Gray Redemption

by Alan McDermott

  The phone went dead and Harvey wished the same on the attaché.

  His next call was to the American Embassy, where he was put through to his CIA counterpart, Doug Wallis.

  “Andy, how are you?”

  Harvey didn’t usually take kindly to people shortening his name, but Wallis was such an affable character, and when seeking information it was a good idea to let the little things slide.

  “Good, thanks, Doug. How’s the family?”

  Wallis gave him the usual sob story about how his wife just couldn’t get settled in England, no matter how much shopping she did. Harvey knew the story could go on indefinitely so he cut his friend short.

  “I’m just looking for some information about the attack on Jolo last week.”

  “We sent that over yesterday,” Wallis said. “Didn’t you get it?”

  “Yeah, we got it, but I’d like to know more about the prisoners. We can’t seem to locate one of them, a woman named Victoria Phillips.”

  “I don’t recall any of them being female,” Wallis said, sounding confused.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. There was certainly no-one named Victoria, anyway.”

  Harvey rifled through the papers on his desk. “I can’t see any reference to the prisoners anywhere,” he said. “Are you sure you sent that information over?”

  “No, they won’t be on anything we passed to you,” Wallis said casually. “That report was classified Internal Eyes Only.”

  “Any particular reason?” Harvey asked, curious as to why the identities should have been withheld.

  “No idea,” Wallis told him. “That’s what we got from Langley, no explanation as to why.”

  It wasn’t unusual for agencies to withhold certain sensitive information from each other, but it seemed strange that the names of three people rescued from terrorists should be considered classified, especially if two of them were British.

  “Is there any chance you can tell me the names?” Harvey asked, knowing what the answer would be. He had, however, planted the seed.

  “Sorry, pal, no can do.”

  “That’s okay, Doug, I understand. Hey, fancy a beer later?”

  The question was a signal they both used when they wanted something off the record, and Harvey was relieved when Doug agreed to meet up later that evening. He was, however, slightly frustrated that he would have to wait another few hours to get the information.

  He walked round to Farsi’s desk to see how he was getting on with the analysis of the Huang Zhen manifest. His colleague had been compiling a list of companies who had used the ship to transport their goods abroad. Once finalised, each company would be run through the internal search engine to find matches to persons of known interest.

  “Anything yet?” Harvey asked, but a shake of the head told him all he needed to know.

  “Nothing so far, but I’ve only been through a quarter of the companies. The Huang Zhen is a ULCV, or Ultra Large Container Vessel. This beast is carrying close to two thousand containers for just over twelve hundred companies. It’s going to take some time to get through them all.”

  Harvey sympathised with his friend. If only investigations were like the movies, he thought, they’d just have to wait for that one clue to drop into their laps and the mystery would be solved. Back in the real world, it was relentless hours of data analysis which usually won the day. It was just a shame the men in power didn’t appreciate that fact; otherwise they would provide more people to get the job done. As it was, the vast majority of staff had been assigned to identifying threats associated with the upcoming Olympics, which left Harvey and Farsi doing work the analysts would normally power through in a few hours.

  To make matters worse, the equally under-manned UK Border Agency was forcing staff to take holidays in the months leading up to London 2012 so that they would have all hands on deck for the games. It meant queues would be shorter during July and August, but it left them woefully short-staffed in the lead-up, something that had been flagged up on several occasions. The politicians, however, refused to believe that anyone posing a threat to the UK would turn up prior to the games, instead expecting them to arrive when they were in full flow. This short-sightedness was a constant thorn in the security services’ sides, but it was something they’d learned to live with.

  The culmination of this was that resources were stretched in just about every critical service and all of the major newspapers had picked up on the fact. Their coverage, in Harvey’s eyes, was an open invitation to attack the country, and he was one of the few people who could do anything about it.

  Harvey shook the thought off and went back to his desk, where he found an internal message which informed him that a secure fax had been received.

  He took a walk down to the communications office and handed over his identity card, despite knowing the receptionist and her recognising him from multiple previous visits. The rule was simple and rigorously enforced: no valid, current ID; no entry.

  After a quick inspection of his card he was given a smile and offered a seat while the receptionist placed a call through to the inner office. A moment later a junior clerk appeared and handed over the communication.

  Harvey saw that it was the call records he’d requested from the High Commission in Singapore. As well as a list of calls made to and from Hughes’s registered mobile number, there was a handwritten note at the bottom of the page:

  A second mobile was found on the body, unregistered. Here is a list of calls we extracted from the SIM:

  There were just four entries underneath the note, and Harvey had a feeling that one of them would be significant. He rushed back to his office and compared the numbers with those of Carl Levine and found a match on the last entry. The mobile number Hughes had called from also matched the incoming phone records they held for Levine.

  Any suspicions they had that this was the Timmy they were looking for were now confirmed, and he asked Farsi to cross each of the company owners with the names on Hughes’s call log.

  “I know it’s a major pain, but if we can tie Hughes to that ship somehow...”

  “Then what?” Farsi asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Harvey admitted. “But I have a feeling there’s a lot more to Farrar’s request for help than just finding Levine and Campbell.”

