She’d gone instead to Bowerbridge, her childhood home. Her mother and Edward Treglown, her mother’s partner, had been doing their best to help her come to terms with Martin’s death and she didn’t want to hurt their feelings by refusing to join them for Christmas.
She had arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon and they had gone to the midnight service at the village church. Liz had been brought up an Anglican but she no longer believed in any sort of God, though she knew that the moral principles she tried to live by were firmly rooted in her Anglican upbringing. And in fact, the church service with its familiar words, its music and the carols she knew so well had proved oddly soothing.
Afterwards they had walked back through the estate that her father had managed for the then owners. She’d played there with the children of the big house when she was quite young and she knew every track and path. It was a clear starry night and frost was beginning to settle on the fields. So bright was the moon that they hardly needed their torches. As she walked, she thought about everything that had happened to her since the previous Christmas and wondered, not for the first time, whether the time had come to quit and find another job.
She had stayed on for Christmas Day, worried that the sadness she couldn’t disguise might spoil the day, but by the evening she had eaten enough and drunk enough of Edward’s favourite burgundy to dull the pain and they had spent a pleasant evening dozing in front of the fire and the TV. Then on Boxing Day they had joined a big lunch party at some neighbour’s, where blessedly no one present had known anything about Liz’s relationship with Martin or about his death, so all she had to do was dodge the usual questions about her job.
She left the next day, promising to try and come down for New Year’s Eve, though she knew that both her mother and Edward understood that she wasn’t going to make it. Wherever she was, Liz knew she was going to be in pain, and she thought it best to suffer alone – why spoil any more of the holidays for everybody else?
After an aimless evening in her flat, she went back to work the next day. She was used to the sense of anticlimax that came at the end of an operation, whatever the outcome, but this time grief redoubled her deflation. Yet she knew that immersion in work would be the one thing to get her through the coming days, so she was glad to be back at her desk.
The office was quiet, virtually empty of staff on her floor, though in pockets round the building people were working as hard as ever. She rang the A4 Control Room to say thank you for all their efforts in following Zara on his anti-surveillance route to Eccles and the lorry from Harwich. Wally Woods answered.
‘Happy New Year,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever have a holiday?’
‘My work is my leisure,’ he responded with a snort. ‘We’re in the middle of another drama now.’
On her return from Manchester, Liz had filed a brief report but knew she would have to supplement it. Not that there was much to add.
On that morning in Manchester when a half-conscious Peggy, just before surgery, had through sheer stubbornness insisted word must get through to Liz that Mrs Donovan had phoned the Thames House switchboard, it hadn’t taken Einstein to see the link with Atiyah. Liz had called Mrs Donovan straight away.
She had expected a call that early would wake the old lady up, but quite the opposite proved to be the case. ‘About time someone rang,’ Maggie Donovan had said irritably. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep. I’ve been waiting for hours.’ Then the old lady, still sharp as a tack, had told Liz about the visitors next door, and how Mrs Atiyah was away and hadn’t said anything about people coming to stay.
Within half an hour, still in the moonless dark, a dozen armed police had filled the terraced street, blocking each end, climbing over garden walls and finally simultaneously breaking down the front and back doors and charging into the house. Inside they’d found the five associates of Mika Atiyah asleep on inflatable mattresses on the sitting room and bedroom floors. Caught off guard, they had been taken into custody without resistance. When they were questioned, they had all protested, claiming that they had come to Manchester to go to the football match with their friends. It hadn’t taken much of a search of the house to find the little pile of tickets for the match, lying on top of a cupboard. But when they were asked to explain why the tickets were all for different parts of the ground, they became less vocal.
After it was discovered that each of them carried a Yemeni passport, even though they spoke in a variety of British regional accents and not one of them could understand the interpreter who was summoned to speak to them in Arabic, they’d refused to say anything at all. Not that that had helped them for long in concealing their identities, once the detailed inquiries were completed. They were all now in prison in Manchester, as was Mika Atiyah, on a variety of charges under the Counter-Terrorism Act.
The media had got hold of the fact that armed police had made arrests at a house in Eccles that were thought to be connected in some way with a shooting incident at a warehouse on an industrial estate off the M60, but so far it hadn’t leaked out that a terrorist plot had been disrupted, or what the intended target had been. Jackson’s death had gone unmourned in the Manchester metropolitan area, while the newspapers had been spare with the usual effusive eulogies for a murdered policeman – word seemed to have got round about McManus’s less savoury activities.
And any sympathy Liz might have felt for her former lover disappeared when Halliday rang her. ‘You know,’ he said after congratulating Liz on the arrest of the terrorist suspects, ‘I felt guilty that I was somehow responsible for the woman Katya’s death – by tipping off Jackson accidentally somehow. But I’ve discovered it wasn’t anything I’d done. McManus was in the police station the night Katya and the other girls were brought in. The desk sergeant told me it was McManus who got her released first – I guess to alert Jackson that she was an informer.’
