Foretold by Thunder

by Edward M. Davey

  “I won’t do anything for now,” said de Clerk, scrambling for kitchen roll. “I promise. Let’s catch our breath.”

  “Thanks,” she replied, meeting his eyes a heartbeat longer than was decent.

  Jenny glanced around the flat. The only traces of his personality were a stack of running magazines, a computer and a shelf of books on maths and computer science.

  “Cup of tea?” he asked lamely.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I could probably do with one.”

  De Clerk’s hands shook as he prepared the brew and his breath tapered through his lips. He poured himself some milk and took half the glass in two gulps. She could turn this man. She was sure of it.

  “Why did you go rogue?” said de Clerk. “You leave me no choice, Jenny. I’ve got to take you to Charlie. I’ve got to.” He looked at her face, then the floor. “But I want you to know it will hurt me. Very deeply, in fact.”

  In a world of secrets and lies the best way to make someone do your will is to be honest with them – one of the crowning ironies of espionage. Win their trust, make them want to help, then tell the truth. So that is what Jenny did.

  She described her disillusionment with the operation; how she had realized Jake was a good man; why she thought Waits was working not for the good of Britain, but his own maniac delusions of power. As Jenny spoke she saw de Clerk’s heart and his head do battle. In the pacing, in the fingers that wrung around each other, in the glass of milk that lay half-drunk, condensation running down its sides.

  “You say all this,” muttered de Clerk. “And it’s convincing, I’ll admit. But you don’t have any actual proof, do you?”

  The whole gamble relied on her judgement that de Clerk was a ‘clever-stupid’ person. Jenny’s grandfather had taught her there were three types of people in the world. Stupid-stupid – well, they weren’t much good for anything. Clever-clever – that was her, even if she admitted it herself. And clever-stupid, like Jake. In her experience, geniuses were prone to the latter state: brilliant, but fundamentally lacking in judgement. A Churchill, a van Gogh. If de Clerk was clever-clever they were in trouble.

  Jake was outside, eavesdropping via the open phone line in her pocket. Who would win in a fight between these two men? Jenny didn’t want to find out – she cared for them both. It was time to play the trump card.

  When she reached into her pocket de Clerk jumped.

  “It’s ok, Edwin,” she said. “I haven’t got a weapon.”

  “Sorry. I’m feeling a bit jumpy. It’s been a crazy morning.”

  “I understand,” said Jenny, a pen drive in her fingers. “Can I plug this into your PC?”

  Jenny studied de Clerk’s reaction as the recording began to play. Davis and Guilherme filled the screen, larging it in an Ethiopian hotel room; those boasts about waterboarding were no more palatable with the passing of time.

  “I don’t believe it,” de Clerk whispered. “I thought all this stopped years ago. And they planned to do it to a British journalist?”

  But when the carnage at Debre Damo played out he was speechless.

  “Why haven’t you sent this to the newspapers?” de Clerk said when it was over.

  “It’s enough to send Frank down,” Jenny admitted. “But Charlie’s not implicated. Frank would say he was acting alone – and then it would be my word against theirs. You know Charlie’s standing in the Firm. There would be only one winner in that tussle. And you can see how they deal with their enemies. The only way is forward. Gather more evidence, blow the whole scandal out into the open.”

  De Clerk staggered to the kitchen table and sat down, cradling his head in his hands. For a time there was silence. Then without looking up he said, “I’m not going to turn you in, Jenny. Of course I’m not.”

  She walked over to de Clerk and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Edwin.”

  De Clerk put his hand on hers. Then he sharply withdrew it, glancing up at her. “What were you even doing here at this time in the morning?”

  Jenny stared out of the window, in the direction of the Thames. “When they caught me I was on the way to Vauxhall Cross,” she said. “I wanted to scope out which guards they had on, in case there was any chance of getting in.”

  “But why?”

  “Because there’s something in there that might solve this,” she said. “Something that might put them away – if only we could get to it.”

