There’d be a meeting – it would start within a few hours. First priority: identify the scapegoat. Next, analyse risk, discuss damage limitation, rehearse termination scenarios. There’d be a general consensus that Palatine was a nuisance and would just have to look after himself.
Part II
Chapter Ten
‘Wait while I check my messages,’ said Sir Iain Strang, without deigning to look up as Clive walked along behind the rank of empty chairs at the conference room table and took his place among the group at the far end. ‘Lisa, would you mind?’
Strang passed his pda over to his PA, who tapped at the keypad then passed it back.
‘Oh yes, you are brilliant.’
It was six-thirty in the morning and the room had an up-all-night feel to it: dirty cups stacked on trays, ties over chair-backs, sallow, tetchy faces, the sharp smell of air-conditioned sweat. It was clear that there had been several more people than now remained. They’d saved him for last, like a fresh treat to feast on before going home. Seeing that Strang was preoccupied, Clive surreptitiously inspected the other attendees: Nigel de la Mere of the North-West Africa Office; and to Clive’s right, Julian Twomey-Smith, Head of Information Systems, a pink-faced man with gingery facial hair clipped in a neat oval around his chin and upper lip. When Clive turned towards him, Twomey-Smith grinned and pointed at the folder he had open in front of him.
What was that supposed to mean? Clive looked into his attaché case for something meaningful to do, but the first thing that caught his eye was a copy of his notes about Natalya Kocharian’s activities in Marrakech, which were so paltry that he didn’t want anyone to see them.
‘That’s enough diddling, we’ll wear ourselves out,’ said Strang, handing his pda back to Lisa. ‘Julian, bring Clive up to speed.’
‘You’ll remember our legal team forced Palatine to write a function that alerts us to attempted IPD400 intercepts on our network?’ Twomey-Smith began smoothly. ‘Well, the alert went off at eight-twenty yesterday evening.’
‘It worked, then,’ said Clive obligingly.
‘Yes. The IPD400 is heavily fortified against unauthorised use – the password function apparently includes the most deeply nested if statement Palatine’s ever written and is impossible to decompile. There are other security features that neither we nor Grosvenor know how to detect, still less disable. So, we are safe to assume that if the IPD400 is up and running, Palatine is at the controls.’
‘Nice piece of sleuthing, Julian,’ said Nigel de la Mere.
Twomey-Smith’s lips formed a simper inside the oval of beard. ‘I looked at the routing of the IPD400 attack on our servers,’ he went on, facing Clive while the others watched. ‘When Zender started supplying us with intel about Polisario arms procurement, we set him up with Centuries Deep – that’s the software we use for encrypting communication across distributed sites. The IP address Palatine fed to the IPD400 was generated by Zender’s Centuries Deep installation – and Palatine could have found out what it was only if he had deep access to Zender’s network.’
‘So we know where he is? Where the IPD400 is?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Twomey-Smith. ‘It’s possible he’s operating the IPD400 remotely.’
‘Trying to get anything useful out of Centuries Deep,’ Strang observed, ‘is like trying to coax jism from a corpse. Nigel?’
‘Palatine took a flight to Oran last Thursday. No obvious reason. Oran is one of Zender’s haunts, as we know. Set alongside Julian’s technical forensics, it strongly suggests that Palatine and Zender are in cahoots.’
Why wasn’t I told this earlier? thought Clive. Strang was staring at him, grey eyes sharp as marbles. ‘James Palatine’s got the IPD400,’ he said, ‘and Zender helped him. You were Palatine’s case officer in Kosovo, Clive, and Grosvenor is on your watch. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know he’d left London.’
‘Palatine’s got at you, yes? He knows things about your jaunt in the Balkans that could ruin you, so you helped him lift the IPD400 from the Grosvenor warehouse.’
‘No, that’s absolutely not the case.’
‘You’ll have to be investigated, Clive,’ said Strang. ‘If I find out you’re lying, I’ll have your balls on toast. And I will find out, won’t I?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What will I find out?’
‘That there’s nothing going on here.’
