Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  His taxi dropped him on the opposite side of the square from the embassy. ‘Can’t get any nearer, Guv,’ the driver told him, echoing his thoughts. ‘New barriers up since last month. If the Yanks didn’t go round the world interfering where they’re not wanted, we could have our streets back. No one wants to live round here now, you know. Used to get top whack for these properties, now they can’t give ’em away.’

  Well, not quite, thought Fane, as he walked towards the police post in front of the weighty, white building that filled one side of the square. The huge gold eagle on the top shone in the late summer sunshine, loudly announcing the presence of Britain’s dominant ally.

  Today, Fane had a lunch engagement at the nearby Connaught Hotel, so instead of summoning Andy Bokus, the CIA station head, to his office in Vauxhall Cross, he had decided to call on him. By the time he had emerged through the slow, deliberate security measures at the door, he was regretting his decision. The breezy cheerfulness of the long-legged, squeaky clean American girl who collected him on the other side, with her wide grin of perfect, white teeth and her Good morning, sir, did not improve his humour. Utterly sexless, he thought to himself.

  It was five years now since Fane’s marriage had broken up and Adele had gone off to live in Paris with her rich French banker. In some ways it had been a relief. Quite frankly, he could now admit to himself, she had been a drag on his career. She had never taken to being an MI6 wife. She had had no sympathy with his work or any wish to understand it and was merely irritated by the frequent postings abroad and her husband’s mysterious and unpredictable absences.

  All the same, now she was gone he was lonely. He hated the vulnerability and he disguised it. His thoughts often turned to the MI5 woman, Liz Carlyle. She would be an attractive companion. She understood him, he knew -perhaps too well. She appreciated how important his work was. For a time last year he thought they were growing closer, but now that Charles Wetherby was back, it was damned obvious that he was the one she was keen on. What a waste, thought Fane. A dry old stick, Charles, and too cautious by half. Well not old perhaps, he thought ruefully, since Charles was a good five years younger than Fane.

  Down in the depths of the building, in the CIA station, Andy Bokus was waiting for him in his office with Miles Brookhaven, a young CIA officer whom Fane had met only once, a couple of months ago, when Brookhaven had paid his courtesy calls on arrival in the country. Fane, standing taller than either of them, his heron-like figure clad elegantly in a dark grey suit, his tie sporting the discreet stripes by which Englishmen communicate with each other, surveyed them with his sharp blue eyes.

  He had heard about Brookhaven from Bruno Mackay, who’d met him at the Downing Street meeting about the Gleneagles Conference. Fane could take in the man at once: a classic east coast WASP, Anglophile, another Yank keen to show he was at home in Britain - doubtless, like others Fane had known, Brookhaven would soon be pressing him to sign the book on his behalf at the Travellers Club.

  Bokus he found infinitely more interesting, and harder to read. When it came to Americans he preferred someone who was not trying to be a European, someone like Bokus, who had amused Fane when they had had lunch at the Travellers, by asking for a Budweiser. From the framed team photographs lining the office wall, he saw that Bokus had played American football (unsurprising given his bulk and obvious strength) at some university Fane had never heard of, somewhere in the Midwestern sticks. Perhaps that was the origin of his remarkable accent. He didn’t speak English as Fane recognised it, but rather as Fane imagined a stevedore on the Great Lakes might speak. It was an act - wasn’t it? Behind the beefy, balding exterior of the man, Fane suspected - though he couldn’t be sure; he had dealt with some dozy CIA officers - there lay a first-rate intelligence, one with enough confidence not to need to show itself, except when absolutely necessary. It would be very easy to underestimate Mr Andy Bokus, Fane concluded. He might be as stupid as he looked, but there would be no harm in assuming the opposite.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Fane said now with a practised smile, deciding that if Bokus could act like a professional football player, he would adopt his most patrician manner, ‘it’s most awfully good of you to see me. I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time, but I thought you’d want to know a little more about what was behind Sir Nicholas’s intervention at the Cabinet Office meeting the day before yesterday. Perhaps we might withdraw and I will expand a little.’