  * * *

  People were beginning to drift out of the office and a glance at the clock told Harvey that it was almost six-thirty in the evening. He’d taken half of the manifest from Farsi and was also running company names through the computer, but for the last few hours he had come up empty.

  When he met Wallis, it was usually at seven in Armando’s restaurant a few streets away, which meant he’d have to make a move soon. He locked his half of the manifest in a drawer and grabbed his jacket as he headed for Ellis’s office to deliver his end-of-shift report. He found her gazing intently at her monitor.

  “I’m done for the day,” he said when Ellis looked up. “We haven’t been able to come up with anything that says the Huang Zhen is linked to Levine and Campbell, but we still have a lot of companies to go through.”

  Ellis stretched and stifled a yawn. “Nothing coming from Farrar, either,” she said. “It’s as if he’s given up the search.”

  “Should we do likewise?” Harvey asked, hoping for — and getting — a negative response.

  “No, we carry on. There’s a link in Asia, I’m certain of it. That was Abdul Mansour’s last known location and now Al-Qaeda chatter has gone off the charts.”

  “As happened just before 9/11,” Harvey mused.

  “Exactly,” Ellis said. “A lot of it is rubbish — a smokescreen — but the sheer volume makes it near impossible to pick out the relevant stuff.”

  She rubbed her temples and let out a sigh. Harvey could see she was under an enormous amount of pressure, as were they all, but as head of the organisation she bore the brunt. He wanted to cheer her up by letting her know about the meeting with Wallis, but if
he mentioned it she would no doubt ask what information he had shared in the past. That wasn’t a conversation he wanted to get into right now.

  “I’m heading home,” he said, and Ellis nodded as he made for the exit.

  Outside, the sky had clouded over once more, heralding yet more rain in what had already been the wettest May in recent years. It was only a ten minute walk to Armando’s and he arrived just as the heavens opened. Inside, he found a table near the back, and the drinks arrived just as Wallis dashed through the door.

  “I’m beginning to see why my wife wants to go home,” he said, bringing a smile to Harvey’s face. He knew that Doug loved his current assignment, and the more his wife complained, the more determined he was to stay.

  Wallis hung his coat on a stand and sat opposite Harvey. They enjoyed their drinks in silence for a moment, Wallis favouring a pint of bitter to Harvey’s lager.

  “So what have you got for me, Doug?”

  Wallis savoured his beer before putting the glass on the table and leaning closer to Harvey.

  “The order to keep it under wraps came from the Home Secretary himself,” Wallis said, and saw the expected surprise on his friend’s face. It quickly turned to curiosity.

  “So who were the prisoners?”

  “The one he was concerned about was Sam Grant.”

  Harvey made the quick transition from curious to confused. He’d never heard the name, and was certain he hadn’t seen it in any recent reports.

  “Who is this Grant guy?”

  “We don’t know. Colonel Travis Dane, commander of the Special Activities Division on Jolo sent his picture over to Langley and all they got back was the name and an order not to share with anyone, not even you guys.”

  Harvey wondered why the minister would want to withhold information from his own security services, and the obvious answer was that it wasn’t an operation that he wanted the Intelligence Services Commissioner to know about. The commissioner is responsible for service oversight and can visit any of the security services at his discretion, requesting documents or information relating to any case. Each year he reports his findings direct to the Prime Minister. This report is then laid before parliament and subsequently published.

  If the Home Secretary didn’t want this case becoming public knowledge, it could only mean one thing. But who would carry out such an operation? It would have to be someone with access to the system. He made a mental note to check with Gerald Small to see if any of the sub-nets fit the bill, but one leaped immediately to mind.

  Farrar.

  Ellis had said that even she didn’t know who he worked for, which pointed to his role being covert. And if it was Farrar, did this mean that this Sam Grant was one of the passengers he was expecting?

  “Who were the other prisoners?” He asked.

  “Simon Baines and Len Smart,” Wallis said.

  “Are you sure?” Harvey asked, a little louder than he intended.

  Wallis nodded. “I read through the report just before I left the office. According to Dane, one of his troops caught three armed men wandering around the jungle and brought them in for questioning. They wouldn’t talk, so Dane sent their pictures to Langley, who sent back the details. All they got for Sam Grant was a name, a photo and that’s it.”

  “Do you have the report with you?” Harvey asked, more in hope than expectation.

  “Sorry, buddy. You know the deal, completely off the record, and that means no hard copies.”

  Harvey understood. “So what happened to the prisoners? Where are they now?”

  “Dane said the three of them went missing during the attack. The guard house was hit and they must have escaped. Apparently your people were pissed when they turned up to collect them.”

  “My people?” Harvey asked, once more confused. “Are you sure they were from Five?”

  “Langley assumed they were, but the look on your face tells me otherwise.”

  “They certainly weren’t sent by anyone I know,” Harvey said, but he didn’t add that it once again pointed to James Farrar.

