Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  He walked cautiously over to the pile, wrinkling his nose at the smell, which was almost overpowering now. In front of the box he hesitated; for the first time cold fingers of fear touched his spine. Trust in the Lord he told himself, as with both hands he slowly lifted the heavy oak lid.

  He found himself looking at a young man’s face - a white face, an English face perhaps, in its twenties, with thinnish blond hair combed straight back. It would have been a conventional, perfectly usual sort of face, except that the eyes bulged like a gruesome parrot’s, and the mouth was set in a rictus of agony, lips stretched wide and tight over the teeth. The tendons of the throat strained against the skin of the neck like tautened cords. There was no question: he was dead.

  As Willoughby stepped back, horrified and frightened, he saw that the man’s legs had been bent at the knee, presumably to cram him into the chest. The knees were pressed together, drawn up almost to the chin, held by a cat’s cradle of rope that encircled his throat, then passed down his back and around his legs again. The man had been trussed like a chicken, though since both his hands were gripping one end of the rope, it looked as if he had trussed himself. If that were so, who had put him in the box?

  FOUR

  In her fourth-floor office at Thames House, in the counter espionage branch, Liz was telling Peggy Kinsolving about yesterday’s experiences at the Old Bailey.

  ‘Gosh, thank goodness it was you, not me,’ said Peggy, shuddering. Peggy had also played a key role in the investigation that had brought Neil Armitage into court.

  It had been over a year since the young desk officer had transferred from MI6 to MI5. After leaving Oxford with a good 2:1 in English and vague scholarly ambitions, Peggy had taken a job in a private library in Manchester. There, with few visitors using the library, she had been free to pursue her own researches, which was what she had thought she wanted to do. But the solitary days and evenings soon began to pall and when, quite by chance, she had learned of a job as a researcher in a specialised government department in London, she had applied. At the age of twenty-four, still with the round spectacles and freckles that had made her family call her Bobbity Bookworm, Peggy had found herself working for MI6.

  Peggy was a girl who thought for herself. She had seen enough of life to take no one at face value. But for Liz she felt something like… she had to admit it to herself something like hero-worship. Or was it heroine-worship? No, that didn’t sound quite right. Liz was something Peggy would have liked to be. Whatever happened, she always seemed to know what to do. Liz didn’t have to keep pushing her spectacles back up her nose whenever she got excited; she didn’t wear spectacles. Liz was cool. But Peggy knew that Liz needed her, relied on her - and that was enough.

  Peggy had applied to transfer to MI5 after working with Liz on a particularly sensitive case - a mole in the intelligence services - and though MI6 were not best pleased, MI5 had welcomed her with open arms. Studying her junior’s eager face, Liz realised that Peggy now felt completely at ease in Thames House. She’s one of us, she thought.

  ‘When will we hear the verdict?’ asked Peggy.

  Liz looked at her watch. ‘Any moment now, I should think.’

  As if on cue, Charles Wetherby poked his head through the open door. Smiling at Peggy, he said to Liz, ‘Armitage has got twelve years.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ said Peggy with conviction.

  ‘I suppose he’ll serve about half, won’t he?’ asked Liz.

  ‘Yes. He’ll be retirement age by the time he gets out. How did it go in the Cabinet Office yesterday?’

  ‘I was just writing it up. We had a guest appearance by Sir Nicholas Pomfret. Apparently there’s something hot off the press from Six.’

  Wetherby nodded. ‘So I gather. I’ve just had a call from Geoffrey Fane. He’s coming across in half an hour. I’d like you there.’

  Liz raised an eyebrow. Fane was one of Wetherby’s counterparts at MI6, a complicated, intelligent and tricky man, primarily a Middle East specialist, but with a wideranging brief covering MI6’s operations in the UK. She’d worked with him before and had come to realise that it was safest either not to sup with Geoffrey Fane at all or to do so with a long spoon.

