Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  ‘Phew,’ she said to the security guard who was holding the door open for her, ‘that was a close one.’

  Upstairs on the fourth floor she looked out of her window and saw that the police had now moved in on the crowd and were dispersing them. Some who resisted were being arrested. There was no sign of her assailant with the big ears.

  Liz was lucky to have a window of her own to look out of. As in so many organisations – from publishers to law firms – most of the staff of MI5 now worked on open-plan floors. The pressure on space in the building, as staff numbers had increased to meet the increased security threats, meant that the days of offices for small teams, or even individuals, were over. Only Directors had their own office nowadays and rumour had it that even they might have to give up the privilege soon. However the Director General and his team, known as ‘The Private Office’, were still ensconced in their suite, which included a dining room and waiting room. The DG’s own office, lined as it was with panelling listed as of architectural significance, could not be altered.

  Through some anomaly, two small rooms on Liz’s floor had remained untouched, and for the time being she had one of them. Though there was barely enough space in it for her desk and two chairs, she was not planning to complain. In fact she was keeping her head down and hoping the building administrators had forgotten about her.

  From her desk she had a panoramic view, across the Thames to Lambeth Palace and upstream to Vauxhall and the MI6 building, Vauxhall Cross. Downstream, thanks to the twists and turns of the river, she could see, on a clear day, the tower blocks of Canary Wharf and, nearer, the pointing glass finger of The Shard. Liz was no fan of skyscrapers, but there was no denying their dramatic effect on the London skyline, particularly after dark. Today it was the nearer view that was capturing her attention, as she looked down on the heads of the crowd and the tops of their placards all intermingling with policemen’s helmets and TV cameras, like some weird modern ballet.

  It wasn’t just the view that made Liz happy to have her own private space. Recovering as she was from a personal tragedy, she still felt more need for quiet and her own company than she had ever done before, so that she could think over everything that had happened. The Service’s psychiatrist, to whom she had been sent by the Personnel Branch, had advised her not to spend too much time alone, but she chose to ignore the advice and deal with things in her own way.

  There was a faint knock on the door, and as it opened a familiar voice said, ‘Good morning, Elizabeth. What on earth have you and your colleagues been doing to cause all this fuss? It’s like a war zone out there.’

  ‘You wait, Geoffrey. It’ll be your turn tomorrow. Don’t assume you’re immune just because they think you’re all James Bonds.’

  The man who now walked into the tiny office was in his early fifties, tall, with dark hair going grey over the ears, a long face and a thin, straight nose. He was distinguished-looking, and would have been handsome had there not been a distancing arrogance in his expression and a hint of the sardonic in his dark eyes. He was wearing a well-cut navy blue suit with polished black brogues and an Old Wykehamist tie – Liz knew about this because she had once offended him by complimenting him on the attractive colour combination. Shocked, he had told her it was his old school tie.

  ‘How did you get in?’ she enquired. ‘I almost got knocked out by a madman with enormous ears.’

  ‘Oh, I came in through the garage,’ he replied airily. ‘I got a warning that you were under siege.’

  ‘I wish someone had warned me. I thought I was going to be a stretcher case. Come in and have the chair or shall we go down for some coffee?’

  Geoffrey Fane shook his head. ‘I had a cup just before I left Vauxhall Cross.’

  Liz and he had worked together on various investigations over the years. It had been a successful partnership on the whole; Liz found him sharp, experienced, decisive – and as trustworthy as a snake. What Fane thought of Liz he never said but close observers of the two suspected that on his side there was an interest that was more than purely professional.

  Fane ignored her invitation to sit down, and stood looking out of the window. ‘Change and decay in all around I see,’ he intoned, staring downstream towards the scaffolding and cranes marking sites where new buildings were being erected.

  ‘O Thou who changest not, abide with me!’ responded Liz.

  He turned round, and said with a wolfish smile, ‘If I thought you were serious I might take you up on that. I didn’t know you were a student of Hymns Ancient and Modern.’

