Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (50 page)

Walking a few blocks through the seventeenth century town center, he kept his hands in his pockets and his head down, the chill in the air aiding him in trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. Like all British towns of this age, the streets made odd turns and dead ended suddenly, creating a crowded feeling and demonstrating the lack of planning that had accompanied the growth of the area. People walked briskly along each side of the narrow streets. Declan made several lefts and rights, doubling back occasionally to be sure that no one was following him. While he knew the police probably hadn't caught on yet, in the U.K. there were other more dangerous agencies to worry about, starting with the infamous Security Service, and since he was there to meet a man who worked for them, it wasn't impossible to imagine that agents of the service could be present as well.

Shane's connections to the IRA were known to his superiors, but Declan didn't think that their connection to each other was. Shane had seen to that, he was sure. But the more he thought about it as he walked around the area, the more he realized how wrong he could be. Rumors abounded that the intelligence agencies of Great Britain watched their own people as much or more than they watched everyone else. While he and Shane hadn't had any significant contact in a number of years, the little bit they had had could have easily been documented by his employers.

As he neared the meeting site, he nearly turned around and headed back to the Nissan. There was still time for him to make it further inland and possibly find a good place to hide out while he considered his next move. But that was the problem. His next move was finding the person within the British Government who had agreed to pass highly classified information to the people who had conspired to kill Abaddon Kafni and aid Ruslan Baktayev in committing an atrocity, and Declan couldn't think of anyone more suited to help him with that than Shane O'Reilly. He walked on towards their meeting spot.

The spire of Saint Nicholas' Church stood stories above any other building in the center of Newbury and in 1991, as the leader of a four man Active Service Unit of Black Shuck; Declan had chosen it as the third of their four meeting spots in case their primary and alternate sites were compromised. The plan the site had been a part of wasn't something that made him proud and as he approached the church, memories of what could have been flooded his mind. The plot had been the entire reason Eamon McGuire had created and trained Black Shuck, an audacious operation against the capital of Great Britain that involved a multi-level attack on the city's leaders, infrastructure, and military and police installations. If completed, the attack would easily have cost thousands of lives in the city of London. Thankfully the plan hadn't come to fruition but had instead faded away with the deaths of Eamon McGuire and the other members of Black Shuck.

Reaching the north side of the churchyard where a large grove of trees was planted, Declan stopped and entered a telephone box at the corner of Bartholomew and West Mills streets. Inserting several coins he'd picked up from the ashtray of the Nissan, he dialed some random numbers and held the receiver to his ear as he inspected the side of the base unit and saw a single line about three inches long that had been made with a blue dry erase marker. He rubbed the mark off with his thumb and looked towards the grove of trees, knowing that Shane was waiting for him.

It had been nearly two decades since he'd made contact with anyone this way, but the process hadn't changed. With the phone to his ear he pretended to have an animated conversation and turned casually in several directions looking for anyone that appeared to be watching. In the cold and often wet atmosphere of early spring in the United Kingdom, anyone watching should have been relatively easy to spot. While most people would be hurrying from one place to another to avoid the wind and light rain, someone watching would dally here and there and never really leave sight of him. He saw no one exhibiting that behavior. The few people that were out did exactly as he expected, they darted from one building to another. Next he looked for patterns of people leaving and going in case the people watching were part of a team with a more elaborate surveillance routine. Again, he saw no one.

Satisfied that he was on his own, he hung up the phone and exited the telephone box. He walked to the four foot high wrought iron gate that joined two sections of the nearly six hundred year old rock wall that surrounded the gothic church and pulled. As it squealed open, he casually turned into the churchyard clearing his three, six and nine o'clock positions again as he closed the gate behind him. Stepping briskly over the cracked pavers that formed a walkway around the entire half-acre churchyard, he entered the grove of tall oak trees that shaded the north wall of the church.

"It's about time," a voice sang from within one of the many stone alcoves.

Declan turned to see Shane O'Reilly leaning up against the church, wearing a tan overcoat and a brown long island cap, tufts of his curly red hair sticking out above his ears. A broad smile formed on the man's face as he stepped forward.

"It's good to see ya, ya Fenian bastard," he said.

Declan felt his own mouth curl into a wide grin. "Aye, good to see ya."

"I was afraid you wouldn't make it," Shane said, his face turning serious. "They've got you jammed up pretty bad."

Shane withdrew a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
from inside his coat and unfolded it, handing it over. Declan took the newspaper and inspected the bottom of the front page, where the headline talked about the nationwide search going on for him in the United States.

"We've got only one advantage at this point," Shane said, "they don't know you're here, yet."

"Aye, but it's not going to stay that way for long."

Shane chuckled. "I don't want to know how you got yourself here, do I?"

"Are you sure there's no one following you? Nobody from the spook house knows we're connected?"

Shane shook his head. "Nah, I don't think they know. If they do they're not too fussed about it, because I'm certain I wasn't followed. I've booked myself out for the next two days to meet with informers around the country. To everyone back at Thames House you're simply agent 3210, one of the twenty or so agents I'm in charge of handling."

Declan nodded. "Aye, sounds like a grand cover, but what're they gonna do once they learn I'm here?"

Shane grimaced. "Same thing any government does, I suppose. Send alerts out to every police station in the country with a picture and instructions on what to do and who to call if you're spotted."

"That's not what I mean. I mean what're they going to do about
you
when they find out I'm here? They may not be worried about our connection now, but if they know about it, I guarantee they will be when that little fact reaches their ears."

Shane placed his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. "I don't think they know. But that's all the more reason why we need to get moving and make this as short a visit as possible."

