Annie shook her head, flicking through the master files, surprised at how thin they were. Wren, she’d begun to suspect, was on the skids, and the news that she was to represent him at the Home Office probably confirmed it. Quite what would happen to him she didn’t know and in some respects she was surprised he’d survived so long. The Service was changing fast. The shock troops of the new Tory right had finally kicked the doors in and a new MI5 was emerging for the government to play with, still unaccountable, still beyond public reach, but nicely tuned in to the Downing Street line.
Wren hated it. She knew he did. She’d seen it in his eyes that very morning, the way he’d briefed her before she’d talked to Willoughby Grant, the way he’d shaken his head when she’d asked why they were going to all this trouble, the way he’d sidestepped the question again, just minutes ago when she’d tried to ask him on the phone. But men like Wren were in a time warp. To them, MI5 was still independent, still its own creature, the servant of Queen and Country, not the puppet of a government hell-bent on absolute power.
Annie smiled, closing the last of the files, wondering again what would happen to Wren. He’d be replaced, of course. Of that, she had no doubt. But in a way it was a blessing. He was an old man. He didn’t belong in any of this. The world he’d known had gone. With luck, by Christmas, he’d be over the worst and planning a decent leaving party. Then he could do what they all did. Retire to Wiltshire and brood.
Annie took a cab to Queen Anne’s Gate. The traffic, for once, was no problem and she found herself standing outside the Home Office with ten minutes in hand. She’d never liked the look of the building – its bulk, the big concrete overhangs, the tiny windows, the feeling that it was somehow impervious to daylight – and she crossed the pavement at once, showing her pass to the uniformed security man inside the door.
The reception area was dotted with padded benches and she was about to sit down when she noticed the man standing by the lifts. He was tall, and young, and she knew at first glance that she’d seen him before. He had a strong, square face and the kind of complexion that comes from prolonged exercise in the open air. He had short, blond, curly hair and over the check shirt and tweed jacket he wore a long, green Drizzabone raincoat, a cavalier touch amongst the neat grey suits and blank, carefully barbered faces.
He was reading a newspaper. He looked across at her and smiled. The lift arrived, and the doors opened, and he stood back, letting her in.
‘Northern Ireland,’ he said, as the lift purred upwards, ‘last year.’
‘Of course.’ Annie nodded, putting her finger on it at last, Thiepval Barracks, the Army’s headquarters in Lisburn. She’d seen him in the mess. Someone had pointed him out. They may have been introduced.
He was looking at her now, extending a hand. ‘Hugh Cousins,’ he said, ‘in case you’d forgotten the name.’
The meeting took place in a conference room on the sixth floor. The room was dominated by a big octagonal table, and there was a series of ill-matched prints hanging on the walls. The windows were screened with venetian blinds and it was incredibly hot.
Annie counted the seats round the table. There were ten. Two of the seats were positioned just behind the rest and Annie sensed at once that one of them was hers. She eyed it speculatively. Cousins was talking to someone from the Ministry of Defence. The two men obviously knew each other well. A door opened at the other end of the room and a small posse of civil servants came in. An older woman in their midst went at once to the table and invited everyone to sit down. Annie felt a hand on her arm. Cousins shepherded her towards one of the spare chairs.
‘Give me a dig when I get it wrong,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll be asking you to talk about our friend.’
Annie glanced at him, thinking again about the master files. ‘Sabbathman?’
‘No.’ Cousins smiled. ‘Willoughby Grant.’
The meeting began. The woman from the Home Office introduced herself and established the ground rules. The Cabinet Office crisis committee, an organisation known as COBRA, had ordered the formation of a small sub-committee for the duration of what she termed ‘the emergency’. The sub-committee, code-named PYTHON, was to exchange information and advise on various options. Her own task was to report back to her minister, who in turn would brief COBRA. The Cabinet were aware, above all, of the dangers of making a tricky situation worse. Public order and the safety of key individuals was paramount. Both, it was clear, were currently under threat.
