‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I know more about this man than about some of my closest friends.’
Vine crossed his legs, never taking his eyes off the screen. Yousef looked almost normal up there, professorial and disarmingly fusty.
Rose clicked to another slide, crawling with squiggles of biro. ‘A medical evaluation when he returned from a spell in a Jordanian prison,’ she said. ‘Given the once-over by a police doctor.’
Vine could repeat the phrases without thinking. ‘Numerous digestive problems, weakness in his limbs, respiratory difficulties.’
‘Very good.’
‘But that’s not where the real interest lies,’ said Vine, suddenly more alert. He felt any tiredness receding. ‘The killer is the psychiatric evaluation. Most detainees come back with what could politely be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Lack of sleep, vivid nightmares, flashbacks. Some can’t even leave the house.’
‘But not Yousef?’
‘The opposite. I’ve watched the tape. He is charming, polite, reasonable. He can do a passable impression of tolerance too, the actor in him. The psychiatrist actually said in the report that he was the most rational subject he had ever evaluated.’
Rose turned towards him. ‘So what makes you so sure that he isn’t?’
Vine looked at her. ‘I’m quite sure he is,’ he said, at last. ‘You know once you see him face to face. His eyes, the window to the soul. He is the most dangerous sort of all – a sane man leading others to do insane things. The only questions we need answered are who he’s working with to plan the attack, and where and when he’s going to strike.’
‘But what if he’s too good? With others, we can count on them for simple errors. What if Yousef doesn’t make mistakes any more?’
‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ he said. ‘Yousef might pretend to be infallible. But he’s not. We just need to keep watching.’
She didn’t respond. The room was quiet for a moment, merely the dull hum of machines.
‘You can talk to me, you know,’ said Vine, summoning up the confidence to move the conversation away from shop talk. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Just the usual.’
‘Gabriel?’
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a slight heave in her chest. ‘I can’t get the thought out of my mind. What they must be doing to him. It’s too horrible to think about, yet sometimes it’s all I can think about …’
Vine could hear Newton’s words float back to him: the best we can hope for now is that they killed him quickly.
‘I don’t even know what’s being done to rescue him,’ she said. ‘When Cecil told me about the operation he just said a mission was underway. Nothing more.’
‘I can talk to Cecil again if you like,’ said Vine. ‘You deserve to know.’ He waited, trying to gauge her mood before he said more. ‘You’ve been the victim in all of this. The least you can have is some idea of what is being done to get him back.’
She sat up, tracing a hand through her hair. ‘But we both know why … We’re both professionals. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s what I would do in their situation.’
Vine shook his head. ‘No … that’s nonsense.’
‘You know it’s not, Solomon. We both do. He was always just another chess piece in Cecil’s grand game. Even if he is alive at the end of it, there’s no way he won’t have divulged everything he knows. No one could resist. Everything the West has done will be hurled back at him. He’ll become a sacrifice for it all.’
Vine could see Cecil in his armchair, those words tumbling out of him: it was clear that MI6 and Downing Street would deny all knowledge if he was exposed, cast him off as an actual traitor, perhaps even threaten prosecution. He thought of Cecil in his armoured car, happy to let Wilde take the rap for his own misadventures.
And yet that twinge of suspicion recurred, unable to be silenced. What if Wilde had set this whole thing up, an ingenious double-bluff? In some part of him, Vine felt he was letting Newton down. He had yet to find any further answers about the MIDAS operation, yet to identify the mysterious correspondent on the Gmail account. Newton had been sure that those details would shed new light on the Nobody mole and Wilde’s disappearance. He could see the watchers tailing him at Guy’s hospital, the man shadowing him around Oxford. He had presumed they were Cecil’s men. But Cecil had access to every digital resource available. He could have stitched together his knowledge of Vine’s whereabouts more easily than deploying physical surveillance. What, instead, if they were acting on Wilde’s orders? Vine analysed the thought, wondering if his own anger was deliberately diluting the last of his rational powers. Truth and fiction seemed amorphous suddenly, motive and inference refusing to stay still.