  ‘We sang hymns at school too, you know. Even if it was only a girls’ day school.’

  Fane hummed to himself, and glanced back out of the window. ‘If they do move you out into the open-plan, I’m not sure you’ll miss this view. Look at it,’ he said scathingly, pointing across the water towards the towers of Canary Wharf. ‘The depredations of the money men have extended well beyond the City.’

  There had always been a lugubrious side to Fane, but this seemed excessive, even for him. ‘Why so gloomy today, Geoffrey? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing yet. But our new Grand Mufti seems determined to rock the boat a bit.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Liz didn’t know much about the new Chief of MI6 across the river, but from the few bits and pieces she’d picked up he sounded like a good thing. His name was Treadwell and he was ex-Foreign Office, where he had dealt with intelligence in various posts; he’d also done a stint in MI6 in his thirties. So he was coming to the post familiar with the Service and, from Fane’s remark, must have ideas about how it should change.

  ‘Do you know what he’s proposing to do?’ Fane demanded.

  ‘Tell me. The smoke signals have not yet crossed the river.’

  ‘He’s worried about this sort of thing.’ Fane waved in the direction of the rapidly thinning crowd. ‘He thinks we need to create a better understanding among the public of what we really do and what we don’t do. According to him, there’s an unholy combination of civil libertarians and James Bond obsessives that’s obscuring our valuable contribution to the nation’s wellbeing.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Liz noncommittally. ‘What’s he going to do about it?’

  ‘He wants to create a “Corporate Communications Director”. A ridiculous idea! Our job isn’t to “communicate” – we don’t tell secrets; we keep them.’

  Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea, thought Liz, though she felt it politic to keep this to herself. As Liz saw it, there was a necessary amount of secrecy about the intelligence services and their operations and people – but there was also unnecessary secrecy, which could be positively harmful to effectiveness in the modern world. But Fane was of the old school – thinking that it was safer to keep quiet about everything, in case you unwittingly gave something important away. He also found change abhorrent, and Liz sometimes thought that he viewed the mere passage of time as a cause for lament – if you listened to him, it had been downhill all the way for British intelligence since the end of the Cold War.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re upset,’ she said mildly.

  ‘It gets worse,’ said Fane. He shook his head, and at last sat down. ‘Do you know, they’ve actually appointed some head-hunters to find this Communications person.’ He seemed to spit out the last two words. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It means they’re going to look outside. It’s not even necessarily going to be one of us – an insider, I mean. They’re intending to advertise the post.’ Fane’s outrage seemed entirely genuine. ‘It’s bad enough to create this position, but then to advertise it and possibly appoint someone who’s never set foot in Vauxhall Cross…’ He paused, to allow the idiocy of it to sink in. Liz contented herself with a raised eyebrow. Fane went on, ‘I tell you, I can see nothing but disaster looming.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll just have to ignore it,’ said Liz, wishing they could get down to business. They met occasionally to exchange in
formation. It was rarely a long meeting, but it could be helpful – sometimes crucially so. ‘Maybe it won’t turn out to be such a bad idea. Perhaps he won’t find a suitable outsider and he’ll appoint an insider after all.’

  But Fane wasn’t mollified. ‘How can I ignore it? Treadwell’s put me on the selection board. I told him to his face that the whole thing was ridiculous. He just smiled and said in that case my contribution would be especially useful.’

  Liz tried not to laugh. This man Treadwell, the new C as he was by tradition called, after the first head of MI6, Captain Cumming, sounded rather interesting. Not that she would have dreamed of saying so to Fane.

  3

  An hour later, with a still-fuming Fane gone, Peggy Kinsolving came into Liz’s office. If Liz had been asked to name her most valuable member of staff, Peggy would have topped the list. She was in her early thirties now, having joined MI5 after first spending two years in MI6. Seconded to MI5 to assist Liz on a tricky case, she had found the work more suited to her skills, and her career prospects better, on the defensive side of the intelligence business. A former librarian, Peggy combined a researcher’s precision and love of detail with a growing aptitude in the field. She had become a brilliant interviewer, transforming her undergraduate interest in drama into a professional asset as an intelligence officer.

