Inside Enemy

by Alan Judd

  Surprisingly, Peter didn’t change his guilty plea, calculating perhaps that it would benefit him in the long run not to do so. He was sentenced and moved to a high security prison in Yorkshire. After some years there he was assessed as no longer a high-risk threat and moved to a more relaxed category B prison in Surrey. Good behaviour and pressure on prison places qualified him for release after less than half his sentence. The puzzle was why he had chosen to escape now, with only a year or two left to serve. Charles, though lacking any evidence, thought he knew.

  12

  Sarah was relieved to be alone when she reached home that afternoon. It was late but there was still time to collect herself before telling Charles about the attempted blackmail. Not that there was any question of wrong-doing or cover-up by either of them but as head of MI6 he was reputationally vulnerable if the story was spun in the right, or wrong, way. Dredging up all that business again was the last thing they wanted. She felt responsible because it was baggage she brought with her. Talking to Mr Mayakovsky made her feel dirty. She showered and washed her hair.

  The phone rang just as she put the hairdryer down and heard Charles’s key in the latch. She picked up the bedroom extension. It was the MI5 duty officer. She called to Charles from the top of the stairs and could see from his face how much he welcomed it the moment he got in. He took it on the kitchen extension.

  Later, hair done and wearing comfortable old jeans and jersey, she went downstairs. He was still on the phone. She offered tea in sign language and he nodded. He continued listening, asked a couple of questions, then gave directions to the house. When she turned on the kettle he took the cordless phone into the drawing room. She waited until he had finished, then took the teas in, looking at him questioningly. He took the tea as if he wasn’t seeing her.

  ‘The police liaison officer from MI5 wants to bring the police round to talk about Viktor. Then there’s an emergency meeting of that committee I was telling you about in the Cabinet Office.’

  Clearly not the best time to tell him, unless it was really a police matter. She wasn’t sure. ‘They’re coming here, now?’

  ‘They’re on their way.’

  ‘Everything’s such a mess. They’ll think we live like this all the time.’ She tried a smile. ‘There’s something we need to talk about.’

  He nodded but still looked preoccupied. ‘When’s that wedding, your nephew’s?’

  ‘Danny’s? The 16th, two weeks, just under. He should be back now. I can’t remember when his ship – boat, he calls it, his submarine – was due in. They never seem to have a date but he told everyone he’d be back in good time. I must ring my sister.’ A car drew up outside and three men got out. ‘That was quick. I suppose they’re only just round the corner, aren’t they? I’ll leave you to it.’ This time her smile elicited a brief response. She went upstairs to unpack boxes in what was to be her study.

  Charles sat them round the kitchen table. They all said yes to tea. They were from SO15, part of the counter-terrorist command formerly known as Special Branch. He knew one of them as DI Steggles, whom he had privately nicknamed Corduroy. ‘We know each other of old,’ he told the others as they shook hands. ‘He arrested and interviewed me in the bad old days of the SIA. Did it very well.’

  They all laughed, a little uneasily. The outline of his story was known within Whitehall in versions of varying vividness and reliability, and Steggles would no doubt have mentioned it in the car. Charles had always been open about it but now, it seemed – because of his new position – no-one would mention it in front of him. It was therefore better he did, and made light of it.

  He described what had happened to Viktor, giving them the background to the case but not Viktor’s contacts with his cyber expert brother. ‘We need to ensure that the local police have all they need for a proper investigation while also trying to ensure that the details of his work for us aren’t leaked,’ he concluded.

  ‘Best brief from the top down,’ said Steggles. ‘If you give me the name of the investigating officer you dealt with we’ll brief the assistant chief constable. May I say you’ll be available to help at any time, sir?’

  Discussion turned to the Russians, whom everyone assumed to be behind the murder. The MI5 liaison officer said they would have used an illegal, someone unconnected with the embassy who would have been sent to Britain from a third country for that operation only. He would probably have been abroad again within hours. The police thought that nevertheless an alert should be sent to ports, albeit it was useless without a description. MI5 surveillance on the Russian Embassy, abandoned during the optimism of the immediate post-Cold War years and reintroduced only with the break-up of the SIA, would be briefed to report any unusual comings and goings or signs of heightened community activity.

