King Solomon's Curse

31

The real John Brice was indeed at the SIS building on the southern bank of the Thames. His shabby, dissolute cover persona from the Democratic Republic of Congo was gone, the MI6 officer now shaved, washed and clad in a clean, sharp suit. His presence there was known to very few people, however, and the number who knew why he was there was even smaller.

The bunker-like basement levels contained numerous operations centres; they were designed to allow controllers in London to monitor and coordinate activities across the globe, but on this occasion the focus of attention was much closer to home. ‘Looks like the police lost them, sir,’ reported one of Brice’s small team, a young but ambitious woman called Staite. She was overseeing the hunt for the fugitives, while at the same time making sure MI6’s involvement remained as discreet as possible. The Secret Intelligence Service’s remit was to conduct operations outside British soil; anything on it was the province of its sister/rival agency MI5, the Security Service, and to say that each fist of British intelligence resented interloping on its own turf by the other was a major understatement. ‘They’ve started to search the area around the car park, but haven’t found anything yet.’

Staite’s partner, an equally youthful Cambridge graduate named Waterford, shook his head. ‘How could they lose them? They were driving something that could be outpaced by a Segway!’

‘Don’t underestimate them — especially not Chase,’ Brice told them. One of the op centre’s many video screens displayed the passport photos of their targets, the images already acting as reference for MI6’s facial recognition software as it scoured London’s extensive network of surveillance cameras. ‘He’s former SAS, and has an annoying talent for survival.’

‘Is it wise to let the woodentops handle this, sir?’ asked Staite. ‘Once we locate them, maybe we should put GB63 on to them instead.’

‘I don’t want to draw attention, especially not from Five, unless absolutely necessary. All anyone outside this building needs to know is that Chase and Wilde are wanted for reasons relating to external security. What those reasons are, we’ll decide once we catch them.’ His phone rang. ‘Yes?’

‘Morley here, sir.’ One of the two officers he had sent to collect the fugitives and their possessions. They had failed the first part of their task, but at least the second had been achieved. ‘We’re leaving Heathrow now. We’ve got everything you told us to expect.’ He ran through a list of assorted electronic items and storage media, but it was the last that most concerned Brice: ‘And a laptop — with a bullet hole right through it.’

‘Does it boot up?’

‘No, sir. I tried, but it won’t even turn on.’

‘As soon as you get back to Vauxhall Cross, take everything to the techies — Evans is in charge of this operation. When will you arrive?’

‘About three-quarters of an hour, traffic permitting.’

‘Good. Carry on.’ He disconnected and looked back at the screens. One displayed a satellite map with Heathrow at the centre, extending as far as central London on the right edge. Somewhere on it, Eddie Chase and Nina Wilde were on the run…

And he had no direct leverage to apply. His watchers were still monitoring their daughter and her grandparents in Southampton, but with no way for him to contact his targets — their phones were amongst the items Morley and his partner had collected — he couldn’t use the threat of violence against her to force them to surrender.

What were they doing? It was possible they would head to Southampton to rescue their family, but the watchers were not merely an observation unit; he had already issued orders for them to take down Wilde and Chase should they show up. And GCHQ was still monitoring all communications with every person they might possibly contact for help, in addition to the agency’s standard filtering of the country’s news outlets. So far, nothing.

Whatever their plan, he was certain he would figure it out. Wilde might be a PhD, but she was just an archaeologist, not a seasoned covert agent. And as for Chase…

Staite gave him a quizzical look. It took a moment before he realised why; he had unconsciously drawn his lips into a dismissive half-smile at the mere thought that some yobbish Yorkshire squaddie might outwit him. Chase relied on brute force and luck, that was all — and both were finite, while he had the considerable resources of one of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies at his disposal. ‘We’ll get them,’ he said, as much to himself as the young woman. ‘We’ll get them.’

