Spy People

by Duncan James

  “No problem with that,” came the reply. “As you can imagine, we are still excited after confirming the existence of the Higgs boson, so we are all keen to probe further in the hope of finding other particles, perhaps leading us into the mysteries of dark matter.”

  Lloyd’s curiosity was getting the better of him. “Have you come across any evidence yet of more than one Higgs boson?” he asked. “The supersymmetry theories predict at least five bosons similar to the Higgs, three neutral and two charged, as I am sure you know.”

  His director laughed. “Not yet, but now I understand why you are going to be so valuable here. You are inventing new physics, and ahead of us and our current analysis of what we have discovered. You will be asking next if we have found any evidence of possible new dimensions!”

  “I am very excited to think that I shall be part of this ground-breaking research, and can assure you that I shall join you again just as soon as my health allows.”

  “You are in demand elsewhere, by the way. I took a call only yesterday from a Professor Williams at the UK nuclear research facility at Cullum. He seems keen to talk to you about a problem they have encountered and which they hoped your particular mathematical prowess may help them to resolve. It has something to do with nuclear fusion apparently, and we all know how successful they have been in researching that new energy field. I have his number.”

  Lloyd took it down, although he didn’t need to. It was where he used to work.

  It was encouraging to know that fellow scientists both here and in England needed his knowledge and expertise. He would get on to Cullum straight away. Williams was his old Director, and one of the few people in the world who knew his real identity. He wondered what exactly the problem was that they had found, and whether he would be able to help. Perhaps once he was at his computer in his new laboratory, he could establish a link with them via the internet. After all, the internet was first developed to allow scientists to communicate with one another easily and freely.

  To be involved again with his old work at Cullum would be wonderful, never mind facing the obvious challenges facing him in Switzerland. Would there be enough hours in the day?

  Within days of successful surgery to remove bits and pieces of bone from his shoulder, and to repair the flesh wound properly, he was back in his flat at Meyrin. It was nice to be ‘home’ again, and to have a change of clothes and some privacy when he wanted it.

  But Colonel Schilling, whose staff at the Payerne air base had looked after him so well, had not let him go without marking his departure with a special lunch in the officer’s mess, when he was presented with a mounted plaque of the air base coat of arms as a memento.

  “You leave here more like a normal human being than you were when you arrived,” he announced. “I have rarely seen a man so disheartened and depressed as you were when you got here. For very good reason as I understand. But now, thanks to the efforts of all your colleagues who have been so keen to keep in touch, you have happily re-joined the human race!”

  He suddenly felt a good deal more cheerful, and for the first time in recent days it felt good to be alive again.

  Certainly better than dead.

  ***

  5 - GLADYS - ENQUIRY TEAM

  On the red phone to Bill Clayton, at the end of the attempt to rescue Dr. Roger Lloyd, Sir Robin Algar, Cabinet Secretary, had said, “…. we should meet tomorrow – or later today, as it is now. We need to think about future protection for Lloyd and who takes responsibility for it, how we handle the Russians if we need to, what the Swiss role should be in all this, and, perhaps most importantly, whether we really do have another mole in our midst, and who it might be. I’ll get my girl to ring Barbara to fix it up.”

  ‘His girl’ never did ring Barbara, because she wasn’t in the office to be rung. To be honest, she didn’t seem to be anywhere else either.

  ***

  His feet had barely touched the ground at RAF Brize Norton when Nick Marsden’s mobile phone rang. He was exhausted, and very tempted to let it ring, but noticed it was from his boss Bill Clayton, Head of Section 11.

  “Yes Bill?”

  “Sorry to get on to you so soon after your return, but I wanted a quick word before you got your head down.”

  “What’s going on now, then?”

  “It’s Barbara. She doesn’t seem to be at home, and I wondered if you might know where she could be.”

  Suddenly, Nick sat up and took notice. This was the little lady he was supposed to be marrying. She was Bill’s PA, but actually worked for both of them at the office.

