by Duncan James
“So as I said, decidedly odd.”
Throughout all this, Nick Marsden was looking more and more concerned and ashen faced.
“You could, and perhaps should, ask me, as I was supposed to be marrying Barbara at some time. But now I begin to think about it, I really know precious little about them, either. I took them at face value, and never really thought to ask whether or not it was their house or whether they rented it, or anything else like that. They say love is blind. Perhaps it is, but I’ve only known Barbara socially for a short time, so the relationship hadn’t got down to the nitty-gritty of personal backgrounds.”
He paused puzzled. “I have a vague notion that Mrs Wilkinson said, or indicated at least, that they came from up North somewhere – near York, I think – but neither of them had any hint of a north country accent.”
“If I may, I’ll get someone to ask you a few questions, to see if he can jog your memory. Perhaps Peter Northcot could take that on, since you know one another? I’ll also get some checks done on people named ‘Wilkinson’ form the York area – births, marriages etc. How old is Barbara, if I may ask?”
“Thirty four; birthday in April.”
“That’s helpful. At least we have a date now to start looking. Anyway, at the moment it looks as if they have gone away and deliberately tried to hide all trace of themselves,” said Newell.
“Is that the interesting development you mentioned?” asked Clayton.
“No, it isn’t. I’ll come to that now. Not only interesting, but probably very significant and important. We found a message on the answerphone in the house, recorded at about 10.30pm on Saturday. I say about, because the time setting on the machine is way out, and plainly has not been corrected for ages. However, it is from a young boy who we assume to be Donald, and I’ll get you, Nick to listen to it to confirm that at some time as soon as possible.
“The message is a bit panicked, but is meant for you, Nick.” Clive looked at his notes. “It says ‘Uncle Nick, I don’t want to be taken away, please come and … yeeeoooow.’ That’s all, except there is the sound of a woman’s voice in the background, obviously shouting at him. The phone seems to have been grabbed from him, as the boy can be heard crying out.
“This is a bit upsetting for all of us, but must be especially so for you, Nick. I can’t think how we missed the call, but we must have been somewhere else when the phone rang.”
“So where was it from?” demanded a frantic Nick Marsden.
“We’re checking on that,” said Stuart Carrington, from GCHQ. “My chaps are on to it.”
“But you should know by now. You’re supposed to have intercepts, phone taps and traces in place on all our phones and internet connections, including that one.”
“I know,” said Carrington. “I’m sure we shall be able to trace it eventually.”
“Do you mean to tell me that it wasn’t being monitored at all?” demanded Marsden. “That poor little bastard risked everything late at night to get word to me from somewhere. He is plainly being taken away against his wishes. He needs help, and risked everything to try to get it. And you missed the phone call and didn’t even manage to log it or record it.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Sorry is no damned good. That boy is only six, and his writing isn’t up to much yet, so he probably couldn’t have left a note behind when he was taken away even if he had the opportunity. But he has always been taught to use the phone in case of an emergency. His home number is the only one he was made to remember.”
Marsden stood up.
“Let’s get over there now. I need to listen to that call. Come with me, Carrington.”
As he stormed out of the room, Marsden turned to Northcot.
“I’ll do our briefing when I get back. Hope you understand, Peter.”
Northcot nodded. “Of course.”
He turned to Clayton. “I’ll get back to the office and make sure there’s nothing urgent going on, then come back here, if I may.”
“Do that,” agreed Bill. “We’ll have time for a chat, I’m sure. Other people are busier on this operation than I am at the moment. Make sure Gladys knows where you are.”
The meeting broke up, and Northcot went back to his office upstairs.
“Interesting?” asked Gladys.
“Very. I think I need one of your coffees, please. And that written briefing from the safe, after all.”
***
‘S’ was still in the briefing room when the red phone rang. It was the Cabinet Secretary from Downing Street.
“Just checking in, Bill, to see how things are going. Anything to report yet?”
“Not really, Sir Robin,” he replied. “We seem to be settling down nicely as a team, but this is the very early stages as I’m sure you realise. We are getting systems in place, and have drawn up tentative lists of what information was obviously passed to Dmitri Makienko, and who here would have had access to it and been able to pass it on. You’re on the list as you can imagine, but there aren’t all that many who had access to everything.”
“What about Barbara? Any news of her?”
“As a matter of fact, there is. The whole family has left home in what appears to have been a well planned and executed get-away, but we have no idea yet why they went or where they went to. We think they may have come from Yorkshire somewhere originally, so we are checking records up there.”
“Very odd, that they should just disappear like that.”
“Also very annoying, Robin, in that the boy, Donald, tried to get a phone call through to Nick Marsden asking for help, but for some reason GCHQ had not put the intercepts in place, so we have no idea where the call came from. This sort of thing is just not good enough.”
“But they should have been in place as a matter of urgency. When was the call?”
“Saturday night.”
