‘She wanted to make sure you’d been told, but she didn’t have your number. I think she was relieved to learn that I’d already been in touch. She said she hoped you would come over right away. She’ll take this very hard but I’m sure your presence here would be a great comfort.’
‘I will,’ said Liz. ‘I’ll be on the Eurostar that gets in at quarter past ten. But I don’t really know Mimi at all.’
‘I’ll send a car to meet you and take you to the flat. Right now you are the one link to her father. She said that the last time she saw Martin he told her he hoped to marry you. He told her everyone has a true love in their life but not everyone is lucky enough to find them. He said he was one of the lucky ones.’
Chapter 50
Peggy Kinsolving liked to wake early – one of the best things in life was having a job she was eager to get to. In her earlier incarnation as a librarian, there had been mornings when she could barely get out of bed, especially in the dark winter months, but ever since she’d joined MI5 there had never been any problem about getting up.
This morning, however, she was fast asleep when her alarm rang at 6.30. After Liz’s phone call telling her the dreadful news from Paris she had just sat in a chair for half an hour, everything spinning in her head. She hadn’t been able to make up her mind whether she should ring DG straightaway or wait until morning. Should she ring Geoffrey Fane? She seemed to be immobilised, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of her.
Then suddenly she had pulled herself together. What would Liz do in my shoes? she’d thought. Well, she wouldn’t be sitting here like this. Peggy had long ago observed that the worse the situation, the more calmly Liz behaved, and she had drawn strength from Liz’s cool efficiency. Well now, she said to herself, I must do the same. So she’d grabbed the phone, dialled DG’s PA and passed on the news. ‘He’ll want to know now,’ was the advice, so Peggy had rung him. DG had asked for an update on the operation and had told her that she must be the main liaison with Manchester Police until Liz was able to take over again. She’d then rung the Duty Officer at Vauxhall Cross and given him the barest account of what had happened to pass on to Geoffrey Fane. She had decided to leave informing Andy Bokus until morning. Having done all that, she began to feel better about herself and got into bed. But it was past two o’clock and her mind was racing. She was thinking what she must do in the morning; how awful Liz must be feeling; whatever could have happened in Paris – and so it went on until she fell asleep at about five o’clock, only to be woken an hour and a half later.
When she got to Thames House, Peggy found that word had already spread about Martin Seurat’s death. A few colleagues asked her what had happened, but she didn’t know any more than they did. As more people arrived for work, they were also greeted with the news. Soon an almost palpable gloom settled over the open-plan office where Peggy had her desk. Liz was a very popular colleague, much admired by the younger officers. It was widely known that her partner was a DGSE officer whom she’d met when she was posted to Northern Ireland, and that an operation there had ended violently in the South of France. Some people knew that Martin Seurat had saved the life of Dave Armstrong, one of their colleagues, who had been kidnapped. So Seurat was something of a hero in the Counter-Terrorist branch, even though not many people had met him.
When everyone had arrived for work Peggy told them all that Martin had been killed in Paris in the course of the operation they were working on; that Liz had gone to Paris and would be getting a full briefing but at present she could not tell them exactly what had happened. DG had asked her, she explained, to stand in for Liz until she was back. She was going to move into Liz’s office for the time being and she’d asked for her calls to be put through to Liz’s extension. If anything relevant came through to any of them they were to come in and tell her immediately. She might well be going up to Manchester very soon. Then she went into Liz’s office, closed the door and set about trying to get to grips with what was going on.
An hour later she felt like a salesman who’d made the rounds but come back with an empty order book. She had begun by calling Charlie Simmons at GCHQ. He’d had the news of Seurat’s death by now, and sounded very subdued. There had been no further email traffic to or from Zara since the email had come in announcing that the meeting in Paris had been cancelled. He explained again that the reason why it had taken so long to unzip that message was that it seemed to have been sent by someone who was not familiar with the code. ‘This may mean that those who usually send the messages are not there,’ he said.