  “How do you know she’s not at home?” enquired Nick anxiously.

  “I’ve been trying to get her on the phone since just after you left, but there’s been no reply. She would have been useful here in the Ops Room, even if only to keep us supplied with coffee and bacon butties.”

  “I was with her until you called me away on this little holiday,” said Nick. “She said nothing about going out.”

  “Odd,” said Bill. “I’ve tried her mobile as well as her home phone, and there’s no reply to either.”

  “At least her mother should be at home,” said Nick getting more worried. “When did you last try to get hold of her?”

  “I tried a couple of times before about eleven o’clock last night, and I tried again about six this morning. When there was still no reply, I sent one of our chaps round to her place, but he said there was no reply from the door and no lights on, but no sign of burglars or a break-in, thank goodness.”

  “This gets more and more worrying,” said Nick. “Somebody should have been there, and she certainly said nothing to me about them all going away.”

  “We should perhaps have a look inside, but that’s a job for the police, really.”

  “Absolutely. But can we wait until I’m there? I’ve got a key”

  “When do you think you will be back?” asked Clayton.

  “I was hoping in about three days, after what I’ve been through, but I suppose as soon as possible, now,” replied a weary Marsden. “But I had hoped to rest up a bit first. To be honest, I’m all in, and if you’ve been following recent events, you’ll know why.”

  “Of course I know why. I’ve been in the Ops Room here since your left, so I have a pretty good idea of what you’ve been through.”

  “It doesn’t seem possible that all this has happened in less than two days. It feels more like two weeks, without sleep or food or anything.”

  “I agree, and I’ve only been sitting here chewing my finger nails in the warm.”

  “Well, let’s think about this,” said Marsden. “I had hoped to get a shower and a change of clothes and a good meal and a couple of shots of rum to warm me up before I even thought about getting back to lovely Clerkenwell. I went with the aircraft to Birmingham, by the way, to see Dusty properly settled in to the Selly Oak hospital, and my medical orderly is still there with him helping with clinical notes and all that. She’s the one person who has so far kept him alive. A really superb performance. So I’ve actually only set foot back here at Brize within the last half hour. The first thing I must do is a full de-brief of my team before they disperse. They have already been hanging around too long. But once that’s done, I suppose I could head for home somehow.”

  “I’ll send a car for you from here,” said Clayton.

  “Make it a decent size then, so I can sleep in the back.”

  “I’ll send the Jag with the blue flashing lights, and make sure there’s a bottle of rum in it.”

  “Done,” said Nick. “While that’s on the way, I can freshen up a bit and grab a meal. Get the car to pick me up at the officer’s mess. They will be impressed! With any luck, I should be with you in about four hours from now, depending on who’s driving. Will that do?”

  “Excellent. I’ll get Archie to drive. I think I’ve seen him in the crew room, and he won’t hang about bothering too much with traffic lights.”

  “Four hours, then
! But tell him I’ll be trying to sleep on the back seat!”

  “I know you must be knackered, Nick, but we must sort this out about Barbara. I’ll get the police standing by so you can let them in to her place when you get here.”

  “I can’t think where the hell she can be,” said Nick. “You’d have thought she would have said something if she was planning a quick flit somewhere, even with her mother. We are supposed to be getting married, after all.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” said Clayton, trying to reassure his deputy. “Meanwhile, I’ve got an urgent meeting at the Cabinet Office early on, so I may not be here when you get back. One of the things on the agenda, by the way, is the possibility of another mole in our presence, more serious that the Foreign Office clerk. Someone told Makienko where to find Lloyd, after the Cabinet Office clerk had gone. Let’s just hope that Barbara turns up. If she does, I’ll let you know. If not, I’ve asked Gladys to come in early to act as stand-in, as she does when Barbara’s on leave.”

  “See you later then,” said Commander Marsden, turning to his assembled team in the RAF Brize Norton Briefing Room. But his mind was no longer on a detailed de-brief of their recent operation.