She ended her opening remarks and introduced the representative from New Scotland Yard, Commander Michael Allder, head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad. A tiny man in an immaculate three-piece suit stood up, one hand in his trouser pocket. The spare chair, just behind his own, was still empty. He spoke from a neat pile of notes, a faint scowl on his face, and Annie listened as he briskly outlined the progress of the investigations to date. She’d never seen Allder in the flesh before and she smiled at the accuracy of Kingdom’s descriptions. The way he stood, rocking back and forth on his feet. The way he used his hands, poking out one finger to emphasise a key point. The way he locked eyes with individual men and women around the table, staring them out with his slightly bulbous eyes until they finally gave in and looked away. He ended his report by acknowledging how little progress had, in fact, been made. Four separate police forces. Thousands of trained personnel. Hundreds of thousands of man hours. And not, so far, a single worthwhile lead.
When he sat down there was an audible murmur around the table and Annie watched the little policeman’s face as he tried to mask a smile. He was just like Francis Wren, she thought. He’d left them exactly where he wanted. In a state of total ignorance.
The meeting came to order again and Hugh Cousins stood up. He talked easily, almost conversationally, the kind of voice you’d listen to in a crowded bar. He made a reasonably funny joke about marauding psychopaths, apologised to any ex-Paras in the room, and then took the committee smoothly through his own presentation. Unlike Allder, he invited their confidence. Unlike Allder, he asked them to share the challenge of penetrating what he called ‘this curious conspiracy’. Regretfully, he said, MI5 had little hard data. As his colleague from the Yard had already established, there were no firm leads, nothing for the huge Curzon House computer to bite on.
They were, however, looking under certain stones. Some kind of Republican connection was an obvious starting point, and inquiries were under way on both sides of the Irish Sea. These inquiries, he said, were highly sensitive and the committee would forgive his reluctance to go into details, but certain developments did look promising. There were indications that certain hard-line Provisionals were trying to abort a move towards a ceasefire. There was evidence that they’d put a so-called ‘lilywhite’ into play, someone from the Republic, someone with no record on any UK computer, someone who might conceivably be linked to the latest wave of killings.
Cousins looked briefly down at Annie, and Annie found herself nodding in agreement. Quite why she did it, she didn’t know but she sensed that this powerful, impressive young man, so different to Francis Wren, had exactly gauged the mood of the meeting. They were listening to him in a way that they hadn’t listened to Allder. He’d taken them by the hand. He’d made them trust him. She glanced up at Cousins again, hearing her name. He was inviting her to report on her dealings with Willoughby Grant. She had, he said, ‘coaxed him to the trough’.
Annie stood up. She’d never been frightened of speaking in public. On the contrary, she loved it. She loved the way it raised her pulse and quickened her wits. She loved the extra twist it gave to that spring she kept coiled inside her. Above all, she loved the knowledge that people were watching her, listening to her, the sole focus of their attention.
She described her conversation with Willoughby Grant. She kept the details brief and factual. She explained the genesis of Mr Angry and she passed on Grant’s promise of more to come. For the first time, there was a question from the committee.
‘What
can we expect next? Can you be more specific?’
The question came from a young man sitting beside the woman who’d opened the meeting. He didn’t bother with a name and neither did she. Annie looked across at him, remembering a phrase or two from Grant’s file.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, ‘and I suspect he doesn’t either. He’s very good at letting things develop. He has a knack of picking winners. He’s nerveless, too. Doesn’t panic under fire.’
‘An opportunist, in other words.’
Annie nodded. In the young man’s mouth, the description sounded like an insult.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And he thinks Mr Angry’s a winner?’
‘Yes. Most definitely.’
‘So we’ll be seeing more of him?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
The young man looked pointedly at Cousins. For someone his age, he seemed to have a great deal of authority.
‘What do we have inside the building,’ he inquired. ‘At The Citizen?’
‘Human sources? Or Sigint?’
‘Either.’
Cousins glanced round the table, a man whose command of his brief was disturbed only by a sensible concern for discretion.