  Charles did not argue. It was possible, all of it – perhaps even likely – and there was no evidence for his alternative theory. But the more he thought about it, the more he believed in it. ‘Nice to be back in harness again,’ he remarked to Steggles, as they stood to go.

  ‘Very much so, sir. Nice to see you back.’

  ‘Are they keeping you busy?’

  ‘Here and there. Nothing as interesting as this, though.’

  ‘There’s Peter Tew.’

  ‘The old spy from your lot? Done a runner, hasn’t he? Won’t be having him back, will you?’ He laughed.

  ‘We want him found. Also, there are a couple of things we’d like to know about. How he spent his time in prison, any contacts outside, particular friends inside, hobbies, attitudes, anything he said that’s at all unusual. If you can get that sort of thing out of the prison service.’

  Steggles took out his notebook again. ‘A big if with that lot. They see any question as an attack. But we’ll have a go.’

  Sarah came downstairs when she heard the car pull away. It was remarkable to be in the heart of London yet in a street so quiet that you could listen for individual cars and footsteps. Charles was putting on his jacket.

  ‘You’ve got that other meeting now?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’ll be back for dinner?’

  ‘Hope so. Our first dinner here. Shall I bring a take-away?’

  His bachelor assumptions had long roots. ‘It’s all right, I’ve got some bits and pieces.’

  ‘You’re a genius.’

  The COFE meeting this time included Mary Cox and Desmond Bowen, permanent secretaries at the Home Office and MOD. Mary was a distinguished-looking woman nearing retirement, with hair in a bun and a reputation for calmness and acuity. Desmond was a new appointment, looking improbably youthful, his thick brown hair just edged with grey.

  The mood of the meeting was sombre. Tim Corke explained that there had been a Beowulf development of which ministers would have to be informed. A decision was needed. He turned to Charles. ‘ Beowulf is one of our nuclear subs, one of the four missile boats, and she’s gone missing. Overdue and off air and we don’t know what’s happened. Off air’s not unusual. They patrol for about three months at a time somewhere in the North Atlantic. No-one, not even in the Admiralty, knows where they are. We transmit to them but they don’t transmit to us unless there’s real need, in which case they use a delay system, very low frequency burst transmissions from where they were, not where they are. A boat that’s overdue would normally let us know why. We’ve sent messages asking but answer came there none. Now there’s been this latest development.’ He looked at Desmond.

  Desmond Bowen was the only one without a notepad. He spoke rapidly. ‘Being overdue is not so very unusual. In fact, it was quite convenient for a while because Beowulf ’s successor on patrol, Beauty, had a technical problem, Bellerophon is undergoing maintenance and Battle’s crew are all on leave. That’s why we need a minimum of four boats for twenty-four-hour coverage. But overdue without explanation is exceptional and no response to requests for one is unprecedented. Now we have what looks like a mass deployment of Russian hunter-killer submarines.
’ He looked at the faces around the table. ‘Naturally, the Russians are always trying to locate our missile boats, to learn their sonar characteristics so they can identify them in future. As do we with theirs, of course. They send their hunter-killers out after our boats and we deploy ours to monitor them and to protect the boats by distracting them. During the Falklands War, when they knew we’d sent all available hunter-killers to the South Atlantic, they deployed nineteen to locate our patrolling missile boat. They failed, I’m glad to say, but a similar situation seems to be developing now. Up to a dozen, the Americans reckon. And we don’t know why. Or why now.’

  ‘Coincidence?’ said Angela. ‘A major exercise? They must have them. How do we know they’re looking for Beowulf ?’

  ‘We don’t. And that’s the other thing, of course. No more Crown Jewels.’