  He was desperately worried about Barbara.

  Bill had mentioned her and the possibility of another spy in their midst in the same breath. That was not an accident. He remembered that they had considered whether she could be a traitor once before, but dismissed the idea at the time, not least because they uncovered the Cabinet Office clerk who was selling information to the Russians. But surely not Barbara? His future wife? Surely not her. But where was she?

  ***

  Gladys always liked standing in for Barbara when she was away. It made a change. She got to know a bit more about what was going on, too. It was always busy, working directly for both Mr Clayton and Mr Marsden, but she never let that stand in her way of looking after the Admin at the same time. Once you lost control of the paper work, you lost control of everything and never caught up. She knew there had been a bit of a flap on that weekend, but they seemed surprised that Barbara had not turned up. Nothing to do with the emergency they had been dealing with, so they said, but it wasn’t making things any easier, her not being there.

  Gladys Something-or-other (no one could ever remember), who smoked like a chimney in spite of the law about smoking at work, normally ran the Admin section. She maintained that there was so little work done in Clerkenwell that the law about smoking didn’t apply, and she was too valuable to get rid of, so people put up with it. She had a form for you to fill in for your every need, and made sure you did it properly and got it countersigned, and all that. It was a waste of time going to anybody for anything unless you’d been to Gladys first for the right bit of paper.

  Gladys decided she needed to know more about what had been happening that weekend, and managed to get hold of ‘Whistler’ Piper before he finally went off duty after a very long shift.

  “If you want me to counters-sign your overtime claim form,” she had said, “you’d better tell me what’s been going on.”

  He did, and she was horrified.

  She quite liked Dusty Miller, cheeky though he was.

  “You’ve been here far too long,” she told Whistler, who really didn’t need telling. “So push off, and I’ll square it with the boss. Barbara’s not in today, apparently, so I’m sitting in for her and looking after Mr Clayton and the Commander.”

  “God help them,” muttered Whistler.

  “Where are they both, by the way?” she asked. “Here I am, in early specially to work for them, and they are not here.”

  “Head of Section was in the Ops Room all night, so he’s nipped home for breakfast, as I understand it, and will be going straight from there to a meeting in Whitehall. The Commander is being collected from RAF Brize Norton and will be coming straight here. He’s been in Switzerland, looking after Dr Lloyd, as I told you.”

  “I thought Dusty was supposed to be doing that,” Gladys said, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  Piper went home, and Gladys wondered what to do next.

  She put the coffee on while she thought about it. ‘S’ had said he had an important meeting in the Cabinet Office first thing, but hadn’t left an agenda or anything, so she didn’t know what papers he might need. She guessed it was about the Swiss operation, but he knew all about that anyway. She wished she could find out how poor old Dusty was getting on. Piper had said he was ‘in pretty poor shape’, which didn’t sound too good.

  It was odd Barbara not turning up. She hadn’t done that before, not without telling anyone first.

  Gladys lit another fag. She knew Bill Clayton and Nick Marsden both disapproved, so she would have to cut down today. It wasn’t easy, just to nip out for a quick drag. Actually, it was easy enough to get out, but with the security and everything, a pain to get back in again. She really ought to give it up. She kept saying that.

  But it was odd about Barbara. Gladys had never been quite sure about that girl. Had a top job in the Cabinet Office before she came here, and then ended up sleeping with the boss and having an illegitimate child! Not so posh after all, Gladys had thought at the time. Not that she would have wanted to sleep with Mr Jarvis, of course. But Donald was a lovely little boy, and obviously he and his Mum were very fond of each other.

  Bill Clayton had said there was no reply when he rang, so where was her mother then? She lived with her mother, in Battersea somewhere. They’d been to have a look, but there were no lights on apparently, and no sign of a break-in either. They would have to look inside soon, she supposed. When the Commander got back, because he had a key. It wasn’t common knowledge about the place, but she, Gladys, knew for a fact that the Commander and Barbara were going to get married. He had secretly told her so, and said she would be invited. She might even help to arrange things. She was good at that sort of thing. She kept Section 11 going with her administrative skills, so it was said. Dusty thought she held the place together with rubber bands and paper clips, but she didn’t mind. She rather liked Dusty, and hoped he’d be all right.