Neither of them said anything. He longed to hold her and to comfort her. He wanted to be free of guilt and worry, of hurt about what had happened.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he said eventually. ‘It will be easier in the morning.’
‘You promise?’
‘Let me walk you home. I could do with the exercise.’
She smiled. It was a sad, humourless curve of the mouth. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Just let me get my things.’
He watched her walk out of the room towards the hall before getting up and yawning loudly. He picked up his jacket and wriggled his arms through the sleeves, wondering whether tonight, at last, he might be able to turn off the thoughts and sleep. As he waited for Rose to return, he saw her coat draped over a nearby chair. It was still cold outside, so he picked it up to hold for her, an instinctive act of chivalry that made him feel suddenly self-conscious, ridiculous even. He was just about to replace it – trying to remember the exact angle across the chair – when he felt a slight protrusion from the inside chest pocket, a bump in the silky lining. His hand was moving before his brain engaged, fingers clasping round the glossy surface. Inching it out, he gently smoothed down the crease in the middle. Then he smiled.
He turned the photo round and saw the marking on the back – ‘Pakistan 2005’ – that he recalled so well from the day he had first seen it, tumbling out of the desk drawer when he had been searching for coasters; the day scarred in his memory by what had followed – a fluffed proposal, an even clumsier engagement. He turned it back round and stared again at that younger, happier Rose, guarded on all sides by the family she had stayed with, a generational sprawl. Her smile was even more arresting than he remembered, shot through with a giddy optimism, eyes dancing with life. It was a world away from this place, like a memory from a past existence. Kept near her now as a means of surviving the day.
He lingered over it for a moment longer, unwilling to let go. Then he refolded the photo down the crease and replaced it carefully in her inside pocket, before positioning the coat back where he’d found it. Silently – instinctively – covering his tracks.
43
The bar of the Royal Horseguards hotel was dotted with tables for two tucked in the corners, close enough to the main area to lose your conversation in the noise yet space enough for comfort. The crowd was the usual mix of travelling corporate suits and greyer-haired tourists beguiled by its nearness to the Palace of Westminster.
Vine and Montague took a vacant two-seater, their body language convincingly wary around one another. The waiter came. Montague ordered a glass of white wine, Vine a glass of red.
They followed the usual script – the recent cricket scores, future holiday plans – until the drinks came. Vine had been glad to get out of the safe house, quarantined for too long within the four walls. He scooped up a handful of nuts, chewed them down and then leaned forwards, voice never rising above a murmur: ‘So … do you think we can do it?’
Montague gulped down a mouthful of wine. ‘Technically, yes. I can get into the CCTV systems without too much fuss. Just a question of whether some eagle-eyed counterpart spots me. They’re getting better these days. Not Silicon Valley money, but enough to recruit guys and gals who know how to make a keyboard sing. I
can cover my tracks, of course, but it will have to be for short bursts at a time.’
Vine nodded. He sat back in his seat and stared down into his glass. There was a tarnished look to Montague that intrigued him, the sort of donnish melancholy that Vine felt reflected his own – scuffed somehow, as if regretting the price that had to be paid for knowledge.
Montague coughed lightly. ‘The powers that be aren’t rethinking, I hope,’ he said. ‘I doubt we would ever get this past the Foreign Secretary. Definitely not the Home Office. GCHQ and the Met are very touchy about anyone else getting into the system …’
Vine shook his head. ‘It’s not the methods that are the problem. It’s the man. Yousef is a genius in the art of victimhood. If he gets any definite confirmation we are watching him, we’ll have every civil liberties lobby group spamming their MP’s inbox by morning. The press would lap it up.’
Montague looked as if he was almost smiling to himself. ‘Well, if duty calls on that front, I’ve always fancied giving the hacks a bit of their own medicine. Altering a few headlines, waking the lawyers up.’ He had sunk the last of his wine now, staring at the glass. ‘Are we off-duty enough for a second helping?’