  Tim looked at Charles. ‘Crown Jewels is the name of the cryptographic product that Configure helped us achieve via his brother. Very tightly held, as you might imagine. Basically, it means we can recognise – not read, recognise – Russian nuclear release procedures. It’s a three-stage process, culminating with the President. There’s no indication they intend Armageddon despite their more aggressive patrolling, the resumption of daily provocations in our air space and so on, but it means that if ever they did we’d get enough notice for the US President to activate the hot line. It also means that we can recognise – again, not actually read – exercise signals, concentration and dispersal orders and whatever. Very, very useful.’

  ‘But now we can’t. They’ve recently changed their procedures and we can’t even find the signals, let alone interpret them. They may be smuggling them out under something else or somebody else, as the Israelis used to conceal their signals beneath Arab diplomatic traffic. Satellites picked up the launch of this shoal of hunter-killers but we’re blank on where they are now, where they’re going or what they’re doing.’

  Angela, who had been doodling, shook her head impatiently. ‘Of course this is all very serious and unfortunate and there’s no doubt we’ve got to find out what’s happened to Beowulf . But we mustn’t get carried away by hypothetical possibilities which, however serious, remain extremely hypothetical. There is no reason at all to think that the post-Cold War Russian state is remotely near even thinking about a nuclear strike on us or anyone else. Indeed, there’s evidence – including some from Charles’s predecessor – to suggest the opposite, that they’re sufficiently confident now of their relations with the Americans to rule it out. So the context is benign, even though the events themselves – what’s happened to Beowulf and so on – are undoubtedly serious. As I understood it, the decision we have to reach today is whether to ask ministers to ask the Russians if they know anything about our missing submarine and whether they’ll help us find it. For what it’s worth, my feeling is that the Foreign Secretary would be decidedly against, although’ – she shrugged – ‘he never ceases to surprise.’

  ‘What could have happened to Beowulf ?’ asked Mary Cox. ‘What are the options?’

  ‘Chances are she has a technical fault, is on her way home and keeping quiet because she’s detected Russian submarines in unusual numbers,’ said Desmond. ‘The worst and least likely case is that she’s suffered some catastrophe and sunk. But it would have to be unprecedentedly rapid for her not to break radio silence and get some sort of signal off. It would have to be something drastic like collision with a Russian sub that was looking for her. Which might account for what the Russians are doing – looking for their own missing sub. The other possibility is that our signals are not getting through and she’s waiting to find out what’s happened. She can sit around on the seabed for as long as she wants, pretty well. If she goes on hearing nothing from us, of course, the captain might open his letter of last resort.’

  He was looking questioningly at everybody. Most nodded but not Charles and Graham Wood from Civil Contingencies. Desmond explained that the letter of last resort was a sealed letter carried by missile submarine commanders containing the Prime Minister’s wishes for what they were to do if a major nuclear strike destroyed all functioning government in Britain. Handwritten by each prime minister on taking office, alone and without sight of his or her predecessor’s letters, they were to be opened only in the event that no signals could be raised from Britain and that no BBC radio broadcasts – particularly Radio 4’s Today programme – were detectable. The letter would express the late Prime Minister’s wish as to whether the commander should retaliate with his own nuclear missiles. Either after retaliation or without it he was then to choose between sailing to Australia and placing himself under command of the Australian government, or sailing to America and placing himself under command of the US government.

  ‘So, serious stuff,’ said Desmond with a smile. ‘Actually, the Russians know all about it. We told them years ago during the Cold War. It means they can never know whether a successful first strike would prevent retaliation.’

  ‘But surely,’ said Mary, ‘even assuming a complete radio blackout from Britain the commander could simply tune into radio broadcasts from other countries to find out what’s happening. I know we don’t count for what we did in the world but I’d have thought a nuclear strike on London might make it onto most news bulletins.’ She smiled. ‘I’m rather with Angela on this. I don’t think we should assume disaster without more evidence.’