  In fact, she rather liked everyone in Section 11. From the boss, ‘S’, downwards, they were all nice people. Some were a bit odd, perhaps, like that theatrical bloke they called Auntie, who looked after the clothing store. He was a rather precious retired actor. Nobody could remember his real name, but he was able to provide appropriate kit for you wherever in the world you were going. He had wigs and dark glasses and false moustaches too, if it was felt that you needed to change your appearance from time to time, rather than become too familiar and run the risk of being recognised.

  Then there was ‘Bottom’. She felt a bit sorry for him, having to live with a nick-name like that. But it was his fault. At the back of the underground garage there was an armoury and a rifle range, run by retired Royal Navy Petty Officer gunner, Phil Langdon, who had introduced himself on arrival as their new ‘top gun’. Immediately, one of the comedians in the team had christened him ‘bottom gun,’ and from thenceforward he had been known as ‘Bottom’ for short. He hated that. But he knew about weapons, and was a crack shot.

  Gladys thought they were all OK really, and she wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.

  But she wasn’t so sure about that Barbara.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, and switched on the computer at Barbara’s desk, as she had always done when standing in. She knew the password and the user ID, but nothing happened until a message appeared on the screen in red – “ACCESS DENIED”.

  Now that really was odd.

  The office system was set up so that they all had access to common files and folders, but each also had their own personal sites using separate log-in codes, not accessible to others. Gladys had tried to access the common system. She knew the codes, so tried again. “ACCESS DENIED” again. Was it just Barbara’s computer site, or the whole office system? Perhaps they’d changed the codes or something. But you
’d have thought they would have said something. Needless to say, the bloke in the Communications Centre who dealt with computers and things wasn’t in yet, so she couldn’t ask. Gladys wasn’t much good at stuff like this. She was OK with paper, but not this sort of thing. It was all she could do to get the TV working properly in her flat.

  Perhaps it was just these three offices, she wondered, so she went to her own desk and tried that. It worked all right. That was something. At least the whole of Section 11 wasn’t of the air, or whatever they called it. Probably just the Head of Section, his Deputy and their PA. She didn’t like to go into their offices to check.

  Funny, that. No Barbara and no computer. Perhaps she’d accidentally mucked it up. Was that why she wasn’t in this morning?

  Nothing she could do about it, though, but wait for the computer chappy to turn up.

  Her phone rang. Mr Clayton, Head of Section.

  “I’m at the Cabinet Office, just going in to my meeting. Has Barbara turned up yet, Gladys?”

  “No she hasn’t. And the computers in the office don’t work, either.” Gladys announced.

  “Funny. Are they all down?”

  “I don’t know about the ones in your office and Mr Marsden’s, but Barbara’s certainly doesn’t. Have you changed to the passwords?”

  “No, we haven’t. Get IT on to it will you please?”

  “Not in yet, but I will when he gets here. I’ve left a message on his desk.”

  “Funny, that,” said Clayton, thinking aloud. “No Barbara and no computers. They must be got back on line immediately. It’s essential”

  Something odd about that Barbara, Gladys had always thought.

  She poured another coffee and lit another fag.

  ***

  Bill Clayton was surprised to find, when he got there, that the whole of the Joint Intelligence Committee had been summoned to the meeting in the Cabinet Office.

  Committee Chairman and Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Algar, wasted no time.

  “I’ve invited Bill Clayton to join us as Section 11 has been playing such a major role on the ground in the events of this past weekend, which are what we are here to discuss,” he said. “I am sure most of you, who’s Departments have been involved in one way or another, have already been briefed, but is anyone unfamiliar with what’s been happening?”