  He recalled that the Huang Zhen had left Malaysia on Monday the 23rd, while the attack on the base had taken place just three days earlier. That meant Baines and Smart would have had three days to travel to Port Kelang. His search through Hughes’s file had shown that he owned a yacht, but could it make the journey in that time? He’d have to wait until he got back to the office to work that one out, and the introduction of the mysterious Sam Grant into the mix meant he wasn’t prepared to wait until the morning.

  “I have to go and check a few things out,” he said as he rose. “Thanks for the info, Doug. I owe you one.”

  “Big time,” Wallis agreed.

  It took Harvey less than five minutes to jog back to Thames House, and once in the office he went straight to his desk and logged onto his computer. He was waiting for the security settings to synch when Ellis approached him.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” she said.

  “I’ve got some new information,” Harvey told her. “I need to do a search for Sam Grant.”

  The welcome screen appeared and he began typing into the internal search engine.

  “Where did you get the name?” She asked as they waited for the results to come back.

  “A completely anonymous and deniable source,” Harvey told her with a smile. “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill myself.”

  The screen showed six results and they went through each one, Harvey looking for anything that could link him to the current investigation. The first four were quickly dismissed, but when trying to open the fifth record he was shown a dialog box which requested a password. He entered his account login and a flashing message filled the screen:

  Access Denied.

  “Okay,” Ellis said, looking at Harvey. “You got my attention. Who is this guy?”

  “I’ve got no idea. However, find Sam Grant and we find Baines and Smart.”

  He gave her a breakdown of the information he’d got from Wallis but stopped short of revealing his identity, despite Ellis asking more than once. She suggested they try to access the file using her credentials, which had a higher level of access. When they got to her office and repeated the process, the outcome was the same.

  “If the Home Secretary personally gave the order to withhold Grant’s file from the CIA — and from his own people — then it smells of black ops to me,” Harvey said. “That means we’re dealing with a team who have the minister’s ear, a team who are off the official grid but still have access. And if Grant was with Baines and Smart on Jolo, that team would not want you looking for that particular pair, even if they were solid leads to finding Levine and Campbell.”

  He looked Ellis in the eye. “So who does that sound like?”

  Ellis had to agree that it pointed the finger fair and square in Farrar’s direction, but it wasn’t conclusive.

  “We need to pin this to him,” she said, rubbing her palms together as she concentrated.

  “Then what?” Harvey asked.

  It was a very good question, one she hadn’t got round to considering. If the passengers were in fact the mysterious Grant and the two men Farrar didn’t want her searching for, what was she to do about it? If she interfered in an order signed by the minister himself, she knew she could kiss her career goodbye. On the flip side, she had proof that Farrar had ordered someone to intercept them, and the phrase ‘ensure no onward journey’ sounded very much like a kill order. If these people were who she thought they were, could she stand idly by and allow a state-sanctioned hit on British citizens? She knew she wouldn’t allow another nation to get away with it, so why shouldn’t those same standards apply to her own government?

  “First we confirm that Farrar is behind this,” she said.

  Harvey nodded. “How do we do that? If Farrar is involved, he’ll just deny any knowledge of Sam Grant.”

  Ellis smiled. “To catch a rat, you have to become a rat.”

  * * *


  James Farrar was wading through the reports his team had produced. So far they had checked hundreds of bed & breakfast establishments for cash-paying families checking in on the 22nd of April, but there were still thousands to be done. There were also numerous camp sites, caravan parks and boat rentals to be eliminated, and all of this in the next few days. At the current rate, his targets would die of old age before he found them.

  He wished he could bring in the police, but that was out of the question. The last thing he wanted was this hitting the newspapers, and all it would take would be one loud-mouthed copper to open his mouth to the wrong person.

  He was still fumbling for ideas when his mobile rang. The display told him it was Ellis and he prayed that she had some good news. He answered using the most pleasant voice he could muster.

  “Veronica, how are you?”

  “Tired,” Ellis said wearily.

  You and me both, Farrar thought, though he didn’t say as much. “I hope you’re calling to let me know you’ve found what I’m looking for,” he said, not wanting to be too specific over an unsecure line.

  “Not yet, but we have been given a lead, a name. Trouble is, we can’t follow it up.”

  “Why the hell not?” Farrar asked, dropping the pretence of amiability.

  “I can’t access his file,” Ellis said. “It’s password protected. I was calling to ask if you could have a word with the Home Secretary and persuade him to release it to me.”

  “Whose file is it?” Farrar asked as he prepared to enter the name into the search engine.

  “Sam Grant,” she said, and Farrar almost dropped the phone. Where the hell did she get that name from?

  “Are you there, James?”

  “Uh...yeah, just doing a search now.” He brought the screen up as he tried to figure out who the hell knew about Grant. He did, of course, and the Home Secretary. Besides them, there was the request from the CIA a few weeks earlier. Farrar had been on a plane back from Manila when the request had come in, otherwise he would have handled it himself and sent them a completely different name. In his absence, all they had been given was a photo, which was what they had in the first place. Giving them the name should have been no big deal, either: It was a fictitious name in a sealed file that was only accessible to a handful of people, and the CIA had been given explicit instructions not to share with anyone. Unfortunately, it seemed that the Americans hadn’t been as tight-mouthed as they should have been.