  This was the signal for the three of them to move into the safe room, that insulated bubble that intelligence stations in embassies keep, where they can speak without fear of eavesdropping. It always slightly amused Geoffrey Fane to think that the normal function of a safe room in an embassy was to prevent eavesdropping by the intelligence services of the host nation. Whenever he penetrated the Grosvenor Square bubble, Fane, from the heart of British intelligence, felt like the cat invited into the goldfish bowl.

  Fane took his time telling his story of Jaghir’s revelation of the threat to the Gleneagles conference, drawing it out to disguise how much he was leaving out. When he had finished neither Bokus nor Brookhaven would have known from which country, much less which source, the information came.

  Bokus scratched his forehead, as if he still had the hair that had once grown there. ‘What are these two individuals meant to be planning to do to screw up the conference?’ he asked.

  Fane shrugged. ‘It’s not clear. We’re pushing our source to try to find out.’

  ‘I mean, is it supposed to be a bomb?’ demanded Bokus. ‘Or a bullet? Or maybe an embarrassment? One of your newspapers catching a president or a Prime Minister in bed with an eight-year-old girl.’

  Fane laughed politely, noticing that Brookhaven could only manage a wan smile. There was nothing very subtle about Andy Bokus. Fane said, ‘If the News of the World was the extent of the problem, I wouldn’t be troubling you with this. No, we can only assume that it’s something dramatic - and lethal.’ He sat back against the taut padding of the couch, adding almost casually, ‘I was hoping you might know something about these two people.’

  Brookhaven looked surprised, but Bokus responded stolidly. ‘What are their names again?’ he asked nonchalantly.

  ‘Veshara and Marcham.’

  ‘Sounds like a Vaudeville act,’ Bokus said, and this time Brookhaven made a better show of laughing.

  ‘I’m afraid these two have rather limited comic potential,’ Fane said, letting his tone slowly frost. ‘Veshara is Lebanese; lives here in London. That’s all we know so far. Marcham’s a journalist.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll find out more about them in due course, but I thought you might save us some time.’ There was nothing casual about his tone now. ‘Can you?’

  Bokus looked questioningly at Brookhaven. The younger man shook his head at once. ‘Neither rings any sort of bell. I’ll check the files, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Fane and looked again at Bokus.

  Bokus stared at him blankly, but then his mouth opened, as if it were not being controlled by his brain. ‘We’ll check it out with HQ in Langley if there’s nothing here, but maybe…’

  ‘Right,’ said Fane, accepting defeat. But he wasn’t through yet. ‘I’d like to stay in touch with this. Our protective security people are already liaising, but this is highly sensitive intelligence and I want to keep it like that for the time being.’

  Brookhaven interjected hesitantly. ‘I’m talking to MI5 about the conference. Are you suggesting something else?’

  Fane lifted his palms about an inch and a half from his knees to indicate reassurance. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘Charles Wetherby is completely au fait. I told him I was coming to see you. He’s got one of his best people on this already -I’m sure he’d want you to deal with her.’

  ‘Liz Carlyle?’

  Was there a hint of eagerness in Brookhaven’s voice? Fane hoped not. ‘That’s the one,’ he declared.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Bokus. ‘Miles here will interme
diate with Carlyle.’ His voice took on a peremptory tone. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No,’ said Fane, as they left the bubble and returned to Bokus’s office, ‘though if we could have a quick word à deux, I’d be grateful.’ He smiled at Brookhaven to show it was nothing personal. Turning slightly red-faced, the younger man made his excuses and left.

  Fane remained standing as Bokus went back to sit behind his desk. ‘As I hope I’ve made clear, strictly speaking this is a matter between you and Thames House.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, yes,’ said Bokus, giving nothing away.

  ‘Well, what I’d like to suggest - that is, if we can speak off the record?’

  ‘Off the record?’ Bokus seemed amused for the first time. ‘You sound like a reporter from one of those… what do you call them, red tops?’

  Fane inclined his head slightly. ‘Well, perhaps. But between us, I think you and I should have a sort of informal channel of communication. Just to keep in touch - about this matter, of course, and anything else that might crop up. It seems important, given the possible urgency.’