  Desmond nodded. ‘Of course. Even if they had a technical fault that meant they couldn’t pick up broadcasts from anywhere, you’d expect them to realise it was their own malfunction. I mention it only as part of the worst case scenario. But we still need to decide whether we’re going to recommend to ministers that we seek Russian assistance. It might help us find a stricken Beowulf but risks exposing a possibly healthy Beowulf to Russian analysis and identification.’

  ‘My vote is that we should not,’ said Angela. ‘We should warn ministers that we may bring such a proposal to them and will have it in preparation but that – subject to their views – we should give Beowulf more time.’

  ‘Meanwhile doing all we can to follow this Russian submarine deployment,’ said Desmond.

  Nobody dissented. Tim Corke turned to Charles. ‘There is another aspect to this with which your old friend Configure may be able to help. Have you seen him yet?’

  Charles glanced at Michael Dunton, who nodded. ‘I have seen him, yes. But only his corpse. He’s been murdered.’

  They listened in silence, save for the hum of a generator somewhere. When he had finished Charles glanced again at Michael. ‘There’s been another murder, too. Possibly related.’ He told them about Frank Heathfield. Michael then told them about Peter Tew.

  ‘Of course, it’s only Charles’s speculation,’ he concluded. ‘Tew may or may not have launched a one-man campaign of revenge. To my mind, it’s much more likely that the Russians did Configure. They have form in that area. But they don’t generally go around knocking off retired intelligence officers, so Frank Heathfield does complicate the picture, I admit. But Tew didn’t show signs of bitterness in prison, had one or two friends but otherwise kept himself pretty much to himself, we’re told. Apart from organising interprison chess championships, which he persisted with despite less than overwhelming demand.’

  ‘No chance of getting Configure’s brother to help regain Crown Jewels?’ asked Desmond. ‘Get us back into their signals?’

  Michael Dunton shook his head. ‘He’s not even remotely conscious of his brother’s relationship with us. And we’ve no way of contacting him unless we pretended to be Configure. And that would unravel pretty quickly.’

  ‘Okay.’ Tim put both hands on the table, edge-on again as if holding a ruler between his palms. ‘We brief ministers on Beowulf and on the possibility of approaching the Russians, but we don’t recommend it yet. We also tell them we are reserving judgement on whether the silence of Beowulf is connected with the multiple attacks on our CNI and with the loss of Crown Jewels, but that it’s possible. Not
all of them know we even had Crown Jewels, incidentally, so some might be upset that the Prime Minister kept them in the dark about that. I don’t suppose that will worry him unduly. I think we should also mention the two murders, stressing however that we have no evidence of a connection either between them or with anything else. Finally, we should tell them that the fact that the cyber attacks are confined to Britain and their frequency and duration has led us to conclude that their route in is via an MI6 computer, which means MI6 has a serious insider problem. Which we are investigating urgently.

  ‘As for ourselves, we need to decide whether we’re looking for what physicists sometimes call a unified field explanation which would account for all the above. Or whether we think that is an alarmist fantasy. Whichever line of investigation we take, ministers will be most concerned about the CNI failures because they’re slap bang in the public domain and the whole nation notices when the lights go out. They want action on it and we’ll have to report some.’ He turned to Graham Wood. ‘Graham, update us on CNI.’

  Graham pushed back his black hair, as he usually did before speaking. ‘We can’t do more than we’re doing already, which is to maintain intermittent services across the whole range of government systems but without guaranteeing any of them. The latest to go down is the mainframe social security system in Newcastle, but with luck no-one will know about it because I had a text on the way here saying it was down for minutes only and it’s now back up. But if it did go down for any time millions of people would see their pensions and welfare payments drying up. There is a back-up, of course, but we don’t want to bring that on stream while the main one’s infected in case it somehow gets infected, too. Luckily, most of these infections are short-lived, leaving everything perfectly normal afterwards. It’s like malaria – when it gets into the bloodstream you’ve got it, when it’s lying dormant in your liver or wherever you haven’t. Except that you have really.’