‘Do you see her?’ Nina asked as she and Eddie made their way through Hyde Park. Their journey into the capital had been lengthy and convoluted as they tried to minimise their exposure to the ubiquitous CCTV cameras. Appropriately for the setting of George Orwell’s 1984, London was the most heavily surveilled city on the planet. The degree to which its tens of thousands of cyclopean glass eyes could be accessed by government agencies had been exaggerated by Hollywood and BBC spy thrillers, the intelligence services not — yet — having real-time access to the security feeds of every pub and corner shop at the click of a mouse, but there were still plenty of official cameras overlooking the streets.

Eddie spotted a familiar figure on a bench near a sculpture of a heron. ‘Yeah, there she is.’

They cautiously surveyed their surroundings for signs of anyone paying them undue attention before finally joining the waiting woman. ‘There you are!’ said Tamara Defendé, in both relief and concern. ‘I’m so glad to see you both. When you got off the plane, I had no idea what had happened to you! We heard shots, but nobody would tell us anything.’

‘Yeah, it was a bit of a wild ride,’ Eddie replied, embracing her. ‘But we made it, and I don’t think we’ve been followed. What about you? Did you have any trouble?’

‘An African woman travelling alone, having trouble at British customs?’ said the Botswanan bush pilot with a sarcastic eye roll. ‘They questioned me for thirty minutes about why I was here and how soon I planned to leave — that was the part they cared about the most — before finally letting me go. I’m glad I had a return ticket to prove I was going to leave. If I’d arrived on a one-way ticket, I would probably still be at the airport, waiting to be deported on the first flight back.’

‘Welcome to England,’ he said with distaste. ‘But you’re here. What about the laptop?’

She opened a large, colourful bag. Inside was a slim computer — with a bullet hole through its casing. Unlike the one on its way to MI6, the damaged circuitry was tinged with red. The laptop Eddie and Nina had brought was Lydia’s, the original machine’s wound replicated with a shot from the mercenary’s Bushmaster — once as many as possible of its files, and those from the backup hard drives, had been transferred to a fistful of SD cards and flash drives bought from a mobile phone shop in Butembo. Nina was unwilling to force the surviving documentary crew to leave empty-handed after everything they had endured. ‘Here. The bullet hole didn’t help when I was being questioned. I told them I was bringing it to London to get it repaired.’

‘Which is kind of true,’ Nina said. ‘If we can get the video off its hard drive, we’ve got a chance of exposing the truth about what happened in the Congo.’

‘That’s if we can get it to the right person,’ said Eddie, taking another wary look around. ‘And if we can actually trust ’em!’

‘I bought some prepaid phones, like you asked,’ said TD. She handed him a plastic bag, which contained three identical mobile phones. ‘Why do you need so many? Two I can understand, one for each of you, but three?’

‘Soon as we finish using one, it goes straight in the bin,’ Eddie told her. ‘The person we’re going to call’s almost certainly being monitored — and once they get our number, they can track the phone.’

She nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

‘I want to say “get Macy to somewhere safe”,’ said Nina, ‘but I don’t know if we can risk it. We know they’re watching her, and if someone they don’t know turns up, it would make them suspicious — and they might even target you.’

TD sighed. ‘These people, they are bastards. Going after your child? They are as bad as Mukobo.’

‘That’s fucking spies for you,’ said Eddie. ‘But you know what’s ironic? The only person who can help us right now actually is a spy. I just hope he’s only the partial bell-end I think he is, not a complete one like Brice.’ He took out one of the phones. ‘You should get moving, TD. Soon as I make this call, there’ll be a load of police and God knows who else on their way here, and you don’t want to be seen anywhere near us.’

She reluctantly stood. ‘I wish there was more I could do.’

‘You’ve done everything you possibly could,’ Nina assured her, hugging her. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘I really owe you,’ Eddie added. ‘Thanks.’

‘Good luck. I hope I see you again.’ TD kissed his cheek, then walked away.

He watched her go, then slipped the laptop into the bag with the other phones and started in the opposite direction. ‘All right,’ he said to Nina. ‘You got that number?’