“That really is not good enough,” said the Chairman of the JIC. “I’ll get on to my opposite number at the Foreign Office straight away, and get him to sort it out immediately. This really is not good enough.”
Sir Wilfred Forsyth was Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, and the Director of GCHQ reported directly to him. He was shocked when he heard about the missed intercepts.
“This is certainly not what I’d expect,” Sir Wilfred agreed. “I’ll get on to the Director immediately.”
The Director also agreed. “Plainly something wrong somewhere.”
The Director got on to his GCHQ man in the Section 11 Ops Room, Stuart Carrington, who happened to be out at the Wilkinsons’ place at the time, so he eventually made contact on Carrington’s mobile phone, via a secure satellite link.
“This is a bloody shambles, and simply not up to the standard I expect,” was the message. “Furthermore, I don’t like being told by the Cabinet Secretary that my organisation is falling down on the job.”
Carrington agreed. “We’re working on it with all urgency, of course, but I agree that so far what we’ve done has been far from good enough.”
Carrington looked across to Nick Marsden.
“Bollocking from on high,” he said. “We’ve been let down somewhere down the chain, and that’s appalling. What I’ll do is get this machine to Cheltenham as soon as possible. We should be able to analyse the background noise at least, and perhaps catch something of what the lady says when she grabs the phone from the boy.”
“I’ll organise a messenger if you like,” offered Nick. “We have some good drivers and very fast motorbikes. But we’ll need to replace this answerphone before it leaves here, in case the boy tries to get through again.”
Carrington’s phone rang again.
“About bloody time,” he said, after a pause. “We’ve already missed one vital call, and that is patently not on.”
“All the intercepts are in place now,” he told Marsden, “and with any luck at all, we should still be able to find out the general area where this call came from, if not the actual number of
the phone that was used.”
“Anything at all will help,” said Marsden, stating the obvious, “and the quicker the better. Let’s get back to Clerkenwell. There are things to do.”
***
By the time they got back, Clayton had already decided that meetings twice a day were no good. Things were moving too fast now, and they couldn’t afford to wait to exchange information. He decreed that a representative from each of the constituent organisations would always be present in the Ops Room on a 24 hour basis, so that any incoming information could be passed on immediately. They all knew the form.
He told Gladys.
“That means that either I or Nick or Peter Northcot should be with you in the office, while the other two of us are down here,” he told her. “But it does mean that you’re going to be busy guarding all the phones, and you must make sure you keep us all briefed about our day-to-day operations in case we miss something.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Gladys, who was quite enjoying things. “I’ll also look after the Admin side of things, and try to make sure you’re kept fed and watered. If I can’t do it myself, I’ll get one of my girls to make sure the kitchen is kept stocked up, so that you won’t starve. Can’t have you not going home for two days again, and not noticing,” she said.
“That’s great – thanks! Anything to report yet, while I’m on?
“I’ve got the new computer up and running and I’ve loaded on the back-up file, too. A chap from GCHQ took a copy of it as well, and that’s gone to Cheltenham with the old computer. I get the impression they’ve just about finished going through these three offices, taking finger prints and everything, so I’ll try to get things as near to normal for you as I can ready for when you do manage to get up here. In case you want them, I’ve drawn a few camp beds from the store, and I’ll get a couple of them down to the Ops Room in case you need them overnight, and I’ll keep a couple up here. You can sign for them later.”
Clayton knew she wasn’t joking, either.
“I’ve also made sure there’s a drop or two of wine in the fridge up here, if you need to get away from it all. I’ve kept the receipts.”
“Wonderful, Gladys – thanks again. Look after Peter as best you can, but don’t hesitate to ring any of us if you need to.”
“Mr Northcot is busy reading the briefing you had when you first arrived, so he’s occupied for the time being. Since you always want someone up here, I’ll tell him to hang about until he’s relieved, shall I?”
Gladys was clearly in charge.
“You could also do us all a favour.”
“Anything.”
“We need to know who the owners are of the Wilkinson property in Battersea. Get on to the Land Registry and look up their title register. You know Barbara’s address; it’s on the file somewhere. There is a fee to pay, so I’ll let you sort that out. Only a few quid, I think, so either pay it yourself and claim it back or something. I’m sure you’ll get round it somehow. The title registry will tell you the registered owner of the property. That’s what we need to know. I think you can do it all on the internet.”
“Consider it done.”
***
Marsden went straight to the Ops Room when he got back.
“There’s no doubt it was Donald who made that phone call, but I didn’t recognise the voice in the background.”
“Anything else?” asked Clayton.
“The phone is going to Cheltenham for GCHQ to analyse it and see if they can pick up anything from the background. Tracing the source would be helpful, but I have my doubts. One of our blokes is taking it down by bike, but we’ve replaced it with another answerphone in case Donald tries to ring again.”
“My call to Robin Algar seems to have worked. I gather all the intercepts are in place now.”
