Dead Line

by Stella Rimington

  During the afternoon, Binding had assembled his small team and they’d all been briefed by Liz. DG had himself spoken to the Head of Mossad in Tel Aviv to get his support. Geoffrey Fane had called Tyrus Oakes, now back at Langley, and had got his agreement to have the Americans represented in the team by a senior FBI officer from the embassy. ‘You can keep Andy out of it, with my blessing,’ he’d said. The security teams up at Gleneagles were contacted and alerted to the risk of a threat from a rogue Mossad officer. A4’s photographs of Kollek in the stands at the Oval were sent up, together with some posed official pictures from his file at the Israeli Embassy, which Ari Block produced. By the time Liz and Peggy had rushed home to collect enough clothes for a few days away, the ground was laid to defeat Kollek’s plans.

  But what those plans were, no one knew. As she climbed into the military helicopter, its rotors already roaring and vibrating, Liz had the uncomfortable feeling that, with all the backup in the world, it was still going to be up to her to out-think Kollek. She was glad she had Peggy to help her.

  As the helicopter circled over the dark grounds of Gleneagles, lit only by the lines of lamps along the drives and paths, a dazzling square of light suddenly appeared below. The helicopter gently dropped and placed itself neatly in the centre of the landing ground, which was almost half a mile from the hotel on the edge of what looked to be a golf course.

  Liz climbed stiffly out into the wind of the rotor blades, reflecting that whatever this hotel was normally like, it was now effectively an armed camp. A policeman cradling a Heckler & Koch rifle stepped forward out of the darkness and shepherded Liz and Peggy out of the helicopter’s downdraught as it rose up in the air again and turned to fly off to the south.

  In a small wooden hut, set up on what looked like a croquet lawn, Liz and Peggy’s documents were examined by a female police officer who offered a car to take them to the timeshare houses where they were staying. ‘I think we’ll walk,’ said Liz, glad to be breathing fresh air again.

  ‘As you like,’ said the police officer. ‘I’ll let the armed teams know you’re coming, but keep to the paths where the lights are on. Everyone’s on alert here; we don’t want you getting shot by accident.’

  As opposed to on purpose, thought Liz wryly as she and Peggy set off. They had left a London that was warm, a late Indian summer. But now, in this Scottish evening, there was a crispness in the air that made them both shiver a bit as they walked. The faint smoky aroma of burning leaves in the air added to the autumnal feel.

  They passed the hotel, and then went out of its back gate, across a small road and into a development of modern stone houses surrounded by tall firs - timeshares during normal periods. They’d managed to acquire the last two remaining bedrooms in one of the houses commandeered by the MI5 protective security contingent.

  The houses all looked the same, which was confusing at first, but thankfully Peggy with her usual thoroughness had printed a map off the hotel website. Liz waited on a small stone bridge across a little stream, breathing in the pine-scented air, while her younger colleague went off to check the door numbers and find their house. Peggy waved and Liz went to join her. They rang the bell. Nothing happened. They rang again and eventually the front door was opened by a man wearing a towel around his waist (and nothing else), his hair a soaking black mop.

  Liz burst out laughing. ‘Hello, Dave.’

  Dave Armstrong had worked closely with Liz in the past when both were based in counter terrorism. They had become good friends; for a brief time, they might have become more. But since Liz’s move to counter espionage, they had rather lost touch.

  Now Dave did a double take. ‘Liz! What on earth are you doing here? They said to expect two more, but they didn’t say who. And you’ve brought your secret weapon as well, I see,’ he added with a friendly nod at Peggy.

  ‘We weren’t expecting you, either.’

  ‘Binding,’ he said crossly, referring to Liz’s bête noire, and seemingly now Dave’s too. ‘He’s seconded me to protective security during the conference. Come on in, and I’ll show you your quarters.’

  There was a bedroom each for Peggy and Liz on the ground floor. Liz deposited her bag and freshened up, then went upstairs, where Dave, now dressed, was making coffee.

