‘Jeff Waters, Counterterrorism,’ came the answer.
‘Jeff, it’s Dennis Muller at NSA DDA,’ Lewis said. ‘I’ve got a call from our guy tonight.’
Waters asked, ‘Do you have anything we can move on?’
‘He’s arranged a meet with someone tomorrow.’
‘OK. Let’s get a black team up. CT wants Novak and the asset in the next twenty-four hours.’
‘Will I tell them capture?’ Muller asked.
Waters answered, ‘My orders are this is a national security Priority One. It’s capture or kill.’
PART THREE
Superhack
8.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Whitehall, London – Tuesday, 6.41am
EVEN THOUGH IT WAS still dark out, Stella could see the devastation of the bombing from as far back as Parliament Street once she ascended the staircase to street level at Westminster tube station.
Streetlights were on and the light from dozens of forensics lamps leaked across the road. Down Whitehall, past the police cordon at the Cenotaph, was still littered with debris, all marked with small red cones to be examined by forensics. The smallest fragment could provide a critical clue as to where the attackers sourced their materials.
Dozens of media teams lined up at the cordon, recording VT for their stations. Stella heard languages from French, Spanish and German, to Eastern European and Asian ones she couldn’t place.
She sheltered from the spitting rain under the archway linking the Foreign Office to the Treasury down King Henry Street, watching with weary detachment the extra police patrolling the area.
The Foreign Office housed one thousand-plus civil servants, as well as paperwork that was crucial to the day to day running of the country, not to mention overseas embassies and British business interests. All that couldn’t just be upped and set down in a few vacant conference rooms down the road. So once the building structure was declared safe police allowed a phased re-entry, first on the King Henry side. The Whitehall side was still too much of an active crime scene.
Stella finished her double-shot espresso, trying to shock the jetlag out of her system. The loss of time from eastwards jetlag always hit her harder than westwards. She had landed only an hour earlier, barely time to drop her bag at the chain hotel Chang had booked her in. Still, it felt good to be back where Stella regarded as home.
In New York she hadn’t figured out all the angles like she had here. She could barely find her way around Manhattan let alone the other boroughs. Now she was just dropping by, it was time to call in a few favours.
She knew her contact’s routine from her days at The Guardian where she first made a name for herself – largely thanks to said contact. It was a quid pro quo relationship: in return for inside information on Foreign Office policy, Stella gave him a heads-up on what minister was briefing against who. Behind the seeming united front for the press was a constant battle being fought over Treasury budgets; Ministers squabbling over who wanted to appear on Newsnight; ambitious backbenchers seeing opportunities to raise their profile; juvenile feuds that were barely above the level of a school playground. Ministers were like bickering child actors, all haggling for screen time: the only real currency left in modern politics.
A man with a pile of the day’s newspapers under his arm – the front pages carrying pictures of smoke rising from Downing Street in the aftermath – came past the Foreign Office archway, not noticing Stella.
She called out to him, ‘Charlie Fletcher.’
He put his head down and upped his speed. ‘Not today, Stella, I’m late.’
Stella set off in pursuit. ‘You’re exactly on time.’
Not wanting to draw attention by having a conversation fifty metres apart, Charlie stopped.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked. ‘It must have been scary down here.’
He said, ‘I’ve got three researchers from international development in the hospital who were standing at a window overlooking the press conference. They’ll live. Just.’
Stella asked, ‘How are you finding life on the other side of the ropes?’
‘The pay’s better, and I don’t break the law as often as I used to.’
Charlie was barely into his forties. Since leaving journalism he’d become convinced that his £31k salary, Savile Row suits and Foreign Office personnel pass amounted to being the same as James Bond.
Stella had been on the politics desk during Charlie’s stint as Features Editor at The Herald. There had always been rumours about phone hacking going on during her two years there. Features always seemed to find celebrity stories no one else had. And the victims knew there was only one way certain stories could have been known.