‘That makes sense,’ said Peggy. ‘Presumably the messages are usually sent by the people who are on their way here. But they must be communicating somehow or how are they going to meet up with Zara?’
‘However they are doing it, we’re not onto it. Perhaps they made all the arrangements in advance and don’t need to communicate.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Peggy, but she was sceptical. The silence seemed ominous.
Next she checked in with A4 and was told that Zara was acting like a model student, attending lectures, working in the library. ‘Completely normal,’ said the Duty Controller. Too normal, thought Peggy, sceptical again.
Finally she checked with her contact at the Border Agency. He was in constant contact with their counterparts on the Continent and no vehicle of the description she had given him had been reported crossing the Channel or the North Sea. Peggy asked, ‘What if the vehicle were coming in a roundabout way?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Say from much further away than the usual Channel ports. Like Scandinavia – ferries from Norway come here, don’t they?’
‘Sure, though that wouldn’t help them escape detection. There isn’t a port within five hundred miles east of here that hasn’t been given the details of the vehicle we’re looking for. And just to be safe, we circulated them to Ireland too. In fact, unless this lorry’s coming from Brazil you don’t have anything to worry about. If it sails, we’ll know.’
‘All right,’ said Peggy, tempted to ask him to cover Brazil as well, but even she could see that was absurd. ‘Thank you,’ she added, realising that perhaps she had been a bit rude. She was getting very tense. It wasn’t just the aftermath of Seurat’s death and the absence of sleep, it was the absence of developments. No news was usually good news, but right now Peggy wanted something to happen.
Chapter 51
It had been a really tedious few days. Maureen Hayes had wanted to take the week as holiday because her son was home on leave from Afghanistan, but she’d been told she had to work. Wally Woods, her A4 controller, had said that they needed all the resource they could muster to cover what was thought to be a developing terrorist plot.
But so far nothing had happened. The target Maureen and her team were covering, Zara, had gone reliably as clockwork every day of the week from his hostel, Dinwiddy House, to SOAS, where he had attended lectures, sat working in the library and drunk coffee in the snack bar with other students. He did not seem to have any close friends whom he met regularly but he chatted in a friendly enough way to whoever was around. She and her team had been unable to get near enough to overhear any of his conversations but everything looked perfectly natural. Then at about five or six in the evening, he had left the university area and gone back to Dinwiddy House, where, according to her overnight shift colleagues, he had stayed until the following morning. If he was plotting a terrorist outrage, thought Maureen, he must be doing it from his room, as there were no outward signs of a conspiracy.
Today was Friday, and at the early morning briefing before they took over the surveillance, she and her team had been told to be extra-vigilant. Something that had happened the previous day in Paris had led the desk officers to think that a group of possibly up to six people would be arriving in Britain, if they were not already here, and Zara would be meeting up with them. They were thought to be intending to carry out some form of terrorist attack, but what, where and when was not know
n. It was vital, they had been told, that if Zara broke his routine or met a group of people who had not been seen before, they reported at once; and above all that they did not lose him.
So Maureen and her team were very alert this morning, and rather disappointed when Zara came out at the usual time and headed off to SOAS just the same as on all the previous days. Marcus Washington went into the building and reported that Zara was in a lecture. After the lecture he went to the library, where he was reported by Marcus, by then sitting two places away from him, to be concentrating on a large book from which he was taking notes. Just before twelve noon, he looked at his watch, packed up his things, returned the book to the desk and came out of the library.
‘On the move,’ said Marcus quietly into his microphone as Zara left the library to be picked up by Maureen and her partner, Duff Wells, as he came down the steps.
‘Having an early lunch,’ reported Maureen to the Control Room. But instead of heading off to the snack bar where he usually went at lunchtime, Zara walked quickly out into Tottenham Court Road, ran straight across, narrowly avoiding being run over by a bus, and headed fast towards Goodge Street underground station.
