The MI6 officer huffed. ‘I am not lackadaisical about civil liberties! I actually donate to—’
Eddie interrupted him. ‘Wait, that’s something Brice actually said to me, in the hotel bar in Butembo. About a state of emergency — he said it was a good way for a government to suspend democracy, something like that.’
‘And in the palace,’ Nina remembered, ‘he described the Shamir as “the perfect tool for regime change”. Get all a country’s leaders in one place, then drop the roof in on their heads…’
Alderley suddenly looked appalled. ‘He couldn’t possibly…’
‘Couldn’t possibly what?’ she asked.
‘Parliament is dissolved in the run-up to a general election,’ the older man explained, awful realisation behind his words. ‘Today’s the final session of Prime Minister’s Questions before that happens. PMQs are normally packed, and today’s will be standing room only. ’
‘That’s the part they show on C-SPAN which makes your politicians look like a bunch of braying schoolchildren, right?’
‘It’s not a high point of dignity and decorum, no. But just about every MP, from all parties, will be there. If someone really was planning to do a Guy Fawkes and bring the Houses of Parliament down on top of them, that would be the time to do it. It’s maximum security, obviously, but…’
‘But Brice doesn’t have to be in the building,’ Eddie finished for him. ‘He could be sailing past on a fucking duck boat and still do it.’
‘And if he’s got support from high up, he can get whatever security clearance he needs,’ said Nina. ‘My God, if he actually does have that kind of support, they could still keep the Shamir a secret! They could make up any story they liked about the attack — blame it on Islamic terrorists or whoever. The government gets to stay in power because there won’t be an election, and the intelligence agencies get a huge spending boost to fight the new threat, whoever they decide it to be.’
‘But there wouldn’t be a government to stay in power,’ Alderley countered. ‘You couldn’t selectively blow up the House of Commons to take out your opponents while leaving your own side unscathed. It’d be far too dangerous. And I’ve dealt with politicians — there isn’t a single one of them who’d risk sitting in that chamber knowing that the roof was about to come down on them, no matter what their side stood to gain.’
Eddie regarded Alderley’s computer. ‘Easy way to find out, though. Check if Hove’s skiving out of PMQs today.’
‘The Prime Minister wouldn’t miss Prime Minister’s Questions — the clue’s in the name,’ said Alderley snippily, but he still started pecking at the keyboard. ‘By the way, would you mind not looking over my shoulder, please? I’m logging into SIS, so everything here is classified.’
‘Ooh, don’t mind us,’ said Eddie sarcastically as he and Nina begrudgingly turned away.
‘I’ll remind you that you signed the Official Secrets Act.’ Alderley called up an information feed and scrolled through it. ‘But anyway, while the PM actually doesn’t always attend, it’s extremely unlikely they’d miss the final PMQs of a Parliament. There are too many sound bite opportunities to…’
‘To?’ Nina prompted after a few seconds of silence.
‘I’m going to risk being arrested and turn around,’ Eddie said to her in a fake whisper.
They both faced Alderley again. ‘You, ah… you were right, Chase,’ he said in disbelief. ‘There’s a first time for everything, but — you were right. Quentin Hove isn’t attending PMQs today; he’s being represented by the Home Secretary instead. Hove’s going to…’ He clicked a link for more details. ‘Okay, this is very odd. He has what’s described as a “critical security briefing” with C at 11.30, so won’t be available for PMQs at noon. But if something was that critical, he’d have other cabinet ministers with him from the COBRA emergency committee — and the Home Secretary would absolutely be one of them.’
‘Also, if it’s that critical, why isn’t he having the meeting right now?’ Nina asked. ‘Why wait an extra five hours?’
Alderley dismissed the feed, then faced his guests. ‘I’m still finding it very difficult to imagine that Brice is planning to destroy the Houses of Parliament with some lost biblical super-weapon, but… the two superiors who would have approved this deep-cover job in the Congo are the same two men who’ve scheduled a closed-doors meeting in Downing Street at the exact time you’d expect one of them to be grandstanding for the TV cameras in the Commons.’
‘So, not a normal situation?’
‘Definitely not, no.’
She held up the laptop. ‘If Brice really is going to attack Parliament, then we’ve got to recover the video and expose him before it happens.’
‘How will that stop him?’ Alderley demanded.
‘Because on the recording, he talks about using the Shamir to carry out a decapitation strike. So it won’t be a secret weapon any more, and it both establishes that he has the means to do it and makes it much harder to pin the blame on someone else. Especially when nobody finds any trace of explosives in the rubble.’
‘If the official story is that explosives were found, then believe me, explosives will be found,’ the SIS officer told her.
‘Which is why we have to take the recording to the American embassy. If the US government has proof, they’ll have enough leverage to go straight to Hove with it. He and the head of MI6 are the only people who can call Brice back in before it’s too late.’
‘They’ll also have proof of MI6 involvement in the crash of that airliner!’ Alderley protested. ‘I told you, that would be a diplomatic disaster.’
‘Which gives them every incentive to pull Brice in before he can do anything else. Remember, the video shows him claiming still to be working for MI6 — but if Hove and C get their stories straight, they can say he’s really an embittered ex-agent who went rogue, and that everything he told us was a lie. They can’t allow him to destroy Parliament if the Americans know about the plan in advance, because it would prove he had MI6 support to get back to England so fast with the Shamir — which in turn proves the British government’s complicity in the crash of Flight 180.’
‘So they’d sell out Brice to the Americans to save their own arses?’ said Eddie. ‘Sounds like what politicians would do, all right.’
Alderley’s expression became thoughtful. ‘If it came to that, I think it’s far more likely that Brice would suffer an “unfortunate accident”. He’d be a huge liability — they couldn’t take the risk that he might implicate his superiors.’ He gave Nina a look of faintly amused approval. ‘You know, for an archaeologist you actually have quite a devious mind. Have you ever considered a change of career?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘No thanks.’
‘What are we going to do, then?’ Eddie asked Alderley. ‘You going to help us?’
He blew out his cheeks, conflicted. ‘I’m really, really not happy about turning the evidence straight over to the Americans. But…’ He stood. ‘If there’s an imminent threat of attack, there isn’t time to take this through channels. Hove and C’s first instinct, if they are involved, will be to obfuscate and delay so they can protect themselves — by which time it might be too late.’