Present Danger

by Stella Rimington

  Ahead of her she could just see Charles Wetherby in the front row, flanked by his two sons and others, presumably relations. There was a woman in the row behind them, smartly dressed in a dark-blue suit with an elegant black hat, who was leaning forward whispering to Charles’s younger son, Sam. She must be another relation, thought Liz.

  She hadn’t seen Charles since Joanne’s death and she felt a sudden pang seeing him now, so obviously bereft. She had of course written to him, but she wished she could have done more than just send a few lines.

  He’d written back, thanking her. The boys, he’d said, had been pillars of strength, though naturally he worried about them, and he’d be keeping a particularly keen eye on Sam, the younger of the two, still more boy than man. Charles ended by saying how much he was looking forward to returning to work.

  Liz hoped that meant he was looking forward to seeing her as well. She had missed him at work, both as a boss (the best she’d ever had) and as … what exactly? She had only recently acknowledged to herself how strong her feelings were for Charles, yet they had never exchanged so much as a kiss. She wondered if that would change now, then immediately felt guilty about envisaging a future with Charles that Joanne Wetherby would never now have.

  Next to Liz, her mother’s friend Edward Treglown put the order of service paper neatly folded on his knee, and whispered something to Liz’s mother on his other side. Liz had been astonished by the coincidence that Edward, who had known her mother for only a couple of years, was a childhood friend of Joanne Wetherby. It turned out that they had grown up together in the same town in Kent. As adults they had lost touch, but came back into contact – because of Liz, curiously enough.

  After Liz had been badly hurt several months before, during an investigation into a plot to derail a Middle East peace conference, she had gone to her mother’s to convalesce. Concerned about her safety there, Charles Wetherby had contacted Edward; meeting in London, the two had immediately taken to each other, even before discovering Edward’s earlier friendship with Joanne. By this time Joanne was already very ill, but Liz gathered that Edward and her mother had been to see both Wetherbys on more than one occasion. If either Susan Carlyle or Edward had any inkling of Liz’s own feelings for Charles, they kept it to themselves.

  The Bach Prelude ended, and there was a chilly silence in the church, the only noise that of light rain thrown by the wind against the stained glass windows. Then the vicar stood before the congregation and the service began. It was traditional, with old standbys for the hymns, and a short appreciation by an old friend of Joanne’s. There were two readings, given by the sons; Sam’s voice quavered as he reached the end of Keats’s ‘Ode to Autumn’, a favourite of his mother’s as he’d told the crowded church. There were tears in many eyes as resolutely he gathered himself together and finished with a strong, resonant voice:

  The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,

  And gathering swallows twitter in the sky.

  A final hymn and the service concluded. As the haunting sound of the organ playing Purcell filled the nave, the congregation rose and began slowly to file out. The thin drizzle had ended, and the sky had lightened slightly to a chalky mix of greys as Charles stood outside the church with the boys next to him. Liz let Edward and her mother go first to offer condolences. Then it was her turn.

  ‘Liz,’ said Charles, gripping her hand firmly. ‘It’s lovely to see you. Thank you so much for coming. How have you been?’

  ‘I’m fine, Charles,’ she said as brightly as she could. It was characteristic of him to ask how she was.

  ‘You’ve met Sam before,’ he said, turning slightly to include his son. The boy smiled shyly and shook her hand. The woman in the black hat Liz had noticed in church came up to the other son, laying a comforting hand on his arm. Was she an aunt? Charles said, ‘Liz, I want you to meet Alison.’

  The woman looked up and smiled. She had a striking but friendly face, with high cheekbones, a sharp nose, and unusual violet eyes. ‘Liz,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’

  Really? thought Liz with surprise. From Charles? Or from Joanne?

  Charles explained, ‘Alison lives next door to us. We’ve been neighbours for years.’

  ‘Yes. Joanne brought me a cake on the day we moved in.’ She looked fondly at Sam. ‘You weren’t even born then, young man.’

  Other people were waiting to speak to Charles, so Liz moved on. She had been invited with others for refreshments at the Wetherby house several miles away, but she couldn’t face a large gathering just now – she wanted to see Charles, but she wanted to see him alone. Her presence or absence would be neither here nor there among the dozens of people certain to be found at the Wetherbys.

  Saying goodbye to her mother and Edward, she left, having decided to drive straight back to Thames House and get on with her work. She’d see Charles there soon enough. If he needed someone to talk to today, Liz sensed that his neighbour Alison would be happy to stand in.

  3

  Something was holding them up. Their driver tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel and Beth Davis looked out of the window at the patchy woods that lined the A307 south of Richmond. She had two meetings planned for that afternoon and was wondering if she’d be back in time for either of them.

  She glanced at DG sitting next to her. He looked the soul of patience. Typical of him, thought Beth. God knows how many meetings he must have scheduled, yet at the gathering after the service at Charles’s house, he had been a model of tact: solicitous of Charles, polite to the array of friends and relatives he’d been introduced to, never giving any indication that he had pressing business elsewhere.

  The car inched forward, tyres churning the slushy piles of leaves in the gutter of the road. ‘Lovely service,’ DG said with a small sigh.

