Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  Meanwhile Liz, at thirty-five, was not getting younger and a series of unsatisfactory relationships was not what she wanted. Why had she allowed herself to fall for someone so unavailable?

  So here she was, stuck in a cab, likely to be late for a meeting about something she wasn’t briefed on and probably about to get soaked into the bargain, she reflected, as the lowering clouds began to deposit their first drops of rain on the taxi’s windscreen. Typical, she thought; the summer had so far been unusually dry and she had not brought an umbrella.

  But Liz was not one to be gloomy for long. There was too much in her job that she found genuinely fascinating. And when, as was the way with London traffic, the jam suddenly cleared and the cab moved on, her mood lightened; by the time she was dropped halfway down Whitehall, outside the door of the Cabinet Office, in good time for the meeting after all, she felt positively cheerful.

  A vast square table dominated the first-floor meeting room, which would have had a fine view over the gardens of Downing Street had the windows not been obscured by yellowing net blast curtains. Good thing, thought Liz, remembering the mortar shell that had landed on the back lawn, fired in the 1980s by the IRA through the roof of a van parked less than a quarter of a mile away.

  ‘I suggest we begin now,’ said the senior civil servant from the Home Office in a dry voice that made it clear he had chaired countless meetings like this before. Liz had missed his name when he introduced himself and now, gazing at his bland, unremarkable features, she mentally named him ‘Mr Faceless’.

  ‘As you all know, the Gleneagles conference will take place in two months’ time. We have recently learned that, contrary to previous expectations, all the main players are likely to attend, which of course greatly raises the level of the security issues. I believe all the departments and agencies represented here are already in close touch with each other and with the allies.’ And here Mr Faceless nodded towards two men, obviously Americans, sitting together on the opposite side of the table from Liz.

  ‘The purpose of this meeting is to emphasise the importance the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister attach to the success of this conference. It is vital that nothing should occur to disrupt it. Ministers feel, and I believe their colleagues in Washington feel the same, that this conference, given the wide attendance, represents the first real possibility of a fundamental breakthrough in the region.’

  As Mr Faceless continued his remarks Liz discreetly scanned the table. He had not troubled to begin with the normal chairman’s courtesy of going round the table for everyone to introduce themselves, so she amused herself by working out who everyone was. A deputy commissioner from the Metropolitan Police - she’d seen his photo in the newspapers though she’d never met him - was sitting next to a man she guessed was also a policeman, probably a Scot. Then there were the two Americans. They must be from the CIA London station; they didn’t look like FBI and anyway she knew most of the FBI characters at the embassy. One of them wore horn-rimmed glasses, a khaki summer suit and a striped tie that shouted Ivy League. The other, older than his colleague, was a heavy-set, balding man, who seized on the opportunity of a pause in the chairman’s remarks to say, ‘I’m Andy Bokus, head of station at Grosvenor.’ CIA, as she had suspected. He spoke in a flat, uninflected voice. Like a Midwestern car dealer in a film, thought Liz. ‘And this is my colleague, Miles Brookhaven. To date we have received no specific negative information relative to the conference.’

  Liz suppressed a groan. What was it with so many Americans? Met informally, they could be the friendliest, least pretentious people in the world, but put them on a stage and they turned into automatons.

  Bokus went on. ‘Liaisons with the Federal Bureau of Investigation are ongoing. So far, also negative. A representative of that agency will attend any future meeting.’ He paused. ‘The Secret Service may also attend.’

  ‘Really?’ asked a tall, sandy-haired man, leaning back languidly in his chair. Oh God! It was Bruno Mackay, an MI6 officer Liz had run up against before. She hadn’t seen him for several years but he hadn’t changed at all in that time. Still the deep tan, the sculpted nose and mouth, the beautifully cut suit that spoke of Savile Row. Mackay was clever, smooth, charming and infuriating in equal measure -and also, in Liz’s experience, deeply untrustworthy. Now he caught her looking at him, and he stared back into her eyes with cold, professional detachment, until suddenly he gave an unmistakable wink, and his face broke into a wide grin.