  ‘How very comfortable,’ said Liz, joining Dave in the kitchen. ‘Pity we’re not here for a holiday.’

  ‘I’m sure it fetches a pound or two,’ said Dave, ‘when it’s not being requisitioned by HMG. You get great views of the mountains through these windows in daylight. The Israelis are in the ones down this row.’ He pointed towards their neighbours. ‘The rest have been allocated to assorted anti terrorist officers, and the bigwigs from the military.’

  Peggy came up the stairs, and they all sat down at the dining table with their mugs of coffee. Dave said, ‘You two have certainly put the cat among the pigeons up here. We got the briefing paper and the photographs this afternoon. The old chief constable, who’s supposed to be in charge up here, was already in a muck sweat, but now he’s absolutely shitting himself.’

  ‘Oh God. Is he going to be a nuisance?’ asked Liz.

  Dave shrugged. ‘I’ll be interested in what you think. He’s scared of the Americans, doesn’t like the English, and acts as if women should never have been allowed the vote. Other than that, he’s fine.’

  ‘You mean he’s perfectly awful,’ said Peggy.

  Dave grinned - he’d known Peggy since she had first been seconded from MI6, fresh-faced, innocent and very literal-minded. He seemed pleased she hadn’t entirely lost these qualities. ‘Don’t worry. Nothing your boss here can’t handle. I can guarantee that her well known charm will wear him down,’

  ‘Do shut up, Dave,’ said Liz.

  ‘I take it the Israelis know their colleague’s gone bad?’ asked Dave. ‘So if this guy Kollek does show up, presumably they’ll pinch the bugger.’

  ‘Yes. They know now.’ Between Liz’s visit to Ari Block, DG’s conversation with Tel Aviv and the telexes Teitelbaum had promised Miles he’d send, there couldn’t be any doubt among the Israeli delegation that Kollek had gone AWOL.

  ‘What about the military and the foreign office and all the other security folk here?’

  ‘Our beloved Binding is masterminding all the coordination from London, but in the morning Peggy and I will go round and make sure everyone’s got the right information and knows what they’re looking for. In so far as any of us does,’ she added ruefully. ‘I’m going to bed now. It’s been a long day - and it’ll probably be a longer one tomorrow.’

  The chief constable in overall charge of security for the conference was a tall, gaunt man in his fifties wearing a uniform decorated with copious quantities of silver piping and braid. He sat at a large table in a makeshift command post that had been set up in the ballroom of the hotel, reading a document from a pile of papers. Behind him sat rows of police officers, some in uniform, some in mufti.

  Liz recognised the man as Jamieson, from the Cabinet Office meeting, an occasion that now seemed months rather than weeks ago. She knew DG had rung to alert him to her arrival, and to tell him that she would brief him in detail on the threat from Kollek, so she was surprised at his manner when she introduced herself, even though Dave had warned her.

  Jamieson hardly looked up from his papers, saying, ‘Just give me a moment, please.’

  Irritated, Liz surveyed her surroundings, while Jamieson continued reading. The ballroom floor had been covered by temporary planking and on it, dotted around the room, were a number of circular tables, which looked as though they normally saw service in a dining room. Each table bore the initials of a different part of the security operation protecting the conference - local police, the Metropolitan police anti terrorist command, MI5, military intelligence. Each group had its own table, computers, telephones, communications equipment, and at each table casually dressed men and women sat tapping at keyboards, talking on phones and drinking coffee. And these were just the UK
elements. The FBI and the Secret Service were in the room as well, but separated from the UK contingent by a low screen. Liz noted that the Secret Service had managed to commandeer twice as much space as anyone else. She looked round for the Arab and Israeli teams, but they must have been put in some other command post of their own. This looked like a coordination nightmare; she hoped Chief Constable Jamieson was up to the task.

