‘Yeah, me too,’ he said gloomily. ‘Just got to hope he’s decided that if he can’t contact us, he can’t use her to threaten us into surrendering.’
‘That’s a very big hope.’
‘All we’ve got.’ He suddenly sat upright at a noise elsewhere in the house, then relaxed — though still remained alert. ‘Ay up. Sounds like Alderley’s moving.’
A few minutes later, a quiet tap came at the door. ‘Nina? Chase?’ Alderley whispered.
‘Yeah, we’re awake,’ Eddie replied.
‘Ah, good.’
‘No, not particularly,’ said Nina grumpily.
A small chuckle. ‘This is normally when I start the day anyway, so nobody’ll be suspicious. I had a quick peek outside, by the way. There’s a car I don’t recognise down the street, and from the way it’s sitting on its suspension, I’d say there are two quite large men in it.’
‘We’ll keep our heads down, then,’ Eddie said as he rolled off the bed. Both he and Nina had slept fully clothed, knowing they might need to make a rapid departure.
‘Come down to my office,’ said Alderley, leading them through the house. They entered the room to find the blinds drawn and his computer on, a screensaver cycling through pictures of his Capri. ‘I logged into SIS to check the morning’s reports and advisories. Last night, around the time you were telling me what had been going on in the Congo, a security alert was issued — for you.’ He sat and typed in a password, the car disappearing to be replaced by passport photos of the couple. ‘This went to SIS, the Security Service, Special Branch, and the Met and surrounding police forces.’
‘Oh, great,’ Nina said in dismay. ‘We’re at the top of the most-wanted list.’
‘Hopefully you won’t feel too offended that you’re actually relatively low priority. The instruction is for you to be detained and brought to SIS regarding, and I quote, “a matter of national security”. It saying “detained” and not “arrested” means they don’t want anyone questioning you on the record before you get to Vauxhall Cross.’
‘Dump us straight into MI6’s torture dungeons, eh?’ said Eddie.
‘We don’t have torture dungeons,’ Alderley huffed. ‘But reading between the lines, this actually gives your story more credence. To me, anyway.’
‘Not to anyone else at MI6?’ Nina asked.
He shook his head. ‘I know you both. Everyone else, though? They’d take what they were told at face value, treat you as a security threat and bring you in — or take you down.’
The couple exchanged glances. ‘So much for British hospitality,’ said the redhead.
‘Oh, it gets worse. There’s a small addendum. It says “AFA”, which means “all force authorised”. That’s a polite way of saying that if you happen to get shot dead, there won’t be too many questions asked.’
‘Huh. Great!’
Eddie brought his right hand towards the flap of his jacket, making sure Alderley saw the movement. ‘But you’re not going to turn us in, right?’
‘Put the gun away, Chase,’ the MI6 man sighed. ‘If I was going to, I would have done it already. I spent half the night mulling over what you told me. And the answer I came up with is one I really don’t like. For John Brice to have gone on a deep-cover mission to overthrow a non-hostile foreign regime, he must have had orders from the very top. That means C. The head of MI6,’ he added for Nina’s benefit.
‘I thought that was M?’ she said. Eddie grinned.
Another sigh. ‘Only in fiction. But this puts me in quite an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, people whose judgement I trust have brought me intelligence about an operation in Africa that’s been kept secret from the head of the Africa desk, and which stands to seriously destabilise a large region—’
‘You trust my judgement?’ said Eddie, his grin widening into a smug beam. ‘Never thought I’d hear that!’
‘Maybe I should have said “a person” rather than “people”,’ Alderley replied, glancing at Nina.
‘Tchah!’
‘But an operation like that could have major international repercussions. On the other hand, my superior, the person to whom I would normally report such intelligence… is the only person who could have authorised such a mission in the first place. And his superior is also complicit! I’m sure you can see the problem.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nina. ‘The head of MI6 and the Prime Minister are both bad guys — so who are you supposed to tell?’
‘Well, let’s not go so far as to say they’re bad guys. We need proof first.’ He nodded at the broken laptop she was holding. ‘But there’s a larger issue.’ He became positively grim. ‘If what you’ve told me is true, then the head of the British government is directly involved in an illegal attempt to overthrow a sovereign state, the jailbreak of a mass murderer, and the deaths of everyone aboard a civilian airliner. That is…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Quite big.’
‘That famous English understatement,’ she said.
‘We need it to stop us from panicking when we realise the true extent of a crisis,’ Alderley replied wryly. ‘But something I can’t overstate is how far the apparatus of the British state will go to protect itself, and its own. And Quentin Hove and Sir Kirkland — C — control that apparatus.’
‘So what do we do?’ said Eddie.
‘First thing, we’ve got to get the video of Brice from the laptop,’ said Nina. ‘Peter, do you know anyone who could do that — someone you could trust?’
He nodded. ‘There are people in my department who could handle it, yes. And one of the advantages of being a section head is that generally your staff don’t question your orders.’
‘So if we get the video, then what?’ the Yorkshireman asked. ‘Take it to MI5?’
Alderley nodded — though not with much enthusiasm. ‘The thing is, for something this big the Director-General of MI5 would report directly to the Prime Minister, just like C. The evidence would have to be absolutely incontrovertible and damning.’
‘There’s somewhere else we could take the video,’ said Nina. ‘The US embassy.’
Alderley — and to her surprise, her husband — regarded her unhappily. ‘I… I’d really prefer not to do that,’ said the MI6 man.
‘Why? Brice destroyed an American airliner! We’re not just involved, we have a right to know about it.’
Alderley’s discomfort was so intense that he was practically fidgeting. ‘You’d be telling the US government that a British officer murdered hundreds of American civilians as part of an operation approved at the highest level. The fallout would be utterly catastrophic.’
‘Yeah, but it’s what happened! Eddie, you can’t possibly think this should be covered up.’
‘I don’t, but…’ Like Alderley, his internal conflict was so strong that it was becoming tangible. ‘When I joined the army, I took an oath — to serve and protect my country. If this came out, I wouldn’t be protecting Britain. I’d be fucking wrecking it. It’d make America hate us, take us from number one ally to all the way down at the bottom of the shit-list with Iran and North Korea, and I doubt the rest of the world’d treat us any better.’
‘Oh, so now it’s “my country, right or wrong”, is it?’ Nina said scathingly. ‘Even when “wrong” means covering up the murders of hundreds of innocent people?’
‘I’m not saying it’s good! It’s shit, it’s horrible. And I’m not saying that Brice and anyone else involved shouldn’t be dealt with for what they’ve done. But…’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t chuck my own country down the toilet because of them. I might not live here any more, but it’s still my duty to protect it.’