by Mick Herron
And as a result of all this change, of course, most things remained the same.
In a room some storeys below the breaking dawn, the lately-appointed First Desk of Regent’s Park was speaking.
“First, the big picture. This is new. Something we’ve never seen before. Crowds as targets, yes, that’s always been the fear, whether it’s football stadiums or market squares, but this takes terrorism onto a whole new level. These kids were invited.”
Claude Whelan was a short man with a high forehead and a pinched way of speaking: words issued from him as if in perforated sheets; his full stops almost audible. But his manner was generally pleasant, and informality the key to his character. While suit-and-tie remained de rigueur among the Park’s male aristocracy, Whelan turned up on his first day wearing a polo shirt under his jacket, “and it was like,” one of the Queens of the Database breathlessly uttered, “a fresh breeze had blown through the whole building.”
“We’ve always known we’re defenceless against the individual extremist. Groups, yes, because groups have to communicate, but the lone wolf, who puts something together in his garage and sets it off in his local supermarket—when they’re completely under the radar, we can’t stop them. We all know that, deep down—everybody knows. But the advantage we’ve always had is that lone-wolf types tend to stick out. They tend to be odd, to arouse suspicion, and they tend—Hollywood notwithstanding—to be functionally moronic, so more of them plaster themselves over those same garages than ever make it as far as the shops.”
He was fifties, childless, but with a wife whose photograph adorned his desk, and whose image he was prone to introduce to visitors: “Claire,” he’d say. “Lost without her.” And sometimes with the words would come a furrowing of the brow, as if the phrase weren’t a simple mechanical tribute but a glimpse into an alternative state of being, where the landscape was a wasteland across which he’d wander mapless, his footprints circling nowhere.
“This one appears to have been different. This one planned his attack carefully, down to the hijacking of the Twitter feed on which the event was first mentioned. That feed belongs to one Richard Wyatt, twenty-one, a student at the LSE, who has a large number of followers owing to his role on the college’s entertainments committee. The tweet appeared at eight forty-seven a.m. on Monday the first, the day before the event. It read, ‘Mob needed for dance duty,’ followed by three exclamation marks and a hashtag, ‘flashthemall.’ We are satisfied that Mr. Wyatt was not responsible for its appearance.”
As for Whelan’s office: that was more fodder for the gossips. His predecessor, Dame Ingrid Tearney—a sweet old lady who drank fresh blood for breakfast—had occupied a room in the grand, and grandly visible, section of Regent’s Park whose windows overlooked the park itself, and whose walls were dappled in summer by the shadows of waving branches. But Whelan had decided that his place was among his staff, most of whom laboured away hidden from sunlight, if you didn’t count the spring-effect bulbs. And so he’d taken one of the smaller offices on the hub, an open-hearted gesture which immediately endeared him to the junior spooks, but put everyone else’s back up.
“By mid-afternoon, the flash-mob announcement had been retweeted over four hundred times and a page had appeared on Facebook. This was the work of one Craig Harrison, twenty-two, unemployed, of Bristol. We’re almost certain he’s innocent of anything more than an enthusiasm for public mischief, but the fact that he didn’t actually attend the gathering sounded alarm bells. His story is that he couldn’t afford the train fare to London, but nevertheless wanted to be part of what he describes as a ‘messin’ bang.’ Once the penny had dropped that a bang is precisely what ensued, Mr. Harrison was quick to add that this is a slang term for a party, and he was not admitting prior knowledge of the attack. Investigation has borne out his claim to poverty, but as we speak, Mr. Harrison’s interrogation has yet to be concluded.”
But a few ruffled feathers aside, things had gone smoothly so far. Claude Whelan’s breezy entrance may have made papers rustle, even blown one or two from unregarded shelves and cast them fluttering to the floor, but it hadn’t caused locks to fall apart, or twisted handles on doors best left shut. “That chap Whelan,” a voice Down the Corridor had remarked, “underneath it all, he’s One of Us.”
Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
“So what about the event itself? Our bomber can be reasonably assured of a crowd turning up, because his target audience will respond to the call of Twitter. That would have been enough for some of his ilk, but no, he wants an actual party to happen, because he knows that that will magnify the horror of the event a hundredfold. A thousand. Now, I’m not going to apologise for showing you the footage again, though God knows we’ve seen it often enough already, but the definition here’s higher than we’ve managed so far. Here’s what we have.” He raised a hand and clicked his fingers. “There. Now we’re looking at the CCTV film. The shopping mall, the kids arriving, the trio with the music machine.” He waved an imaginary baton at a point in the air behind him. “And stop.”
He paused, as if allowing his invisible audience to soak in the invisible scene he’d freeze-framed.
