He bent down and drew up Yousef’s left arm. Some part of him knew this was stupid, but he had stopped listening to that voice. There was only the case now, still a chance this might work.
Vine took the mobile in his right hand, and Yousef’s left arm in the other hand. He positioned Yousef’s index finger on the screen and swiped across, bringing up the initial greyish menu, news stories and other items.
Then he moved the index finger down and pressed it on the home button, praying that he could momentarily fool the phone’s brain. Just as he was about to give up, the initial screen folded away and the standard array of apps began to appear. Vine thumbed through into settings and began changing the passcode so he could manually unlock it in the future, before clicking back to the main screen. He checked the Mail folder, but there was no account set up. Then he moved to Photos, Notes, and several other apps – quickly checking them off just in case.
He moved on to the Phone icon, scanning contacts and voicemail first, but both were blank, as was recent calls.
Finally, he thumbed on to the Messages icon. He paused. Where he had expected to find lots of message chains to numerous contacts, there was only one. He thumbed it open and looked up at the bubbles of words.
As he stared at them, Vine felt his body tense. The room took on an odd hallucinatory quality, his lack of sleep turning the evidence in front of him cloudy and featureless. He tried to shake the feeling off and force himself to greater mental clarity, tracking up to the top and looking at the words again. But they were still the same.
The immunity agreement was a play. They are using you as bait to track down other sympathizers. But we have mutual friends and I believe I can help you. You can’t know my name and must NEVER try and contact me directly. But follow my instructions now and I guarantee you’ll walk away from this …
Drive out of London following the M4, M5 and A4018 and follow signs for the Parkway Mall at 0930 tomorrow. Act as if you are flushing out a tail …
Pick up a package at the Bridge Street entrance of Westminster Tube station at 1600 today. Then head back to Victoria and make for the exit. A further intercept will take place on the stairs before the ticket barriers. The camera on the top right of the main concourse of the train station will be monitored …
All worked fine. You’ve done your bit, and I’ll do mine. I will be in touch soon …
There was one final message, Yousef’s reply sent only minutes earlier:
The games are over. Now is the time to talk …
Vine looked at the number again. The digits were still the same. He knew them by heart, articulating them now to make sure there was no possible mistake. Then he turned back to the words, each syllable lurking like a nightmare. They had been deliberately planted to leave an indelible digital trail, finishing off the work that had been started in Istanbul, every one of them condemning him further.
Each incoming message had been sent from his phone.
48
There was a sound outside, brakes squealing at a turn. Vine snapped back to the room, a cold terror starting in his chest and seeping out through his whole body. He looked at the mobile and briefly considered what to do with it. As he had changed the passcode, and given its contents, there was no way he could hand it over to the forensic team. There would be too many questions to answer. He did another quick check around the room to make sure he couldn’t spot any cameras or bugging devices. They hadn’t managed to plant anything in Yousef’s house yet, and Cecil had ruled out ongoing official surveillance from Thames House or Vauxhall Cross. He saw nothing.
He slipped the mobile into his jacket pocket and then looked around the rest of the room for a final time. He could feel the minutes slipping by, some distant part of him knowing he had to call this in soon. But whoever was doing this was trying to unbalance him. He had to stay focused.
There was nothing further on the desk. The rest of the room was lined with bookshelves and papers. Vine walked along the bookshelves, checking again for any further discrepancies, spotting none. All the books were shelved in alphabetical order, spines patterned with dust.
He reached the end, already attempting to concoct a cover story of sorts for when the forensic team arrived. But he could feel the weight of Cecil’s words pressing on him.
This is outside Five, GCHQ, the National Security Council, Number 10. Completely deniable.
If you end up sitting in a police interrogation room, I won’t be there to get you out this time.
All the pieces of this case began to fragment. He had been so sure he had discerned the pattern, tracing each empirical detail until it built into a theory. Ahmed Yousef would lead them to the answer, each action confirming his guilt. Yet now he lay soaked in his own blood, the answer evaporating once again.
Outside, Vine heard the first suggestion of a police siren. He looked down at the wine-red tongues of colour on his hands. The thought of the number beat at him relentlessly, his stomach curling with fear. He had always been sure before that he could extricate himself from any situation. But as the strange house seemed to close in on him now, he wondered whether this would be the end. Someone was toying with his mind, each strand of reason and logic disfigured into madness.
The siren – or was it sirens? – seemed to grow louder, thickening into a wall of sound. Vine cast one last look at Yousef’s body and then found himself propelled by nothing more than instinct back out into the hall and down the stairs and away. He had no clear sense of geography any more, his legs seeming to move through a primal reasoning all of their own. He reached the door and felt each creak of it like a blow.
Soon he was stumbling into the fog-grey night, down narrow streets and past lifeless buildings, the world newly odd and alien. There was no way he could risk returning to Wellington Square. That was surely the first place they would look, once they had tracked his movements to the house and matched his facial profile to his file on government records. There would be no get-out-of-jail-free card to play. This had all been too well planned, Yousef merely one cog in a far larger wheel which he had been too blind, too complacent, to fully understand.