  As he showed no sign of finishing reading, Liz drifted over to the MI5 table where Dave Armstrong was in charge of a small team. ‘First round to the chief constable,’ Dave remarked as he offered her his chair. She ignored him and walked round the table to see what was up on the screens. She talked to a junior colleague for a few minutes, then an emissary from Jamieson came to say that the chief constable would see her now. ‘Kill him, Liz,’ said Dave in a breathy whisper, as she walked back with the policeman, her footsteps echoing loudly on the planking.

  Brushing an impatient hand across his greying moustache, Jamieson said, ‘Yes, Miss Carling, what can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s Carlyle actually, and we’ve met before, chief constable, at the planning meeting at the Cabinet Office.’

  He sniffed, but said nothing in reply. Liz wondered how much more of this she was going to take. Not a lot, she decided. She said, ‘I believe my director general has been in touch about a new threat that is particularly concerning us.’

  ‘Yes, he rang me last night,’ Jamieson said grudgingly. ‘You’ll appreciate we have a lot of potential threats right now, Miss Carlyle. What I suggest is that you talk to my deputy, Hamish Alexander, who will produce a risk assessment for me.’ He gestured to the tables behind his back. ‘We’ll consider it with all the others at our planning meeting this evening.’

  ‘We may not have until the end of the day. This requires your urgent attention.’

  Jamieson shook his head wearily, as if he had heard this all too often in the last few days. ‘Young lady, I have to prioritise.’

  The ‘young lady’ did it for Liz. ‘Has Sir Nicholas Pomfret arrived yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking directly at Liz for the first time.

  ‘Why?’

  Liz sighed. She’d had this kind of conversation before. On the last occasion it had been with Michael Binding of Thames House. Life might have changed unrecognisably for a professional woman in the past thirty years, but you still met the occasional dinosaur. She said mildly, ‘I ask because either you and I can discuss this now and agree what to do, or I’ll telephone the director general at Thames House, who will then call Sir Nicholas, who will then have a word with you. I’m happy to take that route if you prefer, though I’m sure everyone else involved will think it’s a waste of their time.’

  ‘Are you trying to push me around, young lady?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it; I’m merely asking for cooperation. And I’d appreciate it if you could not call me “young lady”. I’m old enough not to be your daughter.’

  For a moment, Liz thought Jamieson was about to explode, but then some seed of sense must have planted itself. He seemed to think again, and quickly altered his demeanour. ‘Sorry if I was short. It’s just I seem to have the secret services of God knows how many countries trying to tell me what to do. And half of them barely speak English.’

  ‘It must be a nightmare,’ Liz said, trying to show a sympathy she didn’t feel. ‘Now let me make sure that you are fully briefed about this particular problem.’

  She described Kollek as a Mossad renegade, highly intelligent and trained in covert techniques. She explained his background and the fear that in some sort of revenge for his grandfather’s death, he was going to try to sabotage the conference, possibly focusing particularly on the Syrian delegation. In case Jamieson was not up to date, which seemed only too likely, she told him that a brief and photographs had been circulated on intelligence channels. She gave him his own copy of the photographs, suspecting that whatever information loops were operating in the room, he was not necessarily a part of any of them.

  Liz said, ‘I’d like the photographs circulated very widely among all the security on the ground at the hotel, please, and also on the perimeter. It would be very helpful if the local police in the neighbouring towns could have them, too. This man Kollek has been here before, so he knows the layout well. I’ll be talking with the hotel managers myself, so you can leave the staff side of things to me. I can’t stress too highly that this is a real danger. We don’t know where this man is, but we and the Israelis believe he has serious intent.’

  Jamieson nodded tensely. He looked pale and was rubbing the palms of his hands together nervously. A picture of stress, thought Liz. This was obviously the biggest responsibility Jamieson had ever had; sadly, he seemed to be drowning rather than rising to it.

  She went on: ‘If Kollek’s seen, I want him detained and put under guard. If he’s stopped, he’s certain to have a plausible cover story and all the proper credentials, but on no account should he be allowed to go on his way. He may well be armed, so people should be careful. Kollek’s very smooth, but he’s also lethal - we think he killed one of his own agents in London just a few weeks ago, so he won’t hesitate to kill again.’

