Dr Nayar smiled and replied in her gentle voice, “It always is. The mind often protects itself with false memories, trying to shield us from trauma.”
“I don’t see how thinking I’d abandoned him in the bunker was less traumatic than knowing I’d at least tried to save him.” She tapped the side of her head. “Aren’t you supposed to know how this works?”
“I’m afraid we’re still at the ‘more art than science’ stage. We can’t write lines of code for our minds. Not yet, anyway.” Dr Nayar smiled again. “And you now know there was nothing more you could have done. From what you’ve described, I believe you did more than most people would have in the same situation.”
Bridge shrugged. “But we’re not most people, are we? We’re supposed to be better trained, think more clearly, act more quickly.”
“You eliminated several enemy combatants, destroyed the facility, extracted your partner, then outran and escaped your pursuers. What more could you have done?”
“Saved Adrian’s life,” Bridge said. “Or is that not as important as the mission?”
“You saved your brother-in-law. Surely you can give yourself credit for that.”
Bridge snorted. “What, for making sure my sister probably never speaks to me again? If I hadn’t gone running to her, Fred would never have been in danger to start with. Buchanan said they’ve all had to sign the official secrets act, for God’s sake.”
“But you saved them. You killed their attacker, and eliminated the mole to boot.” Dr Nayar put down her notepad, and leaned forward. “I’ve spent a lot of time talking to officers like you, Brigitte. I’ve never met one whose mission didn’t run into problems. Mistaken identity, hesitation, errors of judgement… I mean, at least you didn’t jump into bed with anyone inappropriate, that’s always a bonus.” Bridge snorted a laugh despite herself. “We’re all human, and none of us is perfect. None of you are perfect. Do you think you’re the only OIT to doubt whether you did a good job? Who thinks they screwed everything up, had to improvise, and only scraped through by a stroke of good luck? Because believe me, all those conversations have proven one thing: there are good officers, and there are bad officers, but there is no such thing as a lucky officer.”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Bridge sighed. “This was the last time.”
Dr Nayar frowned. “After all this, are you seriously asking to be taken off the OIT list again?”
Bridge laughed. “Off the list? No, no. I’m quitting SIS.”
* * *
“Don’t be absurd. You can’t resign.”
“This isn’t the cosa nostra, you can’t force me to stay here.”
Giles Finlay raised an eyebrow. Not for the first time, Bridge wondered if SIS kept blackmail files on its officers in case coercion became necessary. “You misunderstand. You can’t resign because your mission isn’t complete.”
Bridge threw up her hands. “What more do I have to do? I found the mole, I killed the mole for God’s sake, and by the way, I took out his handler, too.”
“Now you’re starting to talk like a real OIT,” said Giles, and smiled. Bridge scowled in response, and he quickly continued, “Look, you did very well, a commendable A-minus. But we still have a problem. Actually, two problems.”
“And why are they my problems?”
“Because I said so. First, Nigel Marsh is in the wind.”
“Who?”
“The man Marko Novak met in Islington, the night we lost Novak on the Eurostar. Andrea Thomson and Steve Wicker from GCHQ checked him out, and he claimed to be running a tech startup in Shoreditch. But about the same time you decided to take a holiday in Syria — for which I have run monumental interference in Whitehall this week, and you can thank me later — back here at home, Wicker connected Marsh to a series of recent identity fraud purchases of drone units.”
“You think that’s his connection to Exphoria? So what’s he been doing since Novak went dark?”
“That’s the problem. Following Wicker’s discovery, Five raided the startup and found the whole place cleaned out. Everyone and everything, gone without a trace. So all we know for sure about the Exphoria leaks is what you found on that SD card. Thank you for sending it back in your absence, by the way.”
“It was the least I could do.”
“Wasn’t it just. Now, the second problem is rather more political. You see, Exphoria is still going ahead.”
Bridge tried to reply, but all she could manage were wordless, incredulous sounds of disbelief.