“These three boys. We know from the radio chatter that at least one of Westacres’ security guards, one Samit Chatterjee, guessed something was up when they appeared. Good for him, though sadly he was among the victims. The boys are Jacob Lee, Lucas Fairweather and Sanjay Singh. All sixteen, all at the same local school, inseparable friends according to reports. None with any known involvement with any extremist groups, none with any kind of police record . . . except for Fairweather.”
With a gesture, he aimed his imaginary baton at Fairweather, around whose non-existent image a black circle was no doubt appearing.
“Fairweather was cautioned last June after being arrested at a party that got out of hand. The party was in a house belonging to the parents of another schoolfriend. They were away, and their son’s planned party ended up being tweeted about—initially by Fairweather—so the expected hundred-or-so guests morphed into a mob about two thousand strong. It made the national press, and brought the unfortunate parents storming back from holiday eager to press charges on ringleaders. Fairweather, like I say, was one of them, and while charges weren’t actually brought, he enjoyed fifteen minutes’ notoriety. And that, we think, is what attracted the attention of our bomber.”
Another pause. Perhaps the film moved forward a few jerky frames. Perhaps it remained frozen on the image of three youths, one of them carrying a large black holdall; all of them—boys, bag, futures—now blasted into nothingness.
“On the same morning the first tweet went out, Lucas Fairweather received a text message from a pay-as-you-go mobile. It read, ‘Lucas, want some laughs?’ He replied ‘Who U?’ ‘Friend,’ the stranger replied. And so it went on. The full transcript is in your folders. By the thirty-eighth exchange, Lucas Fairweather and the stranger, who was calling himself Dwight Passenger, were the best of friends. And Passenger had persuaded Lucas to provide the music for the flash-mob. Excuse me.”
Claude Whelan took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of him. Then said:
“Another little taste of notoriety for Lucas Fairweather. Presumably he enjoyed the attention. But it’s clear he had no idea what he and his friends were stepping into.”
A wave of the hand to indicate that the film should roll forward again.
“So. The music starts, and everyone strips off their coats and starts dancing. In the corner of the frame, you can see our security guard, Mr. Chatterjee, who, ah, stood down, as it were, once it seemed that nothing worse than an impromptu dance was in the offing. And for the next two and a half minutes, that’s all it was. A flash mob. They were briefly popular in the mid-noughties, bit of a nuisance if you were caught in one, but just youthful high spirits really. If only this one was—well. We all know it wasn’t. Because meanwhile, this man ap
pears, at 3:04 pm, two and a half minutes after the music starts. And while everyone around him is dancing, he unbuttons his overcoat and—”
A phone rang.
“Christ. Sorry, Claude. Sorry sorry sorry. Really better take this.”
“That’s okay, Diana.”
“Really sorry. I’ll just be a mo.”
And Diana Taverner slipped out of the meeting room, mobile in hand, leaving Claude Whelan on his own, mentally rehearsing the remainder of the talk he’d be delivering to the PM’s COBRA session in just over an hour’s time.
•••
It was a mostly one-sided conversation that took place in the corridor: Taverner—Lady Di, though not to her face—listening, nodding, asking questions. There were no windows here, but a set of glass doors offered a reflection, and she adjusted the fit of her jacket as she listened, brushed lint from her lapel. Her hair was chestnut brown, naturally curly, shorter than ever. The odd grey stranger had been making an appearance, and she found them easier to weed out of a neater crop. Just one of life’s many battles.
The grey hairs, she assumed, were not unconnected to the career-frightening developments of last year, when the internal power struggles common to any high-stakes operation had accidentally triggered a small war in one of the Service’s off-post facilities west of the city. A lot of the shooting had taken place underground, and the area itself was notable mainly for the number of residents who jumped under trains leaving Paddington, but still: you can only let so many bodies fall before someone notices the thumps. It was the excuse several of the big-chins on the Limitations Committee had been waiting for; revenge for having seen one of their own ground into mince, after being caught with his hand in the till. Criminal, yes; treasonous even, if you wanted to split hairs, but the chap was stripped of his knighthood for pity’s sake. Could hardly show his face in his club once he’d served his three months, less time off for having been at Harrow.
So the bloodbath out near Hayes was mirrored by a more serious one in Regent’s Park, and while Diana Taverner had survived the cull, it had been a close-run thing. Favours had been called in, and blackmail threats made good on. It was a rocky road to tread—she knew where a lot of bodies were buried, but, having put a number of them in the ground herself, it wasn’t wise to draw attention to the fact—and her long-held ambition of settling behind First Desk was one of the bargaining chips she’d had to surrender, or at least pretend to. So now she was back where it was starting to feel like she’d always been: Second-desking Ops, and offering ungrudging, whole-hearted support to the interloper who’d stolen her job. This time round, one Claude Whelan, from over the river, where the intelligence weasels lived.
