The Palais Jamaî, transformed from the Vizier’s residence into a luxury hotel in 1930, is an incomparably graceful edifice. Set into the city walls at Bab el Guissa it’s lush gardens and sweeping terraces overlook the teeming Medina. Alex Bowman sat in the warm February sun, savouring a gin and tonic. He watched the black man doing lengths in the pool, wishing it were him. Bowman hadn’t taken any exercise for months. The jagged exit wound in the middle of his chest was almost healed but he wasn’t back to full fitness yet, the movement in his right shoulder still restricted. Bowman had put on several pounds, bringing his prominent nose and jutting jaw into proportion. His thick brown hair was newly cropped, his blue eyes pale and empty of expression. Alex Bowman looked thoroughly drained.
The black man hauled himself out of the pool in the single fluent movement of an athlete and grabbed a towel. His breathing was light and easy. Ben Ambrose stood a little less than six feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds. He looked like a good middleweight boxer in the mould of the great Sugar Ray. A gold chain hung around his neck. Bowman smiled at him and said,
“How was school?”
“School was fine,” Ben Ambrose chuckled. “They say I have a talent.”
“Do you?”
Bowman spoke four languages fluently but had never had a shot at Arabic.
“Don’t think so. But I am having fun. And anyway I owe it to Willowby to give it my best shot.”
Ben Ambrose owed Frank Willowby a bundle and he knew it.
“You’ve heard from Willowby?”
Bowman rattled the ice around in his glass, picked out the slice of lemon and put it in his mouth.
“Not lately. He took off on an extended vacation, disappeared back to the States for a whole month, working on his golf swing.”
“I’d like to meet Willowby.”
Bowman beckoned to the barman and gestured for another round of drinks.
“Sounds like an impressive bloke.”
“Willowby? Willowby’s the best, he has an amazing record, worked his way up from nothing, not like some of the brass got parachuted in. But I told you already, Alex, Willowby doesn’t even know you exist. I’d like to keep it that way. It shouldn’t matter much to you old buddy, you’ve been well paid. For me it’s a career.”
“True, except I took a bullet in the back. Bloodshed wasn’t included in my fee. So you still owe me.”
There was still shrapnel lodged behind Bowman’s sternum, a jagged exit wound in the middle of his chest.
“But at least I have my reputation back. I’ll never be a copper again but I shouldn’t have a problem finding work. It just won’t be official. So play it your way, Ben, take all the credit you want.”
“You’re a star, Alex, always knew you’d see things my way.”
Ambrose stretched, yawned, and put on his gold-rimmed shades.
“You plan to go on living in Spain? Couldn’t you go back to England, now your record’s clean?”
“Spain’s home. I make a decent living and I love my house in San Roque.”
“By the way, what happened to the girl?”
“Melanie? Melanie’s OK.”
“Did she have an abortion?”
“She discussed it with her priest but in the end she couldn’t come to terms with it.”
“So she’s Catholic? I didn’t know that. Jesus. Must have been a real dilemma for the poor kid.”
“It was. She takes her religion seriously. All that hocus-pocus is way beyond me, but for Mel it’s very real. Anyway, thank God in the end she miscarried.” Bowman frowned. He really didn’t want to talk about this.
“But at least she kicked the habit. Poor kid went cold turkey. Then she got her old job back at the Echo, at twice the pay. Her editor’s been really supportive. I think the old bugger fancies her.”
Bowman sipped his gin and tonic.
“Mel says she’s had enough excitement for one lifetime. Can’t say I blame her. I still worry about her though. She knows too much about the coke plantation up in the Atlas. Knowledge like that could be dangerous.”
“She publish anything about the farm?”
“She’s working on it. I think she has a book in mind. But right now she’s busy with your President and his stupid war.”
“The war may be stupid, Bowman, but the President’s OK. Matter of fact I voted for him. It’s that asshole Herzfeld who’s certifiable. They should lock the bastard up and throw away the key. Does he really think he’ll put a stop to terrorism by bombing the crap out of Baghdad? They’ll be joining Al Qaeda in droves, right across the Middle East.”
