by Roger Pearce
The former Commander of Special Branch at New Scotland Yard, Roger Pearce was responsible for surveillance and undercover operations against terrorists and extremists, the close protection of government ministers and visiting VIPs, and other highly sensitive assignments. He was also Director of Intelligence, charged with heading covert operations against serious and organised criminals. After leaving the Yard he was appointed Counter-Terrorism Adviser to the Foreign Office, where he worked with government and intelligence experts worldwide in the campaign against Al Qaeda. Roger Pearce has degrees in Theology from Durham University and Law from London University. He is also a barrister-at-law. Married with three adult children, he has homes in London and Miami and is European security director of a high profile global company. In Agent of the State and future titles the author draws upon his knowledge and first hand experience of a career in national security at every level.
Agent of the State
Roger Pearce
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Coronet
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Roger Pearce 2012
The right of Roger Pearce to be identified as the Author of the Work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 72187 4
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
For Maggie
Acknowledgements
To my agent Sonia Land, publisher Mark Booth, Charlotte Hardman and all the team at Coronet
To tell the truth is a duty: but it is a duty only in respect to one who has a right to the truth.
Benjamin Constant
Contents
Prologue
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Part Two
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Sixty-one
Sixty-two
Sixty-three
Epilogue
Prologue
It is Wednesday, the last day of June 2005. London’s workers read about the threat to aircraft as they trundle through the city’s depths. Terrorists attack trains in Russia and Spain, but seem to ignore London’s creaking Underground.
Detective Chief Inspector John Kerr is accompanying his daughter, Gabriella, to Heathrow for her flight home. Gabi is fifteen and lives with her mother. They take the Tube because Kerr’s Alfa Romeo is in dock and he wants to buy Gabi lunch before she goes airside. She travels light, cabin baggage only, violin case and a small bag on wheels.
Shortly before eleven o’clock they board the half-empty, end carriage at Highbury and Islington, a few minutes’ walk from Kerr’s apartment. They rattle towards central London, Gabi listening to her iPod, Kerr half-reading Metro. In jeans, green polo shirt and suede loafers, Kerr is enjoying an awayday from the office but feels vaguely unsettled at being out of mobile contact until they emerge at Earl’s Court.
The bomber boards their carriage at Euston, two stops down the line. Although there are plenty of seats, he loiters by the double doors. A little older than Gabi, he is strongly built, dark-skinned and clean-shaven, in jeans, trainers and a stained T-shirt with a long white scarf rolled around his neck. He is also wearing a rucksack, but this is not unusual or alarming.
No one is looking, including Gabi. Kerr notices him straight away, because nearly two decades of intelligence work in Special Branch have tuned his instincts. The young man’s body language betrays him as he fidgets by the doors, hands bulging his pockets. He is muttering to himself, eyes flitting everywhere.
As they slow for Green Park station there is a loud pop. People look up in curiosity, not fear: they are unfamiliar with the sound of a detonator going off. But John Kerr has visited Israel and Sri Lanka to study suicide bombers, and to him the detonation is as obvious as a dog whistle. Everything snaps into focus as he forces Gabi to the floor and throws himself on top of her, the father using his body to shield his child before the main charge lacerates them.
But nothing happens. Kerr looks up. The man knows Kerr knows. He is panicking, struggling to free himself from his bomb as the doors open. He races from the carriage still wearing the rucksack, cannoning towards the exit sign with Kerr in hot pursuit.
The platform is clogged with tourists waiting to board the train. The bomber is fast. Kerr is just the right side of forty, but fit and athletic. He is half a carriage behind but makes up ground as he charges through the human funnel the bomber has created, yelling at people to get clear. Near the exit, the platform supervisor half-heartedly blocks the man with the bat she uses to signal the driver, but he hurls her aside as if she were a child.
The station is deep and the escalator long. Kerr has done well along the platform but drops pace as they make for the surface, even though he attacks the steps two at a time. He has stopped shouting to conserve his energy but, at the halfway point, he is at least a dozen steps behind and losing the race. The bomber steals a glance back and looks surprised by Kerr’s determination. Then, at the top, faced with several exits, he makes his fatal mistake. Vaulting the ticket barrier, he takes the underpass that will lead him to Green Park. But instead of choosing the sprint for freedom in open ground, he swings into the men’s toilet, hoping his pursuer will take the wrong exit and leave him to escape in the confusion.
He is not fast enough for John Kerr. Leaping the barrier, as if on springs, Kerr has seen him. He reaches the entrance and assesses the scene in a split second: three me
n at the urinal; a couple of suits on the pick-up by the nearest cubicle doors, looking for a pre-lunch blowjob. At the dead end, his quarry.