As Vine felt his breathing become ragged, he knew one thing with more certainty than ever.
These streets were no longer a refuge. There was no back-up plan or diplomatic trick to make this go away. He couldn’t be vanished from here through a flight to Brize Norton, or bargained by HMG in a prisoner exchange. There were no codes, treaties or conventions to save him.
His own home had become a foreign country. One from which there might now be no hope of escape.
Part Five
* * *
49
The dregs of the coffee clung to the surface of the sink. Outside there was the muffled noise of cars slouching past, trains clunking their way free of the station.
He moved back into the middle of the room and thought about calling Rose. But the better part of him always stopped at the last moment. He was the one who had been hot-headed enough to approach Yousef directly, rising to the bait and endangering their operation. He was the one who should pay for that mistake.
He looked around now at the boxy hotel room. At first, he had been full of elaborate plans to try and get out of the country. It was his job to plan for every eventuality, and he had a fallback to escape from London if he ever needed to. He always carried a debit card under an alias to purchase the ticket for the Eurostar and had long ago memorized the street map of central Paris. By the time the police had alerted MI5, and both had coordinated with the DGSI, he could have been criss-crossing mainland Europe, before finding his way to South America.
He had been going through with that exfil plan when he decided to double back. He was never aware of a conscious choice not to escape until he found himself at St Pancras, purchasing a ticket using his own debit card and making himself visible for the CCTV cameras, before subduing one of the station guards – of a similar build and height, with a brush of sandy-coloured hair – in the station toilets and disappear
ing towards the staff car park, beeping a newish ocean-blue Ford Mondeo into life.
Such a textbook diversion wouldn’t fool the more alert minds at MI5 for long. But it had bought him enough time to plot his next few moves, parking the guard’s car in a long-stay on Carburton Street, changing into some mufti he found squirrelled away in a gym bag in the boot and then picking his way back to Victoria station with care. The most immediate priority was to disorientate the desk officer at Thames House who would be trying to rationalize his movement patterns. The last place they would rationally expect him to return, once they wasted hours churning through the passenger lists and CCTV photos from the Gare du Nord, would be near the scene of the crime. On exiting Victoria station, Vine had disappeared down Hudson’s Place and on to Bridge Place before continuing straight on to Hugh Street, stopping outside a forgettable touristy hotel of the sort that littered the scrappier part of Pimlico. Years ago he had helped the owner escape deportation by intervening with the Home Office, on the understanding that if he ever needed a room no questions would be asked.
He had paid cash and was given the key to room ten on the top floor. He had immediately closed the curtains and then done a preliminary sweep of the place for bugs. Then he had slipped off his shoes and perched on the end of the bed, feeling all the adrenaline of the last few hours drain from his body. Finally, unwillingly, he had allowed himself to tip over into sleep.
From the alarm clock near the bed, he saw it was just after 6 p.m. He had been out for almost twelve delicious hours, weeks of wakefulness finally catching up with him.
He looked down at his hands and saw that the insides of his nails were still coppery. He had tried to scrub off all traces in the St Pancras toilets but wondered now whether Yousef’s blood would infect him for ever. His head still ached with tiredness. He padded over to the cramped hotel bathroom, turning on the shower and letting the streams of water sluice down him, bringing him back to life.
He stayed there for ten minutes, watching as the sweat and dirt of the last two days tumbled from his body, swirling around his feet. He had done so much, seen so much, that he sometimes wondered if he would ever be clean again.
Eventually, he turned off the shower and reluctantly changed back into the clothes, feeling the texture of them cling to his skin. He found a dusty glass and let the tap run until the water turned icy, drinking down as much as he could manage, an almost unquenchable thirst. The cold seemed to jolt his system awake, lessen the chaos of competing ideas that whined like feedback through his brain. Whoever had planted the text messages, whoever was behind all this, was trying to unstitch every last thread of sanity, forcing him to doubt his own mental powers. Somehow he had to remain rational.
As he towelled his hair dry, he picked up the cracked remote from the table beside the bed and turned on the TV. He scrolled through until he found the BBC News channel, sitting through the weather and the sports news until it was time to replay the evening’s headlines. They were almost through, the first flicker of relief in his stomach, when the final item stopped him. There was an old photo of Ahmed Yousef and the headline: FORMER TERROR SUSPECT FOUND MURDERED AT HIS HOME.
After a short segment in the studio, another photo filled the screen along with commentary from the anchor about an ongoing police manhunt. Before Vine had time to react to the glimpse of his own face, the footage cut away to an interview recorded earlier. He immediately recognized the figure of Valentine Amory sitting in his grand Commons office. Vine turned up the volume, edged closer to the screen, breath catching in his body.
Amory was looking in the direction of a producer out of shot, legs folded, hands resting calmly in his lap. ‘Even for those of us used to dealing with the secret world, the news about Dr Yousef’s death has come as a shock,’ he said. ‘Though, I am sad to say, not necessarily as a surprise. Some say that in times of war, the law falls silent. Inter arma enim silent leges. I believe that for too long the intelligence community has used the excuse of the war on terror to erode the law as we know it …’
50
He grabbed his jacket and began packing away the few items he had with him. Right at the last minute, Newton’s anonymous correspondent had become careless, recycling an idiosyncrasy that could be used as an identifier.
