‘I saw them on French TV. But I would have thought they could get arms quite easily from the countries who support them.’
‘I know that seems more likely. But the conference decided that each country should put measures in place to ensure that no undercover supplies from the EU countries get to these jihadis. It seems to be more of a matter for Eastern Europe than us, but DG told me on Friday that it’s been decided that we were to have the “watching brief”.’
‘Great. But what about Six? I wonder what they have on this.’
‘Quite a lot, I imagine. But guess who’s running their part of the show – your favourite officer, Bruno Mackay. Bruno rang me on Friday to welcome us on board. Said he’d like to come over to see you when you were back.’
Liz put her head in her hands and groaned. ‘Did I just say I was glad to be back?’
Peggy grinned. ‘Bruno told me something quite interesting. Do you remember Miles Brookhaven, who used to be in the CIA station here? Andy Bokus’s deputy?’ When Liz nodded she went on, ‘Apparently he was nearly killed a few months ago. He was under cover in an aid charity the Agency had set up in Syria, running a source in a rebel group, and he was attacked in the souk. They aren’t sure if his cover had been blown, or if it was just an opportunist attack, but from what Bruno said, it sounded planned to me. Miles needed a series of blood transfusions – they had to get him out of there pretty quickly.’
‘Poor Miles. He was a bit naïve when he was here. He tried to recruit me once – he took me on the London Eye in a private pod and plied me with champagne. It was fun, and I enjoyed watching him waste the Agency’s money. I wonder if he’s grown up.’
‘I hope so.’ Peggy got up to go. ‘I’ll leave you to catch up.’
But as Peggy walked out of the door she bumped into someone coming in. ‘Whoops. Sorry, Geoffrey. I was just going. Liz will be delighted to see you!’
The tall, heron-like figure of Geoffrey Fane, a senior MI6 officer, sauntered into the room. ‘Good morning Elizabeth. Delighted to see you looking so fit and well. Been on holiday I hear. I hope you had a wonderful time and that our friend Seurat is in good form.’
One of Geoffrey Fane’s characteristics, which drove Liz mad, was his inquisitive interest in her private life and his delight in showing how much he knew about it. She would much have preferred him not to know that she was seeing Martin Seurat of the French Military Intelligence Service, the DGSE. But he did know, and she suspected that he had learned about it from Bruno Mackay, who had been the deputy head of MI6’s Paris Station when she’d first met Martin.
What she didn’t like to acknowledge, though everyone else knew it, was that Geoffrey Fane himself would have liked to be in Martin Seurat’s shoes. He was divorced, a lonely man and evidently deeply attracted to Liz, who though she admired and respected his professional skill, couldn’t disguise the fact that on a personal level she found him pompous and patronising. What she couldn’t – or wouldn’t let herself see – was that much of his manner towards her was a cover for his feelings. So he went on calling her ‘Elizabeth’, though he knew that she preferred to be called ‘Liz’, and she went on grinding her teeth at the sight of him while everyone marvelled that they seemed to have such a successful working relationship.
Now Fane folded himself elegantly into the chair that Peggy had just left and crossed one long, tailored leg over the other, showing a length of subtly striped sock and a highly polished black brogue. ‘I was delighted to learn we’ll be working together on the arms supply front,’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ve just heard about it from Peggy. I gather we’ve been given a watching brief and no extra resources, so I don’t suppose we’ll be doing much active investigation. Anyway, Peggy told me that there’s no specific intelligence about any UK arms dealers being involved, and we certainly haven’t the time to go looking.’
Fane leant forward in his chair. ‘That might have been true last week, but things are moving on. I had a call from Andy Bokus over the weekend. They’ve just posted a new man into Yemen. An old friend of yours if I’m not mistaken. Miles Brookhaven. I’m sure you remember him from when he was here at Grosvenor with Bokus. I gather he was quite smitten.’
Liz gazed at the languid figure in the chair, clenched her jaw and said nothing. Fane smiled slightly and went on, ‘He had a bit of a rough time on his previous posting but he’s recovered now. The Agency have sent him to Sana’a to pick up a rather promising contact of the Embassy. Bokus seems to think there may be something interesting to come out for us as well as for the Agency.’
Chapter 3
Miles Brookhaven’s shoulder still ached at night if he turned over awkwardly in bed, and now driving the heavy SUV he felt a twinge of pain whenever the car bounced over a rut in the road or he had to turn the wheel suddenly to avoid a pothole. The long knife had slashed the tendons at the top of his arm and the doctors at the military hospital in Germany to which he had been evacuated had told him that they would never properly heal. But, under pressure from CIA headquarters in Langley, the doctors had finally authorised his posting. There was a shortage of experienced case officers with fluent Arabic, and as the Arab Spring spread and jihadis joined the rebels in one country after another, the need for intelligence both from the front line of the fighting and from the countries on the periphery had become urgent.
From NSA at Fort Meade and CIA at Langley to GCHQ in Cheltenham, the eyes and ears of the West were focused on the movement of weapons around the world, and in particular to the countries where rebel groups were fighting governments. It was clear that supplies of some of the most sophisticated weapons were getting through to jihadis.
Yemen was a special focus of attention. Overhead surveillance had shown piles of what appeared to be weapons crates stacked on the dockside at Aden. The photographs had landed on the desk of an analyst in Langley at the same time as a report from the Commercial Counsellor at the US Embassy in Sana’a. The diplomat’s report described his meetings with the Minister of Trade, one of his main contacts. The Minister seemed uninterested in developing trade with the US except in one area – weapons. The Minister explained this as the need for his government to be able to protect both its own citizens and foreigners against increasingly aggressive jihadi groups. But the Embassy report pointed out that the same message was coming from the Interior and Defence Ministers – departments where issues of weapons supply seemed a more natural fit.
The other notable feature of the diplomat’s meetings with the Minister of Trade was the frequency of his references to ‘his’ Foundation, set up he said to help the homeless and in desperate need of funds. But research by the Embassy had thrown up no sign of such a charity. It was this last point that had brought the diplomatic cable onto the desk in Langley and which had resulted a few months later in the diplomat being moved to a senior post in another country and Miles Brookhaven turning up in the Sana’a Embassy as the new Commercial Counsellor. He had one brief – to recruit the Minister of Trade.
As he drove, Miles could see the mountains in the west, ranged in a rough semicircle around the city. His health not fully restored, it had taken him a few days to get used to the thin air of Sana’a. This was to be his first meeting with Jamaal Baakrime, the Trade Minister, his recruitment target, and he was feeling rather nervous. In normal circumstances he would have taken months to get to know a target, to assess weaknesses and vulnerabilities before he made his pitch, but he had been told not to hang about with this one but to go straight in and offer him cash for information. If the approach failed he would be quickly withdrawn and posted somewhere else where he could be useful.