‘That sounds clever,’ said Peggy.
‘And simple,’ added Thibault.
‘Yes. So simple I almost overlooked it. We could have wasted half the firepower of GCHQ on this and got absolutely nowhere, when the answer was staring us in the face. Though if you read the emails you’d be none the wiser. A recipe for tabbouleh. A discussion of how best to cook lamb shanks, with an awful lot of talk about whether it should be four and a half hours or three days. Food is the usual topic, which means numbers – one hundred and fifty grams of couscous, ninety minutes simmering etc.’
‘So have you broken this food code?’ Peggy was awestruck by the almost basic ingenuity of this. A circle of middle-aged Middle Eastern women, babbling about cooking techniques and recipes and food shops – perfect cover for what she assumed were in fact lethal instructions and commands.
‘Pretty much. I’ll spare you the details, but basically, every time numbers get used they have to be prefixed by something to indicate what they’re referring to – is it time, or quantities or the geographical coordinates of a place?’
‘Can’t the prefix be in the numbers themselves?’ asked Thibault, leaning forward, his elbows on the table, his hands supporting his chin.
‘They could be, but then too often they would be the same. The repetition would be suspicious. Anyway, I’ve made enough progress to want to let you know.’
Oh gosh, thought Peggy. Simmons has made a breakthrough, but it’s still only conceptual. He’s brought us all the way here to tell us that he’s cracked the code, but he doesn’t know what the decoded material actually means. It was the classic folly of cryptanalysts the world over – fantastic excitement when they cracked a code, as if that were the be-all and end-all. If code breakers had run Bletchley rather than worked in it, the Germans would have won the War.
‘I congratulate you,’ Thibault said gravely. ‘You have done remarkable work. Please keep me posted with any results that come from it.’ He reached for his coat. ‘I need to be getting back now.’
‘What?’ Simmons suddenly was almost shouting. ‘It’s the results I’ve brought you here about. Don’t you want to know them? You should. There are five conspirators heading for Paris – they’re going to meet up with an associate of Zara’s called Michel Ramdani. He lives in Paris. He’s going to send the five men on to England – it’s not clear how they’ll be travelling but he’s responsible for the arrangements.’
‘When are they due to arrive in Paris?’ asked Peggy, reaching for her notebook.
‘The day after tomorrow. I’d better tell you Ramdani’s address. It seems that’s where this little conclave is supposed to meet.’
Chapter 44
It was half past eleven, dark, windy and pouring with rain, when a small convoy set off from Greater Manchester police headquarters. There were six black Range Rovers with tinted windows. In one was Technical Ted and two colleagues, in a second, three more from Thames House. Both of their vehicles had an assortment of oddly shaped bags and holdalls in the back. In the other four were eight police officers, two in each vehicle, but only one of each pair was recognisable from the word ‘POLICE’ on the front and back of his black pullover. All the other men wore anonymous dark clothes.
The cars stayed in convoy as they joined the southbound M60, Manchester’s ring road. Some miles on, at a junction marked Denton, one of the Thames House cars and two of the police cars peeled off, while the other three kept on the M60, circling the south of Manchester until they reached the turning for Eccles, where they too left the motorway and at a small roundabout headed into an industrial estate, led by one of the police cars. Ted, who was in the passenger seat of the Thames House vehicle, was talking to one of his colleagues in the other convoy.
‘All’s going fine here,’ he was hearing. ‘No problem with the alarm. It’s just the usual Chubb as we’d been told. The whole place is quiet as the grave. There’s nothing in here but empty wine crates and cardboard cartons, doesn’t look as though it’s been used for ages. We’ve put in three mikes and we’re doing two cameras; Frankie’s just working on the first one now. Then we’ll be testing it back to the Ops Room and we should be off to the next place in less than an hour.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Ted. ‘We’ve just arrived at our first stop, so let’s hope it’s as easy.’
The three cars pulled up on a square of tarmac outside a large metal warehouse which stood on its own, separated by at least fifty metres of grass and weeds from the next building on the narrow road. The wind was rattling the structure, making it reverberate like a drum. Dim lights on tall concrete lamp posts weakly illuminated the road and the front of the warehouse. One of the police officers came across to Ted’s car.
‘There’s resident security on this estate. They’ll be holed up in their hut on the other side. We’ve warned them we’re doing a search here and told them to keep away. If they come out, leave them to us.’
Ted nodded. ‘Suits us. We’ll be inside and we’ll stay there unless you alert us to get out.’
The policeman nodded, and as he did they both saw the lights of a car across the estate.
‘Looks as though they’re out of their box,’ said Ted. ‘Over to you.’ And as he turned away, one of the police cars drove off in the direction of the headlights.
By this time the small door to the side of the roller door was open and Ted’s two colleagues were inside. They had rigged up a couple of lights which showed that the interior of the warehouse was partitioned along one side, forming what seemed, judging by the doors, to be three separate rooms and leaving a large open space in which a lorry or several cars could be parked. It was not what Ted had been expecting. He opened one of the doors and found a room with four bunk beds in a row, very close to each other. The next room was a very small shower room with a lavatory and wash basin, and in the final room, which was a primitive kitchen, there was a pile of boxes, some open, some taped up, all of which seemed to be full of bedding – duvets, pillows and towels.
‘Looks like he’s expecting visitors,’ said Ted.
‘Or maybe he’s had visitors,’ replied Ted’s colleague Alfie, who had come in behind him, clutching a drill. ‘Some of this stuff has been used.’
‘We’re going to need six cameras to cover this lot,’ said Alfie, ‘so we’d better get going. We need to fit four mikes as well.’
‘OK. While you do that I’ll get onto the others and see how they’re getting on. This is going to take longer than we thought.’
The other team had just arrived at their second target, the warehouse on the industrial estate near Stockport, and reported back over a mobile phone. ‘Looks as though he uses this one as a store for his club. It feels quite used, as though people have been in recently. There’s restaurant-type tables and chairs, boxes of glasses and china and crates of wine and beer.’
‘Yeah. Well, that makes sense. It’s the one nearest his club. Stick in a couple of mikes and cameras and make sure you leave it as found. Then get out asap, just in case anyone turns up. We’ve got him under control but he must have staff who go there to get stuff, though probably not in the middle of the night – let’s hope not anyway. Then let me know when you’re finished, as it may be best for you to do the last one. This one’s a bit complicated and we’re going to be here some time.’
As he finished speaking, one of the policemen came in.