She said, “Okay, Emma. It’s a mess we don’t need, but let’s not go to panic stations. If it’s not on Twitter, the press’ll never know it happened. So get the local Noddies on board. They can beat the bushes or the shrubbery or whatever they have down there until the old man turns up. Meanwhile, have one of our legals put the word to whoever’s in charge. Let them know it’s a security issue, and that Cartwright’s ours when they have him. Stress that it’s unrelated to the Westacres event. That’ll make them think it is related, and be more likely to cooperate. Update me in an hour. And try not to step on anyone’s toes.”
She ended the call.
The weasels from over the river dealt in data rather than human assets: feeding intelligence into gaming programs to assess real-world outcomes; running long-distance psychiatric evaluations of foreign notables; stress-testing domestic security systems for loopholes, all of which meant they spent more time with a mouse in their hands than they did interacting with humans, so it was no surprise they were all fucking weird. Whelan, though, seemed level-headed and socialised, which made him either an outlier or a born politician, and for the time being she was his go-to-guy; the only lifebelt he’d find in the notoriously treacherous waters of Regent’s Park.
She stepped back into the room. “Sorry about that.”
Whelan was gathering his papers into a pile, slipping them inside a cardboard folder. “Serious?”
“Not Westacres. A former agent—David Cartwright?”
“Of course. I never met him, but I know who you mean.”
“Yes, well, there’s been an incident at his home. It looks like the old boy shot an intruder and disappeared.”
“Good lord!”
“It gets worse. The ‘intruder’ was his grandson, who’s a current member of the Service. Bit of a mess all round. But Emma Flyte’s on the scene. She’ll lock it down.”
“The grandson. Is he—dead?”
“Very. Do you want to run through the rest of your debrief?”
Her switchblade turn took him aback. “. . . Not sure we have time. Any feedback so far?”
Taverner said, “You’re going to have to speed it up, especially at the beginning. Everybody knows it was a damn tragedy, and the PM gets his rhetoric from his scriptwriters. All he wants from you is fresh info he can dripfeed the media, plus something he can withhold for later dissemination when it all dries up. Which it will. This is going to be long, hard and cold. You want to get that across too, though nobody will listen. They’ll still expect answers tomorrow.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“They’ll want to know why nobody at Westacres was prepared for the flash-mob. It wasn’t the world’s best-kept secret.”
“No, but Westacres’ security staff aren’t GCHQ. They look for shoplifters, they’re not scanning the internet for potential threat. As for our own surveillance, if it crossed our radar, or Cheltenham’s, it wouldn’t have held their attention more than a minute. Why would it? It’s a student prank, not an IS plot.”
“Fine, but put that upfront. Make it part of the narrative, not an excuse we’ve come up with afterwards. And don’t worry about Cheltenham, either. If GCHQ fuck up, that’s their problem.”
“This is our united front?”
“This is zero-sum politics. If GCHQ gain influence, we lose it. That simple. You’ve got the fact-sheet on Robert Winters?”
Robert Winters was the 3:04 man. The man who’d turned up at the Westacres flash-mob and blown the children to Kingdom Come.
“Everything we know about him, yes.”
“Don’t stray beyond that for now. Speculation isn’t going to help.”
Whelan tucked the folder under his arm and said, “Thank you, Diana. I appreciate your input.”
“Your first week. Not what you’d call a gentle introduction.”
“No, well. I wasn’t expecting an easy ride.” He hesitated. “I know you had, ah, ambitions of your own.”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished. “Wasn’t going to happen, Claude. I was too closely associated with Dame Ingrid and, well, once it turned out she was toxic . . . ”
“The penalties of loyalty.”
“That’s a kind way of putting it.”
Five minutes’ prep would have taught him that she and Ingrid Tearney had been sworn enemies, and whatever else you might say about the weasels, they always did their prep.
As casually as he could manage, he said, “Anything else, Diana, before I go see the headmaster? Anything you’re not sharing?”
“Anything I find out, you’ll know one minute later.”
“A minute’s a long time in intelligence work.”
“Figure of speech, Claude. I won’t hold anything back.”
“Good. Because like you said, it’s a zero-sum game. Anyone not for me is against me. I hope we’re clear on that.”
“As glass, Claude,” she said. “Oh, one thing. Your autograph.” She’d left papers, neatly stapled, on the table, and she collected them now. “Times three, I’m afraid. Everything in triplicate.”
“Some things never change. Do I need to read all this?”
“I ought to insist. Y
ou’ll discover more about where we source our office supplies than you ever dreamed possible.”
“One of the things I love about this job. Its refreshingly traditional attitude towards red tape.” He skimmed the top set, signed all three on their final page, then left the room at a trot.
Lady Di watched him go, hugging the papers to her chest, then reached for her mobile and redialed Emma Flyte.