Kerr’s ID is superfluous. The men scatter, leaving him with the bomber. The young man bolts the door of the farthest cubicle, but Kerr defeats it in a single kick and has him round the throat before he can react. He forces him back on the toilet seat, crushing the rucksack against the cistern pipe, and lands punch after punch on his face. The bomber struggles hard, landing a couple of jabs in return. He is fighting back, which is what Kerr wants: resistance means he does not have to stop. He can continue punishing the man who tried to murder his daughter.
Then, dragging the bomber out of the cubicle to the bank of washbasins, he smashes his face against the mirrored wall. A couple of punters enter, turn on their heels and hurry away. There will be no witnesses. The young man is groaning as the fight deserts him, but Kerr bangs his forehead again and again on a tap. He hears something give, bone, tissue, perhaps an eye, and the young man’s blood flows as quickly as the water, spraying them both in diluted red.
The scarf is already rolled around the bomber’s neck so Kerr pulls it tighter still, garrotting him, and hurls him back into the cubicle.
The cleaner has left his mop against the wall. Kerr snaps the handle in two and, with the free end and the scarf makes a tourniquet, twisting it until the man gives up the battle. Panting hard, Kerr leans down to look deep into his face. Yes, the left eye is seriously damaged, but he will not be needing it. Somewhere outside a young woman is screaming. The bomber’s face slumps against his chest. ‘You tried to murder my daughter, you piece of shit.’ It is hard to tell if he is still conscious, but Kerr needs to tell him, anyway: ‘Here’s where you belong.’
He holds the tourniquet tight until the bomber is dead, lowers him face down to the floor and gently removes the rucksack. There is a bomb inside, a charred, inert plastic package of white powder. It has nails and screws for maximum damage, but is as dead as its maker. Kerr pads to the entrance, pulls the iron gate shut and calls the office.
The bomb will excuse the murder. When they tell him, Kerr will shrug and walk away, uninterested in legal nicety. For him it is a case of vengeance.
Friday, 15 July 2005, is a time for blame-shifting, deck-clearing and defence-building. It is sixteen days after the murder and eight since the atrocity of 7/7. Counter-terrorism’s Big Issue is its failure to prevent 7/7. Kerr’s bomber was an associate of the main perpetrator, Mohammed Siddique Khan. It turns out he was from Batley in West Yorkshire and, like Khan, has security traces.
John Kerr had executed the man who, captured alive, could have led them to the London bombers before they left on their terrible mission.
In the late morning Kerr is summoned to the commissioner’s private conference room ‘to meet some people’. There are three civilians sitting around the table, but seven dirty coffee cups and plates, and the air is heavy with earlier heated exchanges. The biscuits have disappeared, along with the commissioner and his sidekicks. Kerr is unsurprised. There is no mileage in sitting alongside an employee who has murdered in cold blood. Probably no knighthood, either.
Kerr’s interrogators introduce themselves as Beth, Hugh and Neil. They are white, middle class, surname-free and smiling, like talent-show hosts. The MI6 guy, Hugh, is an army retread, with streamlined collar and shiny shoes, straight off the parade ground. The woman is skinny, with bleached, spiky hair and a butterfly tattoo on her neck. Kerr remembers that, after a secret intelligence briefing at Cheltenham seven or eight years ago, they shared a chicken Madras and got drunk on red wine. If Beth remembers it, she isn’t saying. Years of dropping in on jihadi chit-chat have not been kind. She is thinner now, and the butterfly looks grounded for good.
When they are seated around the table, Kerr on his own facing the window, the boy from MI5 kicks off. Kerr is glad to find it is not to be an interrogation. They are all delighted that the attorney general has decided not to press charges. Really. They nod and flick on the smile switch again, sharing Kerr’s joy that he will not be standing in the dock at the Old Bailey.
‘There was no other option, was there,’ shrugs Kerr, ‘seeing as you covered the whole thing up?’ The media has been silent about Kerr’s interdiction, because no one told them about it. With the corpse and rucksack spirited away, the attempted bombing simply did not take place. The cover-up must have sounded a good idea right up until 7/7.
Neil is currently working police liaison. He wears wide braces and a watch with too many dials for a civil servant in charge of a desk. Since Kerr’s last sighting, he has developed the beginnings of a goatee.
