by Roger Pearce
‘That’s all I can tell you.’
‘Is MI5 protecting him?’ Kerr silently regarded his agent for a few moments. ‘Did I screw up an agent operation or something, Jerry? What the hell’s going on here?’
‘I swear,’ said Kestrel, close to tears.
‘Because if Mr Jibril is a good guy on a nice little earner, that’s absolutely fine. I’ll say sorry, buy you lunch and back off. But I’ve been lifting a lot of stones these past few days. And the vermin underneath all tell me he’s a jihadi working for Al Qaeda.’
‘What stones?’
‘Now, if that’s true, and I find you people are shielding a bad bastard who’s not under control, then we’re in a completely new ball game and I’m going to be coming to you with a lot more questions. Day or night.’
‘You didn’t answer.’
‘So you need to get your sticky fingers inside that double cover for me. And if I find you’re bullshitting, I’ll do your fucking legs.’
‘What stones?’ said Kestrel, turning to face Kerr.
Kerr laughed. ‘You don’t seriously think I’m going to show my hand to you?’
‘Perhaps you’re the one who’s bluffing,’ said Kestrel. He was trying to be combative, but his voice had risen a pitch. ‘Could you really burn me to Philippa now, after all I’ve been through? I don’t think so.’
Kerr was already walking through into the saloon, ready to disembark. ‘Try me,’ he said, over his shoulder.
They were six or seven feet from the dock when Kestrel made his move, suddenly swinging back to the stern deck. By the time Kerr became aware, the agent was already clambering over the port rail and balancing on the gunwale. The boat was still a couple of metres from the dock but closing fast against a strong tide.
‘Jerry, stop!’ As Kerr yelled, Kestrel bent his knees and launched himself into the air, scrabbling for the ropes on the dockside. But he lost height so quickly that he only managed to grab one of the protective tyres lining the pontoon. He hung, suspended with his feet and lower legs beneath the water just as the boat was being sucked against the dock. Everyone was shouting now as the crewman on the pontoon rushed to save him. Before they could reach him, Kestrel hauled himself, with a show of strength that surprised Kerr, onto the pontoon. A split second later the boat would have come alongside and crushed him.
The crewman and a couple of astonished passengers waiting to embark tried to hold onto him, but Kestrel shoved them away, ran up the ramp and escaped onto the Embankment. Kerr was already speed-dialling Melanie as Kestrel sprinted towards the street.
Out of sight by the hotel, Melanie clocked Kestrel as soon as he made his astonishing run from the dock. She followed him but did not attempt to intervene. At this moment of crisis and high agitation, she wanted to see what he would do next. His pace reducing to a fast walk, Kestrel could have turned right and reached Tower Hill Underground station by walking up the slope to Tower Hill. Instead, to her surprise, he took the longer route, turning left through the giant studded gates along the cobbled lane leading to the Tower, losing himself among clumps of pedestrians. She followed him past the souvenir shop towards the station. Distracted by the squelching of his bulky shoes, tourists gawped at the eccentric figure hurrying past in his flapping raincoat and soaked trousers.
Descending into the Tube, Melanie followed him to the westbound platform and kept her distance, unseen, as he sat on a bench. It was mid-afternoon, passenger traffic was light, and down there in the gloom he could be anonymous again. He stayed there for several minutes, head in his hands, unnoticed except by Melanie, and let two trains go past. With the sound of the third approaching he abruptly stood up, walked forward to the edge of the platform and stood motionless, hands at his sides. With thin strands of hair blowing in the draught, his eyes seemed glued to a poster on the curved wall across the track as the train whooshed out of the tunnel mouth.
Five metres away, Melanie realised she was too far from him to intervene as their agent prepared to kill himself. Kestrel was standing in the middle of a thin line of people waiting to board. In horror, as the train lumbered down the platform, she saw him take his penultimate step past the yellow line until his feet were right on the platform edge.
