Tina stubbed out her cigarette.
"Will you be running other agents, Gregg?"
Hathaway's face hardened.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because you're going to a lot of trouble over little old me," she said with a smile. She nodded at the laptop.
"The website, you, Latham. I can't believe this is all being done just for my benefit."
Hathaway nodded slowly, a slight frown on his face as if assessing what she'd said.
"Suppose I was having this conversation with someone else. You wouldn't want me to tell them about you, would you?"
"That sort of answers my question, doesn't it?"
Hathaway smiled thinly and folded his arms.
"There's nothing I can say. Other than lying to you outright, and I'm not prepared to do that."
"And are they all being sent against Tango One?"
"That I can't tell you, Tina."
"But suppose one of your people gets close to Donovan and I see them. If I send you details of what they were doing, doesn't that put them in the spotlight?"
"All your reports will come through me and I won't pass on anything that would put another operative in danger." He smiled again.
"Assuming that there are other operatives."
Tina walked over and sat on the arm of the sofa.
"The reports I send. What will you do with them?"
"I'll go through them and pass on whatever intelligence there is to the appropriate authorities."
"But isn't there a danger that it could be traced back to me?"
"I'll make sure that doesn't happen," he said.
"When you do file, by all means highlight anything you think might be linked to you, but frankly it's the big players I'm interested in. Donovan and the like. I'm not going to risk blowing your cover for anything less."
"Blowing my cover!"
Hathaway closed his eyes and put his hand to his temple as if he had a headache.
"That came out wrong," he said. He opened his eyes again.
"What I mean is that the important thing is that you stay in place. That is my primary concern, keeping you undercover as long as possible. The only reason I'd want to pull you out is if it meant putting Donovan behind bars."
Tina stared at Hathaway. She knew next to nothing about the man who was about to become her handler, who would have her life in his hands.
"You realise that you can't ever tell anyone what you're doing?" said Hathaway.
"No matter how much you want to. No matter how much you think you can trust the person. There'll be times when you'll want to talk to someone. To confide."
"I don't think so."
"What about your family?"
"I haven't seen them for six years. Don't want to see them again. Ever."
"Friends?"
"Not the sort I'd confide in. About anything."
"It's going to be lonely, Tina."
"I'm used to being on my own."
"And how do you feel about betraying people who might well become your friends? Your only friends?"
Cliff Warren took a long pull on his bottle of Sol while he considered Hathaway's question. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Thing is, they won't really be friends, will they? They'll be criminals and I'll be a cop."
"Easy to say now, Cliff, but you might feel differently three years down the line."
"If they're criminals, they deserve to go down. Are you playing devil's advocate, is that what's going on here?"
"I just want you to face the reality of your situation, that's all."
Warren pursed his lips and tapped his bottle against his knee.
"I know what I'm letting myself in for." He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling and sighed mournfully.
"Funny how things work out, in nit
"In what way?"
"By rights I should be square bashing at Hendon. Left, right, left, right, back straight, amis out. And instead I'm gearing up to hit the streets as a drug dealer." He lowered his chin and looked over at Hathaway.
"That's a point, where do I get my cash from?"
"I'll be supplying funds. At least in the early stages. And drugs."
At first Warren thought he'd misheard, then the implications of what Hathaway had said sank in and he sat upright.
"Say what? You'll be giving me drugs?"
"You'll be operating as a dealer. You can't be out there selling caster sugar."
"The police are going to be giving me heroin?"
Hathaway winced.
"I was thinking cannabis," he said.
"Just to get you started. You ever taken drugs, Cliff?"
Warren shook his head.
"Never. Saw what they did to my folks." Warren's mother had died of a heroin overdose when he was twelve. His father was also an addict and had ended up in prison for killing a dealer in North London. Warren had been passed from relative to relative until he'd been old enough to take care of himself, and it seemed that every household he stayed in was tainted in some way by drugs. He had steadfastly refused to touch so much as a joint.
"I don't see that's a problem, though. Plenty of dealers don't use."
"Absolutely, but you're going to have to know good gear when you see it."
"I've got people can show me. The stuff you're going to give me. Where's it coming from?"
"Drugs we've seized in previous operations," said Hathaway.
"They're destroyed if they're no longer needed as evidence. We'll just divert some of it your way."
Warren took another drink. His heart was pounding and he felt a little light headed. It wasn't the alcohol he'd barely drunk half of his beer it was an adrenalin rush, his body gearing for fight, fright or flight in anticipation of what lay ahead. He felt his hand begin to shake and he pressed the bottle against his knee to steady it. This was no time to have the shakes.
"There's one word I haven't heard you mention," he said.
Hathaway raised an eyebrow.
"What's that?"
"Entrapment."
"It's no defence in an English court," said Hathaway.
"Cases have gone as high as the House of Lords and the end result has always been the same entrapment evidence can't be excluded from a trial, because there is no substantive defence of entrapment in English law."
"I thought there'd been cases where undercover officers had obtained confessions and the confessions weren't admissible because they hadn't administered the caution?"
Hathaway smiled.
"It's a grey area," he said.
"You're right, a confession without a caution required under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 would be technically inadmissible. But that wouldn't apply if you weren't questioning them as a police officer. Anything they tell you would be admissible if it was a conversation between equals. Or at least as if they perceived it as a conversation between equals."
"But if I'm encouraging the commission of a crime, doesn't give them a way out?" asked Warren.
"They could say that I was leading them on, that I was waving money around saying that I want to buy drugs. They could claim that if I hadn't approached them they wouldn't have committed the crime in the first place. How are you going to get a conviction on that?"
"We won't. We'll note the transaction and the people involved, but we won't be moving in to arrest them. A couple of busts like that and your cover would be well and truly blown. It's information we want, Cliff. Good quality intelligence that will help us mount effective operations. The last thing we're going to do is to put you in court holding a Bible and swearing to tell the truth." Hathaway drank from his bottle of Sol, then leaned back and studied Warren for almost a minute.
"Entrapment isn't covered by PACE or by the codes of practice issued under PACE," he said, eventually. And it is one hundred per cent true that claiming entrapment isn't a defence under English law. But there were Home Office guidelines issued in 1986 which do refer to entrapment. Basically the Home Office said that no informant must act as an agent provocateur, that is he or she mustn't suggest to others that they commit an offence or encourage them to do so."