Vine laughed despondently. ‘Be my guest.’ He watched Montague scan the room for a waiter. The dance music on the overhead speakers was replaced by velvety jazz.
He was still only halfway through his wine, savouring the flavour in his throat. He suddenly felt his body give in to tiredness, the fidgety twinge of it on his muscles. The dam must break soon, he knew. Even spies could only wait for so long.
Once started on his second glass, Montague said: ‘What do you think he’ll do? Brush pass of some sort?’
Vine thought back to the sly simplicity of the counter-surveillance at the shopping mall. There was something that continued to unsettle him about it, a wrong note which he couldn’t quite identify. ‘That’s what I’d do. Nothing digital, not worth the risk. Just a handover, lost in the crowds. Become a needle in the haystack.’
‘Which means we’ll need eyes on him for most of the day. Risk getting caught inside the system.’
‘The catch-22.’
‘Do you think he really is planning an attack?’
‘Yes. It’s the only explanation for how he’s acting. The key question is, are we good enough to stop him?’
With that, Montague took another large gulp of wine, and they gathered up their coats. Vine asked for the bill and paid. At the door, he looked to his left at the grandeur of the Ministry of Defence and said, as if to no one in particular: ‘Who spies on the spies? The eternal question.’
‘What do we do if they find us?’ said Montague, threading his arms through the sleeves of his overcoat. ‘Who do we say we are?’
Vine smiled. Something else was brewing. He could almost taste it in the air. He glanced back at Montague.
Who do we say we are?
He flicked up the collar of his coat as they began walking down Whitehall Court.
‘Nobody,’ he said, at last.
44
‘Alpha 2, do you have a visual?’
Vine looked up at the two main screens. The fuzzy image of Ahmed Yousef was always the same, a ghostly smudge. It was only a week in, and already Vine found his every thought consumed with the possible movements of the wraith-like figure in grey.
‘Confirm,’ said Anderson, his voice crackly over the comms system. ‘Into Green Park Tube station.’
Sitting rapt before the screen, Montague tapped furiously on the keyboard, trying to summon the appropriate CCTV camera.
‘Which line?’ said Rose, taking the right-hand position in front of the screen, arms folded. She turned to Vine. ‘Has to be Victoria. He’s heading home … Alpha 2, which line?’ she repeated.
‘Doesn’t look like he’s getting on from platform 4. He’s heading for the Jubilee line.’
‘Where’s he going?’ said Rose.
‘Keep close to him,’ said Vine. He turned to Montague. ‘Tube stops he could be going to?’
Montague tapped again. ‘Westminster, Waterloo, Southwark, London Bridge.’
Vine felt his pulse beat faster. Westminster. After days of nothing, this could be the moment Yousef began to lead them to his target. ‘Alpha 1, where are you?’
Waugh didn’t answer immediately. ‘Still stuck on Piccadilly,’ he said. ‘Tried to check out Yousef’s detour through St James’s Church.’
‘Anything?’
‘Not that I could see. Just a way to shake off a tail from Jermyn Street.’
‘He’s been under surveillance for the best part of fifteen years,’ said Rose. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’
Vine tried to summon all the possible scenarios. ‘OK. Alpha 2 stay close to Yousef, make sure he doesn’t leave you on the station platform. Alpha 1, get back to Cumberland Street, make sure we have that covered.’
Anderson said: ‘Confirm. Target heading for Jubilee Southbound.’
Montague quickly worked his magic with the CCTV cameras. Soon they were staring at a live feed of platform 6.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Vine said. He scanned through the clumps of people waiting for the train due in less than a minute. ‘Switch to one of the east-facing cameras. He must be further down.’
Montague clicked again. He cursed as the footage buffered on them. ‘Sorry, this equipment is pretty bloody horrible at the best of times. I’m having problems connecting.’
Vine cracked his knuckles. He felt his chest tighten. They had about forty seconds until the train arrived. With a platform this busy, Yousef could lose surveillance easily. Alone, there was a vanishingly small chance that Anderson would be able to get an eyes-on in time to track him.