She had transcribed the contact details from their own phones during the flight. ‘Yeah, here.’

He began to thumb in the number. ‘God, it’s been ages since I used a phone with actual buttons.’ He had told TD to pick up the cheapest prepaid phones she could find; there was no point buying expensive smartphones just to throw away after one call. ‘Okay, it’s ringing. Let’s hope he answers…’

Waterford sat up in response to an alert on his computer’s screen. ‘Sir, I just got a flash from GCHQ. One of the people on Chase’s watch list has just been phoned from an unknown mobile number…’ He tapped at his keyboard, then listened to the intercepted call through a headset. ‘I think it’s him, sir! Chase, I mean.’

‘Put it on speaker,’ Brice ordered. ‘Wind it back, I want to hear the whole thing from the beginning.’

The call was being recorded digitally; it only took a moment for Waterford to shuttle to its start. A click of connection, then: ‘Alderley.’

‘He’s calling Peter Alderley?’ said Brice, surprised. From what he remembered, his SIS colleague and Chase were acquaintances at best, but hardly friends.

‘Ay up, Peter,’ the Yorkshireman said over the loudspeakers. ‘It’s Eddie Chase.’

‘Chase?’ replied Alderley, surprised. ‘Didn’t expect to get a call from you. What’s up?’ A pause, then with a certain dread: ‘Oh, God. You’ve caused another bloody international incident and you need my help, don’t you?’

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ was the not entirely convincing reply. ‘Me and Nina are just in town, that’s all. We can’t talk for too long right now—’

‘Obviously telling him that the call’s being monitored,’ muttered Staite.

‘—so it’d be great if we could meet up. What time do you finish work?’

‘Five o’clock,’ Alderley told him, still sounding highly suspicious. ‘Although I generally run late.’

‘You’re in charge of the department, aren’t you? Tell someone else to finish up for you, then hop in that crappy old car of yours and meet us in that square between King’s Cross and St Pancras at half six.’

‘Battle Bridge Place? I know it, but I did rather have plans for tonight. You know, going home, seeing my wife, having dinner, things like that?’

‘Hi, Peter,’ said a new voice. ‘It’s Nina. I know it’s short notice, but we really would love to see you. Both of us.’

‘That’s right,’ Chase added. ‘Nothing I want more right now than to talk to my old mate Peter.’

‘O-kaaay…’ said Alderley dubiously. ‘Well, if it’s that important to you… I suppose I can find the time.’

‘All right, great,’ said Chase. ‘We’ll be waiting for you.’

‘Anything I should bring?’ Alderley asked. ‘You know, in case you need it?’

‘Just your car so I can have a good laugh. See you there, Peter.’ The call ended.

‘Did we get their location?’ asked Brice.

Waterford checked his screen. ‘Sorry, sir. Somewhere around Hyde Park, but there wasn’t enough time to get a precise triangulation.’

‘Contact the Met anyway,’ Brice ordered. ‘Tell them to start a search; they might get lucky. And poll all the CCTV resources to see if we can get a hit.’

Staite nodded and dialled a phone number. Waterford, meanwhile, reacted with a start at another piece of data on his monitor. ‘Wait, the number he called — it’s here at SIS!’

‘Peter Alderley is the head of the Africa desk,’ Brice told him. ‘And he and Chase have worked together before.’ The wording of the call was troubling him. Chase and Wilde had clearly given Alderley a coded request for help, but only in the most general way, not providing him with any specific information. Somehow, though, he felt there was more to it, that he was missing something…

‘Should we pick him up?’

‘Who, Alderley?’ said Brice mockingly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I just told you, he’s a section head. A fishing trip like that would end your career if he really does know nothing about what’s going on.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But put watchers on him, follow him when he leaves the building. They might try to make contact while he’s in transit. And get a unit to stake out Battle Bridge Place.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Waterford.