Giles raised his hands in resignation, and related the events of his meeting with Sir Terence and the others. “Basically, all they see are a few photos. They can’t, or won’t, understand the implications.”
“Isn’t that precisely why they have intelligence agencies in the first place?”
Giles gave her a lopsided smile. “Sometimes I wonder. By the way, Archives found this. You should see it.” He handed Bridge a file from his desk. She opened it to see a recent photo of James Montgomery, and several word-processed reports of activity monitoring and financial checks.
“What’s this from? Are you saying you knew Montgomery was dirty when you sent me in?”
“Not at all. We only came across this after you’d uncovered him. Turns out there was a watch on Montgomery a few years ago, when he was a departmental advisor at the MoD. There were rumours one of the bidding contractors on a defence job was owned by a conglomerate of Russian oligarchs, through shells of course, and they were trying to buy the contract with bribes.”
“Montgomery was working for them?”
“All we had was speculation, so we kept an eye on him throughout. In the end the contract went to a different firm anyway. The file was closed, the flags removed. We didn’t make the connection until we found out the Russians were behind the Exphoria leak.”
“Are we sure they are behind it, though?”
Giles looked surprised, then frowned. “Explain.”
“Well, I’m not a hundred per cent myself, but…”
“Bridge, it’s your own evidence that points to Moscow in the first place. Spit it out.”
She took a deep breath, still not entirely sure of her theory. But it was the best she had. “Something Voclaine said after he picked me up from the police. He said they found a go-bag waiting on the bed in Montgomery’s apartment, with a Russian passport, currency, the usual.”
“Correct, and that confirms who his handlers were.”
“But I was in Montgomery’s bedroom directly before he attacked me, and there was no bag. So who put it there? I didn’t. He certainly didn’t.”
“Then it must have been Novak, after he — oh.” Giles rubbed his beard. “Yes, now you mention it, that is strange. Why prepare an agent’s bag, when you can see with your own eyes that the agent is dead?”
Bridge smiled. “Unless, of course, you want the police to assume he was leaving for Russia.” She was growing in confidence. Explaining the theory out loud made it sound more real, more plausible, than when it was locked in her head. “And then there was the gun, a Russian-issue Grach that I’m positive Novak gave to Montgomery.”
“Why?”
“Because Novak seemed to know it wasn’t loaded before he picked it up. As if it had never been loaded, and he knew that precisely because it was his gun.”
Giles leaned back and gazed at the ceiling. “It fits, I’ll give you that. But it’s not much to go on.”
“It makes sense combined with other things that occurred to me in Syria, though. Lots of time to think, out there in the desert, and I realised how old-fashioned this has all been. A traditional code cipher, sent over a part of the internet hardly anyone uses any more. Photographing computer screens, instead of just hacking into the servers. Handing off the photos, rather than a secure online transfer. And Novak himself was old school. He tracked me down with
old-fashioned tradecraft rather than electronic surveillance, and he fought like a relic of the Cold War. He couldn’t have been any more Russian if he’d had Stalin’s face tattooed on his forehead.”
“It is all rather outdated, true,” mused Giles. “The modern FSB is a hive of tech and wizardry, even in theatre. God knows, it’s one of the reasons I set up the CTA in the first place.”
“Exactly. But Novak might as well have been flying the hammer and sickle over Agenbeux. So,” she took one final breath, “I think this was a false flag operation, to make us think Russia was behind it.”
“But Novak was definitely ex-FSB. We’ve had that confirmed by multiple agencies.”
“Ex- being the operative word, right? He’s been freelancing. Who’s to say he wasn’t hired by someone else precisely because he was so unmistakeably Russian? And told to blackmail Montgomery, a man we already suspected of taking bribes from Moscow?”
“Who else would run a mole inside Exphoria?”
