There was turbulence ahead. They lifted off and the aircraft shook as it gathered height. It would be a foul flight. The uncertainty festered in his mind. The cream of the Service's new intake, his contemporaries on the IONEC course, were now scattered round the Gulf, in Islamabad, Tashkent and Tehran, in Damascus and Tel Aviv, in Beirut, Cairo and Khartoum, and the prize bitch among them was in Kabul. They were at the sharp end of the Service's work, and Gabriel Locke was in Warsaw where less than fuck-all relevant work was done…and he was being summoned back to London because two dead-drop procedures — as antiquated and outdated as the plumbing of his parents' milking parlour — had failed. The sourness engulfed him as the plane ducked through the choppy air. His annoyance, for want of a better target, focused on the outmoded system that had produced Ferret in the first place.
Alice North was at the far end of the conference room where she would hardly have been noticed with her back to the window. The bright sunlight that was thrown over her shoulder cast a shadow on her face. Her legs were crossed and on her upper thigh was the notepad in which she wrote her shorthand, with sharpened pencil.
Before the meeting had settled, Alice had written at the top of the first page of the foolscap pad:
Codename Ferret
Meeting at VBX, 21 September 2002.
Present:
Albert Ponsford (AP) Russia Desk; Peter Giles (PG) Dep. Director Covert Ops; Gabriel Locke (GL) Warsaw station; Maj. William Courtney (WC) Special Air Service/Liaison; Lt Cdr Geoffrey Snow (GS) Naval Intelligence; Alice North.
Alice's face, without makeup, was a mask. Of all of them in the room she knew the most of Codename Ferret, but she was not expected to speak…she was only there to take the record of the meeting, not to contribute.
GL: It's ridiculous — in this day and age, with the electronic capability we have — for us to be dependent on drops where we have no control of the situation. I don't know what's going on, and it doesn't seem anybody else does. Anyway, if he's in difficulty, this Codename Ferret, I cannot see that anything can be done for him.
She had met Gabriel Locke once, at Rupert Mowbray's retirement party, and from the first sight of him she had disliked the young man. Not tall, a nice head, fine dark hair, well-cut features, but humourless, cold and without humanity.
PG: We have a good reputation, deservedly so, for providing help and succour to those who are in need of it. But there are two limitations on what we can do — first, what is possible in the circumstances, second, what is desirable in the current political, diplomatic mood.
AP: I don't want to pour cold water on this — I'm as keen as the next man to do the right thing by an agent, but there are very serious areas that we must look most closely at. HM Government policy is now towards rapprochement with our Russian neighbours. Nobody suggested, of course they didn't, that in light of the rapprochement we should wind down what we were running inside their territories, but we most certainly do not shove two fingers up in their faces. I would assume that ministers would expect, should our man be arrested, that events should be allowed to take their course.
Peter Giles had always been a snake in the grass. And Alice had scant respect for Ponsford either, a time-server with a knapsack of pomposity since the last New Year Honours and his OBE award.
PG: Minimize the damage — for heaven's sake, we now have collaboration committees meeting monthly, and Afghanistan couldn't have been attempted without that exercise in good relations, because we were the conduit between them and the Americans. Ride it out, let the storm blow over. We couldn't dream of jeopardizing the new relationship for one man. He's only a junior naval officer, isn't he?
Alice glanced up from the notepad and saw the naval intelligence man wince. All the faces were turned towards him. She thought him not a man to put his head unnecessarily on the block. He coughed. The delay he put into the hack deep in his throat, then the shovelling in his pocket for a handkerchief seemed to her to be in the hope that someone else might speak up. There was no escape.
GS: It's difficult to quantify his value. It's not state-of-the-art research and development, but it's all useful. All right, occasionally we get something that's hot, but most frequently we get what is relevant. How I'd summarize — we're being given a rather unique insight into the modern Russian navy. From him we have confirmation of much that we believed but were not certain of, and he's surprised us with detail on submarine depths, hull coatings, engine noise, missile-preparedness and range. What is also clear is that the quality of the material has reached a higher level than we received in that first package. His access is good. Now, I don't know who he works for, but I have to assume he's close to a senior admiral. I suppose the possibility is that the admiral will go right to the top, and take his man, our man, with him. Conclusions? Because of him we feel comfortable about the Russian navy. Then there're the airforce insights, which colleagues appreciate. But if we lost him, would it matter? No, the world wouldn't stop — I don't think we'd miss him.
Again, Alice looked up and saw heads nod agreement. Others now took their cue from the navy's man. She scribbled busily.
AP: It's all about embarrassment — formally we'd deny all knowledge of him…
PG: Never seek to justify, never look to apologize. Anyway, when they walk in, these people, they must have a pretty clear idea of the risk being undertaken. What would he get — ten years, a bit more?
AP: Something a little more drastic than that.
Her face was down and close to the notepad, her pencil moved silently, but her coverage of the word 'drastic' was emphatic, and if she had pressed harder the lead might have snapped.
PG: I thought they'd abolished capital punishment in the Federation…
AP: Well, they'd find a way round that little obstacle — but it's not our problem. Our problem is our ministers and how they'd regard the fallout from an arrest. Deniability is indeed the name of the game. It was good stuff about the redeployment of the Tochka missiles into Kaliningrad, and good fun the kicking we were able to give them over it…even if it did have to be sourced as satellite photography.
GL: Cut him adrift, forget him. Not worth the hassle. At our station we have excellent relations with the Russians, and it's two way traffic. They're getting techno know-how, and we're getting decent stuff on organized crime…it would hurt if we lost that. What's the worst case — they expel a couple of ours, we expel a couple of theirs, then it's history? What we should not do is exacerbate a situation, turn a clean cut into something that's infected.