he was in his late fifties and was a smoker but frankly not in a bad physical state at all. No excess weight. Lungs not too bad for a smoker. Nothing wrong with the heart or the circulation. No bleeding anywhere. No injuries. Nothing. I have checked everything and asked another senior member of the medical faculty to have a look as well. It would appear that a man in late middle age in perfect health just died in his bed one night. It happens.'

‘But what was the actual cause of death?'

‘I think he just stopped breathing – passed away in the night. There are no bruises to suggest that someone suffocated him. He didn't choke on anything. The only thing I would say is that he appeared to have had quite a lot to drink – a bottle and a half of wine and something a little stronger to finish off.'

‘In St James' it's always Calvados.'

‘Yes quite, Colonel. Even against a background of embalming fluid and disinfectant I could detect an appley smell. I have drunk the stuff myself. It's rather good.'

‘Since the Litvinenko murder is not so long ago I suppose I should ask – any traces
of radioactivity?'

Livesey looked hard at Jacot. The penny had just dropped that this was an intelligence matter. ‘No. The police asked me to check for that. Not surprising given what the Russians have been up to. But no radioactive substances at all present. It's one of the easiest things to check for.'

‘Poisons?'

‘The toxicology report is clear. We have tested for all the usual stuff and most exotics. There was no curare if that is what you are wondering about or any of the modern
derivatives
. Although a drug like that would suffocate in the way poor old Verney seems to have died. It's a very unpleasant way to go. You suffocate but are still conscious until the end. Horrible I should think. But there is no sign of it.'

Jacot flexed his hands. ‘What's your view?'

‘Obviously, I don't know the background. Don't worry I won't ask you. To a
pathologist
it looks like a natural death. But then if he was killed by opponents from the sort of world that you represent I suppose it would look like a natural death. There are a couple of more tests we need to run to exclude a couple of the more exotic, very exotic poisons. I can't do them here but the Home Office are coming for a sample tomorrow and I understand the FBI have offered to help. I have prepared samples for them.'

‘What sort of exotics, Professor?'

‘The kinds of things used by those who might wish this country harm. Stuff that is used by other countries' intelligence people and, of course, these days terrorists. I am not naïve Colonel. And it is not the first time I have received a visit from the intelligence
services
.'

‘They sent someone up about Verney already?'

Livesey laughed. ‘No not at all. Cambridge has in the past been full of spies. It still is. One head of house is a former “C” and they have people at all levels of the university in various guises nervous about our laboratories and some of our international students. And shall we say there is lots of sponsorship.'

Jacot looked out of the window over the Backs. The bulk of King's College Chapel loomed to the right with the south front of Clare just behind running down to the river. It was an odd feeling. He was inside one of the most famous views in the world, inside the postcard.

Livesey understood what Jacot was thinking. ‘For some reason the Regius Professor of Pathology is a fellow of King's. Funny gang. Lots of women parsons and the ugliest undergraduettes in the university. But the view is glorious.'

This was going well thought Jacot. There is no more powerful bond between modern men of a slightly old-fashioned disposition than a secretly shared political incorrectness. ‘Professor, forgive me, but I have a question.'

‘Do go on?'

‘If you wanted to kill someone quickly without making it look like a murder, how
would you do it?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘No funny stuff. No 1930s thriller stuff. But a simple effective poison that would not be detected by the authorities.'

Livesey went to his bookshelf, crammed with medical books but also with shelves of amusement and civilisation. Jacot noticed row after row of PG Wodehouse, beautifully bound in dark blue Morocco.

‘I see you have spotted my secret vice – Wodehouse first editions rebound. He keeps you going if you are a pathologist. Let me make it absolutely clear Colonel Jacot that I would never discuss poisons with anyone outside the medical profession. I probably would not discuss them with anyone who wasn't a qualified and practising pathologist. Poisons are funny things, tempting things to some people. Some perfectly innocent chemicals can quite simply be mixed into powerful poisons. Some quite powerful poisons can be administered in such a way that it would be easy to allay the suspicions of observers or even the police. All of us live in terror of a rogue doctor like Shipman. That's why medical schools are so strict on personal discipline and character. Becoming a doctor is a bit like being ordained. It's not just a matter of the medical or theological knowledge. Suitability is all. Worse much worse than a Shipman who was a General Practitioner would be a pathologist who turned rogue murderer. If the back office can't be trusted we have all had it.'

‘Professor, I understand. Believe me.'

‘Well, Colonel I will make an exception for you.' He took a paperback from one of the shelves, one of those French paperbacks where you have to slit the pages yourself with a knife and gave it to Jacot. ‘Marine toxins are what I would use. It's all in this book. It's in French because the French keep an eye on these things because of their
possessions
in the Caribbean and the Pacific. These are basically toxins, naturally occurring poisons, produced by various types of algae in small quantities usually in tropical waters. The algae are ingested by creatures like oysters which are then eaten by small fish which are then eaten by large fish. Usually ones that live on reefs like barracuda. The toxins are not poisonous to the fish themselves but they build up in the food chain. By the time you get to a barracuda that's been feeding on this stuff it can be very dangerous. They are all different and produce different symptoms but basically they interfere with the chemical messaging system in the body causing respiratory failure – sometimes quite quickly. The toxins are heat resistant so cooking does not help. But there is one upside from the safety point of view – eat some of this stuff and you are normally sick as a dog. Vomiting and all the rest of it, so very often the body is purged quite quickly.'