‘I’ll ask you again: have you any reason for thinking Palatine might have been planning to reunite himself with the IPD400?’
‘No. I don’t understand it.’
‘Well fucking speculate.’ Strang thrust his head forward like a hyena with the scent of young flesh in its nostrils. ‘You write these clever strategy papers that have your wonk-friends at Westminster ejaculating into their Pampers, so how about applying the creative genius to a little bit of light intelligence work? Why did Palatine make off with his IPD400?’
‘Money?’
‘A man who makes two thousand dollars a day in consultancy fees? I doubt it,’ said de la Mere. ‘Besides, whatever else we may think of him, Palatine is honourable to an irritating degree.’
‘Try again,’ said Strang.
‘Perhaps he wants to stop us getting hold of it?’
‘He’s already stopped us,’ said de la Mere, ‘courtesy of the bizarre terms of his contract with Grosvenor.’
‘Is that what he told you, Clive?’ Strang asked.
‘No. I hardly have any contact with him now. I mean, I’ve seen him a few times, but he’s been. . . dismissive.’
‘Dismissive?’ said Nigel de la Mere. ‘You must be great pals. The last time we met, I counted myself lucky not to wind up in casualty with a broken jaw.’
Sir Iain Strang leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and looked up at the ceiling. A sigh hissed through his teeth. ‘Dr Palatine is one half overpaid geek and one half psychopath,’ he said. ‘And didn’t his mummy die when he was only little?’
‘He was fourteen,’ said Clive.
‘Don’t answer my questions unless I fucking tell you to,’ said Strang. ‘Nigel, when are you interviewing Palatine’s partner at Imperial?’
‘Had him picked up from Herne Hill a couple of hours ago,’ said de la Mere. ‘Dr Hugo Vanic. Timid sort, very much in awe of Palatine. I don’t expect much. House was clean.’
‘Palatine’s flat in Camden?’
‘Predictable blank,’ said de la Mere.
‘What about the money?’
‘Nothing suspicious in Palatine’s account – or at least the one we know about. As for Zender, he’s a Swiss national – and as if that wasn’t enough, he holds proxy accounts in Monaco and the British Virgin Islands. I have the accountancy team on it, but the man’s finances have been under scrutiny for years, and his people are dab hands with the digital rubber.’
‘Have we considered the possibility that Palatine is doing this under duress?’ said Clive, emboldened by the fact that the inquisitorial tone of the meeting seemed to have dissipated. ‘Perhaps using the IPD400 to hack a Service network is his way of alerting us.’
‘Nice idea,’ said Julian Twomey-Smith. ‘But Centuries Deep utilises a system of session-based IPs created on the fly. Only when the handshake has been authenticated via a public-private key is—’
‘Cut the wank, Julian, I feel faint,’ said Strang. ‘The point is, Clive, when Palatine keyed in the IP address, he had no way of knowing he was pissing on our gates.’
‘I can see the reasoning. But Palatine is very resourceful. . . ’ Why was he defending James Palatine? Strang’s hard eyes would not let him think. De la Mere was watching him from beneath raised eyebrows, a caricature of scepticism. ‘He must have got the Centuries Deep IP from somewhere.’
‘I can tell from the constipated expression on Julian’s face that he’s already thinking about that,’ said Strang. ‘Any other ideas from the acclaimed man of ideas?’
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Clive thought frantically. ‘Are we assuming that Palatine hired Zender to get hold of the IPD400 for him? I do find that hard to believe.’
‘If anyone spots anything in this business that isn’t hard to believe, it would be sweet relief to hear it,’ said Strang.
‘The alternative,’ said de la Mere, ‘is that an unknown third party commissioned Zender to arrange both the hijacking of the IPD400 and the capture of an eminent British scientist. In the far-fetched stakes, I’d say that would be in a league of its own.’
‘Your investigation has turned up fuck all, either way,’ said Strang. ‘But the grisly details will have to wait until we’ve got the IPD400 back.’
‘It would help if we could enlist our American cousins,’ said de la Mere, who by contrast with his colleagues seemed unperturbed by the MI6 chief’s vitriolic manner. ‘Or even the Moroccans.’