‘Back up,’ said Montague. The live stream from an east-facing camera further down the platform juddered into life on the screen.
‘Anyone?’ said Vine.
‘Right at the end,’ said Rose. ‘Behind that group of tourists.’
The screen blurred slightly as the headlights from the train glittered into view.
‘Alpha 2, target is near the end of the platform. About to board the penultimate carriage. Do you have a visual?’
The platform had descended into barely organized chaos as streams of passengers disembarked.
‘Alpha 2?’
There was nothing, just the sound of heavy breathing from one of the mikes. Eventually, with a breathy rasp, Anderson’s voice came through: ‘Confirm.’
‘Which carriage are you in?’
‘Third one down. I have sight of the target.’
‘Is he carrying anything?’ asked Rose. It was almost impossible to tell from the CCTV footage.
‘No.’
‘Stay with him,’ said Vine. ‘Alpha 1, update please.’
Waugh’s voice sounded again, still laced with a defensive edge. ‘Nearly at Green Park.’
‘OK. Confirm when you reach Victoria.’
Vine coughed, reaching for the bottle of Evian and downing half of it in one go. He reeled again through the other possible stations: Waterloo, Southwark, London Bridge. London Bridge was a possibility if he didn’t get off at the next stop.
‘How much longer approximately?’ he asked Montague.
‘One minute max.’ Montague brought up a diagram showing Westminster Tube station on the left-hand screen. ‘If he gets off the train, there are three options. He stays on platform 3 and heads towards the District and Circle lines. Or he leaves platform 3 and either takes the escalator down to the Jubilee Westbound on platform 4 or the two escalators up towards the main exit.’
Vine looked at the digital clock on the bottom of the screen. He saw the glow of the approaching train on the right-hand screen, waiting as it shuddered along the platform, inspecting the penultimate carriage for any flicker of movement.
‘Alpha 2, did you get that?’
On the footage, the five-foot-nine frame of Ahmed Yousef stepped out of the train carriage and began pacing down the platform. Monta
gue changed the CCTV feed to the first escalator.
‘He’s on,’ said Rose.
‘Alpha 2, do you copy?’
‘Confirm. I have a visual. Target has left platform 3. Going up. Looks like he could be heading for the exit.’
Yousef was walking up the left-hand side of the escalator. His pace quickened slightly as he veered round to catch the second escalator up towards the main station concourse.
‘Where does he go now?’ Vine whispered to himself. ‘Alpha 2, do you still have a visual?’
There was another pause. ‘Yes. He’s beyond the ticket barriers, heading out of the Bridge Street exit.’
On the screen, Vine saw Anderson place his Oyster card on to the scanner, walk through the ticket barrier and break into a light jog towards the steps leading up to Bridge Street. Behind him, Montague’s breathing was becoming thicker, heavy with annoyance.
‘Bear with me,’ he said.
Vine stopped himself saying anything. He tried to let the anxiety subside. They had no read on the target.
‘Alpha 2. Anything?’
‘I can’t see him.’
‘Camera situation?’
Montague didn’t look up. He just smashed his thick fingers harder on the keyboard. ‘One minute … I can’t do it any faster. There are some network problems I’ve got to work through.’
‘We’re currently blind on the target,’ said Vine, voice scratchy with irritation. ‘If we don’t get something soon, we’ve lost him.’
‘It’s too busy. I can’t get past the crowds,’ said Anderson. ‘I can’t see him.’
‘Damn,’ said Vine. He hit his hand against the side of the table and barely noticed the sting. This was the one lead they had managed to get since the counter-surveillance at the mall, some basic residue of tradecraft. Now they’d let him go.
‘Camera up,’ said Montague.
Vine and Rose both stared at the CCTV picture of Bridge Street outside Westminster station. It was like looking at an ant colony, a gaggle of faces and clothing scraping past each other. Vine scanned every face he could see.
My Name Is Nobody Page 17