On that night – really, very early morning – when the Atiyah house was being entered by armed police, a search party had been busy back in the warehouse. It had taken them almost three hours to find the weapons hidden in the lorry, and it would have taken longer than that but for a stray remark from one of the Dagestani women the police had begun to interview. She complained about how long the journey had taken. She said that the driver was forever stopping to fill up – yet he wouldn’t let them out at the petrol stations to stretch their legs or go to the toilet. Since lorries of that size had enormous petrol tanks, this continual stopping for fuel seemed peculiar.
It was then that they checked the fuel tank itself, where they soon found that half of it had been fitted with a metal partition. In the newly created compartment they found twenty AK-47s wrapped in oilskins, grenades in metal containers, and box after box of ammunition clad in bubble wrap. It was an ingenious hiding place, and a stupid one, since a stray spark and some leaked petrol fumes could have set off the ammunition and blown the lorry sky-high.
Liz remained concerned about Peggy Kinsolving, whom the doctors had told to take six weeks’ sick leave. Peggy had been through the mill, with fragments of shrapnel embedded deep in her arm. Some had chipped the bone, and it had required two bouts of surgery to remove them all and repair the bone. She’d been in Manchester Royal Infirmary for more than a week as they monitored her for shock and infection.
Liz had visited her just hours after the tumultuous events at the warehouse had concluded with the arrest of the jihadis at the Atiyah house. She had found Peggy not long out of a first operation on her arm, propped up in bed and still looking dazed and shaken. A TV set on the wall of her room was showing the game between City and United. Liz sat down and they watched together in silence. As the camera panned around the stadium, which was packed to the rafters with noisy fans, waving, cheering and singing, they looked at each other. Liz voiced what they were both thinking.
‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘Think what that would look like if Zara and his friends had got through. If they’d got those guns and grenades in there, into different
parts of the stadium, they could have killed hundreds of people before anyone stopped them.’
The two were silent; wild cheering filled the room as a man in red scored a goal. ‘I can’t forgive myself for not checking the message Mrs Donovan left with the Thames House switchboard when I first got it. We could have picked up the terrorists hours earlier and arrested Zara before he ever came to the warehouse.’
‘I’m not sure about that. We needed to have Zara go where the weapons were to have a good chance of prosecution. Anyway there’s no point in beating yourself up. As it’s turned out they were stopped. Thanks to you and everybody else working on this case, it didn’t happen.’
‘Yes,’ replied Peggy, reaching out with her good arm for Liz’s hand. ‘And that includes Martin.’
Liz nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
Now, weeks later, there was still a lot more investigation to do both for the police and Liz’s team before any trials could take place. Research into the young Atiyah’s finances had unearthed a recent series of deposits into his bank account, totalling £177,000 – deposits which to Liz’s fury, the particular branch had never thought to question, as if it were entirely normal for a student from Eccles to have that kind of money at his disposal. It had proved possible to trace the money to a Lebanese bank, which had so far been stubbornly slow to assist with British efforts to uncover the money’s original source.
Following the spider web of connections from Atiyah back to his controllers in the Middle East was challenging and time-consuming, but Liz consoled herself that there was already ample evidence to prosecute Atiyah and his cohorts. Antoine Milraud, appalled by what his young customer had been planning to do, was cooperating fully with Isabelle Florian in Paris, and had agreed to give evidence in court.
Martin would have been pleased by this, Liz thought, as she stood up and went over to the window of her office. There had been a fall of snow the night before, but it was melting now, leaving a thin layer of slush on the pavement along the Embankment. The Thames was a dull grey and restless, with choppy waves stirred up by the winter wind. Martin had liked to tease her that the Seine was the superior river, and today she would have agreed.
Would she ever stop missing Martin? Even now she could only feel heartbreakingly alone in a world without him. His death had served some purpose, she knew. Had he not succeeded in flushing out Ramdani the terrorist would have warned his colleagues bound for England that they were blown. They would have melted away and Liz would still be searching for half a dozen lethal men. She couldn’t make room for the thought that this was any kind of compensation for Martin’s death – it wasn’t – but at least it gave some meaning to it. He had been dedicated and professional to the end, and Martin would have been the first to scoff at any suggestion that he should have hesitated to act because of possible danger. He knew, just as Liz knew, that risk came with the job.
A knock on the open door of her office shook Liz from her reverie. ‘Come in,’ she said.
It was Geoffrey Fane, and for once he actually looked friendly, almost shy. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said awkwardly.
Liz smiled to herself. There was no point in getting cross; he really couldn’t help it. ‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘I actually do prefer Liz, you know.’
‘Of course,’ he said, coming into the room. Liz went back to her desk and sat down, motioning Fane to a chair. But he shook his head; unusually for him, he seemed to understand that his presence might not be entirely welcome. ‘I just wanted to say how very sorry I was to hear about Martin Seurat. I know you two were close.’ He paused, as if hearing his words and how lame they sounded.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply.