Brice regarded the map again, using a tablet to zoom in on Hyde Park. Given such a broad search area it was unlikely that the regular police would catch the fugitives. If he gave an order to designate Wilde and Chase as dangerous, high-priority targets, however, armed response and Special Branch units would cordon off the area and scour every cranny until they were found — but doing so would draw a huge amount of attention, which he didn’t want to risk unless he had no choice.

But in a couple of hours, he knew where they would be — or where they said they would be. ‘Send someone to watch Alderley’s house as well,’ he told Staite, ‘just in case this meeting’s a diversion.’ It was possible the call to Alderley had been a decoy, as he was sure they knew it would be monitored; but if it was, then to what end?

‘Play the call again,’ he told Waterford, who dutifully called up the audio file. There was something in the short conversation he had overlooked. He just had to figure out what.

The answer had not come to him by the time Alderley approached the rendezvous, though.

‘Subject is going into the St Pancras multistorey,’ reported one of the watchers tailing the section head. After leaving work, Alderley had travelled by Tube and train to his home, then driven back into central London to make his rendezvous. There had been no sign of Chase or Wilde on either leg of the journey, or near his house. ‘Do we follow him in?’

Brice hesitated — having the watchers take their car in behind Alderley ran the risk of his noticing them — but gave an order in the affirmative. ‘They might try to meet him inside. Don’t let him out of your sight.’

‘Roger. Going in now.’

He waited impatiently for an update. More watchers were already in place at the public square between the two railway terminals, but so far none had anything to report. ‘He’s parked on the second floor,’ Alderley’s shadow finally said. ‘Going past to find a space for ourselves… he doesn’t seem to have noticed us.’

‘Split up,’ Brice told them. ‘One of you follow him, the other park the car and then catch up. I don’t want you to lose eyes on him for a moment.’

‘Understood, sir.’

Brice looked up at the operations room’s screens. Many showed real-time CCTV feeds from cameras around Battle Bridge Place, little wireframe boxes flashing over the heads of the milling pedestrians as MI6’s facial recognition software searched for a match. None yet, though…

His phone rang. ‘Yes?’

It was a call he had been waiting for. ‘I have an update on that laptop,’ replied Evans, one of SIS’s senior technical specialists.

‘Did you recover any files from it?’ Brice asked.

‘We haven’t recovered anything from it yet, old man,’ said the Welshman with silken pomposity. ‘The bullet clipped its hard drive, as well as causing a fair amount of damage to the main logic board. I can give you categoric reassurance that it would have been impossible to boot up after it was shot, though.’

‘What about getting data off it? Could anything have been copied even if it couldn’t power up?’

‘There are ways, yes. But I doubt they could have been employed in the field without specialist hardware.’

‘I need to be absolutely sure, Evans,’ Brice said firmly. ‘There’s a video file on that computer that’s of the highest importance to national security. I need confirmation that it hasn’t been watched or copied.’

‘I did read your request form, old man. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it — just give us a little time. We’ll dismantle it and see how much we can tease out of the SSD. Might have to write a custom controller to piece together any scrambled data, but that’s why they pay us the modest salaries, right?’ He chuckled.

‘Just get on with it and report back to me the moment you have an answer,’ he said before ending the call.

‘Techies, sir?’ asked Waterford. ‘Always a pain in the arse, aren’t they?’ Staite smiled.

‘Keep your minds on the job,’ Brice told them irritably. Based on Evans’ report, it seemed unlikely that the incriminating video had been copied — certainly none of the other devices retrieved from Chase and Wilde had contained it — but he needed to be absolutely sure. Once he had confirmation, the threat the couple posed both to himself and SIS as a whole would be drastically reduced. Until that time, though, it had to be considered very great indeed.

‘Subject’s going down the stairs,’ reported the watcher following Alderley.

‘Ground units, have someone ready at the bottom,’ ordered Brice.

‘Already in position,’ replied another officer, a woman. Seconds passed, then: ‘I see him. He’s alone.’