‘I suppose faking a virulent stomach bug would be a good way to murder but
wouldn't
it be a bit obvious? In our scenario we are trying to kill without being found out,' said Jacot.

‘Quite, Colonel. And some of the toxins have strange effects to say the least – there
is one found in the Pacific and Caribbean which affects the nervous system in such a way that it changes the heat sensors in the mouth – hot will feel cold and vice versa. Bit obvious that one too. Poisoning of this sort can happen in northern climes as well, rarely though, and only with imported fish – most doctors learn something about it at medical school and then forget all about it.'

Livesey handed over the book. He seemed hesitant. ‘There is one toxin that stands apart from any of the others. But please don't discuss it with anyone other than your
professional
colleagues. Other than Lady Nevinson in fact. I don't want to put ideas into people's heads. I would use something called Saxitoxin. It is a toxin, therefore naturally occurring, derived from certain types of shellfish. In the way I have described oysters, say, ingest a type of rare algae that produces the toxin in minute, really minute quantities and even then only in certain unusual climatic, tidal and other marine conditions. Most of the time in quantities that do not affect humans – even after two dozen oysters at Wilton's. Through the way molluscs feed – they filter stuff out of vast quantities of water and vegetable matter – occasionally, if the water they are in has a glut of the unusual algae responsible, a harmful algal bloom, these potent toxins build up in their flesh. If a whale or an otter or human eats the oyster or whatever it is – bingo. Something called Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning occurs – PSP. The toxin, through a chemical process which I will not bore you with, shuts down the signals to and from the respiratory system. Paralysis can be very quick, usually within a few minutes of ingestion – maybe up to an hour. The unfortunate individual is usually dead within a couple of hours. It's a kind of dry
drowning
. Nasty form of death I should think because you know what is happening but can't do anything about it. And here's the killer fact if you like – it only takes about .2 of a
milligramme
of this stuff to kill a normal man or woman. Bit more if you are very heavily built. And afterwards it's very difficult to find. The tests for it are unreliable in some ways but between them the FBI and our Forensic Science Service should be able to detect it, although not necessarily.'

‘Very interesting, Professor. But there are no signs of a stomach upset with Verney. So we are back to square one.'

‘Not quite. And again you must not pass this on to anyone. We checked everywhere. But some poisons, like Saxitoxin, if injected or even inhaled, can work very quickly, at extremely low doses. The digestive system is bypassed so no vomiting or diarrhoea. Paralysis would be almost instantaneous although unconsciousness would not follow for some time, as I have said. I hasten to add there were no signs of any injections on Verney's body. I checked thoroughly, very thoroughly.'

‘And who is likely to have this sort of stuff?'

‘The Americans used to make it. But President Nixon ordered the supplies destroyed. There is still some around in research institutes and hospitals for nervous diseases – it works by obstructing sodium channels in the nervous system. But nothing else – all the other channels remain open. So incredibly useful in research into various unpleasant
diseases
 
of the nervous system.'

‘But difficult.'

‘Difficult. Very difficult. Although if you had an oyster farm and a chemistry degree you could probably have a go. From time to time there is a worry that somehow Jihadists have synthesised a small quantity. Interestingly, it's what the US used to give to their spies – just in case. Gary Powers the U2 pilot shot down over Russia in 1956 was rumoured to be carrying a suicide pill made of the stuff. I very much doubt that there is any of it left and it would have lost its power by now, chemically degraded. There was an antidote as well, if I remember rightly, with even more complex chemistry. I have little doubt that both the FBI and our people will draw a blank. But for what it's worth that's what I would do. One final thing. Despite my oyster farm image, if it were a poison of this type I would expect it to have been synthesised by a state, an advanced state.'

‘So not terrorists?' Jacot spoke slowly emphasising every word.

‘No', Livesey clearly understood what Jacot was asking and the implications. ‘No. It would have to be a state.'

‘And the FBI and our spooks are coming tomorrow for their samples?'

‘Yes. Someone from the embassy in London and an official from the Home Office.'

Professor Livesey was used to dealing with the authorities and clearly enjoyed dealing with people “from the other side of the green baize door”. Somehow Jacot needed him to believe that he Jacot represented a more senior authority. It was time for a little bluff.

‘Well I think we should have some more tests done. I would be grateful if you would prepare a sample for the National Security Adviser. You know Lady Nevinson of course.'

‘Well yes, a little. I mean I met her once at something in Cambridge.'

‘She wants me to arrange some more tests.'

Livesey looked nervous and undecided. It was time for Jacot to go in for the kill. ‘You understand, of course, the constitutional position – not only is she the Prime Minister's personal adviser on intelligence matters, but also she has operational control on his behalf of the entire intelligence set up – a different creature altogether. In effect she
controls
promotion within the services and budgets and curiously the allocation of honours. You know MBEs, knighthoods and peerages.'