  Ignoring him, Liz turned her attention back towards the rest of the table, and realised that Mackay’s intervention seemed to have flustered Bokus, who was now silent and frowning at the chairman. Clearing his throat, Mr Faceless remarked in hushed tones, ‘Although it is not widely known, even among departments and agencies - and I would ask you all to protect this information for the present - there is a strong possibility that the President will attend the conference.’

  Well, perhaps there is a chance of a breakthrough after all, thought Liz. The President certainly wouldn’t be attending if this was going to be just another pointless summit. As if to confirm that this was something different, the door to the room opened and a man came in, walking briskly towards the chairman’s seat.

  He looked familiar to Liz, and she was at a loss for a moment until realising why. It was Sir Nicholas Pomfret. She had never seen him in the flesh, but recognised him from his many appearances on television and in the press. A saturnine figure, bald and dark-skinned, with coal-coloured eyebrows, a hawk nose and sharp, intelligent eyes, he was a near-legendary political Mr Fixit. But he also had a solid core of government experience; for many years he’d been a civil servant at the Home Office, before becoming senior political adviser to the last prime minister but one.

  He’d left government for a while, becoming first CEO then chairman of a leading investment bank. Then, after the election of the new Prime Minister, he’d returned to number 10 Downing Street. The PM had sent him on several overseas missions as his personal ambassador -soothing ruffled Saudi feathers when an arms deal was threatened by a hostile UK press, helping various British firms with difficulties doing business in Hong Kong under mainland Chinese control.

  Most recently, he had been named as the new security major-domo, reporting directly to the PM. His appointment had caused muttering when announced, since he was a political veteran rather than a security professional. But long tenure in the Home Office meant he knew the ins and outs of both the police and the intelligence services and his status as the PM’s personal advisor meant that he had influence with foreign heads of government, so he was now generally accepted as a good thing among that most closed of worlds, the security community.

  His presence at this meeting suggested an urgency. Liz found herself sitting slightly more upright as, after a nod to the chairman, Sir Nicholas began to speak.

  ‘Sorry to miss some of your proceedings, but I’ve just come from the Prime Minister. One of the things we’ve been talking about is this conference, and I wanted to say a few words to you before you go.’

  He paused dramatically, knowing he now had everyone’s attention. ‘A month ago one might have been forgiven for thinking the prospect of another conference on the Middle East distinctly… unpromising. With only the usual participants lined up, it was hard to see how any progress could be made.

  ‘Today, however, I’m very pleased to say that things have changed. It now seems increasingly likely, thanks to prolonged and intensive lobbying by Her Majesty’s Government, in which I was privileged to play a part, that all the relevant parties to the conflict in the Middle East are likely to be at Gleneagles. Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and even Iran have indicated their intention to participate.’

  He’s revelling in this, thought Liz, though there wasn’t any doubting the importance of what he was saying. ‘Gleneagles could be the breakthrough that’s so desperately needed. It’s a great opportunity, but if it fails, there won’t be another peace initiative any time soon. I’m sure t
he seriousness of what I’m saying is apparent to us all.

  ‘That’s why I’m here. I must tell you in the utmost confidence that we have very recently received intelligence - highly classified intelligence - that an attempt will be made to abort the conference, possibly before it even begins. I can’t be more precise than that for the moment - the intelligence is vague, but highly reliable. Those agencies who have a need to know will be briefed in greater detail by our colleagues in MI6. I can assure you that the threat is real. Nothing must be allowed to derail the talks. Thank you for your time’. He stood up. ‘Now I have to get back next door.’

  Later, when the meeting broke up, Liz looked out of the corner of her eye at Bruno, who was lounging back in his chair, looking immensely self-satisfied. It wasn’t hard to guess why. How typical, she thought, feeding intelligence in at the top for maximum dramatic impact, rather than briefing colleagues in the normal way.