‘Nobody passed him on the stairs,’ said the man.

‘Okay, wait for your partner. Ground units, he’s coming your way.’ Brice looked back at the screens. One of the CCTV cameras covered the car park exit closest to Battle Bridge Place. A brief wait, then Alderley emerged. ‘There he is — track him,’ he told Waterford.

Different cameras followed Alderley into the square. He slowed as he neared its centre, looking around. Several watchers announced that they had him in sight. ‘No sign of the main targets,’ said one.

‘Be patient. Let them come to him.’ He kept watching the screens. Alderley wandered back and forth, looking hopefully at the stations’ exits, but it didn’t take long before his body language revealed impatience. He sat on a bench, checking his watch. Even on the CCTV image, his frown was clear.

Twenty minutes ticked by, and still no trace of the people he was supposed to meet. Alderley became increasingly irritated. ‘Maybe the woodentops caught them,’ suggested Waterford.

Staite shook her head. ‘They would have notified us. Sir, this whole thing might be a decoy.’

‘I’d already thought of that,’ said Brice. The nagging feeling that he had missed something still would not go away. ‘But a decoy from what?’

Another ten minutes passed. ‘He’s moving,’ said one of the ground team. Brice looked up from a styrofoam cup of tea. Alderley had finally thrown in the towel, visibly huffing before stalking off towards the car park.

‘Looks like he’s had enough,’ Brice told everyone. ‘Stay with him. Mobile units, get back to your vehicles. Wherever he goes, I want him followed.’

‘He’s making a call,’ said Staite, seeing Alderley take out a phone.

‘Get it,’ ordered Brice. An intercept had already been set up on the section head’s mobile by GCHQ; the call came through in real time.

But it was nothing of value. ‘Hi, sweetie, it’s me,’ Alderley said to his wife, who asked how he was. ‘A bit pissed off, actually. The people I was supposed to meet never turned up. I’m coming home.’ The rest of the call was similarly innocuous.

‘Keep some people in the square, just in case they show up,’ Brice told Staite, but he was sure now that Chase and Wilde weren’t coming.

He glared at the screens. Where were they — and what were they doing?

Alderley returned to his car. The 1971 Ford Capri 3000 GT was his pride and joy, the classic vehicle lovingly hand-restored over two decades as time and finances permitted. It was rare that he actually took the metallic orange coupe out on the road, not wanting to risk damage or — more likely — a breakdown, but the fact that Eddie Chase had been very insistent he bring it rather than his everyday vehicle had caught his curiosity.

So had the rest of the phone call. While he was quite fond of Nina, she was hardly a close friend, and Chase himself was aggravating at best. They would not have contacted him simply to catch up over a coffee. There was something they wanted — needed — to tell him. But knowing that all calls to SIS headquarters were monitored, they had been forced to be circumspect.

Except… they hadn’t turned up. That was both annoying and surprising — as a former military man, Chase was a stickler for punctuality. Had something happened to them?

That thought had already triggered the innate paranoia of all intelligence officers. He couldn’t be sure, but while waiting in the square it did seem that the same faces kept circulating on its periphery…

He cautiously surveyed the car park before entering the Capri. A man was just starting his own vehicle nearby. Alderley eyed him. Was it the same car that had followed him in? The silver Vauxhall was exactly the kind of unassuming vehicle that a team of watchers would use.

He waited for the man to depart before starting his own car, the three-litre engine’s rumble echoing through the low-ceilinged concrete space. Another look around. Nobody there. Wondering if he was being a bit too paranoid, he set off.

Nevertheless, he paid more attention to the view in his mirror on the way home. No one seemed to be following him — though whether that was because nobody actually was, or they were good enough not to be noticed, he couldn’t tell…

Alderley shook his head as he stopped at traffic lights, smiling to himself. ‘There’s nobody behind you,’ he said—

‘Ay up,’ said a muffled voice from behind him. ‘If you drive over any more bumps, I might have to kill you.’