He gave a little cough. ‘I gather you did stellar work up in Manchester.’
‘It’s kind of you to say that. A lot of things didn’t go right.’
‘Possibly, but when do they ever? And you did prevent the very worst happening. Well done.’
Is this why Fane had come? Liz wondered. Gentle commiseration followed by a pat on the back? She’d known him long enough to know there had to be some other agenda.
And so there was. Fane came right into the room now, sat down, straightened his long back and crossed a languid leg over one knee. This was the Geoffrey Fane she knew. She watched him warily, waiting for what was to come. He said, ‘I’ve got a bit of news actually.’
‘Really?’ She tried to look surprised.
‘I had a meeting with our friend Andy Bokus yesterday. Not an altogether happy encounter, you could say. I pointed out that there was a missing link in this case, one that would have helped us a lot.’
‘Baakrime.’
‘That’s right. The Minister,’ Fane said, with the mild surprise he always showed when he found that Liz had got there too. ‘He was both the instigator and the linchpin of this whole affair.’
‘But currently unavailable.’
‘So it would seem. Thanks to American cack-handedness. When they shilly-shallied he must have panicked and decided to throw in his lot with the Russians.’
‘You said that to Bokus again?’
‘In so many words.’
‘That couldn’t have gone down well.’
Fane gave a sly smile. Liz could see he was enjoying himself now.
‘Actually, he had bigger things to worry about.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. It seems he’s being moved on. Back to Langley.’
‘I’d have thought he’d be pleased. Bokus never liked it here.’
‘That’s true. Or at least he never liked us – or to be even more precise, me.’ Fane’s grin now could only be described as wicked. ‘But from his account, it sounded as if he was leaving under something of a cloud. No trumpets at the Langley gates when Andy reappears.’
‘But what’s he done wrong?’
‘He’s being blamed for Baakrime’s disappearance.’
‘Really? It was Miles Brookhaven out in Sana’a who was running Baakrime.’
‘Ah, but it was Bokus who was giving him the line to take and Bokus who was pushing Miles to squeeze Baakrime.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Liz dubiously.
‘And that’s what provides the delicious irony – and what I suppose must gall Bokus the most.’
He paused, savouring his position as the fount of high-end gossip. Go on, spill the beans, Liz thought to herself, but she hesitated, knowing that Fane was longing to be asked. Finally curiosity prevailed. ‘What delicious irony, Geoffrey?’
Pleased to be asked at last, Fane said, ‘You see, they’ve already named the new Station Head for London. Usually, there’s just the slightest lag – out of courtesy to the departing Head. Not this time.’
‘Who is it?’ But Fane was now laughing too hard to reply. ‘Come on, Geoffrey, what’s so funny?’
And at last he managed to croak, ‘Miles Brookhaven.’
Liz stared at Fane, wondering if he was pulling her leg. It seemed too improbable to credit, until one looked at its natural symmetry. It was Miles who had first relayed the tip that arms were being sent to the UK, and Miles who had triggered the convoluted sequence of events that had ended – thank God – in a failed conspiracy to kill countless numbers of people.
So Miles’s return to the UK somehow seemed entirely fitting. It was this – as well as the thought that she quite liked Miles, and was curious to learn what he was like after several years away – that meant Liz was glad to hear the news. Glad enough in fact to join Geoffrey Fane and find herself laughing too.
A Note on the Author
Dame Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director–General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and eight Liz Carlyle novels. She lives in London and Norfolk.
By the Same Author
The Liz Carlyle series
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Secret Asset
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Dead Line
Present Danger
Rip Tide
The Geneva Trap
Non-fiction
Open Secret: The Autobiography of the
Former Director-General of MI5
Rip Tide
A Liz Carlyle Novel
When pirates attack a cargo ship off the Somalian coast and one of them is found to be a British-born Pakistani, alarm bells start ringing in London. MI5 Intelligence Officer Liz Carlyle is brought in to establish how and why a young British Muslim could go missing from his family in Birmingham and end up onboard a pirate skiff in the Indian Ocean, armed with a Kalashnikov. After an undercover operative connected to the case turns up dead in Athens it looks like piracy may be the least of the Service’s problems. Liz and her team must unravel the connections between Pakistan, Greece and Somalia. And they don’t have long, as trouble is brewing closer to home: the kind of explosive trouble that MI5 could do without…
‘Rimington’s best work demonstrates a flair for narrative, with a sense of authenticity and an insider’s grasp on the pressing issues of the day’
Washington Post
‘Rip Tide incorporates the epic sweep and global concerns expected of a contemporary spy thriller’
Irish Times
‘She provides lots of detail of intelligence work used to counter today’s terrorists that seems real – and intriguing’
Financial Times
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The Geneva Trap
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