A young woman, immaculately groomed in a smart business suit, was first to realise the danger. Melanie saw her hand on his arm and her head rapidly moving as she shouted something in his ear. The driver must have seen him, too, because the train whistled, a sharp, piercing scream. The combined effect seemed to drive Kestrel back from the edge, to bring him to his senses. Melanie watched him walk along the platform, away from the attention, and board the fourth carriage. She watched him go, then dashed to the surface to ring Kerr.
She had expected Kerr to be on his way back to the Yard, but he was waiting for her just outside the station, on a bench beneath a tree overlooking the Tower, as if he had guessed she would return. The last time he and Kestrel had disembarked there they had shared a drink at one of the bars behind St Katharine’s Dock: perhaps, she thought, Kerr had hoped she might persuade Kestrel to return with her.
Kerr listened in silence while Melanie described Kestrel’s attempt to kill himself. She was genuinely concerned about his fragile state of mind: was it fear that Kerr would expose his double life, or the burden of some terrible knowledge he was carrying around with him? She tried to give her boss some notion of the stress Kestrel was under, to make him acknowledge the danger signals. ‘I’m saying we have to step back, John,’ she concluded, ‘give him space to collect himself.’
‘Oh, really? Is that so?’ When Kerr switched his gaze from the Tower to look at her, his face was set. ‘There’s only one thing we have to do, Melanie, and that’s to stay on MI5’s inside track. We agreed the priority, didn’t we?’
‘The truth.’
‘It’s what we all signed up for. Do you believe our man can take us there?’
Melanie began to speak, then realised he wasn’t expecting an answer.
‘No way am I going to let Jerry Thompson hold out on me, Mel. We crack on at him. Nothing else matters.’
Thirty-one
Tuesday, 18 September, 16.53, the chairman’s office, National Crime Agency
After their debrief at Tower Hill, Melanie left for the Lambeth plot and Kerr took the Tube back to St James’s Park. He grabbed a sandwich at Strutton Ground and caught up on his emails in the Fishbowl. As the weather was reasonable, he left the Alfa in the underground garage and walked to the headquarters of the National Crime Agency. It was quicker, gave him time to think and, because parking at the Yard was first come, first served, prevented anyone snatching his space while he was away.
Kerr was intrigued by his invitation to call. Officers from the agency were drawn from HM Revenue and Customs, and Immigration, as well as the police. Its national law-enforcement remit was to bring to justice major criminal targets across police boundaries, and it regularly carried out joint operations with the Yard.
Bill Ritchie called him bang in the middle of Vauxhall Bridge to summon him to his office. He sounded buttoned up, so Kerr put him off, pretending he was in Chiswick supporting Dodge on a non-existent agent pitch. It was a nifty piece of footwork until a couple of seagulls squawked loudly overhead and blew his cover. Eventually they settled on a meeting at seven, after close of play.
Theo Canning was already bounding to the door like a man half his age as the PA showed Kerr in. The two men had collaborated on more dodgy operations than Kerr cared to remember, so there was genuine warmth in the welcome.
Canning had built a reputation as an exceptional field officer in a long career with MI6. He had begun his career thirty-seven years earlier at Century House, near Southwark, the old MI6 headquarters, a grim tower block with a petrol station in the forecourt, and completed it at Vauxhall Cross, the futuristic green glass monster right on the riverside. For nearly four decades he had spied in the world’s most hazardous countries, sometimes buried in the Diplomatic List as a thir
d secretary, often undeclared. His reward was to be promoted to director of global operations and close confidant of C, as the director-general of MI6 had signed himself since the days of Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming nearly a century before.
He had been within seven months of retirement when the government had brought him back to take over its high-profile agency. His brief was to co-ordinate the nation’s war against organised crime although, unofficially, ministers wanted him to ‘knock heads together’ and stamp out the turf wars that had plagued his predecessors. Canning and Mary, his wife of thirty years and former MI6 signals clerk at the station in Moscow, had just purchased their first real married home in England, a converted farmhouse near Trowbridge in Wiltshire.
Kerr knew from the grapevine that Canning had been undergoing medical treatment. They had not seen each other for a couple of years, and he was thinner than Kerr remembered him.