“So I’m told. My guess would be that Donald made his call from somewhere in the UK. He would probably not be able work one from abroad, and wouldn’t know the UK dialling code anyway.”
“They would hardly have had the time to get out of the country if the answerphone timer was anything like accurate.”
“True. I had only jumped into the Alps a few hours before that. But they didn’t waste much time leaving home, did they? They must have left almost at the time I set off, as I went to Brize Norton straight from Battersea. We don’t know, of course, if they did leave the country. They may still be somewhere in the UK.”
“A hasty departure must have been on the books for simply ages. They couldn’t have cleared out the house of absolutely everything in the time between you leaving them and Donald’s call.”
“We need to find Barbara’s car urgently,” said Nick.
“They’re looking. By the way, I’ve got Gladys looking up the Land Registry files to find out who actually owns the place where the Wilkinsons lived.”
“Where’s Peter?”
“Upstairs in the office, reading the written brief you handed me when I arrived. Poor fellow has been thrown in a bit at the deep end.”
“He’ll survive.”
“If neither of us can get round to it soon, I’ll get Gladys to show him around and introduce him to people.”
“As a matter of interest, Nick, did Barbara know you were going to parachute into Switzerland to help out Dusty?”
“She must have done,” he replied. “I was at her place when you scrambled me to get the Arctic team together.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Clayton.
“Do you think it was her who told Makienko I was on my way?”
“Somebody did. It could have been her mother, of course. I don’t know what to think yet, but I am fast coming to the conclusion that we can stop treating these two issues as separate.”
“I agree. She’s on our list of suspects anyway, and one of the few who knew just about everything that was going on to protect Jack Barclay, as he then was.”
“We should soon be able to start a process of elimination, and whittle that list down a bit. The MI5 chaps are taking the lead in that.”
“I’m not too impressed with them. They let Makienko slip through their fingers at Heathrow, when they assumed he was going to Moscow rather than watch him board the aircraft. That cost us valuable hours tracking down the fact that he actually went to Zurich.”
“That means he must have known that Lloyd was in Switzerland. But why did he go to Zurich and not direct to Geneva, which was nearer to where they were?
“Perhaps there wasn’t a flight.”
“But perhaps he didn’t know Dusty was with him, either.”
“I really must get on to Selly Oak again to check on how he is.”
“One of us.”
Clive Newell came over to them.
“News from forensic, boss. There are no unexpected finger prints either in your offices here or at the Wilkinsons’. As you would expect, plenty of Barbara’s around both the computers, but nobody else’s.”
“So it looks as if it was her who took out both hard drives.”
“Right. No evidence of anyone else tampering with them.”
“Pass that on to the MI5 & 6 teams, will you?”
“It begins to look as if the Wilkinsons are not away on holiday after all, then. Seems we are dealing with one enquiry and not two after all.”
Nick Marsden looked quite upset.
“If she’s made a fool of me all this time, I’ll never forgive her.”
“You may never see her again, of course.”
“I can hardly believe all this,” said a distressed Marsden. “But I shall see her again, make no mistake. I shall seek her out, wherever she is.”
“Do you think she will ever try to get in touch with you again?”
“Yes, I do. And I’m quite sure Donald will, even if she doesn’t.”
He paused.
“Remind me of the time once before when we discussed the possibility of her being a mole. That was something to do with Donald, wasn’t it?”
“Right. It w
as at the time the Russians were blackmailing Jarvis, and we were trying to work out how the Russians knew that Jarvis was Donald’s father. Again, a question of who knew, and who could have told them.”
“I remember now. We eventually ruled Barbara out because we couldn’t think of a motive, and discovered that the Russians had got hold of a copy of the boy’s birth certificate, with Jarvis named as his father. There weren’t many other possibilities, though. Only Barbara’s mother, apart from the two of us. Barbara and Alan Jarvis obviously knew, but Jarvis was hardly likely to tell anyone, let alone the Russians, for exactly the reason that it would lay him open to blackmail, and put his career at risk.”
“And we simply couldn’t see any motive on Barbara’s part, or what she could possibly gain by telling the Russians something that nobody else knew about,” Clayton reminded him. “If she’d wanted, she could have screwed up Jarvis’s career sooner by telling you, or Sir Robin Algar or someone. Telling the Russians made no sense. The fact was she told nobody until I stumbled across the possibility and forced her into admitting the fact. So that put me in the frame. I could have told the Russians,” continued Clayton. “But nobody on that list of five people seemed to have the slightest motive for telling anyone, let alone the Russians.”
“We could have just asked Barbara, of course, but that would have alerted her to the fact that we suspected she could be a spy of some sort,” said Marsden, “but we chose not put her on notice and on her guard, just in case.”
“Suppose we were wrong, after all,” postured Clayton.
“You mean Barbara did tell them?” said an incredulous Marsden.
“It could have been an elaborate, and rather clever, diversion, getting the birth certificate.”
“A double bluff, by a double agent?”