  ‘Sounds okay to me,’ said Bokus without enthusiasm.

  TEN

  When Fane had left, Andy Bokus picked up the phone and dialled an extension. ‘Miles, could you come back for a minute?’ he said, though it wasn’t really a question.

  There was something puppy-like about Brookhaven that annoyed Bokus almost as much as his East Coast manners, his English-style clothes (elbow patches for Christ’s sakes) and his open admiration for all things English.

  What kind of a name was Miles Brookhaven anyway? His people were probably landing in Massachusetts while Bokus’s forebears were shovelling shit in the Ukraine. ‘Miles’ for godsake - anybody with a first name like that had ivy twined round his head.

  Bokus hadn’t been poor, but unlike most of his Agency colleagues he had come from America’s small-town heartland, where ‘sophisticated’ was not a word used admiringly. But he had always believed in himself, and in the American promise that anyone in that country could, if they worked hard and put their mind to it (and, he admitted to himself, enjoyed a fair share of luck), do anything. When a football injury in his second year at college had put paid to his hopes for a professional career, Bokus had for the first time in his life paid attention to his studies. A political science major, he had known he wanted to see a bigger world than rural Ohio had to offer, so when one of his professors had suggested he take the Agency’s exams, he had seized the chance.

  And by now, he’d seen a fair amount of it. His most recent posting before London was Madrid. He spoke Spanish fluently and he had liked the Spanish people - the men were dignified but straightforward, the women often beautiful and full of grace. He’d been there at an interesting time, too - the Madrid train bombings had been a real wake-up call in that country and had put the Agency’s Madrid station into the front line at Langley. He’d done well in Madrid, which was why he’d got this plum job of London.

  But he wasn’t as happy here. The English struck Bokus as a sour bunch; snooty, devious when it suited them, willing to rely on American firepower while making it clear they had the superior intellects. Like Fane, who couldn’t ever disguise his obvious conviction that Bokus was an idiot.

  Yet it wasn’t Fane’s patronising manner that was worrying him now; it was what Fane had said. You didn’t have to like the Brits - which God knows Bokus didn’t - to respect them. Once they got their teeth into something they shed all their ‘jolly good this’ and ‘jolly good that’ and acted like old-fashioned bloodhounds. They didn’t give up.

  Bokus could not be seen to refuse to help the Brits with this high-alert threat to the Gleneagles conference, but he was going to have to walk a tightrope. There would be no doubt at Langley that ‘Tiger’, the source Bokus had spent the last eighteen months running in London under the nose of MI5, was too valuable to jeopardise. If the Brits even got a sniff of him, the shit would hit the fan with a massive splat. Tiger was a source so sensitive that no one else in the CIA’s London station was aware of it. Tiger’s reports went directly to a small group in Langley, who controlled the case. This was top-flight ‘need to know’ and only a handful of people were indoctrinated. If the Brits learned about Tiger, then Langley would, to use an English expression that Bokus actually liked, have his guts for garters.

  There was a tap on the open door and he turned and motioned Brookhaven to come in. Brookhaven stood in front of the desk as Bokus, standing behind it, shuffled papers while he thought. ‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘I want you to do something.’

  ‘What’s that, Andy?’

  ‘I want you to get close to this MI5 woman, Carlyle. Okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ Brookhaven said dutifully. ‘I met her at the Cabinet Office meeting. She seemed perfectly competent, nice actually.’

  Where did he learn to talk like that? At prep school? ‘Yeah, well, competent’s just dandy, but make sure you get close to her, and not the other way around. These people act like they’re your best friends. They aren’t, right?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Brookhaven, but Bokus was warming to his theme. ‘Sure this Carlyle lady will be “perfectly charming”. She’ll coo and chat and give you tea.’ He looked sharply at Brookhaven. ‘She may even act like she’ll give you more than that. But if you close your eyes for the first kiss, when you open them you’ll find she’s swiped your shoes. You got me?’

  ‘I got you, Andy.’

  You better, thought Bokus, but only grunted in reply.