  There was something different about her this morning, and it took Liz a moment to twig. ‘Where are your glasses?’ she said suddenly as Peggy sat down.

  ‘I’ve got contacts. What do you think?’

  ‘You look great,’ said Liz, a little taken aback by the transformation. The Peggy she’d first come to know had been an uncertain bookish girl with rather wispy hair. In those days Peggy had worn horn-rimmed spectacles, which never seemed quite to fit her face. Over the years Liz had come to recognise that during an investigation the sight of Peggy pushing her glasses firmly into place meant that she was on to something, and it had always lifted Liz’s heart. But as Peggy had become more confident her appearance had subtly changed. Now she often wore her hair up, held in place by some sort of clasp, and instead of dun-coloured jumpers and skirts, she went for blues and lilacs. The contact lenses seemed to complete a transformation that had been slowly taking place for years, and for the first time Liz saw that the eyes that had been hidden behind the spectacles were a rather remarkable blue.

  ‘What does Tim think?’ asked Liz.

  ‘Oh, Tim!’ said Peggy, sighing. ‘He hasn’t even noticed. If there’s a typo in the edition of Donne he’s reading, you can be sure he’ll catch it. But if I walked through the flat in biker’s leathers he’d just ask me when supper would be ready.’

  Liz laughed, though she sensed that something in Peggy’s attitude had changed. Previously she had treated her partner Tim’s academic absent-mindedness as a joke and had laughed fondly at his eccentricities. But now she sounded irritated.

  ‘Give him time,’ Liz said soothingly, but Peggy just shrugged.

  ‘How is he otherwise?’ Liz persevered.

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Peggy, sounding resigned. ‘But he’s got seriously into civil liberties. He thinks it’s today’s big issue.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ said Liz, who was essentially well disposed towards Tim. She found his attachment to vegetarianism and Ayurvedic medicine difficult to take and thought him rather wet in a donnish way – he was a lecturer in English at King’s College, London – but she knew he adored Peggy, and Liz thought he was good for her.

  ‘Possibly, but being Tim, he’s gone for it hook, line and sinker. He thinks Edward Snowden is a hero. Says Orwell didn’t imagine the half of it – soon we won’t be able to breathe without the state monitoring our exhalation rate.’

  ‘Oh, dear. That must be a bit difficult to live with. But I’m sure he’ll mellow a bit when he thinks about it. Can’t you reason with him? He must know that you’re no advocate of massive state surveillance. He’s lived with you long enough. You’re in a pretty good position to explain the balance between freedom and protection. He knows how hard we work and what we are trying to do. Tell him that if we had even a third of the power of surveillance that he’s imagining, our job of keeping people safe would be a lot easier.’

  ‘I’ve tried. But so far he’s not listening. He wants me to go to a lecture with him tonight at the university. It’s on civil liberties, naturally. It used to be poetry readings he dragged me off to, or lectures on diphthongs in medieval literature. But now it’s Snowden he’s obsessed with instead of the Metaphysical Poets. When the Guardian published all those revelations, Tim didn’t read anything else for days.’ She shook her head wearily. Then she asked, ‘Have you heard of Jasminder Kapoor?’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’ Liz racked her brains for a moment. ‘I know – she’s the civil liberties woman; I heard her the other morning, on the Today programme. She edits some magazine, doesn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a monthly called Democratic Affairs. Tim brings it home. He gets it at the College. She lectures in the Law department there but I don’t think he’s ever met her.’

  Liz nodded; she’d occasionally leafed through copies of it in bookshops. ‘There’s some pretty wild stuff in it, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, Jasminder Kapoor’s own stuff is pretty balanced, I think. But some of the others who write for it seem a bit off the wall.’