Charlie faced daily harassing demands to find raunchier, sensationalist copy no matter the cost. Finally, one of Charlie’s reporters had been caught out when they hacked a story too far, one of Britain’s most beloved actors, and the actor sued. Despite the hacking having been sanctioned from the top down, the only one to be convicted was a single reporter. For appearances, Charlie stepped down from his role at The Herald, but only after the chief editor put in a kind word for him at the Foreign Office. Just three months later, he was working for Nigel Hawkes and The Herald folded after nearly 100 years in circulation.
Stella started working her angles. ‘Has there been any word from overseas intel yet? Word is this Mufaza is a cleanskin.’
‘No one has anything. Until last week he was just a carpet cleaner no one knew anything about. This is the world we live in now.’ He leaned in, speaking more quietly. ‘His wife says he had been growing more radicalised over the past few years. Attending mosques with militant imams, watching Anwar al-Awlaki speeches online.’
‘Do they know how he got access to Downing Street?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t have anything on that yet.’
Stella didn’t look convinced.
‘I don’t!’ Charlie said.
‘What about Ali’s speech?’ Stella asked. ‘Someone must have a copy.’
Charlie pulled back with a roll of his eyes, like she’d asked for something impossible. ‘Stella...’
‘Oh, piss off, Charlie. Like you’re not desperate to tell me you know.’
‘Twitter knows more about that than me. The speech wasn’t green lit by the Foreign Office, and it wasn’t sent to the teleprompter.’ Seeing she was about to interrupt, he added, ‘Stella, I swear to God, the only person who knew what Simon Ali was about to say is lying on a slab under armed guard in the St Thomas’ Hospital morgue.’
‘Is this how it’s going to be then?’
‘How what’s going to be?’
‘You seem to be forgetting our last meeting when I agreed not to report on your boss’s rather dubious expenses claims. Foreign Secretary, the Right Honourable Nigel Hawkes MP.’
He was on the back foot now. ‘For which we are both very grateful.’
‘And for which I got absolutely nothing back.’ Stella tried to frame it in language he would understand. ‘So I get you off, then you roll over and pretend you’re asleep, is that it?’
A colleague of Charlie’s shouted to him from the front steps of the Ministry.
‘Be right there!’ Charlie answered. He spun Stella away from the man’s view. ‘One name. Riz Rizzaq.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘A no one who’s about to be someone.’
‘Charlie, what the–’
‘A BBC cameraman found dead in his flat Monday evening. And that’s something the Home Office will never give you. Are we even?’
Stella thought about it. ‘You should use a different hair pomade, Charlie. That one runs in the rain.’ She turned and hailed a taxi, leaving Charlie feeling at the globs dripping from his hair.
In the taxi the ever-aware Stella clocked a black Audi with two men in the front that had been tailing her since Great George Street.
While the taxi stopped in traffic, Stella moved towards the driver’s partit
ion. ‘Excuse me. How long has that black car been behind us?’
‘I was just thinking that,’ the driver replied in his thick South London accent. ‘Been there since Embankment, he ’as.’
Coming all the way into Hackney, it was too far to be a coincidence.
Stella sat in a café round the corner from Shoreditch Police Station, tucking into the full English breakfast she’d been dreaming about all across the Atlantic.
An overweight man in his fifties came in, wearing a black leather jacket that was too long for his stubby arms. ‘The usual, Tina,’ he wheezed at the counter. While he waited, he glanced over his shoulder at Stella sitting in the corner.
The café was quiet after the morning rush.
When he sat down at her table with a groan, Stella gestured at his jacket with her knife. ‘Midlife crisis already, Sidney?’
He knew Stella too well to be offended. ‘Only twenty quid down Harrow market. Dolce and Gabbano.’
‘It’s Dolce and Gabbana,’ she said with a mouthful of sausage.
‘That’s not what the label says.’
‘You always were a man who knows a bargain.’ Stella slid one of the café takeaway menus across to him.
