‘Good morning, sir,’ she said brightly. She smiled, showing greying teeth.
The Saudi nodded. He didn’t believe in talking to the hired help. He waved for her to wheel in the trolley.
‘How are you this morning, sir?’ she asked.
The Saudi ignored her and headed back to the bathroom. He heard a rapid footfall but before he could react he felt a thump in the small of his back and slammed into the wall by the bathroom door. The barrel of a gun was forced under his chin. ‘Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,’ the waitress hissed
There were more footsteps in the corridor outside the suite, then half a dozen men burst in, all armed. Hands grabbed at the Saudi’s arms and forced him around so that his back was to the wall. The grey-haired waitress was grinning as she kept the gun rammed against his neck. The Saudi stared at her, but said nothing.
The Labrador growled softly and dropped the tennis ball at Charlotte Button’s feet. Button ignored her and carried on flicking through the dozen or so personnel files she had scattered across the coffee table. The dog gave a plaintive yelp and Button sighed. ‘What part of working at home don’t you understand, Poppy?’ she said. ‘I’ll take you out at lunchtime.’
The dog was panting and Button patted her. Then she picked up Shepherd’s file and reread Kathy Gift’s most recent assessment. There was no doubt that Shepherd was going to be an asset to SOCA. His Special Forces background combined with his police experience made him the perfect undercover operative. She had been impressed with him when they’d met at the Ritz, and he didn’t appear to be the sort who’d have problems working for a woman. The police was still a very male-dominated organisation, especially when compared with MI5 where more than half of the two thousand or so officers were female and the director general was a woman. But Shepherd didn’t seem bothered by Button’s sex, and she hadn’t once caught him glancing at her breasts or legs. Jimmy Sharpe was a different matter. During his interview he’d made some outrageous observations about the role of women in police work, always followed by a gruff ‘no offence intended’ – although he clearly didn’t care one way or the other whether she was offended or not. Button didn’t plan to hold Sharpe’s sexist views against him. It took all sorts to make up an undercover unit and his assets far outweighed his liabilities.
It had been two days since Shepherd had taken the Christopher Donovan birth certificate and he was due to go in and collect the passport from the Uddin brothers. She picked up her mobile and dialled his number.
‘It’s Charlie,’ she said, when he answered.
‘How’s it going?’
‘I was going to ask you the same.’
‘I’m getting ready to go in,’ he said. ‘Jimmy Sharpe’s riding shotgun.’
‘Great,’ said Button. ‘Bag it as soon as possible. We’ll need to run a full print and DNA analysis.’
‘You know who the contact is?’
‘It’s all wrapped up,’ said Button. Another phone rang. Her landline. ‘Dan, my other line’s going. Call me when you’ve got the passport.’ She stood up and cut the connection. Poppy raced to the door, tail wagging.
‘I’m answering the phone, silly,’ she said. ‘We’ll do the walk thing later.’
At the mention of the word, Poppy’s tail wagged even more enthusiastically. Button shook her head. Poppy had been her husband’s idea. Given the choice, she would have preferred a cat, but as the house had been her call, as had been the car, their daughter’s boarding-school and the cottage in the Lake District, she reckoned he deserved the pet of his choice.
She picked up the phone. It was Patsy Ellis, her former boss at MI5’s International Counter-terrorism Branch. Ellis was also one of MI5’s representatives on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and was tipped as a potential director general.
‘How goes SOCA?’ asked Ellis.
Button looked across at the files on the coffee table. ‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to make any mistakes with my team. There’s a lot at stake.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Ellis. ‘You won’t have the Official Secrets Act to hide behind. Everything you do will be followed by every investigative journalist in the country.’
‘This is a pep talk, is it?’ asked Button.
Ellis laughed. ‘You don’t need one from me, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I put you forward for the job, remember?’
‘Only because I was after yours,’ said Button, only half joking.
‘A few years out of the fold will do you the world of good,’ said Ellis. ‘And you’ll be able to take the credit for your successes, which we’re never allowed to do.’
Button knew she was right: SOCA had been a good career move – if she made a success of it.
‘Before you get too settled in, we’ve had a request for your assistance,’ said Ellis.
‘We?’
‘It came from the DG’s office. Not for you personally but the DG decided you were the perfect candidate.’
‘Because?’
‘Your Arab language abilities, as it happens. And your interrogation skills. Oh, and your sex, which makes it even more intriguing.’
‘My what?’
‘They wanted a woman. Ideally a pretty one. I was going to cry sexism when I heard, but there is a method to their madness.’
‘Patsy, you’re talking in riddles. Who’s “they”?’
Poppy nuzzled the back of Button’s legs.
‘The Americans. The request came from Homeland Security, which, as you know, now covers a multitude of sins. But it came at the highest level. Actually phoned the DG at home at five o’clock in the morning, and you know how she relishes her beauty sleep. Seems they’ve got someone in their embassy they need interrogating.’
‘They’ve got their own Arab speakers, surely?’
‘They want some UK involvement, because although the embassy is effectively on American soil it’s still our country. Just about. And apparently the only Arab speakers they have in situ are Muslims, and that’s not what they want.’
Button looked at her watch. ‘When?’
‘Now,’ said Ellis.
The windows overlooking the garden rattled.
‘It’s going to take me a while to get to Grosvenor Square,’ said Button.
The rattling intensified. The trees at the end of the garden bent over as if they were being pushed down by invisible hands.
‘Not as long as you think,’ said Ellis.
Button heard the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter’s rotor-blades, then saw its shadow flash across the lawn.
‘Must be important,’ said Button.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ellis. ‘Very.’
Button replaced the receiver and looked down at the Labrador. ‘Your walk will have to wait, Poppy.’
The dog’s tail beat a tattoo on the carpet.
‘You really are a stupid animal,’ said Button. She headed for the kitchen door. She’d phone her husband when she got to Central London. When all was said and done Poppy was his dog.
Jimmy Sharpe lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of the open window of the Vauxhall Vectra. Shepherd coughed pointedly and Sharpe flashed him a tight, but non-apologetic, smile.
‘When did you start smoking?’ asked Shepherd.
‘When I was twelve,’ said Sharpe.
They were sitting in the car a short walk from the Uddin brothers’ Edgware Road bureau de change. It was just before eleven o’clock, an hour before Shepherd was due to collect his new passport.
‘Haven’t seen you smoke before.’
‘Don’t read anything into it,’ said Sharpe. ‘I just felt like a cigarette.’
‘Okay.’
‘And, Hargrove never allowed smoking on the job.’
‘Ah, so while the cat’s away…’
‘I just felt like a cigarette.’
‘Fine. Makes a change from you farting.’
‘Hey, you don’t have to wait in the car,’ said Sharpe. ‘There’s a Starbucks over there. Or you can go sit with the sand jockeys and have a hubble-bubble pipe.’
‘Not very politically correct, Razor.’
‘Well,’ said Sharpe, ‘take a look round you. Arab cafes, Arab shops, Arab banks and half the shops here have got Arabic signs. You wouldn’t think this was England.’