But the handshake was still bone-crushing. ‘Great to see you again.’ He beamed, steering Kerr to an armchair with a panoramic view of the Thames. ‘Thanks for dropping by.’
‘Very swish,’ said Kerr, looking admiringly around him. ‘Better than you’re used to.’
‘Nairobi was always great fun but a bit of a khazi.’ Canning dropped into the chair opposite and crossed his legs. Dapper in light grey pinstripe suit and powder blue tie, he still favoured the timeless brown suede shoes Kerr remembered so well. ‘And as for dear old Geneva. Let’s just say v. cushy indeed but bored the pants off me.’
The PA asked if they wanted tea. Kerr said he was OK but Canning told her to bring some anyway, then glanced at his watch. ‘Unless you’d like something stronger, old chap?’ Kerr laughed as the PA left. ‘Old chap’. He had lost none of his style.
‘No, suppose not. We’re all too fucking sensible these days.’
‘I heard you were unwell.’
‘Touch of the Big C, but nothing fatal, all perfectly curable these days. Regular check-ups, and the medics insist on shooting some magic bloody potion into me every couple of weeks,’ he said, shaking a hand in the air. ‘Feel like a bloody junkie, but it seems to be doing the trick. Mary wanted me to retire but they shooed me in here last year as chairman. Sorry, person. PM’s special appointment. How come you’re still DCI?’
‘Is it starting to work yet?’ said Kerr.
Kerr had been surprised when Canning had accepted what most in the business regarded as a poisoned chalice. In the early days the jealousies, hostility and outdated working practices among the various parties had proved corrosive. Each organisation had brought its own agenda and carried on as if nothing had changed, as did the gangs of serious and organised criminals. Now there were real signs of improvement, driven by the unequivocal message from Whitehall that the National Crime Agency had to work. They had appointed a chief constable as front man, but no one was in any doubt that real power lay in the hands of Theo Canning.
‘You know the score, my friend,’ laughed Canning. ‘Bollocks to the turf wars. Things are getting better. Drugs, guns and gangs. Money-laundering, of course. And more cybercrime than we can handle. A lot of confiscations. We’re kicking some multi-millionaires where it hurts most. The judge sends them down and we lift the yacht, which is nice. Contract’s for two days a week, but I always end up doing four. Keep a handle on all the dodgy operational stuff for obvious reasons. Am I succeeding? Fuck knows.’
‘Doing a great job from what we hear,’ said Kerr, smiling to himself. Canning made even foul language sound elegant.
‘Let’s say I’m searching for some fresh blood.’ He stopped, looking Kerr in the eye.
‘And?’
‘I want you to help me.’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Come and join me in some dirty work again. Like the good old days.’
‘Jesus, Theo,’ exhaled Kerr, ‘didn’t see that one coming.’
‘You can guess what I’m up against here, John,’ he said. ‘There’s still a heady mix of Spanish practices and good old 1990s corruption.’ He arched his fingers. ‘Last thing I need right now is a government inquiry or a press scandal. Shall I tell you who I want alongside me? Someone honest and competent from outside this monastic circle of doom and fucking gloom. And at the higher grade you richly deserve.’
They fell silent as the PA served tea, with china crockery and silver spoons. The two friends were more accustomed to drinking from cracked glasses at the top of Century House, and Canning winked as she offered milk and sugar.
‘Not exactly like the good old days, is it?’ Kerr smiled.
‘Look, I want you to run the intelligence side of the business on the ground,’ Canning continued, the moment they were alone again, ‘manage the undercover officers and oversee the surveillance, with a promotion to detective superintendent as soon as I’ve squared the wankers in HR.’
‘My boss hasn’t been speaking with you by any chance?’ asked Kerr, taken aback by Canning’s directness.
‘No, but I want to give her a call, if that’s all right?’ He sat back in his chair, waiting for a response, but Kerr simply shrugged. ‘Look, John,’ he continued calmly, ‘I know what you guys in the Met are going through. Political correctness gone mad, cult of the clitorati and all that. And I know they don’t take to you over there, the new breed. The SO15 CT fucking Directorate or whatever has pushed the Special Branch operators into the cold. Am I right? Well, I need you here right now.’