‘We have both,’ he said carefully. ‘We have a woman on the subs’ desk, plus a number of taps in place.’
‘And?’
‘Our source confirms what we’ve heard.’ Cousins tilted his head towards Annie. ‘This new angle’s been around a couple of days and now they’re all delighted with the result. They’ll push it. There’s no question about that.’
‘Push it where? In what direction?’
‘They don’t know. And we can’t say.’ Cousins offered the committee a smile. ‘Opportunism isn’t an easy condition to deal with. The usual drugs don’t work.’
There was a ripple of laughter. The young man was making notes. Then he whispered something in the older woman’s ear, stood up, and left the room. The older woman introduced the man from the MOD and Annie sat down. Cousins turned to her as the man from the MOD began to outline contingency plans in the event of further killings. Annie thought she heard the phrase ‘special forces’ but she couldn’t be sure.
‘Drinks on me,’ Cousins was whispering. ‘You were brilliant.’
They walked to a pub off Buckingham Gate, a big old Victorian tavern already comfortably full. Cousins found a quiet table in the corner and Annie wriggled out of her coat while he queued at the bar for drinks. Her blood was still pumping from her moment of glory and she could feel the warmth in her face when he returned with the beers.
‘You always drink pints?’ he asked.
Annie nodded. ‘On a good day,’ she said, ‘definitely.’
They talked for nearly an hour. Annie had been right about Francis Wren. He was being moved sideways, to a temporary position in ‘A’ Branch where he’d be compiling some kind of report on MI5’s dealings with British Telecom. The phone tapping operation, Tinkerbell, had recently been attracting outside attention and it was Wren’s job to find out why. It was obvious at once that the appointment was a major demotion, a hint – Annie assumed – that Wren should devote some serious thought to early retirement.
‘He’s a nice man,’ she said for the second time, ‘I like him.’
‘I like him, too. But that’s life. He’s past his sell-by date. I’m just surprised he’s hung on so long. You lose the appetite for it. And it pays to be hungry in this game.’
They exchanged glances and Cousins smiled. There was a subplot here, a reef beneath the conversation, and they both knew it. The lagoon’s full of sharks, Cousins was saying. Weaken, and they’ll have you.
‘The guy on the committee,’ Annie began, ‘the one who asked me about Grant.’
‘Andrew Hennessey. Tory Central Office.’
‘A party worker?’
‘Sort of. He heads something called Special Projects.’
‘I see.’ Annie nodded, surprised at the reach of the Tory political machine. Emergency committees like PYTHON offered a seat in the dress circle, ministers and key officials only. Riff-raff like Hennessey normally belonged at Tory headquarters in Smith Square, along with all the other party hacks. ‘So why the questions?’ she asked. ‘How come they’re all so worried about Willoughby Grant?’
Cousins didn’t answer for a moment. His eyes were the lightest blue and he had the knack of holding her gaze without the slightest hint of aggression. It was a piece of body language that sat oddly with the SAS tie and Annie was fascinated by it.
‘Downing Street have got the shits about all this,’ he said, ‘and Andy’s the guy with the bucket and the mop.’
‘But why Willoughby Grant? He’s no threat, surely?’
‘You’re right. He’s not. But Mr Angry …’ Cousins shrugged. ‘Who knows? Politicians are an odd bunch. You don’t realise it until you meet them. They’re like kids. Babies. Deeply insecure. They’re in the popularity business. Forget all the stuff about tough decisions and taking the medicine, all that crap. They want to be loved. They need it. So Mr Angry makes them very nervous.’
‘But he’s inane.’
‘Yes. But he’ll be incredibly popular. Even in Downing Street they know it’s all going wrong. They know they’re hated. They know the country’s in the shit. They call it voter-deficit. Come the next election, that’ll be a posh word for losing.’ Cousins balanced a beer mat on the edge of the table, and flipped it upward, catching it before it fell. ‘Politicians hate losing,’ he said, ‘which is where we can sometimes help.’