“I have an uncle used to be in advertising,” Bowman mused. “He always says ‘son, if you want to sell the cure you must first spread the disease’.”
“Hey, Alex, that’s pretty smart.”
Ambrose climbed into his Calvins, slipped on his Gucci’s and fastened an 18 ct Oyster on his wrist.
“What about you, Alex? You did good work, wouldn’t you like some recognition?”
“I like it here in the shadows, on the outside looking in. But you can do me one small favour.”
“What’s that, Alex?”
“Pick up my hotel bill. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of thousand dollars. Help offset my medical expenses.”
“Sure, Alex, no problem. I’ll wire the London Embassy for funds.”
***
8
The night-duty officer at the Signals Intelligence listening post at Morwenstowe, Cornwall, sat alone in the windowless, air-conditioned chamber. This was the worst part of the night shift when nothing of importance ever happened. She made another mug of the instant coffee she detested, stretched, yawned and lit a cigarette. A buzzer sounded on the Cray SV1 supercomputer that occupied an entire side of the room. It spat out a single A4 page. The duty officer did not immediately grasp the importance of the printout. It recorded the booking of three business class return airfares from Dublin, via Paris, to Bogotá Colombia. The passengers’ names meant nothing and were certainly false. The trigger that alerted the computer to this particular transaction was the credit card number used to pay for the flights. It was a fixed reference on the Echelon watch list and operated a known IRA account. She sat at the keyboard, re-encrypted the message, wrote a brief evaluation and forwarded it to her controller at GCHQ in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
***
The rush hour traffic around Vauxhall Cross was one incredible mess. The chauffeur driven Rover 75 pulled swiftly away from the lights, swerved in front of the white van, traversed two lines of cars and vanished down the ramp into the monstrous cream and green headquarters of MI6, affectionately known to its familiars as Legoland.
Merlyn Stanbridge, newly appointed head of the Secret Intelligence Service, more popularly known as MI6, or The Firm to insiders, rode the lift to her twelfth floor office overlooking the Thames and downstream to the Palace of Westminster. The room was large and airy, furnished in the dull utilitarian style that passed for modern in the British Civil Service. No personal memorabilia adorned the uncluttered desk.
Merlyn Stanbridge was well into her fifties, built on a strong but not heavy frame, with the wide astonished eyes and clear skin of a woman with a satisfying sex life. She wore a plain grey worsted suit, woollen stockings and the inelegant flat-heeled shoes of someone who prefers the company of dogs to the company of people. She crossed to the window and glanced furtively at the opposite embankment from where the Irish Republican Army had fired a missile at Legoland three or four years earlier. Merlyn Stanbridge had been in Moscow at the time. She missed Moscow, missed the Cold War. Things were so much simpler then. You knew and respected your enemy. Your enemy knew and respected you. It was like a gentlemen’s club, except that ladies were admitted. There were persistent rumours she’d taken a lover in Moscow, her counterpart in the KGB, but nothing was ever proven and it hadn’t stopped her ascent to the top position. Maybe it had enhanced it. But the Cold War was over. Nowadays she dealt in terrorists, d
rug traffickers, money launderers. The dross of humankind. Truth was, she wanted to retire. Take a cottage in the country, get a couple of dogs and a nice man to look after.
At 10 a.m. a transcript of the Morwenstowe report was placed before her. Merlyn Stanbridge immediately informed the Foreign Secretary on the secure phone line. At noon she received a summons from the Prime Minister to an urgent meeting in Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A” at Downing Street. At 2 p.m. London time a summary assessment was passed to Bill Bradshaw at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As the meeting came to a close the Prime Minister pulled the head of MI6 to one side.
“Look, Merlyn, I’m getting very concerned about WMDs. Why can’t we find any?”
“We’re doing all we can Prime Minister but it’s beginning to look like WMDs just don’t exist. The Iraqis may be telling us the truth after all, that they really did destroy them after the last Gulf war.”