Bridge shrugged. “Who wouldn’t want to get their hands on next-gen battlefield drone technology? North Korea, China, India, Argentina, Egypt, the Saudis… Hell, I wouldn’t put it past America, or Mossad. The only people we can definitely rule out are us and France.”
Giles’ phone buzzed. He swiped the notification away, and stood. “Then it sounds like you’ve got plenty on your plate. One way or another, we need to know who’s behind this, and fast. The Exphoria launch is in two days, big ceremony at an airfield in Lincolnshire. Five is liaising with the MoD to enhance security, naturally, but if we can work out who we’re up against, we stand a better chance of guessing their plan. I want a report of everything you know by tomorrow am.”
Bridge was halfway to her desk before she remembered she’d gone in there to resign. She sighed and figured she’d see this through, then leave. If nothing else, she wanted to make sure everyone involved in Ten’s murder got what they deserved.
73
Bridge never saw Century House, SIS’ old headquarters. She was recruited after the service moved to the purpose-built premises at Vauxhall, a furiously modern building that acquired the nickname ‘Legoland’ even before it was completed. Some of the veteran officers and staff assured her she should be glad; despite the mythology surrounding it, Century House was a cold, damp, crumbling shambles of a building by the time they left. Still, she couldn’t help but think of it again as she entered Thames House with Giles, admiring the traditional classic London façade of the place. Five had moved in here the same year SIS moved to Vauxhall, but it was somehow fitting that SIS should move on, into a building of the future, while the home service came to a place that looked like it was constructed a thousand years ago.
Her expectations of leather-backed chairs and wood-panelled corridors, however, were quickly dashed after they passed lobby security. The second security check was more like an airport, the corridors began to lose their classical charm, and when they were finally escorted into the headquarters proper, Bridge thought they might as well have been visiting an accountancy firm in Docklands. Grey carpet, grey aluminium-legged desks, Aeron chairs, gridded strip lights, stale air conditioning, and the omnipresent hum of computers. The air was recycled, thin and stale. Aside from the colour scheme, it wasn’t so different to SIS’ place over the river, and Bridge felt an inexplicable disappointment.
Andrea Thomson’s office was a little bigger than Giles’, which Bridge guessed probably annoyed him endlessly, though it was just as tidy and organised. Andrea received them with a smile, dismissed their escorting officer, and closed the door behind them as they took seats at her desk. “I’ll get straight to it,” she said. “We got DNA from the startup offices.”
Giles, languid until now, perked up. “Nigel Marsh?”
“We assume so, although we’re going from old photographs.” A large screen was fixed to one wall, and after a few mouse clicks Andrea’s computer desktop appeared on it. She pulled up a file that had been scanned from an old analogue record. An old photograph of a young boy with a mop of tousled blond hair, against a tropical background. Underneath, a name: Bowman, Daniel Christopher.
“You think that’s him? Where did this record originate?”
“The Hong Kong archives, would you believe. Now look at this.” She opened another photograph, and Bridge recognised Marko Novak sitting at the bar of a pub. Novak was talking to a thin man about Bridge’s age, with a sandy beard. “This was taken at the Islington rendezvous, the one you decoded while you were in France. Pretty close, don’t you agree, Bridge?”
“Yeah, that could be him,” agreed Bridge, noting the resemblance between the boy and the man. “Why Hong Kong?”
“Because that’s where Daniel Bowman was born and raised. His father was a minor civil servant for the FCO, hence there’s a record of him, and his family. And unlike most of our people over there, they chose to stay on after the handover to the Chinese.”
“Where are they now?” Giles asked.
“That’s a very good question, and one we haven’t been able to answer. Post-handover there’s almost no record of them for a couple of years, and nothing at all after that. We’re hoping your lot might have more luck, because we’re pretty sure they’re not here in the UK.”
Bridge frowned. “Are you sure? We didn’t know Daniel Bowman was here until now.”
“True, but we have much more comprehensive domestic records on his parents, and they’d be in their late sixties by now. Bowman Senior retired from the civil service the day before the handover and became a hairdresser.”