He paused for a moment, letting his words sink in. ‘I also gather you’re suffering with this Jibril nonsense. What the hell was Finch thinking of to let that boy run again? He had fourteen days, why not use them?’
‘It’s certainly made life difficult.’
‘And goes against the grain. Do you want to talk about it?’
He listened without interruption as Kerr told him everything about the flawed arrest of Ahmed Jibril, the devastation of the explosions that had almost killed him and his team, the loss of his friend Jim Gallagher, and the obstructiveness of Jim Metcalfe and his crew.
‘So why not tell them to bloody well poke it?’ he said, when Kerr had finished. ‘You’ll get no aggravation here. Run your own show from day one. Don’t tell me you’re not tempted.’
Kerr laughed. Offloading to Theo Canning had been cathartic, and he suddenly felt a huge sense of relief. Paula Weatherall clearly believed there was no place for him in SO15, and his prospects were diminishing as even Bill Ritchie turned against him. If half of what Kestrel had told him about high-level corruption was true, he was about to upset some very senior people. Nothing he uncovered was likely to prove career-enhancing.
With such powerful forces opposing him, the prospect of joining the man he admired most in the intelligence community became more attractive. Theo Canning was a top-flight field operator and agent handler of complete integrity and incredible connections. It would be inspiring to work alongside his friend again. ‘Actually, Theo, the most difficult thing is, we acted on intelligence from your old Service.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, the original info came from head of station in Sana’a.’
‘Joe Allenby.’
‘You know him?’
‘Top man.’ Canning was nodding vigorously. ‘Old school.’
‘Yeah. He was returning a favour. Sent me a photograph and everything beneath the radar. Sunday afternoon, you know, sod-all happening back at Vauxhall Cross. Jibril had traces on Excalibur. Then we found someone had removed the lot and Joe seems to have disappeared. We’re getting a complete blank on the normal liaison channels. I don’t suppose . . .’
‘You’re wondering if I can do anything unofficially, you mean?’
‘That would be fantastic.’
‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll stroll over to Vauxhall Cross to do some proper searching unmolested, meet up with a few conspirators of my own. So long as you promise me you’ll think about my proposal.’
Kerr smiled again. ‘Are you leaving me any option?’
&nb
sp; Kerr knew something was not right the moment he stepped into Vauxhall Bridge Road. Even before he had buttoned up his jacket his sixth sense told him he was being followed. He picked out the black Nissan saloon in the line of slow-moving traffic, clocked the registration number and occupants, and requested an immediate ‘lost or stolen’ check on the Police National Computer.
Thirty-two
Tuesday, 18 September, 17.36, Lambeth
It was only the second time Ahmed Jibril had left the crumbling Victorian house since his release from Paddington Green high-security police station. Apart from a brief excursion to the convenience store an hour after his return to his safe-house on Sunday evening, he had stayed invisible.
From the observation post in the council flat across the street, Justin activated the video and rattled off a couple of stills. He had taken over from Steve Gibb, the SAS secondee, at five o’clock and felt refreshed after a day with his girlfriend and another road run.
He was more fortunate than Gibb had been when Jibril had appeared the previous Thursday because his bladder was empty and the target, jacketless this time, in jeans and a thin sweater with his hands in his pockets, was walking slowly. He was alert, but the body language was that of a man out for an evening stroll, not a bombing mission. ‘Mel from Justin, subject on the move.’
Melanie’s voice bounced straight back. ‘Thanks. We have him.’
The Red surveillance team was fully stretched, with most operatives secretly deployed on Kerr’s orders against Samir Khan, Jibril’s contact in East Ham. Melanie was left to cover Jibril’s Lambeth address with Red Four, the young linguist who had forced his way onto the bus as Jibril headed for Vauxhall station. Justin heard the clunk of the car door as they got out of the dark green Honda and separated to take him on foot.