‘He’s doing anti-surveillance,’ reported Maureen as Wells, who had anticipated the move and was already on the other side of the road, went into the station ahead of Zara. Maureen caught up, arriving at the station as Zara and Wells with a small group of passengers were waiting for the lift to take them to the platforms. Maureen, Wells and Zara, with about fifteen other people, piled into the ancient lift, which creaked its way down and juddered to a halt at platform level. Zara was first out, hurrying along the tunnel to the southbound platform.
‘Doesn’t look as though he’s going to see his mum,’ reported Maureen. ‘Euston is north.’
Then began a short tour of the underground system as Zara, with Maureen and Wells accompanying him, went south on the Northern Line to Tottenham Court Road, west on the Central Line to Oxford Circus and finally back north on the Victoria Line to Euston, where he took the exit for the mainline station. Each time he changed trains he hung back and tried to be the last onto the train, but Maureen and Duff Wells knew all about that anti-surveillance ploy and, helped by the crowded platforms, one or other of them managed to board the train after him without drawing attention to themselves.
Half an hour later, as Maureen, now ahead of Zara, emerged up the stairs from the underground onto the concourse of Euston Station, she was relieved to see another colleague, Fred Watson, standing in the crowd in front of the departure board.
As she followed Zara towards the booking hall and watched from the door as he collected a ticket from the fast ticket machine, she heard Fred talking to the Control Room. ‘There’s a Manchester train at one o’clock; we’ll go with him if he catches it. Gets there at seven minutes past three.’
‘OK,’ came back from Wally Woods. ‘I’m alerting the police to meet the train at all the stops. I’ll get a team out to meet you in Manchester. Keep us posted.’
Back in the main concourse Zara joined the crowd in front of the departure board, where he stood waiting, watched from different directions by the three pairs of eyes of the A4 team.
As soon as the platform for the 13.00 train to Manchester Piccadilly flashed up on the board, Duff Wells moved fast, ahead of the crowd, towards Platform 5 and Fred Watson followed, more casually. Maureen stayed in the concourse waiting for Zara to move too. But Zara didn’t move. Maureen muttered into her microphone, ‘Watch out for a last-minute rush. He’s still here and he’s very alert for surveillance.’ At 12.55 Zara was still on the concourse.
Then suddenly he moved fast, out of the concourse, towards the platforms. ‘On the move,’ said Maureen. She was trying to keep up with him, but she lost sight of him in the crowd of people now rushing to get seats on another train. ‘Control lost,’ she shouted as she ran towards the platforms.
Fred and Duff were still waiting at the top of the ramp leading down to platform 5, but there was just a trickle of latecomers now and Zara was not among them.
‘Pretty sure we haven’t missed him.’ It was Duff Wells. ‘Fred got here before anyone else. Between us we’ve clocked everyone who got on.’
As Maureen ran up to join them, Wally Woods said, ‘Try the next train’, over their headphones. ‘Thirteen-oh-three, Platform seven, for Birmingham.’
‘I’ll wait here till this train leaves in case he’s just delaying,’ panted Maureen as Duff and Fred set off running to Platform 7 where the stragglers were still boarding. Duff waited at the end while Fred sprinted along the platform, scanning the passengers without much hope of seeing his target, but then near the far end of the platform he spotted Zara, just about to get onto the train.
‘Got him,’ he shouted. ‘Second carriage. I’m boarding now.’ Duff joined a chattering group of grey-haired men dressed in walking clothes who were getting into a carriage in the middle of the train. Last to arrive was Maureen, clambering into the final carriage, just before the doors were locked and the guard signalled the driver to go. She stood leaning on the door, gasping for breath, her heart pumping at twice its normal speed. I’m getting too old for this, she thought to herself.
‘Phew,’ she heard Fred say. ‘That was a close one. But we’re still with him. I’ve got eyeball. He’s just three rows in front of me.’
‘OK,’ said Wally from Thames House Control Room. ‘Well done.’