He lifted a corner of the menu, seeing five £20 notes inside. ‘Looks quality to me.’ He put the cash into his inside jacket pocket, where his police detective ID was hanging, then slid an envelope back to Stella.
‘This place hasn’t changed much,’ Stella said, sweeping up the envelope.
‘The only place round here what hasn’t,’ Sidney said. ‘I mean look at them.’ He drew Stella’s attention to two men chatting on the street. One with a handlebar moustache and trousers that stopped well above his ankles. The other had a long manicured beard, and wearing yellow dungarees and tiny round glasses that looked like they were fancy dress. ‘Fuck sake. That what a man looks like these days, eh? Fucking hipsters. You know they opened a bloody shop just for cereal. These knobs are paying a fiver for a bowl of Lucky Charms what’ll cost you three pound a box in the Yankee bit at Tesco. It’s not the city I grew up in, Stel.’
The two men came in and sat down, taking evident delight in ordering all-day breakfasts.
Sidney looked away scornfully. ‘Ten years ago they wouldn’t have set foot in a greasy spoon like this. Probably scoping the place out to convert it into a fucking Ribena bar or something.’
Stella wanted to get on. ‘How sure are you this guy was killed by the bomber?’
‘Sure enough that MI5’s taken it out our hands. Who gave you the heads up?’
‘Someone who knows as much as you,’ Stella said.
‘That so?’ Sid nodded. ‘He doesn’t know what else I’ve got for you. I guarantee that.’
‘Tell me it’s not black stockings again,’ Stella said.
He leaned a little closer, stale cigarette breath wafting across the table to her. ‘We found a body on the banks of the Thames this morning at low tide. About half a mile from Parliament.’
‘I’m on foreign affairs for the Yanks these days. But I can pass it to someone else.’
‘Trust me. You’ll want this one for yourself.’
‘What’s the MO?’
‘Male, white, late thirties. He had a phone on him but no ID. Didn’t even have labels on his clothes. Single shot in the forehead, double-tap in the chest. Killed sometime Sunday night into Monday morning. Professional job. Very professional.’
Stella started gathering up her things. ‘Give it to someone at the Mail. I’m not being sniffy, Sid, but drug and gangland killings are too small for me.’
‘It’s not gangland. They don’t come into Westminster.’
‘Who’s the victim?’
‘We don’t know yet, but his fingerprints are on record.’
‘He’s got form?’
‘Not with us.’
‘What records then?’
‘What if I told you his record’s classified and I can’t get access. Would that still be too small for you?’
Stella sat back again. ‘OK, I’m listening.’
The waitress put down the detective’s breakfast and coffee. ‘There you go, Sid.’
‘Ta.’ He waited for the waitress to leave before saying, ‘All I know is he’s ex-GCHQ.’
‘GCHQ? That would be two of their own killed the same night.’
He ate his breakfast messily, chewing with his mouth open. ‘You talking about Abigail Bishop?’
‘I’m following up on that story. Accidental death, or maybe even suicide.’
He smirked.
‘You know different?’ Stella asked.
‘According to the final autopsy, Abigail Bishop fell off a balcony after necking two bottles of wine. But the first autopsy, before MI6’s doctors started poking about the place...’ He purposely trailed off.
‘You mean MI5 surely?’
‘Nope. Six. Swear on me mum’s grave. Started invoking anti-terror legislation and national security.’
‘But MI5 handles domestic.’
‘All I know is, before they showed up, her blood levels were normal. Could have driven an ambulance that night, she could. Both copies of those autopsies are in there with the other geezer’s.’
‘And what about this other geezer? You think it’s a coincidence two GCHQ employees died the same night?’
‘That’s what we’re starting with.’
‘Can you get me into the evidence room? I need to see that phone.’
Sid dipped some toast into his egg yolk. ‘I’ll text you.’
‘And no one else is getting these autopsy reports, right? From what I hear the Met’s got its own eBay profile these days.’