  ‘The boys read beautifully,’ said Beth, and DG nodded. She went on, ‘It must be awfully hard on them, especially now that they’re boarding.’

  ‘I think only the eldest is boarding yet. And boarding may be a good thing. They’re kept busy, lots of distractions, all their friends around them. Being at home might be much harder. Too many ghosts; too many reminders.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Still, it will make it more difficult for Charles when they’re both away. Wandering around that house all alone.’

  DG gave a small grunt. After a moment he said, ‘Our lot made a good show of it, I thought.’

  ‘Yes. Thames House must have been seriously undermanned for a few hours.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone leaving the service, so let’s hope there were no crises.’ DG smiled, then grew serious. ‘I didn’t see Liz Carlyle.’

  ‘I did; she was at the church, with her mother. She didn’t go on to the house though. She must have had to get straight back.’

  DG nodded and looked thoughtful. Beth sensed what he was thinking – it was no secret that Liz and Charles were close, though no doubt the two of them believed no one else had noticed. But how could you fail to observe their obvious mutual attraction? The way Charles’s face would light up when Liz joined a meeting he was chairing. The rapt look on Liz’s face when Charles was speaking. You would have been blind to miss it.

  The couple’s feelings for each other would not have been a problem if Liz had worked for anyone else. But now she was reporting to Charles again, since he had taken over the counter espionage branch, and that’s where matters grew complicated.

  It was not an unknown, or even uncommon situation. It was understood within the service that the secrecy of the job made it hard to forge relationships with anyone ‘outside’, and that therefore office romances were inevitable. Joanne Wetherby herself had worked for Charles, Beth remembered, though once Joanne and Charles had started seeing each other she’d been posted – to work for DG in fact, when he had still been a director.

  What was expected, however, was that the participants in office romances declare themselves at once, and understand that one of the pair would
have to be moved. The power of love might be accepted, but its inevitable impact on working relations couldn’t be.

  As far as Beth knew, Liz and Charles had nothing to declare. If anyone had told her that the pair of them sloped off quietly at lunchtime to the City Inn Hotel on John Islip Street, or rendezvoused at the weekend in a West Country B&B, she would not have believed them. Charles was far too upright, too devoted to his wife to do anything like that. And Beth simply couldn’t see Liz in the role of mistress, waiting restlessly by the phone for a call from her married lover. Beth was sure that with these two, there had been no illicit affair. And that was the problem: everything was bubbling beneath the surface.

  DG sighed again, this time more loudly, usually a sign that his thoughts were about to find vocal expression. They were in Putney now, about to cross the river. DG said, ‘I think we’ve got a bit of a problem on our hands.’

  Beth nodded; there was no need for him to say what the problem was. She waited patiently and at last he added, ‘It could be very difficult for them both.’ He threw up a hand to indicate his own ambivalence. ‘I mean, there’s nothing stopping them now, is there?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Beth.

  ‘Though my father used to say “forbidden fruit looks less attractive once it’s off the tree.”’

  Beth gave a small snort. ‘With all respect to your father, I don’t think the mutual attraction’s going to diminish. It’s other things that will get in the way.’

  DG fingered his tie soberly. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like guilt, unjustified though it might be. And I suppose the fear that what you’ve wanted so long could finally be yours.’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Yes. Not that it won’t turn out to be what you wanted, but that somehow you don’t deserve it. They say long-term prisoners are often terrified when their release date approaches. It’s just too much – the prospect of having what you’ve desired for so long is too daunting.’

  ‘You think it could be that bad for those two?’

  Beth shrugged. She was paid to understand people, but had long learned that such understanding was precarious, and never to be assumed. She said, ‘I’d like to think not.’

  ‘But you’re not sure,’ said DG, and it wasn’t posed as a question. ‘In which case their work will almost certainly be affected. So I think they might profit from a break.’

  Beth must have looked horrified, as if he had suggested ordering the two to go off together for a week’s leave in Paris, for he added hastily, ‘I mean a break from each other.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth with relief.

  ‘Yes,’ said DG.

  What now? she thought warily. Personnel and postings were her responsibility, and he rarely interfered directly. But now she could see he had made his mind up. She didn’t want an argument, so she hoped she’d be able to go along with whatever he’d decided.

  He said emphatically, ‘I think Liz should be posted – at least temporarily, while Charles settles back in at work. There’s a lot for him to do, you know,’ he said, almost accusingly, as if he thought she might think he was being unnecessarily harsh.

  ‘Where do you want to put her?’ she asked. Counter terrorism, she imagined. That’s where Liz had been before. Working for Charles when he had been director there.

  ‘We’ll have to work that out,’ he said, rather to her surprise. If he’d already decided, as she suspected he had, he clearly wasn’t ready to say. ‘It’s got to be something challenging. I don’t want her to think it’s in any way a demotion. That wouldn’t be fair on Liz.’

  ‘No, though—’ and Beth hesitated. When DG looked at her questioningly, she sighed. ‘She’s going to see it that way, I fear.’