  Now Liz said, ‘Why’s he talking to us about this? Shouldn’t it go to protective security?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see what he has to say,’ said Wetherby calmly. ‘You know the PM’s pinning a lot on this conference. God knows what happens if it fails. I think the Middle East is in what the Americans call the Last Chance Saloon.’

  ‘There were two men from Grosvenor at the meeting.’

  ‘Was Andy Bokus one of them?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Head of station. They call him Bokus the Bruiser,’ said Wetherby with a smile.

  ‘He had a sidekick with him, a guy called Brookhaven. He seemed rather nice.’

  ‘Don’t know him. See you shortly.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Liz. She paused a beat before asking, ‘Is Fane coming on his own?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  She shrugged. ‘He sent Bruno Mackay to the Cabinet Office meeting.’

  Wetherby grimaced, then gave a wry smile. ‘No, it’s just Fane, thank God. He’s hard enough to pin down without Mackay muddying the waters. See you in a bit, then.’

  He went off down the corridor and Peggy left to return to her desk in the open-plan office.

  What a relief to have Charles back in charge, Liz thought. Charles Wetherby, formerly director of counter terrorism, had spent several months earlier in the year on compassionate leave, looking after his two boys when his wife was thought to be dying from an incurable blood disease. At the same time, Liz had been transferred to the counter espionage branch, working for the dreadful Brian Ackers, a long-time Cold War warrior who couldn’t get it into his head that the relationship with Russia had changed. Liz had had to manage Brian Ackers and Geoffrey Fane as well. That Irish business! She still shuddered at the thought. If Charles hadn’t come back at the last minute it could have been the end of her. It was bad enough as it was. Anyway, Charles had taken Ackers’s place, since his wife seemed to have turned another corner. It wasn’t clear how ill she was - Charles never spoke about it.

  Liz looked again at the summary report she had started to prepare the day before for her weekly meeting with Charles. A lot was going on: yet another pass had been made by a Russian intelligence officer, this time to a low-level clerk in the Foreign Office who had reported the contact straight away; an Iranian posing as a Saudi was suspected of trying to buy anti-tank weapons from a UK manufacturer; the numbers in the Chinese Embassy continued to grow suspiciously. She’d finish it tomorrow, she thought, as Charles phoned to tell her Fane had arrived.

  She stood up and locked the file in her cupboard, running a quick hand through her hair, pulling down her jacket.

  FIVE

  Many years of working with Geoffrey Fane of MI6 had taught Wetherby self-control. He knew that however annoying Fane might be, with his lean, elegant figure, his well-cut suits, his languid air and above all his habit of dumping embarrassing situations on Charles at a late stage, the worst thing to do was to show irritation. Managing Geoffrey Fane was a fine art and Charles rather prided himself that he was as good at it as anyone.

  That said, however, he had hoped that his move to counter espionage would mean seeing less of Fane, most of whose time was spent on Middle East issues, particularly terrorism. But now, after only a few weeks back at work, he found himself again gazing across his desk at Fane, who was reclining comfortably in one of the two padded chairs in Charles’s office as they waited for Liz Carlyle.

  Avoiding his visitor’s eye, Charles looked over Fane’s shoulder, through his office window at the wide view of the Thames at low tide with a bright sun scattering diamond sparkles across the small, receding waves. At least he had one thing to thank Brian Ackers for. Traditionally the director of counter espionage had one of the best offices in
Thames House.

  Ackers, in his curious, obsessive way, had turned his desk so that his back was to the view, and one of Charles’s first changes had been to turn it round. After that, he had removed Ackers’s lifelong collection of Sovietology from the bookshelves and replaced it with his own eclectic library, assembled over his years in the service. The one extravagance he still allowed himself was buying books and he had long since filled up all the space in the house near Richmond, which now had to accommodate the assorted possessions of his teenage sons as well as his and Joanne’s.

  The door of his office opened and Liz Carlyle came in, bringing, for Charles at least, a breath of fresh air and a noticeable lightening of the spirit. Charles had by now admitted to himself that an important part of the pleasure he got from his work came from the proximity of Liz. He found her deeply attractive - not just her appearance, her level gaze, her slim figure and her smooth, brown hair, but her straightforward, down to earth personality, her honesty and her quick intuition.