‘We still can’t,’ said Strang. ‘But go to Marrakech yourself. Talk to Mehmet al Hamra, see if Zender’s putting out signals. I don’t believe Moroccan intelligence just turn their backs while he holds arms fairs at La Mamounia.’
‘I can do that,’ said de la Mere, ‘though al Hamra isn’t known as the Gnome of Rabat on account of his forthcoming personality. He keeps tabs on the fat Swiss, yes, but Zender leads a charmed life. The Polisario intel he sells to us we pass straight on to the Moroccan military, as you know, and they absolutely lap it up – forever parading it before the UN as evidence that the Third World War is about to erupt on their southern borders. It’s galling for Mehmet’s people to have Zender lounging around in Marrakech, but they know he’s our source so they tiptoe round him.’
‘How the fuck does Zender find out what the Polisario are buying?’
‘He brokers most of their deals himself,’ said de la Mere. ‘In return, the gullible clots let him operate out of their compound in the Free Zone, which is Shangri La for a man like Zender.’
‘We shouldn’t be taking sides in their interminable tiff,’ said Strang irritably.
‘Perhaps not, but I would go so far as to say that Zender’s intel is central to our co-operative relations with Rabat,’ de la Mere replied.
‘A pillar of the establishment, then,’ said Strang. ‘Top of the guest list for embassy wife-swaps.’
‘I’m told he plays backgammon with King Mohammed’s private secretary.’
‘If that’s the sort of feeble gossip that’s going in your memoirs, Nigel, you can cross me off the freeby list. When you’ve failed to get anything out of the DGST, find out what the special favours girl is up to. Clive doesn’t seem to know – or perhaps he’s just not telling us.’
‘She’s had a preliminary meeting with Zender,’ said Clive quickly. ‘I think we always knew it might take her some time to draw him in.’
‘Oh, Clive, you’re still here. Then we’ll move on to Operation Anemone.’
Clive felt sweat break out on the palms of his hands and rubbed them furtively on his trousers, only to look up and find that everyone in the room was watching him.
‘Palatine’s working with Zender,’ said Strang, ‘so your op is compromised.’
‘We don’t know that,’ said Clive desperately. ‘Anemone has nothing to do with the loss of the IPD400, and Zender would have no reason to—’
Strang held up the palm of his hand. ‘One, Anemone is quarantined. Two, you’ll be investigated.’ Clive looked up with his mouth open, but the Director-General of MI6 had already pushed back his chair and was striding towards the door.
‘Clive, talk to Caroline.’
Caroline Hampshire was the Director of Human Resources. She and Clive sat opposite each other in a pair of undersized club chairs while she recited relevant sections of Service protocol from a blue vinyl ring binder. Clive was trying to work out from her expression whether this was a routine investigation or something more serious, but the features of her big-boned face were obscured by a thick layer of foundation and lipstick the colour of boiled lobster. Beside her was a purple African violet, bleached and wilting from too much water, set on a beech-effect occasional table adorned with a fan of SIS in-house newsletters and several issues of a magazine called People Matters. He started to drum his fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair, but Caroline Hampshire was not to be distracted. Her voice reeled on, its tone as neatly trimmed as a piece of suburban topiary. He found himself studying her knees, which were large and smooth, with a disconcertingly prosthetic hue. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining pushing his hand up between her thighs, guiding her to the desk and lifting the hem of her grey skirt over her large backside.
‘I’ll give you one of these briefing sheets, which has a full set of rules and guidelines for the quarantine procedure,’ she concluded. ‘An investigation and a quarantine all in one day. I do sympathise with you, Clive. These complex ops can cause issues on the people side of things. You understand that none of this should be taken to imply any suggestion of wrongdoing on your part?’
There was a knock and Nigel’s face appeared in the glass window set in the door. He pushed it open and said: ‘Clive, drop by for a moment, when you’ve finished with Caroline?’
‘I already have,’ said Clive, standing up.