  She was glad to see that she had Jamieson’s full attention now. By the time she left the ballroom, she was satisfied that not only did he now take the Kollek threat seriously but he was unlikely to think of much else. His initially patronising manner had infuriated her, but at least he was on board now, and that was the important thing.

  The hotel manager, Ian Ryerson, occupied a small windowless office behind the arcade of shops on the ground floor of the hotel, just round the corner from the ballroom command post. He was a dapper man in his forties, with a bland smile and an affable manner that could have been pressed into service in resorts anywhere from the south of Spain to the golf-laden stretch of coast between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

  In welcome contrast to the chief constable, he was eager to help, though it soon transpired there were limits to the assistance he could provide. Yes, Kollek had been up to Gleneagles, he confirmed, and he had toured the facilities with two others from the Israeli embassy.

  ‘Can you tell me exactly what they asked to see?’

  Ryerson looked embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t. You see, I didn’t give them the tour. I was rather taken up with the Americans.’

  ‘Secret Service?’

  He nodded dolefully. Liz gave an understanding laugh. ‘Could I speak to whoever did show them around?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It was young Dougal; he’s only been here a year. But he’s very good,’ he insisted, lest she think he had fobbed off the Israelis on an incompetent junior.

  Summoned by phone, Dougal joined them, looking like a schoolboy called to the headmaster’s study. He was a gangly youth, with a mop of ginger hair and a serious expression that made his youthful face look oddly middle-aged. Ryerson explained vaguely that Liz was involved with security arrangements.

  ‘We’re just checking up on a few things,’ Liz said casually. ‘No big deal. I gather you escorted an advance party of Israelis. Can you tell me about them?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dougal, starting to relax, since the headmaster’s cane was nowhere in sight. He described Naomi and Oskar, then, more hesitantly, the third member of the party, a man they called Danny.

  Liz picked up on this. ‘Tell me about this Danny. Was there anything in particular you noticed about him?’

  Dougal thought for a moment. ‘Nothing I could put my finger on. Except that… he seemed more… detached. I kept thinking he was looking for something. As though he had some idea in his head that he wasn’t letting anyone else in on.’

  ‘What sort of idea?’

  Dougal shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Was it about the dinner the Israelis are giving the Syrians? The night before the conference.’

  ‘I haven’t been involved with the dinner. Sorry.’

  ‘If it wasn�
�t the dinner, was there anything else he might have been concerned about?’

  ‘Not really. Other than the entertainment, I mean.’

  ‘There’s entertainment?’ said Liz, trying to stay calm. Naomi at the Israeli Embassy hadn’t said anything about entertainment.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Dougal. He looked worried, as if he’d suddenly realised he’d done something wrong. ‘Falconry and gun dogs.’

  When Liz looked puzzled, Dougal explained how demonstrations of each were going to be given for the guests before the dinner began.

  When he’d finished, Liz said crisply, ‘This afternoon I’d like to visit both the schools.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ryerson. ‘I’ll ring ahead so they’ll know you’re coming.’

  ‘And I wonder if you could spare Dougal to come with me. That way, we could retrace their steps precisely, and speak to the same people Kollek talked to.’

  Ryerson agreed. Then Liz took a copy of the photograph of Kollek from her briefcase. ‘There’s another thing. I’d like this circulated among all the staff here at the hotel. If any of them had contact with Kollek while he was here I’d like to know right away. Anyone from the cleaners of his house to a barman - if they remember seeing him, or talking with the man, please ask them to report it immediately. I’ll give you my mobile number so you can pass on any reports you get.’

  ‘There’s a large number of staff, Ms Carlyle, so it may take a little while—’ he said, then stopped speaking as he stared at the photograph Liz had put on his desk. He looked up at her with thoughtful eyes. ‘He looks familiar,’ he said.

  ‘You may have seen him when Dougal was showing him around.’