  He thought she felt for him too, but she gave little away. He knew that she expected nothing of him and, while Joanne was alive, he could not expect anything from her. But that did not prevent the tinge of jealousy he always felt when he saw another man’s attraction to her.

  The two men stood up. ‘Elizabeth,’ said Fane warmly, shaking her hand. ‘You’re looking well.’

  Charles was aware that Liz hated to be called Elizabeth and he suspected that Fane knew it too. He waited to see how she would react. Fane, with his sophistication and his style, was an attractive man; he was also divorced. But Charles knew he was ruthless in pursuit of operational success and probably in his pursuit of women too. Liz and Fane had worked closely together in his absence on a case without a happy outcome for either. Charles, coming in at the end, had seen how it had shattered the confidence of both of them and in doing so had drawn them together. He hoped that Liz would be careful. Fane was not the man for her.

  ‘Thank you, Geoffrey,’ Liz said frostily as Charles waved her to the second chair in front of his desk.

  ‘Liz, I thought you should hear what Geoffrey’s just been telling me. It strikes me as rather important.’

  Liz looked levelly at Fane, her eyes narrowing slightly with concentration.

  Fane said, ‘We’ve had an intriguing report from Cyprus. Our head of station there is Peter Templeton - he’s been in the Middle East for years, so I don’t think you’ll have met him.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s been running a very sensitively placed source for some time. It’s someone who’s given us excellent intelligence in the past.’

  Fane paused again, hesitant, and Charles could see that not all of his old arrogance had returned; once, he would have known exactly what he would or wouldn’t say.

  Settling himself in his chair, Fane went on. ‘This source has high-level access. The day before yesterday he called an urgent meeting with Templeton. What he had to say was rather concerning.’

  And Fane related in economical fashion what Templeton had learned from his source - that two people in the UK were working to blacken the name of Syria and so to destroy trust and wreck the peace conference. And that Syrian intelligence was going to move against them.

  ‘And that,’ said Fane, ending his account with a dramatic flourish of one cuffed wrist, ‘is the reason I came to see you.’

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Liz asked, ‘Is this the threat Sir Nicholas Pomfret was talking about at the Cabinet Office?’

  Fane nodded. ‘Yes. Bruno told me Pomfret had addressed you all.’ He smiled knowingly.

  Charles was tapping his pencil on his notepad. He looked thoughtfully at Liz, who said, ‘If it’s a matter of protecting two people, that sounds like a job for the police, not us.’

  ‘This is delicate source material, Elizabeth. It can’t possibly be handed to the police,’ replied Fane. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure whom we should be protecting.’

  ‘You said these two lives are at risk,’ she responded.

  He ignored the implication. ‘This is about the future of the Middle East. If there is some sort of plot to disrupt the conference, and the Syrians snuff it out, who are we to complain?’

  Typical of Fane, thought Charles, and seeing Liz’s hackles rising he spoke quickly to pre-empt her response.

  ‘Did this source have any sense of what these two are planning to do? Are they working together? Who is controlling them? And above all, how did the Syrians find out about this plot?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything we know, Charles, and I’ve given you the names.’ Charles pushed a paper across his desk to Liz, while Fane leaned back in his chair. Fane said, ‘It’s over to you now.’ And as if the ensuing silence confirmed that the ball had been placed in MI5’s court, a smile bordering on the smug settled on Fane’s lips.

  Charles ignored him and started tapping his pencil again, his eyes drifting over to the window and its view of the Thames. ‘It could just be an old-fashioned set-up. God knows, we’ve seen them before, especially from the Middle East.’

  Liz spoke up. ‘But what would the point be, Charles? I mean, other than sending us on a wild-goose chase, why would anyone want to plant disinformation of this sort?’ Unusually, Charles noted, she was arguing on Fane’s side.

  Fane snapped, ‘They wouldn’t.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Charles said. ‘But whoever told them may have had their own motives - or some reason we can’t imagine at present.’