  ‘Probably.’ DG shrugged lightly. ‘But that can’t be helped. And so long as we make sure her new posting is tough enough, she’ll soon get stuck in. She’s too good an officer not to.’

  4

  The call came out of the blue and Dave didn’t recognise the name.

  ‘Phil Robinson,’ the man on the end of the phone repeated, with an English-sounding voice. ‘I’m a warden with the National Trust. I was in contact with the RUC Special Branch in the past. I was told to ring you.’

  Dave Armstrong had been in Northern Ireland for a couple of months. He was part of the team that was gradually filling up the smart new MI5 offices in Palace Barracks, the army HQ a few miles north of Belfast city centre. With power-sharing in Northern Ireland taking its first staggering steps, the new Police Service of Northern Ireland that had replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary had handed over intelligence work in the province to MI5.

  With that transfer of power went all the records of the large stable of agents – the human sources that had fed the RUC with information from inside the Republican and the Loyalist armed groups during the Troubles. It was information far too sensitive to retain in a police service that might find itself answering to government ministers or members of a police board who were once themselves part of the armed groups. The last thing the new police service wanted was a spate of revenge killings or score settling.

  So Dave and a couple of colleagues in the agent-running section of the MI5 team had the job of sorting through the list of sources they’d inherited, closing down the many who were of no future use and getting to know the few who might continue to be of value. For although the so-called ‘peace process’ was well established and the security threat in Northern Ireland had changed, it hadn’t gone away. The Provisional IRA might have disbanded its armed groups and decommissioned its weapons but there were still those among its former ranks – and Loyalists on the other side of the divide – who did not support the peace process. For them the war was not over, which meant Dave and his colleagues were monitoring several renegade groups determined to do all they could to keep the war very much alive.

  Phil Robinson. The name now rang a bell. It had stuck out of the list of old sources because of the National Trust link. It had seemed an unlikely connection, but Dave knew that National Trust properties had been the target of IRA attacks in the past. In 1973 two young IRA volunteers had blown themselves up in the Castle Ward estate with a bomb they were trying to plant. After that, the security forces had paid more attention to the Trust’s properties in Northern Ireland, and Robinson had been one of the people who’d been recruited to advise them.

  ‘How can I help?’ asked Dave now.

  ‘Something’s come up. I wonder if we could meet.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dave, thankful to have something active to do. He was finding the routine job of reviewing old files and standing down old cases tedious. Maybe this would turn out to be nothing, but Robinson sounded sensible. So Dave said, ‘How about this afternoon?’

  *

  They had arranged to meet in the middle of the city. Dave took one of the operational cars from the garage and drove, working his way through the traffic into the heart of Belfast, busy even in mid-afternoon. When he’d first arrived, it had been a pleasant surprise to find the middle of the city lively, vibrant, humming with activity. The images Dave had grown up with – soldiers with automatic weapons, barricades and barbed wire, the apprehensive looks on people’s faces – had been replaced by teeming shops, pedestrian areas (from which cars were now banned for reasons that had nothing to do with security), and a buoyant nightlife. It was hard to believe that not so long ago the city had been to all intents and purposes a war zone. And although Dave’s job gave him a healthy scepticism about the new-found peace, the citizens of Belfast seemed too intent on enjoying ‘normal life’ to let things be derailed by a few murderous malcontents.

  He was living in one of the flats the service leased in the suburb of Holywood, just outside Palace Barracks. It was an area of the town that had been comfortably safe in the Troubles but now, for someone living on their own like Dave, it was rather dull and lonely. He had a girlfriend in London, Lucy. They’d been together for two years, which for him was a long time. But it was diffic
ult keeping it going when they were so far apart. He was too busy to hop over to England every weekend and there wasn’t much point in Lucy coming to see him if he had to work. But he was serious about her and that meant he wasn’t looking to meet girls in the bars of Belfast’s lively nightlife – he didn’t join his younger colleagues when they went out partying.

  But he’d just heard some news that had lifted his spirits. Michael Binding, the head of the MI5 office in Northern Ireland, had told them all that morning that Liz Carlyle was coming out to head the agent-running section. Dave knew that Binding didn’t have much time for Liz, or she for him. But Dave had both affection and respect for her, though he wondered, now that she was going to be his boss, if their relationship would change. Not that they had been very close for the last couple of years. Liz had been transferred from counter terrorism, and it was only a fluke that they had recently worked together – in Scotland, at Gleneagles, on a plot to ruin a vital peace conference. It had been good working with her again; she was formidable without being aware of it, straightforward, clear, decisive.

  That wasn’t all, of course. For a time, five or six years ago, they had been not only good work colleagues but close friends as well. They might even have been more than that, but some mutual hesitation had held them back. More ‘mutual’ for her than me, Dave thought sadly, because he’d realised ever since that a part of him regretted that they hadn’t got together. Well, that was out of the question, now. For one thing he was with Lucy and for another, you didn’t get a second chance with someone like Liz. Anyway, he knew that her heartstrings were tied somewhere else – to Charles Wetherby. When Joanne had died two months ago, Dave’s first thought had been that Liz and Charles would be together. So why on earth was Liz coming to Belfast?