‘It’s a seller’s market, Stella, but for you I’ll make an exception.’ He looked up at her optimistically as he wiped the egg yolk from his mouth with a napkin. ‘You back for long? Thought you might fancy a drink later.’
‘Sounds good,’ Stella said, putting her cutlery down, breakfast unfinished. ‘You could bring your wife along.’ She raised her eyebrows warningly at him.
‘Worth a shot,’ the detective said with a grumble, getting back to his eggs.
Stella chuckled as she got up. On the way out the door she mumbled to herself, ‘Creep.’
Stella stopped at the end of a path leading to a modern apartment block overlooking the rare greenery of London Fields. She looked back down the road at the underground station sign, and numerous buses blocking up the main road. ‘Good access,’ she said quietly to herself. Someone could be in Whitehall within half an hour if they timed the trains right. The piles of fresh flowers at the front door told her she had the right place, but to be sure, she took out the police report she had just purchased and checked the address against the note Sidney had given her: ‘Residential address – Riz Rizzaq.’
A name and address was all she had, but she’d started stories on less.
Spotting a postman descending the inner stairwell, Stella quick-stepped down the path, rummaging in her bag as if looking for keys. She caught the door just as the postman was exiting. Stella gave an exasperated laugh at him, ‘Forget my head one of these days!’ The postman smiled politely.
Once safely inside the lobby, Stella made her way confidently up the stairs – like she belonged there – listening out for any neighbours. In the second floor stairwell she looked down at the residents’ parking area, as a battered red Ford Escort pulled in. When the driver came out, whistling in a trying-too-hard-to-be-casual way, Stella hid behind the landing door, seeing the top of the man’s prematurely balding head as he made his way inside. Trailing behind, the black Audi puttered into the car park too. Neither of the two men inside got out.
The balding man was wearing a wrinkled suit, which looked like it had been slept in, and he looked all around himself in the most unsubtle of ways. His demeanour screamed paranoia. The front door clattered shut clumsily, followed by a slightly muffled, ‘Shit.’
Stella waited for the footsteps to stop, but they kept comi
ng. She knew there was only one flat the man was bound for. She stepped back, hands poised at chest height as the landing door opened. Before the man realised what was going on, Stella grabbed his left arm and twisted it up his back, turning his wrist inward which sent him straight to his knees in agony.
‘Why are you following me?’ she demanded. ‘One lie and I break your wrist.’ She tugged his wrist a little more to let him know she was serious. She was close enough to him to smell his previous night’s lager.
The man cowered. ‘Bloody hell, Stella. It’s me!’ He turned around as far as he could – which wasn’t far – giving an embarrassed little smile despite the pain etched on his face. ‘It’s me.’
She let his arm go then pushed him away with her knee. She stared at him in incomprehension. He had aged a lot in the three years since she had last seen him. ‘Superhack? Why am I not surprised.’
‘Nobody calls me that anymore,’ he said, feeling his arm.
To everyone else he was Dan Leckie.
‘There I was thinking you spent your days hiding under rocks,’ said Stella.
Leckie struggled to his knees, flexing his arm to check for damage. ‘Her Majesty’s been putting a roof over my head the last few months.’ He had the voice of a Cockney wideboy, his receding hair making him look closer to fifty-three than the thirty-three he was.
Stella made no attempt to help him up. ‘I thought they gave you a year.’
‘Good behaviour,’ he said, grinning with crooked, nicotine-stained teeth. There was something gormless about him. Like he should have been at the nearest dog track ripping up losing tickets. Now he was up close, Stella remembered his pinhole eyes and tiny mouth. His suit was too big for him, and the trousers were two shades of grey away from the jacket.
‘Where does stalking fall in your parole guidelines?’
‘Stalking?’ he asked, as if mystified by the accusation. ‘I’m an honest citizen again.’
‘Well your tradecraft needs finessing, Dan. My cab driver was on to you as far back as Whitehall.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Official Secrets Page 18