  ELEVEN

  Ben Ahmad left the Syrian Embassy in Belgravia a little before three o’clock, telling his secretary he would not be back until the morning. She was used to his sudden departures and had learned not to ask questions. On his way out, he was glad to see the ambassador was not in. Ahmad reported to him in his capacity as a trade attaché; they both knew his real reporting line ran back to Syria, to the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Syrian secret service. The ambassador did not disguise his unhappiness with this arrangement.

  Outside, Ahmad glanced at his watch, a handsome Cartier given to him by his wife, who was in Damascus looking after their three small children. His meeting was not until four thirty, but it would take him at least an hour to get there, since there would be several diversions en route.

  He was dressed neatly in a dark suit, and carried a raincoat over one arm. With a trim haircut and neat moustache, he was indistinguishable from the thousands of other Middle Eastern men going about their business in London that afternoon. He had worked hard to cultivate this anonymous air.

  Walking up to Hyde Park Corner he went down into one of its labyrinthine underground tunnels, and emerged several minutes later on the far side of Park Lane, where he walked to the Hilton. There he joined a bunch of high-spirited American tourists waiting in a small queue for taxis in front of the hotel, giving the doorman a pound coin when it was his turn to enter a cab. Out of earshot of anyone but the driver, he gave his destination as Piccadilly Circus.

  There, he got out, and stood for a minute against a disused doorway at the bottom of Shaftesbury Avenue, watching for other taxis that might have followed him. It was difficult in so much traffic to be sure he was not under surveillance; equally, in the hurly burly of the streets here, following him without being noticed would be a difficult task.

  He saw nothing untoward, and walked quickly to the Underground entrance. He disliked the area, which he thought epitomised the baffling English love of sleaze. He was faithful to his wife, teetotal, and he simply couldn’t understand a culture that gave such value to infidelity and alcohol.

  He had hoped to be back in Syria by now, for his posting had originally been intended to last only six months. Tibshirani had promised him that; otherwise Ahmad would never have left his family behind. But then ‘Aleppo’ had arrived - code name for a source that had appeared out of the blue, full of information so extraordinary that Ahmad had distrusted it at first and relayed only bits and pieces, while he
tried to confirm its authenticity.

  Yet even these titbits had caused consternation in Damascus, enough that Tibshirani had tried to insist on flying to London to manage Aleppo personally. But Aleppo had refused to meet anyone but Ahmad, stressing that if the Syrians tried to push him, he would break off all contact. Tibshirani didn’t dare risk that, especially once the authenticity and value of Aleppo’s information had become indisputable.

  Aleppo had forecast the assassination of a senior Lebanese politician, information which subsequently proved of intense interest to that part of the Syrian secret services that was widely (and erroneously) thought to have been responsible for the murder. He had exposed a fundamentalist cell of Saudi extremists in Germany who were plotting to kill Bashar-al-Assad, Syria’s young President, during a forthcoming trip to Paris; the result was the discovery of four men shot dead in a Hamburg flat, killings put down by the German police to internal Wahhabi feuding. And Aleppo had revealed the location of Iran’s research facility into limited plutonium-based explosions, information Syria kept carefully in reserve.

  So when Aleppo had revealed that two agents were actively working against Syrian interests in the UK with the intention of blackening Syria’s name before the Gleneagles peace conference, Ahmad had ignored the vagueness of the information and promptly passed it back to Tibshirani. He had long ago learned that when an agent had a perfect record, there was no point in trying to pick and choose; he would leave that to his superiors at home, while he got on with trying to control this goldmine on his own.

  In the Underground, Ahmad bought a ticket from the manned booth rather than a machine, then stopped to buy a copy of the Evening Standard before descending on an escalator into the cavernous depths of the Piccadilly Line.

  He stood on the platform, almost empty at this time of day. He did not board the first train that came in, but took the next one, and stood up in the compartment, holding his paper in front of his face, until he got off at Acton Town. Here he went upstairs and through the ticket machines, then made a show of looking at his watch, before going back into the station. He caught a train heading north and after a single stop got off at Ealing Common. There he remained on the platform until the others who disembarked - there were only three of them - had taken the lift and gone. Then he caught the next train.