Giles was taken aback. “Come again?”
“Well, his wife held the scissors. But he started and owned their hairdressing business in Hong Kong, which lasted a couple of years before folding. Like I said, after that we have nothing.”
Bridge looked from Giles to Andrea. “So they must have been spies, right? I mean, hairdressers? Really?”
Giles shook his head. “If they were, it wasn’t for us. I’ve never heard of the Bowmans, and I wouldn’t forget a cover story like that.”
“You should check your files anyway,” said Andrea. Giles opened his mouth to object to the obvious, but Andrea continued before he could speak. “But yes, you’re probably right. From the few records we could dig up, the Foreign Office assumed they were ‘Peking Ducks’, spying for the Chinese. But there was no evidence, it was all a very long time ago, and they’re probably dead anyway. Before this week, the last time anyone accessed their files was over a decade ago.”
Bridge groaned. “And there’s your false flag. If Marsh’s — sorry, Bowman’s — parents were spies for Beijing, it’s a safe bet he is too. He would have grown up surrounded by Maoist propaganda, completely indoctrinated and taught to hide it from an early age. A native English boy, loyal to the red state.”
“That would be quite an asset,” agreed Giles, “but it still doesn’t explain why he’s doing this, or on whose orders. Would Beijing really need us to think the Russians are behind this?”
“Maybe they’re just playing for time, hoping to misdirect us long enough for Bowman to complete his mission. Once it’s done, they won’t care if we know it was them, because the only evidence is Bowman himself.”
“And he’ll be completely deniable,” said Giles, rubbing his beard. Bridge wondered if Andrea would appreciate the scent of hazelnuts. “Then it’s down to Five to locate him before he acts, and fast. You’re focusing around the airfield, I assume?”
“Yes, although we’re not ruling out Bowman remaining in London and using an agent in Lincolnshire for the attack. Patel’s team at GCHQ is all over it, and trying to find this bloody radioactive material too. How’s your lad getting on in France?”
Giles stood and offered Andrea his hand. “Nothing yet. You’ll be the first to know.”
Andrea shook his hand and smiled sceptically. “Don’t fib to me, Giles. Second or third wil
l do just fine.”
Bridge waited until they were escorted back through the layers of security and out of the building before asking, “Radioactive material? What’s Henri doing in France?”
Giles was confused, then gasped like a man remembering he’d left his car lights on. “Sorry, this all happened after you left Agenbeux. There’s the small matter of a suspected dirty bomb attack. The material was shipped out of Saint-Malo, and Mourad is trying to track down the men who transported it to find out where it was headed.”
“We could contact Voclaine, ask the DGSI to help.”
“Who? Oh, you mean Tolbert.”
Bridge laughed. “So that was his real name, after all?”
“Well, it’s the one they gave us. But no, I think we rather need to keep this on the QT for now. Besides, Mourad told Ems that he’s close.”
74
By some miracle it wasn’t raining, so instead of taking refuge in a café Henri Mourad found an unoccupied bench in a small square of Toulouse’s pink city to wait for Marcel. The southern nights were now almost as warm as the northern days, and a group of weathered old men threw pétanque on the far side of the square, oblivious to the fading light. Henri’s view of the game was poor, but the players’ reactions and taunts were enough to tell him one side was handily beating the other, and delighting in their impending victory.
The game distracted him enough that he didn’t clock Marcel until after the Frenchman had entered the park. He tried to approach discreetly but failed miserably thanks to a hoarse, chesty cough. Henri expected him to sit on the bench, but instead Marcel walked close by, whispering, “Follow me.”
Henri fell in beside him, and they walked toward a park exit. “Have you found them?”
Marcel jerked his head around, checking nobody was within earshot. “Yes. And it won’t be long before someone else here does, too. The whole city is jumping, ready to beat them to a pulp.”
“Your forger Benoît must have been well-liked.”
The Exphoria Code Page 31