  A thought occurred to de Clerk and his face brightened. “Well, I still work there, don’t I?”

  Clever-stupid.

  78

  The council of war was held in a chain coffee shop at Victoria Station.

  On the agenda: ascertaining whether one of the most top secret documents possessed by Her Majesty’s Government could be liberated.

  To be in attendance: Jake Wolsey, Jenny Frobisher, Niall Heston, Edwin de Clerk.

  Jake had dissuaded Heston from inviting Marvin Whyte. Heston trusted his security correspondent, but every newspaper on Fleet Street had staff run by MI6 officers and it was easy to imagine him being fed scoops from Vauxhall Cross in return for information. The smaller the circle, the safer they would be. And Jake had an ulterior motive. If this story stood up he would become one of the highest profile journalists in the country. He would be damned if Whyte was to share in la gloire.

  It was patently unsafe to meet at the newspaper, which was bound to be under surveillance. Their homes and cars would be compromised too. But a coffee shop in one of Britain’s busiest stations provided both anonymity and intimacy.

  Heston had not arrived yet.

  “Passports,” Jenny said.

  “What do you mean, passports?” Jake replied. “I haven’t bought mine with me, you never said I’d need it.”

  “No, not your passport. That won’t get you very far if this thing goes wrong and we need to get out of the country. We’ll need new identities, three each. That goes for you too, Edwin.”

  “I know, I know,” said de Clerk, shaking his head. He turned to Jake. “Travel Service can run the documents off pretty quickly for us. They have to do it all the time – it doesn’t even need to be sanctioned at a high level. Once they’ve fixed them up I can alter our database. They’ll be real passports with real microchips – but MI6 will have forgotten how they were made. You’ll need to create your legends of course.”

  “Legends?”

  “Your new identities,” he replied simply. “Names, dates of birth, how many dependants, stamps in each passport – the backstory generally.”

  “We’ll have to take new photographs,” said Jenny. “Dress up a bit.” She grinned. “You can have a bit of fun with this stuff.”

  Heston arrived at the table, the collar of his leather jacket turned up. Jake thought he looked flushed.

  “Sorry I’m late,” began Heston. “Got delayed by a security alert at the Tower of London. This might amuse you actually. There were rumours of a bomb at first. But it transpires one of the turrets got struck by lightning.”

  Jenny laughed. “There is no escape!”

  Jake made no comment.

  “Tell me then,” said Heston. “This file you’re after. Can it be done?”

  The MI6 agents exchanged looks.

  “Edwin knows more about the official secrets side of things,” said Jenny.

  Heston’s gull eyes studied de Clerk. Then he opened his palm and gave a half-wave, as if to say: speak.

  “Seeing as we’ve been talking about the Tower of London,” de Clerk began, “let me put it like this. I think it would be considerably easier to steal the Crown Jewels.”

  Jake winced, sipped his coffee and winced again. He’d ordered an Americano with an extra double shot – it tasted of crude oil. “Perhaps you could explain the hurdles we’d need to cross?” he said. “Hypothetically speaking.”

  “That would be a start,” said Heston.

  “The first difficulty is that this document will almost certainly only be stored on paper,” sa
id de Clerk. “To give you an example, the FSB – that’s the modern-day KGB – are a paper-only organization. It makes Russia a hundred times harder to spy on. You can’t hack your way in. You have to physically get what you want in your hand. In the UK paper is also used for the most highly-guarded documents. The ones classified at a level above top secret.”

  “There is such a thing?” said Heston.

  “You bet. Second problem. There’s a chance this document is kept at Gosport – it’s an old fort on the south coast. MI6 mainly use it for training, but there’s a sizeable archive there too.”

  “Surely it can’t be more protected than Vauxhall Cross?” asked Heston.

  De Clerk took a sip of his own coffee, something weird involving cinnamon and soya milk. “Just as impenetrable,” he said. “The public can’t get within two miles. Actually, for our purposes it’s worse. I’d need an excuse to visit and an official request from my manager. You can’t just wander into these places without good reason, even at DV level.”