  ‘In my experience, Charles, fathoming motives in the Middle East is the equivalent of building sandcastles.’ Fane was emphatic. ‘You can erect the most impressive structure, and then one big wave can wash it all away.’

  Charles suppressed a sharp reply and Liz broke in. ‘These two names,’ she said, looking at the paper, ‘do we know anything about them?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Fane.

  ‘Sami Veshara - well, I think we can say he’s not Anglo-Saxon.’

  ‘Lebanese perhaps,’ said Charles. He added drily, ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  Fane shrugged again. He’s being purposely irritating, thought Charles.

  Liz went on, ‘And Chris Marcham. That has a familiar ring to it - or is it just because it sounds English?’

  Suddenly Fane looked slightly flustered. ‘Actually, that’s a name we do know something about. He’s a journalist, specialises in the Middle East. Freelance now; used to be on the staff of the Sunday Times. We have talked to him in the past. Not often. Bit of an odd fish, frankly.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Liz.

  ‘He made his name reporting first-hand on the Falangist massacres in the South Lebanese refugee camps. For a moment, the world was his oyster. He’s extraordinarily knowledgeable about the Palestinians, and one of the few Western journalists all their factions seem to trust. He could have become another Robert Fisk, but something seemed to hold him back. He doesn’t write that much nowadays.’

  ‘Personal issues?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fane. ‘He’s a loner - no wife that we know of. He travels a lot - must be out there at least half the year.’

  ‘We should be able to find him easily enough.’

  ‘Yes, I’d suggest you start with him.’

  ‘Start?’

  Charles caught Liz’s outraged gaze. But he had already made up his mind. ‘Geoffrey and I have agreed this story needs looking into, if only to establish there’s nothing to it. I want you to do the looking.’ He shrugged and knew that when she calmed down Liz would realise that he had no choice. To be told that people, operating in the UK to disrupt a peace conference, were also targets for assassination required some response - even if, as he suspected, it all proved to be absolute balls.

  Fane’s smug expression made it obvious that whether he was passing along a ticking bomb or a damp squib, he was in the clear now.

  ‘When do you want me to begin on this?’ asked Liz, knowing the answer.

  ‘Right away,’ Charles told her and added what he hoped would
be a consolation. ‘Have Peggy Kinsolving help you.’

  Liz suppressed a laugh. She knew Fane had been irked when Peggy had switched allegiances from MI6 to Thames House.

  But Fane seemed unfazed. ‘Good idea,’ he declared. ‘She’s a clever girl.’ He stood up. ‘In the meantime, I’ll ask Templeton to try and get more out of this source of ours.’ He grinned at Liz. ‘It will be good to work with you again, Elizabeth.’

  ‘It’s Liz,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Of course it is.’ Fane was still smiling. ‘How could I forget?’

  Honours even, I think, said Charles to himself as Fane left the room.

  SIX

  ‘This is really good!’ Peggy exclaimed, and Liz had to suppress a smile. Only Peggy could be delighted by a cheese sandwich bought from a deli on Horseferry Road.

  They were lunching at Peggy’s desk in the open-plan office, surrounded by reference books and working papers. Liz glanced with distaste at her own lunch, a grim salad of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and a piece of rubber passing as a hard-boiled egg.

  ‘All right,’ she said to Peggy. ‘Let’s start with the Syrians. What do we know about their people here?’

  ‘Not much’, replied Peggy, ruffling through her papers. ‘I spoke to Dave Armstrong in counter terrorism, but he says the Syrians aren’t one of their priority targets, so they haven’t done any close work on them recently. And we haven’t had a counter espionage case involving them for many years. All we know is what’s on their visa applications. I’ve checked the names with European liaison and the Americans and got three possible intelligence traces.’

  ‘We’d better get A4 to take a look at them and get some better photographs, so we can begin to build up an idea of who we’ve got here.’

  Peggy nodded and made a note.

  ‘Now,’ went on Liz, ‘what about these two names? How have you got on with Sami Veshara?’