Guy Fawkes Day
Page 24
Chapter 16: South Bank, London: October 19: 8:00 a.m.
Clayton arrived bleary-eyed in the office long before any of the non-duty officers. The residual alcohol from the overnight Hong Kong flight did not help to improve his mood. He had to make his own coffee, too. God, in any half-decent developing country there’d be a local chappie employed just to do that; and if one were really lucky, the ‘chappie’ would turn out to be some sexy, dusky young thing, too, who turned the odd trick or two to supplement her pitiful stipend. God, how he hated being back in England! The drab monotony, the unrelieved sameness of it all: retail centre after retail centre; phalanxes of Ford Focuses and white vans on permanent motorway patrol to gunge up the gaps on M25 or the M6; reality TV, chicken jalfrezi and a four-pack of lager on a Saturday night; car boot sale in a muddy field littered with burger wrappers and discarded cans of Red Bull on a Sunday morning. Meanwhile even his own job was threatened by the budget-slashers in government. What was needed was a new enemy that was more novel and alluring than a violent but pathetically disjointed Al-Qaeeda or IS for attracting government funding. And Clayton thought he just might have found one.
He checked his watch: just gone eight o’clock. There was a good chance that Graham Knox would be in his office already over at MI5. Clayton rustled in his desk for the number and picked up the phone.
Knox, Clayton had to admit, was a good man dogged by a nervous cough that a consumptive would have been proud of.
‘Morning, Graham, surprised to find you still answer your phone. Thought you lot spent all day snooping on the internet these days.’
‘Good morning, Max. How the devil are you?’ Cough. Nervous giggle. ‘Heard you’d been away…Oh, the Far East—very exotic!’ Scrape of throat.
Clayton cut short on the travel details and told Knox as much as he thought the deputy director of M15 needed to know about Mr Hasan and the Ramli special envoy in Oxford. As they got down to business, the coughs turned to more infrequent throat clearances.
‘Ramlis, eh?’ said Knox dubiously. ‘The same ones bringing all the arms contracts in? Sounds doubtful to me; it won’t go down well upstairs either, Max. Now if it were Iranians, I could quite understand.’
Clayton didn’t mind the hesitancy. He would sooner that than feverish excitement. The last thing he wanted was a thunder-stealer with a ticklish throat.
‘I’m not asking for anything official, Graham, more a personal favour. Wondered if you could divert a couple of your lot to Oxford for a few days—you know, checking up on a dodgy fundamentalist house that happens to be next door to the Ramli special envoy’s residence. Very low-key stuff; you know the drill—comings and goings, visitors, that sort of thing.’
Knox was still doubtful. The uncertainty upgraded the throat splutters to fully-fledged coughing bouts.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you, Max.’ Cough. ‘But you know how it is these days; everything has to be tightly accounted for. Give me a couple of hours. I’ll let you know this afternoon if I can arrange anything.’
‘There is one more thing, Graham. I’ll text you a photo I’d like your lot to run through your files. Maybe it’ll be a face you know. My lot are doing the same.’
Knox grunted and Clayton texted a JPEG of the print of the unidentified Westerner that Eitan had given him in Cairo. The faces in the rest of his portfolio he would withhold till later—no need to let Knox know any more than strictly necessary.
‘OK, Max, I’ve got it,’ Knox replied after a lengthy pause and a hurried cough. ‘I’ll give you the results when I call you later.’
Oh, one last thing,’ Clayton blurted out just in time. ‘Tell your team to get me a photo of the Ramli special envoy. Nothing kinky. Just a plain mug shot will do.’
Gritty grunt. ‘OK, Max. I’ll pass the message on.’
Clayton put the phone down and thought about how much he would tell McPherson. Best not to get the foreign secretary too excited too soon. After all, there was still no positive link connecting the mysterious Prince Al-Ajnabi to any of the faces in the rogues' gallery Eitan had furnished. It would be wise to play down the significance of his findings for the time being, while he waited for news from Knox.
Al-Ajnabi? The name reminded Clayton of something that made his eyes go hazy, looking out over the grey Thames towards Westminster. In Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, he had all but put from his mind the thoughts that had so irrationally troubled him in Cairo. Now they returned with airsick hangovers. Did he really want to go into all that business again? He watched a barge drift down the river while he chewed on the question. The sight of it reminded him of the opening of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and that made him even grumpier, gave him the extra impetus to get his teeth stuck in to Prince Al-Ajnabi.
He swiped at the phone as if it had been jeering at his doubt and uncertainty.
‘Williamson? Oh, OK, you’ll do, Houghton. Google me a number in South Africa—company called Critical Interference, head office Johannesburg. Ring back when you’ve got it.’