‘The train stops at Rugby, Coventry and Birmingham International; Birmingham New Street is the last stop,’ continued Fred.
‘Get off where he does, but I’ll try to get the police to be at the stops along the way – I’m hoping they’ll be able to take him on if he gets off before New Street. I’ll get our teams to meet you at New Street in case that’s where he’s going.’
Rugby and Coventry came and went and it wasn’t until Birmingham International was announced that Zara got up and joined the line of passengers waiting to get off the train.
What on earth is he up to? wondered Maureen. Don’t say he’s going to a conference – not after all this trouble.
But it wasn’t to the Conference Centre he was heading. As soon as he left the train, he made a beeline for the Skyrail to the airport and got on the first train that came in, with the A4 team in hot pursuit.
‘What do you want us to do if he checks in for a flight?’ asked Maureen.
Wally replied, ‘You’ll have to let him go. But get all the details.’
But at the airport Zara didn’t go to the departure hall; he went instead to the arrivals hall, and straight to the Hertz car-hire desk.
‘He’s hiring a car. We’ve got no wheels so we’ll have to let him go or hire one ourselves.’
‘Get the number and make of the car and we’ll pick him up on the road. There’s a police team coming out now to join you.’
As the A4 team watched, Zara hired a dark blue Ford S Max and drove off, heading for the airport exit.
While Wally Woods in London passed the target to the police surveillance teams, Maureen and her colleagues went off in different directions to get some lunch in the airport cafés. By the time she had finished a not very enticing salad, Maureen heard over her headphones that Zara’s car had been picked up by the cameras, heading towards the M6 Toll. That was a silly choice if he’s trying to avoid surveillance, she thought. He’ll be on camera all the way.
Chapter 52
Peggy had been staring out of the window, feeling as sluggish as the Thames at low tide, when the phone on Liz’s desk rang.
‘Hi, Border Agency here. I think we have something for you.’
‘Where?’
‘Hook of Holland. They called five minutes ago. There’s a Stena Line ferry leaving for Harwich at fourteen thirty their time; that’s half past one here, so fairly soon. Scheduled arrival time at Harwich is twenty hundred hours, British time. The lorry came in just before the deadline – they have to be quayside sixty minutes before sailing. It’s got the mark
ings you’re looking for, though it’s carrying Turkish registration plates.’ He read out the registration number. ‘Just one driver, Turkish passport, name of Deniz Keskin, date of birth thirtieth October 1963.’
‘I bet that’s a false passport. If that’s our lorry it’s come from Dagestan and he’s not Turkish. What’s it carrying?’
‘Mattresses. Lots of mattresses, according to the manifest.’
Plus a few other things, thought Peggy. And she asked, ‘Has anyone looked inside?’
‘No. The Dutch are giving it a bit of space – as we requested. You said don’t scare them off.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It was weighed – all the vehicles are, so that can’t have aroused suspicion; it was apparently normal weight for its declared load. But it’s hard to tell much without looking inside. We can have Customs search it when it arrives if you want. Easy enough to do.’
‘No, thanks. We don’t want to risk alerting them at this stage. But please ask them to try and put the marker on as it goes through.’
As Peggy put the phone down she was hoping she’d taken the right decision. It was a big risk to allow into the country a lorry that she was pretty sure was carrying weapons, detonators and heaven knew what else, intended for a group of jihadis who had gone off the map and could be anywhere in the country. But she didn’t have much time to worry about it. As soon as she put the phone down, she picked it up again and rang Wally Woods in the A4 Control room.
‘Hi, Liz.’
‘No, it’s Peggy. Liz is out today.’
‘Oh?’
Obviously the news from Paris hadn’t percolated to the A4 control room. Peggy said, ‘I’m running the op until Liz gets back. I’ve just heard news of our lorry from the Border Agency. It’s on board the Stena ferry at the Hook of Holland coming to Harwich.’ She passed on the details she’d been given. ‘They’re going to get the marker on at Harwich.’
Close Call Page 23