‘By trying to bribe Willoughby Grant?’
‘By marking his card.’
‘Same thing,’ Annie smiled, ‘isn’t it?’
Cousins didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he leaned forward across the table, lowering his voice, Mr Sincerity.
‘I know what you mean, Annie, and I agree. Believe me, I do. Where I came from, no one cared less about politicians. We just did what we did. We got on with it. But this game …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s different. They matter. You have to get to know them. You have to get to know the way they think, what frightens them, what turns them on.’
‘Simple.’ Annie grinned. ‘Power. Getting it. And keeping it.’
‘Sure.’ Cousins nodded. ‘But there’s more to it than that. Think what you like, they are in touch. In fact they’re probably too sensitive. Like I say, it’s every little nuance. Every little breath of wind.’ He paused. ‘Papers like Grant’s worry them a good deal. He can deliver, when he wants to. And other times, he can be a bloody pain. Which is why we want to nip Mr Angry in the bud.’
‘So he is a threat?’ Annie leaned forward, touching him lightly on the hand. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
Cousins smiled at her, those same blue eyes, and reached for the beer mat again. ‘Tell me about Flavius,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Tell me what you made of us all.’
‘How did you know about Flavius?’
‘I read your file. This morning. Plus …’ He fingered his tie. ‘You made a bit of an impact. The blokes aren’t blind. Far from it.’
Annie looked away a moment, warmed by the remark. Her first job for MI5 had been down in Spain, liaising between the SAS and the local intelligence people in Malaga. The Spaniards had mounted long-term surveillance on three Provo terrorists planning a bomb attack on nearby Gibraltar. In the end, the operation code-named Flavius had been botched, three killings in broad daylight that had made headlines around the world, but the preceding months of patient preparation – laying out the bait, closing the trap – had been Annie’s first taste of undercover work. She’d been amazed at the reach of MI5, the corners it could cut, the strokes it could pull, the rules it could ignore. Being part of all that, even as a lowly liaison officer, had given her a feeling of immense power.
‘I loved it,’ she said to Cousins. ‘I truly loved it.’
‘You were very good. From what I hear.’
‘Well …’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever. But I thought it was amazing.’
‘Better than real life?’
‘Much.’
Cousins went back to the bar for some crisps and when he returned, Annie found herself telling him the rest of the story, starting way back, leaving school with ‘A’ level distinctions in French and German and a hunger to work abroad. She’d signed on with a big travel company, working for a pittance as a rep in Lloret de Mar. She’d been good at it – tireless, good-humoured, happy to cope with whatever came her way – and she’d soon found herself supervising other reps, first in Lloret, then throughout the Costa Brava. After Spain, she’d returned to London, hopping from company to company, learning the business from the inside. She’d ended up with the market leaders. They’d given her a car, and an office, and finally a brochure of her own, and by her twenty-ninth birthday she was one executive promotion away from a seat in the company’s boardroom. At this point, typically, she’d resigned.
‘Why?’ Cousins asked.
‘I got another offer. Big German firm.’
‘More money?’
‘A little. But lots of scope. Lots of responsibility. Starting a whole new operation from the ground up. Blank sheet of paper. Fantastic.’
She beamed at him, remembering it, reaching for her drink. Cousins smiled back.
‘And then we came along?’
‘Yes. A year or so later.’
‘And wrecked it?’
Annie shook her head, returning the glass to the table. The approach from Gower Street had come out of the blue. She’d been at a travel fair in Frankfurt. They must have had an eye on her for a while. They’d taken her to the restaurant in the Sheraton-Century Hotel, two of them, a man and a woman from an executive recruitment outfit in London. They seemed to have known every last detail about her life: where she’d come from, the stops she’d made, the long list of battle honours on her professional CV. Wherever she’d paused for breath – a new desk, a new company – they’d taken more soundings, and by the end of that long, long meal they’d made it plain that a job with MI5 was hers for the asking.
Sabbathman Page 14
