Her husband patted her on the back. ‘Love? I’ve got some bad news about the rest of the day.’
Brice looked over the vehicle waiting for him in a lock-up a mile from SIS headquarters. It was a white Ford Transit van with a pickup rear body, its paintwork dirty and scuffed from years of solid use. In no respect was there anything noteworthy about it… which made it perfect for his purposes.
He checked the pickup bed. SIS’s quartermasters had also provided him with suitable props: various tools, warning signs and road cones were stacked in the rear. He hopped up to clear a space for the Shamir’s lead box. The ancient weapon was currently in the boot of an equally anonymous car, but he needed to transfer it to something that could stop anywhere without drawing attention from traffic wardens or police officers.
The Transit would fit the bill. Its doors bore the coat of arms of the City of Westminster, the central London borough that was home to many of the city’s most famous buildings — including the Houses of Parliament. Anyone looking closely would notice that the vinyl decals were brand new, without the patina of diesel particulates speckling the rest of the van; there were limits to what SIS’s people could do on short notice. He doubted it would receive such an inspection, though. A council van working on its own streets was so unremarkable as to be effectively invisible.
He was about to collect the Shamir when his phone rang. ‘Yes?’
‘I have some good news for you, old man.’ Ellis, the senior technician. ‘About your laptop.’
‘What did you find?’ Brice asked cautiously. Ellis’s people had been ordered not to watch the incriminating video should they recover it, but it was inevitable that someone would have viewed at least parts of it, if only to check that the picture and sound were intact. ‘Did you recover the recording?’
‘We recovered lots of recordings,’ Ellis replied cheerily. ‘The thing is, though, they’re all audio files, not video.’
The spy felt a rising sense of unease. ‘Had anything been copied off the hard drive and then deleted?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. Even if they’d used a secure delete command, we’d still be able to tell that something had been deleted.’
Brice’s discomfort grew. Something was very wrong. ‘There’s nothing at all from the drone?’
‘There isn’t even anything related to a drone, old man. Apart from the standard system software, all the applications are audio-related. Sound recording, editing, filtering, that kind of thing. Professional-grade software, by the way. I’d say our having this means a sound man’s lost their livelihood.’
‘A sound woman,’ he corrected, all the puzzle pieces suddenly slotting together.
‘Considering the bullet hole, maybe they lost more than that! But I don’t think that you—’
Brice cut off the call. Fighting back anger, he entered a new number.
It was the private secure line of C himself. A reply soon came. ‘Armitage.’
‘Sir, it’s Brice. We have a situation. The laptop we took from Chase and Wilde at Heathrow — it’s not the one they used to make the drone recording. They switched it for an identical computer.’
The response was terse. ‘Then where’s the real one?’
‘They must still have it. Maybe they got someone else on the plane to bring it through for them. Sir, Ellis just recovered the data from the laptop in our possession. If Chase and Wilde have done the same with the real one—’
‘That would lead to very unwelcome consequences,’ C interrupted, making it perfectly clear upon whom said consequences would fall. ‘You need to find them, and the laptop.’
‘I’m getting ready to start the mission, sir. I need help. If I can have your permission to activate GB63—’
‘You have it.’ The authorisation came with no hesitation, or emotion.
‘Thank you, sir. And there’s something else. Chase contacted Peter Alderley yesterday to arrange a meeting, but never showed up. But I think Alderley must be involved somehow. He knows something — he might even be helping them.’
‘I’ll call him in for a chat,’ said Armitage. ‘Now: is your mission in jeopardy? Will you have to abort?’
‘This is the only opportunity we’ll have before the election,’ said Brice, realising his boss was putting all the responsibility on him. ‘If we find Chase and his wife and get the laptop, there’s no threat to us.’
‘And what if they’ve already recovered the file and are disseminating it?’
‘GCHQ need to monitor for any signs that they might have done so. I can coordinate that through ops. But until I know that there’s a definite risk, I’ll continue as planned.’
‘Very well. Remember, Brice — you can’t afford anything to go wrong. Understood?’
‘Very clearly, sir.’ Brice lowered the phone, realising he was sweating. He rubbed his neck, then made another call, again to SIS. ‘Staite? Brice here. C has just approved the use of the Removal Men. Their targets are Eddie Chase and Nina Wilde.’ A small smile. ‘Turn them loose.’
Peter Alderley looked out from his office at the activity in SIS’s Africa section. His unexpected drill was being taken very seriously, his staff working flat out to meet the ten thirty deadline. He made a mental note to use the same approach again in future; it would keep them on their toes…
His desk phone rang. He answered. ‘Alderley.’
‘Peter. This is C. I need to talk to you. Come up to my office.’
Impromptu meetings with the head of SIS were far from common. ‘Sir, I’m just about to hold a staff briefing,’ he said, unsettled.
‘Now, Peter.’ He hung up.
‘Oh, boy,’ Alderley muttered. He had no doubts that the summons was somehow connected to his unexpected houseguests. Had they been caught?
A moment of hesitation — what he was about to do could end his career — then he called the number Eddie had given him. It went through to voicemail. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said, trying to sound casual for those monitoring. ‘I’ve just been called into a meeting with the boss, so no idea how long I’ll be. You should go on ahead. Bye.’ He hoped the recipient wouldn’t take too long to check his messages.
A quick apology to his staff for delaying the briefing, then he headed out and took a lift up to C’s office near the top of the building. Armitage’s secretary told him to go straight in. That in itself was ominous; on the few previous occasions when he had been summoned for a meeting, he’d had to endure the ritual of the powerful, waiting outside like a schoolboy until his superior concluded more important business.
C stood at the window, looking out across the Thames. ‘Ah, Peter. There you are.’ He did not turn around.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Alderley, joining him. ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, I did.’ He continued to gaze at the river. ‘I want an explanation.’
‘About what, sir?’
‘Your contact with Eddie Chase and Nina Wilde last night. They called you.’
‘Yes sir, they did,’ said Alderley, knowing there was no point dissembling. C would have seen the telephone logs and quite probably listened to the call, GCHQ recording every phone conversation in the country as a matter of routine. ‘They said they wanted to meet me, but didn’t turn up.’
‘And are you in the habit of going out of your way to meet everyone who requests an audience?’
‘They’re… friends,’ he said, almost forcing out the word at the thought of describing Eddie as such. ‘I hadn’t seen them for a while.’
‘And were you aware that they are fugitives wanted on a matter of national security? That they instigated a gun battle at Heathrow and caused an enormous amount of property damage in their escape?’