"Aye. Have you had any luck with finding out who we're looking for?"

Shane shook his head. "I'm afraid all I can tell you is that it came straight from the top through the Deputy Director himself. Very rare for my department these days, so whoever's after you is well-connected."

"Where does the Deputy Director get his orders from?"

"From the Director-General and the Joint Intelligence Committee, a weekly meeting of the minds for all the intelligence-related services in Great Britain."

"Who attends?"

"I don't know for sure. It's real hush hush kind of stuff and unfortunately I'm just not at that level. I know it's chaired by a permanent chairman from Whitehall and that the committee itself is made up of the heads of the three intelligence agencies; Five, Six and GCHQ, as well as advisors, staffers and representatives from various ministries, all related to defense. Honestly, I really can't tell you any more about it than Wikipedia probably can."

"Does anyone from foreign governments attend or is this strictly a British affair?"

"Supposedly the London station chiefs of certain intelligence agencies from around the world attend when matters concerning their nations are being discussed, but I don't have any idea who they are or how often they attend."

"Well, it would only be nations that are allied with Great Britain, right? That would certainly include the United States. The CIA has a presence in London, don't they?"

"Aye, it's unofficial, but they have an office at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Five works with them sometimes when interests coincide, but most of that is on Islamic terrorism these days. I haven't seen the CIA in my department in a good while."

"But there is a CIA boss in London and that could very well be the person we're looking for. Do you have any idea who it is?"

Shane shook his head. "No. They don't exactly broadcast their people's names. I can't say for sure, but I'd venture a guess that they're all undercover to some degree. Even if you walked down the hallways of Grosvenor Square and read the nameplates on the doors you'd probably only come up with a bunch of fake job titles."

Declan shook his head.

"Look," Shane said, as if he was trying to defend himself, "I'm a Grade 5 salaried intelligence officer, Dec. I can't exactly ring the members of the Joint Intelligence Committee for tea."

"It's okay. It's grand. We just need to think this through. These people are bureaucrats. They're like mating garter snakes, all in a big ball seeing who can screw the one lone female the fastest."

Shane's face twisted in mock disgust. "Jesus, Dec—"

"I mean they're all connected in ways that would make the average person's head swim. Now think who and what from the intelligence community has been in the news lately, for any reason."

Shane thought for a moment and then took back the newspaper he'd handed Declan. Opening it to a page about three quarters of the way through he said, "Here," then handed it back. He stabbed a finger at a lengthy article containing a picture of an older gentleman with graying blonde hair who was standing next to two Irish wolfhounds alongside an aging rock wall. "That's all I can think of."

"Lord Dennis Allardyce," Declan said aloud, as he scanned the article, the
acting
director-general of the Security Service. I remember him. He used to be friends with my father."

Shane looked up suddenly. "He was what?"

"A friend of my da's."

"Do you think he remembers you?"

"I doubt it. That was a long time ago. I wasn't but nine or ten. Why's he the
acting
director-general?"

"Because the bleedin' sod that was in charge couldn't keep his willie in his Y-fronts and damn near caused an international incident, bloodied the poor bird up a bit as well. Allardyce has been appointed temporarily, but is expected to be confirmed as the permanent replacement within a matter of weeks. As such, he sits in the weekly meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee."

"So he was there when the request was made?"

Shane nodded. "Aye, should've been."

"Then that's who we need to talk to."

Shane glared in disbelief. "Dec, we can't just walk up and knock on his door. He's the head of the Security Service. Going to him would be like turning yourself in."

"He's the only person we know of that was in that room. So unless you have any other ideas, he's all we've got."

"Alright, alright," Shane said, putting his hands up in submission and looking around the churchyard. "But what if he made the request himself? What if they're all connected, like you said, and whoever's after you put the request directly to Allardyce?"

"No, I don't think so," Declan said, continuing to scan the article. "If they had access to someone like Allardyce, the orders given to you yesterday probably would have come much earlier. Instead they had to wait until the meeting, which likely means that it was someone
not
connected to the British Government."

"Someone like the CIA Station Chief."

"Exactly."

"Alright, grand, let's just say you're right and Allardyce can point you in the right direction. What makes you think he will? What makes you think he'll help?"

"I don't know if you remember or not, but Allardyce once held another position before his rise to the level of the Lords Temporal or whatever he is now. He's been in the British Civil Service a long time; he used to be the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, which is how he knew my father."

Shane thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah, we were barely old enough to be out of nappies, but I think I remember."

Declan smiled in amusement. "Well, you might've been late to toilet training, Shane, but in seventy-nine I was campaigning with my da' for parliament and I remember Allardyce. He was the closest thing the IRA had to a friend in the British government during those years. He honestly thought the Catholic population had been done wrong by and at least tried to be understanding of the IRA's position, a fact that didn't exactly win him a lot of friends after events like the Mountbatten assassination and the Warrenpoint ambush. The bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in eighty-four ended his tenure. By then Da' and Mum had been murdered and I'd been in and out of orphanages and was flirting with the 'Ra. I never saw him again after my parents' funeral."

"And you're thinking that if we can get to him, talk to him and tell him the truth of your situation, then maybe he can help us find out who made that request and that may lead us to the person who's behind all of this? It's a bit of a long shot, but I suppose it's the best we've got."

"Aye, it's the best we've got," Declan said, pointing to the picture in the article. "Where is this?"

"Greumach Manor is in Scotland. About two hours west of Aberdeen in the Cairngorm Mountains."

"That's a long way, but the article says he's spent every weekend there since he was a boy. Let's hope that's a tradition he's continued now that he's the nation's top spook."