Nigel de la Mere treated him to an extended recap of the meeting with Strang, complete with reinforcing statements as regards his own distance from everything that had happened, whether known or unknown, and everything that might subsequently occur, along with many non-committal hints that if Clive confirmed Nigel’s general absence from the loop then, in return, he would do what he could to smooth things over with Sir Iain.
‘I’ll trust you on that, shall I, Nigel,’ said Clive, ‘on the basis that you always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with colleagues under fire?’ Now that the pressure of Strang’s presence was gone, he was feeling mulish and ill-treated. ‘Why has Anemone been iced?’
‘Why was it ever given life?’
‘You’re the project sponsor – you’re supposed to be supportive,’ said Clive.
‘And you’re the project manager. If Anemone hadn’t been quarantined, Sir Iain would have killed it off anyway. Because, frankly, we’d have got better results if we’d sent a carrier pigeon over North Africa with a camera up its bum.’
‘It’s an innovative methodology. It was always going to take time.’
Nigel de la Mere gave him the raised eyebrow and Clive turned away in exasperation.
‘Listen, Clive, read the bloody runes for once. Anemone was set up under pressure from the Treasury to trial some cost-cutting proposals that were doing the rounds – remember?’
‘It was only a think piece. And I didn’t leak it – I’ve told you that a hundred times.’
‘You wrote it, though. Resourcing in the Age of the Specialist – do you have any idea how much trouble it caused? Every time Sir Iain went off to the Treasury to scrap for our budget, he found them tittering over your wretched paper. They had whole chunks off by heart. The proposed cuts in funding can act as a catalyst for beneficial change – that was their favourite bit.’
‘What was I supposed to do, claim everything was perfect?’
‘Exactly. Instead, you made Sir Iain look a fool. He once told me he was using your paper to wipe his arse, and I’m not even sure he was joking.’
Clive felt cowed by this evidence of the disgust he aroused in the MI6 chief. ‘Everyone else uses private sector specialists,’ he said weakly, ‘why shouldn’t we?’
‘Have you ever asked yourself why you’ve spent eighteen months in exile at Grosvenor?’
‘So that’s it? No one ever believed in Anemone? It was just a sop to keep the Treasury off our backs?’
‘I didn’t say that. We’ve all put our best foot forward, myself included. But Anemone has been badly compromised by this business with the IPD400 – and if you want to know whether Sir Iain is devastated, I can tell you that he isn’t.’
De la Mere’s words filled him with gloom. Operation Anemone was sup
posed to get his career back on track after Kosovo – now it was just another ineradicable entry in Caroline Hampshire’s personnel file.
‘You really think I helped Zender and Palatine get hold of the IPD400? Sir Iain thinks that?’
‘We need to confirm that you didn’t, that’s all.’ He paused. ‘Look, it’s bad luck that Anemone’s got snared up in this, but now that we have a solid lead on the IPD400, Sir Iain will find a way of getting it back. Just keep your head down, you’ll get a chance to redeem yourself.’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘No? Well, neither had Jesus. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, Clive. Once it’s all been tidied up, the mood will be more forgiving. Until then, you’ll survive.’
Chapter Eleven
James was laying out his belongings on the mattress. About half a pound of meat salvaged from the food he’d been given over the last week, soused in the diazepam prescribed by the doctor, then dried. A pocketful of dates and half a dozen flatbreads, hard as plates. Some lumps of fat. Ibuprofen. A dozen plastic-sheathed ethernet cables purloined from Nazli’s lab, three of which he had braided into a yard-long plait. A screwdriver and two spoons, hooked at the ends. Strips of canvas torn from the mattress cover. Three lengths of plastic hose. The jeans and T-shirt he had come in. No shoes – they’d taken them away on arrival and he’d been barefoot since.
He’d run through the idea of breaking into Nazli’s lab, stealing the IPD400, loading it into one of the compound vehicles and hightailing out before the guards could stop him – run through it countless times without being able to envisage anything other than a disastrous and bloody outcome. He had to go quietly, which meant going on foot. Which meant he couldn’t take Little Sister with him.
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