  “What’s DV?”

  “Developed vetting,” said Jenny. “That’s the level Edwin and I are at. Sorry, the level I was at.”

  “They ask if you’ve ever taken drugs,” said de Clerk. “If you watch porn, whether you masturbate and if so how often. The idea is that you tell them the lot – then there’s nothing left to be blackmailed with.”

  And this was the organization they were attempting to penetrate.

  “Edwin would need an excuse to even leave the office,” said Jenny. “Since the Gareth Williams case they’ve been pretty hot on that.”

  Williams had done the same job as de Clerk until he was found naked and dead, zipped up in a hold-all; the disclosure that he’d been missing a week before MI6 raised the alarm had led to some uncomfortable questions.

  “I don’t think it would be in Gosport,” said Jenny. “Not knowing Charlie. He’d want to keep it close.”

  “The third problem is discovering the name of the file,” de Clerk. “Actually, that’s the biggest hurdle of all. The Dicks Report won’t be mentioned in the file name, and these archives aren’t the sort of place you can go rummaging around in – you’re admitted to inspect a single file, and you need the exact title. Without that it would be like finding a needle in several hundred haystacks.”

  “What’s the naming convention?” asked Jake.

  “There’s a nine digit reference number and then a date,” said de Clerk. “The date we know – 20th September 1941. Next comes the level of secrecy. I’d guess this report is ‘belt3’, which means for your eyes only, paper only. Unless there are even higher levels of secrecy I haven’t heard of, which I can’t rule out.”

  There were groans around the table. Jake watched Heston tap his lips with his index fingers, looking from face to face as the task became more daunting.

  He’s not going to go for it.

  They could always go it alone, of course – but having a national newspaper behind them offered a frisson of extra security. If they got caught, other journalists who knew where they were could be something to bargain with. And if Heston was involved throughout he would be more likely to publish whatever they found.

  “Finally there’s a codeword,” said de Clerk. “That’s the real kicker. The rest I can work around, but if we can’t get the codeword we can’t find the file, it’s that simple.”

  “What sort of codeword?” asked Jake.

  “They choose a word at random. It could be anything – armchair, ratatouille, shuttlecock, whatever. But it’ll be totally unconnected to the subject matter.”

  “Then how do we find it?” asked Heston.

  “We don’t,” said de Clerk. “That’s the point. In this case only two people will know it, Charlie and Evelyn. Hence why the system is impervious.”

  “Saints wept,” he replied.

  “And if we could obtain the file name?” asked Jake.

  “We’d still need authorization from Charlie to access the file.”

  “And what then?” said the editor.

  “If Charlie’s permission could be faked, someone – me I guess – would have to physically go and get the file. In theory once you’ve got all the authorizations that part’s easy.”

  “You could do it, Ed.”

  Jenny squeezed his hand; Jake sickened at the contact.

  “If only we could get that far,” she finished.

  “That’s a big if,” sighed de Clerk. “It’s impossible, isn’t it? Surely.”

  The contradiction came from an unexpected quarter.

  79

  “No.” Heston sat very straight and his tiny eyes examined each of them in turn. “No, it’s not impossible – few things are, when you put your mind to them. And we have several advantages. First off, we have a person on the inside, which gives us a massive edge. And that person is a computer expert – a genius in fact. Or so I’m told.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said de Clerk.

  “Come on man, don’t be bashful,” snapped Heston. “Going ahead with this operation is the biggest call of my career. Believe you me, stealing documents from MI6 is not a day-to-day occurrence on Fleet Street. Whether or not you are a genius is a pertinent question. What’s your IQ, for a start?”

  “It’s 161,” said Jenny.

  De Clerk coloured and sipped his coffee.

  “Right, higher than Einstein’s IQ,” said Heston. “So you are a genius. And it pains me to admit this, but Jake here’s probably not that far off either.”

  “I’d say Jenny’s brighter than me,” Jake hastened.

