Carver

23

Whitehall, London SW1

Sir Frederick Greenhill, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, looked around the table. ‘So, any other business?’

The question was a formality. The agenda for the meeting had been completed. A couple of the senior intelligence officers and civil servants who comprised the committee membership began gathering up their papers. But then Cameron Young, the Prime Minister’s political advisor, and his personal representative on the JIC, spoke up: ‘Yes, there is one thing, actually.’

Young did not look much like the slick corporate types, with their sharp suits and self-satisfied expressions, who constituted the majority of the Prime Minister’s closest associates. He had pale-ginger hair, a fleshy face, and a bushy drooping moustache — which gave him the slightly morose, doggy air that had long ago inspired his nickname: Fred Basset. This particular hound, however, had claws and teeth worthy of a Dobermann. Young had qualified as a barrister before becoming a political operator. He possessed intelligence and ambition in abundance, not to mention an independently wealthy American wife who had become one of London’s leading political hostesses. He was not a man to be crossed.

‘As I’m sure you’ll be aware, the American financier Malachi Zorn is formally launching a new investment fund in London at the end of this week,’ Young continued. ‘Many of the world’s richest and most influential individuals have placed very large sums of money in this fund, and will be attending the launch party, as will the PM himself. He sees this event as a tremendous vote of confidence in the government and in UK plc, and he wants the world to know about it.’

‘Is that wise?’ asked Sir Charles Herbert, the Foreign Office’s man on the committee. ‘Some of the individuals in question are not necessarily people with whom the PM would want to be associated. The provenance of their fortunes is not always as respectable as one might wish.’

‘I’m sorry?’ asked Young with a frown.

‘He means the money’s dirty,’ snapped Jack Grantham, whose duties as Head of MI6 included attendance at JIC meetings.

‘Then we will make sure that the PM is not photographed standing next to any of them,’ said Young, with an almost imperceptible air of impatience. ‘But he has to make an appearance. There’s just going to be too much money and too much power in the room to ignore. And of course, Mr Orwell will be there.’

‘Well, we wouldn’t want him hogging the front pages while the PM sits at home at Number 10…’ Grantham mused.

‘No, we certainly would not,’ Young agreed. ‘The question that concerns me, however, is this: what are the security implications of this event in particular, and Mr Zorn’s presence here in general? I’m sure many of you will be aware of the interview Mr Zorn gave to the BBC World programme HARDTalk yesterday. He gave a public warning to the UK government that we were at risk from attacks by eco-terrorists. Firstly, let us just establish the facts of the matter. Do you have any reason to believe he’s right, Dame Judith?’

The successor to Agatha Bewley as Head of MI5, Dame Judith Spofforth, was not given to dithering. Her reply was immediate, all the facts at her fingertips: ‘Not at the moment. We keep a weather eye on the most extreme ecological and animal rights groups, of course. They tend to go in for nasty, frequently illegal, but essentially small-scale activity: harassing executives that work for companies of which they disapprove, digging tunnels on the sites of planned motorways, and so on. But there’s no sign any of them have any major stunts in mind.’

Cameron Young turned to Euan Jeffries, the Director of GCHQ. ‘Euan?’

‘I must say, I agree with Dame Judith. We’re not seeing any significant traffic that indicates planning for an attack of that kind.’

‘Jack?’

Grantham thought for a second. To anyone else in the room, it looked as though he was sifting through intelligence data and analysis in his mind, weighing up the threat to the UK. In fact, he was thinking about Ahmad Razzaq and his contract on Malachi Zorn. Strictly speaking, he ought to mention it — the PM would go ballistic if Zorn came to any harm on British soil. But the fact was, Grantham had not been asked about threats to Zorn. He’d been asked about eco-terrorists.

‘No,’ Grantham said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’

Young nodded encouragingly. ‘Well, that’s reassuring. Nevertheless, the PM believes that we have to be seen to respond. He does not relish the prospect of doing nothing and then standing up in front of Parliament — or, even worse, Newsnight — when a bomb goes off somewhere. He is also keen to have an initiative to take to this launch. Congress ignored Mr Zorn. We will not make that mistake.’

Dame Judith cast her sharp eyes in Young’s direction. ‘May one ask what you have in mind?’

‘We need a high-profile event of our own, a proper eco-terrorism summit: senior figures from the intelligence, defence and energy communities; a couple of top energy executives; scientists who can discuss the possible implications of a blown-up oil rig, that sort of thing.’

‘Clearly you will want to make an announcement within the next week or so,’ said Sir Charles Herbert, with diplomatic smoothness. ‘But surely there’s no rush over the summit itself. As I’m sure you’ll know, these things take many months to organize. In fact, I dare say everyone will have forgotten about the idea long before anything can be done.’

Cameron shook his jowly head. ‘No, the PM is adamant. An announcement is not enough. He wants to be seen taking swift, decisive action. It’s got to be put together immediately: tomorrow, in fact, nice and early so it dominates the whole day’s news cycle. So I’d be very grateful if all the relevant bodies would rustle up a few of their brightest stars. To save any interdepartmental wrangling, we’ll coordinate it all from the Cabinet Office. And let me emphasize in the strongest possible terms, the PM wants a real spectacular.’

The men and women of the Joint Intelligence Committee were, by definition, highly experienced, unflappable individuals who weren’t given to panic. But even they had a hard time concealing their shock at what Young had just proposed.

‘Where were you thinking of holding this meeting?’ Sir Charles Herbert asked, hoping that a moment’s consideration of the practicalities would swiftly scupper the PM’s hare-brained scheme. ‘It’s going to be hard getting one of the major London conference venues at such short notice.’

Cameron Young was not deterred. ‘No, we don’t want anything like that. We have to have maximum media coverage, so we need a photogenic backdrop.’

‘Well, maybe you should try an oil rig, then,’ suggested Jack Grantham, wondering to himself just how mad this was going to get.

He, too, had underestimated Cameron Young. ‘No, we considered that option. But it’s always a nightmare getting people to and from rigs, and they can’t cater for the number of visitors we had in mind.’

‘And just think what would happen if the weather got up, and you suddenly found several chopper-loads of dignitaries stuck on a rig overnight with all the media jackals,’ said a man from the Ministry of Defence. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Precisely,’ said Young. ‘We need a controllable environment. And we think we’ve found just the one…’