  Making her way downstairs, through the familiar glass security doors and out into Whitehall, Liz found herself in the company of the younger of the two CIA men, the Ivy Leaguer with the horn-rimmed glasses and the striped tie. It had been raining and there were puddles on the ground. He was wearing a Burberry raincoat that looked absurdly new.

  Smiling, he held his hand out. ‘Miles Brookhaven,’ he said in a soft voice, his accent mid-Atlantic. The afternoon traffic was light and they had the wide pavement to themselves. ‘Going this way?’ he said, indicating the gates of the Horse Guards building, twenty yards up Whitehall.

  She hadn’t intended to, but found herself reflecting that she could just as well get back to Thames House by walking across Horseguards Parade as by going down Whitehall and getting involved with the complicated crossings around Parliament. They turned into the gates together, passed the sentries in their boxes and emerged through the dark archway into the sunshine reflected off the red gravel of the parade ground.

  ‘Your Sir Nicholas,’ Brookhaven said appreciatively. ‘Is that what they mean by a mandarin?’

  Liz laughed. ‘Strictly speaking, a mandarin is a civil servant. He was a mandarin once, but now he’s got himself a profile - these days he’s a politico.’

  Brookhaven was walking quickly. A shade under six feet, he was lean and athletic-looking. He seemed to glide effortlessly over the pavement and though Liz was hardly a dawdler, she found it hard to keep up. Out of the corner of her eye, as they crossed the gravel, she saw Bruno Mackay climbing into the driving seat of a flashy-looking car. How on earth had he got one of the special passes that entitled him to park there? In fact, how had he got out there so quickly?

  ‘What do you make of what he said?’

  ‘Sir Nicholas?’ Liz shrugged. ‘Oh, I think we have to take him at his word, for the time being anyway. No doubt Six will pass on the intelligence when it’s been assessed. There’s nothing we or anyone can do until we know more.’

  She changed the subject. ‘How long have you been stationed here?’

  ‘Just two months,’ he said, before adding quickly, ‘but I know England well. My school had an exchange programme with a school here. I had a lovely time and I’ve often been back.’

  Lovely - not usually a favourite word of the American male. Brookhaven was an Anglophile, thought Liz, and keen to show it. They were always quick to tell you that they knew the place.

  ‘Which school?’ she asked.

  They had reached the corner of Birdcage Walk and Parliament Square. Brookhaven pointed almost directly ahead of them.

  ‘Right here. Westminster,’ he said. They stopped. ‘I’m off that way,’ he added, gesturing up Birdcage Walk.

  ‘Right. I’ll see more of you, no doubt.’

  ‘I hope so.’ He smiled quickly and walked off.

  Liz had intended to skirt Queen Elizabeth Hall and then set off diagonally towards the far corner of the square, but on an impulse she continued straight ahead, passed the front of Westminster Abbey and walked through the arch into the great courtyard of Westminster School. On the green in front of her a group of uniformed fifteen-year-olds was casually throwing a ball around. To her mind there was something maddeningly upper-class about the scene, something that she knew she could never quite understand or like.

  Feeling somehow out of place, out of time, she crossed the court, out through the tiny gate at the far end and into the sunlit maze of eighteenth-century houses that led her out opposite the House of Lords and the long, tapering wedge of a little park, convenient for peers of the realm and members of parliament to take the air. She remembered the fateful afternoon when she’d sat on one of its benches with Charles Wetherby, and tried calmly to relate to him her discovery that the thing he had feared most - a traitor working in their midst - was true. He’d taken the news with an outward show of calm, but she’d known how shaken he must have been.

  She was thinking of that now when a car pulled up abruptly on the street right next to her. It was the Mercedes 450 cabriolet - a low-slung sports model, silver with an amazingly loud ketchup-coloured top - that she’d seen Bruno Mackay getting into on Horseguards Parade.

  Her heart sank as she watched the front passenger window slide down. The driver leaned over.

  ‘Want a lift?’ he shouted out.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, as cheerily as she could. The only way to deal with the man, she had learned before, was to make it clear that nothing he said mattered at all.

  ‘Come on, Liz, lighten up. I’m going right by your building.’