There is a bit more disarming preamble to show Kerr he is among friends, and they use his first name a lot, which puts him on red alert. Kerr’s partners in the US State Department call it ‘time to decompress’, but it does not work here and now because the atmosphere is stifling and Kerr has seen it all before.
Eventually it is Kerr who calls the meeting to order. He knows they want to ask him one question: why did you take the guy out when you should have arrested him? Arrest might have led them to the 7/7 bombers and prevented the attacks eight days later. It is a fair point. Kerr has thought about this.
Then Neil blows it by saying he understands: he can imagine what it’s like to be facing that kind of threat. He says this to impress the others, as if he’s just dropped in from hand-to-hand combat in Afghanistan. But it is a mistake, like telling a terminal-cancer patient you know how it feels. He wants to appear a man of the world, but Neil is really just another tosser from Thames House.
‘John, we have to examine what you gleaned about this man. Explore if there’s anything we could have done to prevent the attacks.’ When Neil says ‘we’ he means John Kerr, of course. They want him to admit he found something out, then use it to hang him.
‘You want to know if he shared his Facebook before I garrotted him?’ asks Kerr, mildly.
‘Not exactly,’ says Neil. ‘But he might . . . I dunno . . . did he shout something in the carriage before he ran off, for example? Or in the toilet before . . . you know? Any clues at all?’
‘Did I torture him before I killed him, you mean? Abu Ghraib in the Gents at Green Park?’
Hugh evidently decides it is time to intervene. His neck is tighter against the collar and his eyes have become slits. He no longer looks decompressed. ‘Did you?’
‘Did I fuck,’ says Kerr, which irritates them even more. ‘And the only clue was a rucksack full of fertiliser and shrapnel.’
Kerr’s statement of the bleeding obvious creates a lull while they regroup. The interview is going badly, for the subject is not showing the right level of contrition. Who would have expected him to come out fighting?
During the sparring match Beth has sat in silence, head down, doodling. Perhaps she’s thinking she had a narrow escape all those years ago. ‘Your man was an associate of Khan, so probably knew their intentions,’ she says now, frowning at her rectangles and circles, ‘so why do you think he risked messing everything up for them?’
‘You’re the mind expert, Beth. You tell me,’ says Kerr, familiar. ‘Perhaps it was just good old vanity . . . you know, a compulsion to be first among the nutters. But he didn’t tell me that, either. In case you’re wondering.’
‘We’re not, John. Honestly.’ Neil is back on track. ‘It’s just that a lot of questions are going to be asked. We have to know if there’s anything you think we could have done to prevent this atrocity.’
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You should have gone public. Made people aware and warned them of the risk. In the end it’s always the cover-up that gets you, Neil. You guys should know that by now.’
‘You know full well we had to avoid alarming the public unnecessarily.’
‘You kept it quiet because your office had just lowered the threat level.’
‘That’s neither here nor there.’
‘Said there was no imminent threat.’
‘Look, I have to live with what I’ve done. OK, seven-seven may have happened because I killed that bomber. That possibility will haunt me. But you have to live with the consequences because you kept it secret.’
‘And it has to stay that way.’
‘Does it?’ This brings another pause. They are looking at him intently; even Beth has put down her pencil. And then, in a flash, all becomes clear. ‘You think I’m going to blow the whistle, don’t you?’ He laughs. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all. We’re in this together.’
‘Bullshit. You couldn’t give a toss whether that young man said anything to me, only whether I’ll hold the line. That’s it, isn’t it? So why don’t you ask me up front?’
‘Why did you do it?’ snaps Hugh. It is a last-ditch attempt to subordinate him. ‘What made you murder a man in cold blood when you know you should have kept him alive?’
Kerr looks each of them in the eye. He knows they are not family people. ‘Ask me that when you have children.’
Part One
One
Thursday, 13 September 2012, 06.53, New Scotland Yard
Squeezing into the glass cubbyhole that passed for his office at the top of New Scotland Yard, John Kerr had to ease the door open with his left shoulder, Starbucks in one hand, encrypted laptop in the other, head tilted to clamp the BlackBerry to his ear. But the call from his deputy made him dump all that stuff and scramble for his firearm. It was a Glock 19 semi-automatic 9mm pistol, the lightweight weapon of choice for his surveillance teams. It should have been stored in the secure armoury next to the operations room but, against all the rules, he kept it in a locked cabinet inside his safe.
The call lasted less than half a minute. ‘Why didn’t they tell us immediately?’ Kerr demanded, then listened intently to the answer. ‘You’re absolutely certain it’s Melanie? Is she blown? Any demands yet? OK, Dodge, just get me the address of the stronghold.’