Inter arma enim silent leges.
He heard Amory’s voice on the TV, expertly reciting the tag. It was impossible, surely. And yet the more Vine thought of it, the more elegant a solution it seemed. Valentine Amory was a Member of Parliament and Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, tasked with holding the intelligence services to account on behalf of the public. He was the one person who was almost untouchable, immune from the usual tactics of the secret world. Even the merest whiff of interference in his affairs would bring down the full wrath of Parliament on Cecil and the rest of them. Who better to safeguard vital information in the event that Newton was taken out? Amory was the one man no one could touch.
Vine closed his bag and then locked the door to his room, still seeing that photo of himself flashed before the world. He knew London would be swarming with police trying to find him, Wellington Square placed under constant watch. These streets were now hostile territory. One false move and it would all be over. In addition to his role as Chair of the ISC, Amory was also the highest-profile defender of Ahmed Yousef. To approach him now would be putting everything on the line, a march straight into enemy territory.
Vine tried to ignore that thought, knowing he had no other options. Instead, he decided to make the most of the evening gloom, the last chance he might ever get to hurry through these streets.
It was raining, heavy clouds bruising the skyline. There was the rattle of a plane overhead. He wedged his hands into his jacket pockets and began pacing, sucking the air into his lungs. Then he was down towards Buckingham Palace, staring across the last of the bedraggled tourists hovering round the Victoria Memorial, the guardsmen standing motionless and inhuman as the rain worked its way into their skin.
The Mall was similarly deserted, like a film set at the end of shooting. Vine slowed his pace, craned his head up towards the sky and let the rain wash the top of his brow, relishing the icy trickle down to his nose, mouth, through the gaps in his jacket. It felt like some sort of absolution.
He walked on to Whitehall, past the statues of Haig, Monty, the bunting of Empire. Barriers were being put up on either side of the street, staff in fluorescent jackets huddled under umbrellas. A gaggle of important-looking military figures – the uniforms American rather than British – were being politely shown around final preparations for some future parade. Vine saw the absurdity of it all more clearly in the rain. What right did they all have to cling to past glory, skulk about pretending to maintain the balance of peace? He wondered whether too long in the shadows had made him deaf to common sense. Finally, as he turned left, up past the Tube station, taking his place at the start of Westminster Bridge with a direct view of the glassy front entrance to Portcullis House, he longed to be free of all of it. Of England, of history, of the peculiar strain of muddling through that allowed good people to suffer and others to walk free.
He tucked himself away in a corner and settled down to wait for as long as he had to. Just past one in the morning, he saw a thin figure with a red velvet collar and umbrella, head covered by a trilby hat, making his way out of Portcullis House. As Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and a backbench MP, Valentine Amory QC was not gifted with any state security. He was forced to carry his secrets alone.
Vine moved into view and took his final gamble.
51
Valentine Amory stopped, caught off guard by the voice.
‘I’m sorry?’
Vine walked towards him, brushing the sheen of water from his eyes. He tried to ruffle his hair dry. ‘I need to speak to you. In private.’
Amory moved forwards, voice raised against the tattoo of rain on the canopy above them. As he took in more of Vine, his face creased with
recognition. ‘You look familiar … Who are you?’
Vine kept his hands in his pockets. He knew that Amory could turn him in any second now. It was a reckless move coming here. But the clock was against him.
‘I’m the man you’re trying to put in prison,’ he said, at last. ‘Solomon Vine, trainee at Fort Monckton and former counter-espionage officer for the Secret Intelligence Service. Don’t worry, the pleasure’s all mine.’
Amory stepped backwards and turned in the direction of the dwindling police contingent inside the glass doors behind him. Any moment now, Vine knew, everything could be over. His entire future depended on the next action of the man in front of him.
‘You have every right to turn me in,’ said Vine. ‘But, before you do, hear me out. I didn’t kill Ahmed Yousef. I was set up, just as I was in Istanbul four months ago. There is something far bigger going on here. Cosmo Newton knew it. Since his death, I have been trying to figure out what that is. You used an anonymous email account to send messages to Newton without ever meeting. Newton, for whatever reason, trusted you with information to be kept safe in the event of his death.’
Amory’s glance had pivoted back round from the police to Vine, face torn with confusion. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Newton left me a file in a safe deposit box when he died. In it he wrote down the login details for the email account. He was trying to lead me to you. He also wrote the word MIDAS. I believe that the truth about the MIDAS operation is the key to everything that has been going on. And I believe you know where I can find the last bit of information I need.’
The lights had turned red, and the green man glowered at them. The road was almost deserted, but Amory used the diversion to dart forwards, his umbrella flapping in the breeze. They reached the other side, Amory trying to establish distance as he hurried over Westminster Bridge and away.
My Name Is Nobody Page 19