  ‘I remember thinking she sounded rather sensible when I heard her on the radio.’ Jasminder had been on the programme with an American politician, talking about the remaining prisoners in Guantanamo. The American, a conservative Republican, had grown heated, suggesting that his interlocutor was either a naïve dupe or on the side of al Qaeda. Kapoor had made her points very calmly in the face of his blustering, suggesting that his caricature of an argument did as much damage to democracy as its extremist opponents.

  ‘I agree. She’s the person giving the lecture tonight.’

  ‘Actually, that could be quite interesting,’ said Liz.

  ‘I hope so. It’s called “Security and Democracy: Where’s the Conflict?” I think Tim will be very disappointed that she’s not more radical in her views.’

  They turned to business. Liz chaired an inter-agency working party on the activities of foreign intelligence agencies. Counter-espionage had been something of a poor relation to counter-terrorism for a few years, but now the focus was back on it, following an increase in cyber-attacks from various countries and renewed aggression from Russia. Resources had been moved on to the subject in MI6 and GCHQ and Liz had been put in charge both of MI5’s work and coordinating it with the other agencies. She had asked Peggy to move with her.

  ‘You remember we decided we needed to brief the CIA on our meetings,’ Liz said. ‘I’ve been thinking about the best way of doing that. I’m not sure we want to invite them to come or to send them the minutes. There might be some sensitive UK cases we wouldn’t necessarily want to share with them. It might be better if we set up a regular briefing meeting with Grosvenor. We’d probably get more feedback from them that way too – and learn what they’re doing.’

  The CIA Station in London was known as ‘Grosvenor’ from its location, along with most of the rest of the US Embassy, in Grosvenor Square, though soon it would move to the Embassy’s new quarters in Wandsworth.

  ‘There’s a new Head of Station now, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is,’ said Liz. ‘Andy Bokus has gone. The new man used to be here as his deputy a few years ago. You probably remember him. It’s Miles Brookhaven – you know, the guy who was attacked in Syria and then did a rather good job in Sana’a. I think you should go over and meet him. Then you could be the contact point with the working group.’

  ‘Me?’ Peggy looked surprised. ‘Wouldn’t he expect you to do it?’

  ‘No. Why would he? I should think he’d be pleased to see you. After all, we are offering him a regular briefing.’ And, of course, hoping to get something in return, Liz thought, but didn’t say.

&
nbsp; Something else she didn’t say was that Miles Brookhaven was someone she’d rather not encounter just then. Their paths had crossed when he was at Grosvenor previously. Liz had nothing against him – the problem back then was that he had made it pretty clear that he was keen on her. Too keen, as far as Liz was concerned. It was one thing to be friendly with her CIA counterpart, quite another to be the recipient of flowers, phone calls, and unsolicited invitations to dinner. That was several years ago and he had probably grown up. For all she knew he might be married now. He’d obviously had quite a tough time professionally during the intervening years and the Agency must think highly of him – Head of the London Station was a big, important job. Still, it would do Peggy good to represent the Service with the Americans and it would enable Liz to put off meeting Miles again for a bit longer.

  ‘Ring the Embassy and make an appointment,’ she said to Peggy. ‘Let me know if there’s any problem. And I hope you enjoy the lecture tonight.’

  4

  It was just getting dark when Liz left Thames House to go home. The streetlights were coming on and the starlings in the trees along Millbank were chattering and arguing as they settled down for the night. The tiny leaves just emerging were outlined against the luminous blue sky. London was on the cusp of spring. Soon it would be light when she left work and then light when she got home.

  She had always loved this time of year but today it made her sad. She couldn’t help thinking what Paris would be looking like this evening and imagining how the linden trees in the square outside Martin’s flat would be bursting into leaf. Diners would be arriving to sit at the tables in the local bistro where she and Martin had dined so often. She wondered who was living in his flat now and whether they had changed things much.