  “This is my point,” said Heston. “We’ve got four highly intelligent people in this room. And Edwin knows the system inside out, he’s got his fingers on the buttons. There must be a way to get this codeword.”

  Jake had never seen him like this: he realised what the story meant to his boss too.

  And Heston didn’t know the half of it.

  The room swayed as the enormity of what they were doing hit home. The risks, the rewards, the philosophical ramifications. For the knowledge was always with Jake: the outcome of this operation was already foretold, and by some nebulous cognizance that was watching them even now. Nesta’s electromagnetic network; Eusebius’s All-Seeing Eye.

  “So all of you, think!” said Heston, wrenching Jake back into the room. “We can work out how to do this!”

  They sat with heads bowed, as if in prayer. Heston bought more coffee; ideas were discussed and discarded. Then Jake cleared his throat, a curious twist to his mouth.

  “Only two people in the world know this codename, correct?”

  “Correct,” said Jenny. “Not even the PM is briefed on this. Not even The Queen.”

  “Then there’s only one thing we can do.”

  Suddenly Jenny saw it too. “He’s right,” she said. “Thinking about it laterally there is only one way.”

  Heston leaned in. “Which is?”

  “We will need to get them to discuss it.”

  *

  “Good thought that man,” shouted Heston, clapping his hands. “And once they’re discussing it we record them – a classic tabloid sting. Why didn’t I think of that? Easy! I used to be chief investigative reporter on the Sun.”

  “Easy?” De Clerk looked pained. “Easier said than done, my friend, even if we were somehow able to socially engineer a conversation between two of MI6’s smoothest operators.”

  “You could hack their email accounts?” suggested Jake. “Impersonate Charlie, try to wheedle it out of Evelyn?”

  “Oh don’t be soft,” said Heston. “This is MI6 for fuck’s sake.”

  “Actually, I’m pretty confident I could hack the accounts,” said de Clerk.

  “How?” Heston was incredulous. “MI6 must have the most formidable firewalls on the planet.”

  “I helped design them,” he replied. “But unfortunately that’s no use to us.”

  “Why not?” asked Jake.

  “Because neither of
them would ever mention the codeword by email.”

  “They’d only say it verbally,” said Jenny. “And inside an SSR.”

  “Just for today might we try and steer away from the jargon?” said Heston. “For the sake of those of us who aren’t professional spies?”

  “Ok, ok,” said Jenny. “They would only discuss it in a secure speech room.”

  He winced. “Secure speech room? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “You book them to discuss something top secret,” explained de Clerk. “They’re deep underground – thick walls, completely soundproofed. And each room is equipped with a Nace machine.”

  “What’s a Nace machine?” asked Jake, a child again.

  “It detects electronic circuits,” replied Jenny. “You bring your mobile in and it beeps. Bring your car keys in and it beeps. Bring a bloody torch in and it beeps – you can’t secrete any kind of recording device in the vicinity.”

  “Is this ‘Nace’ a physical object?” asked Heston.

  De Clerk nodded. “Yeah, it’s a sort of black column and at the bottom is a strip with LED lights which blink to show it’s functioning. Even the frequency these things work on is top secret. They’re made by Q Branch – you know, James Bond and all that?” He looked bashful. “Q Branch actually exists.”

  Heston produced an irritable noise. “Jesus.”

  “Look, secrets are MI6’s game,” said de Clerk. “If secrets were easy to lose, what would be the point in the organization?”

  “There’s one other thing on our side though,” said Jenny.

  “What’s that?” said Heston.

  “It’s that people are fallible,” she replied. “Even Charlie. That’s the basis of espionage, it’s why we bother. People lose concentration, people have affairs. They have drug habits, they like to show off. Every MI6 officer thinks they’ve got the coolest job in the world – there are some monster egos in Vauxhall Cross, believe me. But they can’t boast about their work to anyone except each other. That’s why there are so many bars in the building. So staff can let off steam and talk about the day-to-day stuff.”