  ‘I’m going to walk, Bruno,’ she said firmly, as a van started to hoot its horn in protest at the hold-up. ‘You go on. If you stay there much longer you’ll get arrested.’

  He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. But don’t think I didn’t see you back there consorting with the enemy.’ He said this with the mock-reproof of a headmaster.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Liz, tempted to use a stronger word. ‘Miles Brookhaven isn’t the enemy. He and I have a “special relationship”.’ And she walked on, certain that for once she had left Bruno at a loss for words.

  THREE

  That morning the Reverend Thomas Willoughby hoped for rain. Earlier in the year, during the flooding in May, he had wanted never to see rain again. But now in late summer the grass had curled and died, yellowed from the heat and drought, and the gnarled old apple tree in the front of the churchyard looked pained, its carpet of wizened windfall fruit picked at by hovering wasps.

  When he had first moved from his Norfolk village parish to St Barnabas, on the edge of the City of London, Willoughby had feared the worst - endless traffic and noise, vagrants, a secular culture that would have no time for his religion. Yet St Barnabas had been a surprise. It had turned out to be a refuge from the fast-paced urban world. Built by an anonymous student of Hawksmoor, the church had the baroque grace of the master, and a characteristic towering spire. It was just a stone’s throw from the bustle of the old Smithfield meat market and the thrusting steel and glass of the world’s greatest financial marketplace.

  But the church figured on no tourist map and was visited only by the occasional aficionados, working their way through a weighty architectural guidebook. It was almost wilfully obscure, tucked away at the end of a small side street of eighteenth-century terraced houses, not yet gentrified. ‘Bit of a backwater, really,’ the previous incumbent had said on Willoughby’s first visit, then pointed at the small graveyard in one corner of the churchyard. ‘It’s been full up since Victorian times. That’s one service you won’t have to conduct.’

  Like any city church, St Barnabas was locked overnight. Approaching the vestry door, the Reverend Willoughby was just reaching for his keys when he noticed that the door was already open. Not again, he thought, his heart sinking. The church had been burgled the autumn before - the collection box stolen, along with a silver jug that had been left in the vestry. Worse, though, had been the vandalism: two brass rubbings that hung on the chancel wall had been hurled to the floor, their frames smashed to smithereens; one of the ornate
family memorial plaques had been badly chipped by a hammer blow; and - he shuddered at the indignity of it - human excrement deposited on a pew.

  He entered the vestry apprehensively, confident the intruders would be long gone but worried about the destruction they might have left behind. So he was surprised to find the room untouched - the collection box (kept empty now) in its proper place, the cassocks hanging on their hooks; even the Communion articles sat on the dresser apparently unmolested.

  Still anxious, he went cautiously through into the choir, dreading what he might find. But no, the altar stood unharmed, its white marble shining in a shaft of sunlight, and the delicately carved wooden pulpit seemed undamaged. He looked up and saw to his relief that the stained glass window in the chancel still had all its panes. Willoughby looked around, mystified, searching for signs of an intruder. There were none.

  Yet there was a smell in the air, faint at first, then stronger as he moved down the centre aisle to the front of the church. Something pungent. Fish? No, more like meat. But Smithfield’s days as a meat market were over. It was being converted into smart apartments. And this was meat gone off. Ugh. The odour intensified as he examined the pews on either side of the aisle, all pristine, the kneelers neatly hanging on the backs of the wooden benches, hymnals in the low racks on every row.

  Puzzled, he walked down to the front door of the church. Lifting the heavy iron bar that secured the massive oak door from inside, he swung it open, letting light flood into the nave. It was as he turned away, blinking from the sudden harsh sunlight, that he saw something odd. It was next to the large wooden box (a vestment chest originally, he’d always supposed) in which the extra hymn books were stored. Two or three times a year - at Christmas, or for the memorial service of a local dignitary - the church was filled to capacity, and then these spare books were pressed into service. But now they lay in a higgledy-piggledy heap on the ash-coloured paving stones.