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To Johnny’s hyper-sensitive ears, Sir Greville welcomed him, as always, as if he was still in short trousers. ‘Johnny. Good to see you, boy. Glad to see we’ve got a real lion on the job, eh, Ivor?’

The gaze stayed on him for barely a moment, flicking back to Sibley before the sentence was finished to make it quite clear there was little meaning behind the words.

Sibley gestured around the chairs, sat down and passed folders around.

He looked round to see they were all settled and ready and cleared his throat. ‘Matthew Quill,’ he said. ‘Yesterday’s substitution went exactly to plan. We now have to consider the next phase, which is why we are here today. He’s a persistent young man and we must make sure he sees a good reason to look elsewhere. Maggie.’

‘Thank you, Ivor,’ said Maggie, opening her folder. ‘In the past two months, we have put into play a successful vulnerability programme against the subject. This has taken three main directions, financial, psychological and professional. If I could start with the financial side? You’ll find it at Appendix 2A.’

Appendix 2A was a list. Johnny and the others all around the table scanned down it.

‘Just to run through,’ said Maggie. ‘Quinn’s an easy one for the treatment. He’s been living on a shoestring and we’ve managed to fray the string to breaking point with very little trouble. Cash withdrawals first. This month we have made unauthorized cash machine withdrawals of a hundred and fifty pounds from his account, removing the surplus balance. We have used machines he normally uses himself and we have satisfied ourselves from inspection of his flat that he keeps few records and is unlikely to be able to make a convincing case to the bank even if he does pin down the individual transactions. We did in fact put receipts covering the transactions in his briefcase, where he stores unsorted paperwork, so if he does try to check back he will be very confused.’

She looked down at the list. ‘Uninsured property. For recreation at weekends he had a bicycle, a fairly expensive Rockhopper mountain bike. That was removed last week. He lacks funds to replace it. Then there’s domestic bills. Let’s see.’ She glanced further down. ‘We gained entry to his flat a few days ago and substituted a defective motor and a worn pump for components in his washing-machine. It’s a German one and the bill’s going to be at least one hundred and seventy pounds. Carwise, he runs an old Fiesta. He parked it last Saturday morning in Knightsbridge on a meter. We were able to move it on to double yellow lines while he was gone and it was subsequently towed away. All told he’s down about seven hundred and fifty pounds in unforeseen expenses in the month and that’s much more than he can afford. He’s now seeking loan facilities but we’ve arranged entries on the credit registers which should ensure no one will be prepared to lend him money.’

Sir Greville interrupted her. ‘All well and good, but does it stop him working?’

Sibley answered. ‘His research grant’s ending this week, Sir Greville. He has to show sufficient progress on the project to get it renewed. As of yesterday’ – he paused, and smiled – ‘thanks to Maggie and Johnny, he has virtually nothing to show. The samples they substituted will provide him with no evidence whatsoever.’

‘So that’s it? We just hope he packs his bags and leaves us alone? After spending a year of his life chasing it?’ Sir Greville’s tone was mild but no one mistook his meaning.

‘No, of course not. What we do next is offer him an alternative research job as outlined in the proposal of which there is a copy in your file.’

Sir Greville waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘I’ve seen it. So, maybe he’ll agree. Maybe he’ll go to New Zealand. But it’s still food additives, isn’t it? I mean that’s his field, after all. It might be a different direction but it does raise the danger he might start experimenting again in a direction we don’t want, doesn’t it?’

‘He’ll be kept busy and we’ll keep an eye on him. It buys you time, Sir Greville.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘do it. Now, what about this bloody woman, Jean Davies?’

‘The letter would indicate that you have a big potential problem there.’

Sir Greville nodded. ‘Severe discipline, I think.’

Most of what had just happened had passed over Johnny. He’d heard of vulnerability enhancement as a theoretical technique – in the office, they’d called it wallet-hitting – but he’d never been directly involved and he still didn’t know exactly what Quill had done to make himself a target. In a sudden hush he became aware that Ivor Sibley and Maggie were looking at him.

‘This is where Johnny comes in,’ said Sibley. ‘You said you’d like to be involved in his briefing so I thought we’d kill two birds with one stone.’

Sir Greville nodded at the bearded man who had never been introduced. ‘Gordon?’

The man looked at him morosely, then back at Johnny. ‘Have you been following the Hurst Inquiry?’

‘On and off,’ said Johnny, who hadn’t really. He thought hard of what he knew. A spin-off from the revelations of the Scott Inquiry and the Pergau Dam affair. Once the rumours of arms-deal brokers who were a little too close to Tory grandees for comfort proved unstoppable, a series of fresh inquiries had become inevitable. Sir Roger Hurst’s task was to look into arms sales to less developed countries.

‘A little while back,’ said the man called Gordon, glancing with heavy import back at his boss, ‘the Hurst Inquiry was sent a transcript of a proposal we were making to a… let’s just say a foreign group, concerning the sale of a trial quantity of a new product, CN512. The Inquiry had it within a week or two of our transmitting it and they’ve given us notice that they’re calling Sir Greville for questioning.’

He looked expectantly at Johnny.

‘So you want us to find out who gave it to the inquiry?’ Johnny asked, thinking it sounded like an internal security job. Routine. Find out who had access, who had an axe to grind, and start whittling them down.

‘Oh no,’ said the man, ‘we know that. The person who sent it’ – he paused for effect – ‘was a twenty-nine year old youth worker from Yorkshire called Heather Weston. What we want to know is how the hell did she get it?’

Sibley held up a six-by-four black and white. ‘That’s her, Johnny. You’ll find all we’ve got on her in the file. We can talk tactics afterwards.’

He looked at the picture – a bit grainy, taken on a long lens as she was coming out through what looked like a shop door, hair blowing across her forehead. It was hard to make much of it except that she looked happy and friendly and about as unlikely a person as you could find to be sending defence secrets to a government inquiry.

There was a silence, broken by Sir Greville who leaned forward and in a dangerous tone of voice that Johnny had known since childhood said: ‘Isn’t there anything else you’d like to know, young Johnny?’

It meant, as it had always meant, that he’d missed something obvious and was in imminent danger of being shown up. He racked his brains and fell back on the safest ground he could find. ‘I’ll read the file. If there is, I’ll be in touch.’ He was rather proud of the level way he said it, but his stepfather’s eyes lifted in a tiny but deadly expression of impatience.

‘Wouldn’t it help you to know what this is all about? What CN512 is?’

‘If this is a suitable moment,’ said Johnny trying very hard to sound incisive and determined and immediately aware that he had failed.