“And what about the ten thousand litres of anthrax that are unaccounted for?”
“Unaccounted for means just that, Prime Minister. It doesn’t mean it still exists. And even if it does exist it’s probably way passed its sell-by date, these things degrade, they don’t last forever.”
“Look, Merlyn, I’m under colossal pressure from backbenchers and at least two members of the cabinet are threatening to resign. If no weapons of mass destruction are found I might not carry the Commons. My Premiership won’t survive defeat. The stakes are far too high for MI6 to let me down. You’ve just got to come up with something. Anything. After 9/11 the Yanks can go for Regime Change. I can’t. The electorate won’t buy it. I have to have WMDs.”
“Prime Minister, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any.”
“And why don’t they want us to verify that, Merlyn?” the PM smiled his most ingratiating smile. “Given the fact we’re about to bomb the crap out of Baghdad? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Saddam doesn’t want to lose face with his neighbours, Prime Minister. The Arabs are funny like that. Face is very important to them.” She made ready to leave. “But anyway, there’s not much more MI6 can do with limited resources, it’s all down to the cousins and the UN inspectors. All they’re asking for is a little more time.”
“Did you try the Internet?”
The PM flashed his boyish smile. He was only trying to be helpful.
“The Internet, Prime Minister?”
She wasn’t sure if he was joking, sometimes it was hard to tell.
“Sure. There’s loads of stuff on the Internet. My kids use it all the time.”
Merlyn Stanbridge now knew he must be joking.
“We’ll do our best, Prime Minister, but all we can provide you with is inadequate information. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong. At the end of the day it’s just our best guess at the time, based on incomplete, imperfect data. But the evaluation of the data, the final decision whether or not we should go to war, will always rest with you.”
“Caveats! Caveats! Caveats! Jesus, Merlyn, does everything you give me have to be buried beneath a heap of caveats?” He wasn’t smiling now. “Just get me the data. And leave the politics to me.”
The PM turned abruptly and mounted the staircase to the family flat on the top floor. As he climbed, he passed the portraits of his predecessors. The soon-to-be forgotten bean counters, Callahan, Wilson, and Attlee. His own unforgettable heroes, Wellington, Churchill and Thatcher who had led the country into war. The Prime Minister did not plan to go down in history merely as a competent administrator. This Prime Minister was determined to round off his CV with his very own Falklands Factor. He entered the private apartments and strolled into his eldest boy’s bedroom. The teenager was hunched over his computer.
“Find anything, son?”
“Hi Dad. Yeah, sure. The internet has buckets of the stuff. Come and have a look at this. It’s a complete PhD thesis.”
***
Merlyn Stanbridge did not like being pressured but as she rode back to her office she took comfort in the thought no war had ever been declared based on intelligence alone. Not even the crude Pavlovian groupthink enveloping the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic was going to change that. But for now she had a more interesting problem to consider, something worthy of her time and effort, something more rewarding than the hunt for WMDs that intelligence suggested had already been destroyed. Even if unearthing them might secure the PM’s reputation. The FARC, drugs, the IRA; how were these three things related? The cousins were on board at last. It had taken them a while. It was only when the Irish Republican Army started showing up in the Colombian jungles that the Central Intelligence Agency had awoken with a start. The idea the IRA might be training Marxist guerrillas to place bombs in American cities scared them shitless. But what if the FARC wanted to make a major statement, put themselves on the international terrorism map? The whole world had seen what Al Qaeda could accomplish. What if the FARC had ambitions to emulate 9/11?
Merlyn Stanbridge spent the next hour at her desk catching up on overnight dispatches. One particular item caught her eye, a CIA intercept that recorded Declan O’Brien flying in and out of Medellin on one of Pablo Ortega’s private jets. Attached to the memorandum was a report from MI6’s Head of Station in Bogotá, that noted O’Brien travelling south into the safe-haven. The IRA’s contacts with the narco-terrorists weren’t new, they’d been supplying training and expertise to the FARC for three or four years, but as far as Merlyn Stanbridge knew the Irish Republican Army had no dealings with Ortega. The IRA’s criminal fringes had a profitable sideline dealing drugs but they weren’t into mainstream trafficking. So Merlyn deduced O’Brien must be engaged on some private business of his own. And given what she knew about the Irishman that meant a contract killing. A matter too small to interest the head of MI6. Except that nothing that involved Ortega was ever small. As she pondered the significance of these events the inter-com on her desk brought Merlyn Stanbridge back to reality. It was her secretary, Vincent.
“Miss Drake is here for her appointment, ma’am.”
“Show her in.”
The head of MI6 rarely spoke to reporters one on one, but the days when the identity of the country’s top spy was a secret were long gone. And Melanie Drake was not just any journalist. Melanie Drake had knowledge. Melanie Drake had contacts. Direct access to the White House put this journalist in a class of her own. Properly handled, Melanie Drake could be very useful.
The Chief Reporter of the Echo wore a dark blue business suit, no jewellery, and carried a briefcase but no handbag. There was a freshness about her, a frailty almost, that Merlyn Stanbridge found very appealing. They sat together on a sofa near the window. Merlyn Stanbridge handed Melanie a sheaf of papers.
“It’s just a standard press release I’m afraid but I’ve added some handwritten notes, some anecdotes, to make it sound more personal. But I’ll need to see the piece before it’s published. You have any problem with that?”
“None.”
Melanie knew her place. But with luck and a little journalistic licence she could come up with a new and interesting angle, maybe work something in about the rumoured Russian lover.
“In return there’s a couple of things I need from you. First, I want a story planted in the Echo. Front page. Banner headline. Saturday’s paper would be perfect. We think the IRA is up to no good in Colombia, training and equipping the local bad boys. Echelon spotted three of their senior operatives heading for Bogotá.”
“Echelon?”
Melanie grabbed her pad and a ballpoint pen. She’d heard the acronym before but never knew for sure the organization actually existed. The authorities always denied it. This alone would make the interview worthwhile. It could be dynamite.
Merlyn Stanbridge knew the journalist was hooked, which was just what she intended.
“This is not for publication, Miss Drake, but if we’re going to work together you have to understand how these things are done. You just didn’t he
ar it from me. OK?”
“OK.”
“And if this does leak out, take it from me, you’ll never work in journalism again. And that’s a promise. Got that?”
“Got that.”
Melanie put away her shorthand pad and pocketed her pen.
“Echelon is the secret computer network we share with the cousins, dating all the way back to the Cold War. Echelon straddles the handful of key choke-points that process ninety per cent of the world’s computer traffic.”
She lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke through her nose.
“Echelon captures staggering volumes of data, randomly harvesting three billion messages a day. We have sniffer devices hooked up to computer systems around the globe that scan the data constantly. Arrays of SV1 supercomputers sift the data, distilling it through artificial intelligence programs like Memex and Dictionary, searching for key words like “Bomb” and “Pope” appearing in the same communication.”
Merlyn Stanbridge paused to check the journalist was suitably impressed.
“Then techno-spooks target locations associated with terrorist activity, a specific house or internet-café, or it could be an entire community or town.”
The UK’s chief spook went to the window and looked downstream to the Palace of Westminster.
“Of course, if any of this did leak out there’ll be an official denial that anything remotely resembling Echelon even exists.”
“I’m impressed. But isn’t it illegal?”
“Illegal? Of course it’s illegal. That’s why it doesn’t exist. Echelon contravenes all sorts of civil and statuary rights. But that’s the world we live in, Miss Drake, and that’s how we spotted our three Paddies. So now we have a unique opportunity to cause maximum embarrassment to the IRA. With luck it’ll be enough to cut off their US funding. After 9/11 the American public suddenly disapproves of terrorists. The Echo would be ideal, it’s always had a republican bias, comes from having an Irish editor I suppose.”
First Strike Page 4
