King Solomon's Curse

32

Alderley froze. ‘Chase?’

‘No, your car’s talking to you like KITT from Knight Rider. Of course it bloody is!’

‘You — you broke into my Capri?’

‘The locks are from the Seventies, I could’ve got in with a pipe cleaner. Why do you think I asked you to bring it? That and being able to find it in the car park. Don’t let on that we’re here, though. You’re being followed.’

‘We?’

‘Hi, Peter,’ Nina added.

‘Are you in my boot?’ the SIS officer asked. ‘And also: why?’

‘Long story,’ said Eddie. ‘But we need your help, and we couldn’t talk about it on the phone. The people following you are from MI6.’

‘What? Why on earth would my own agency be following me?’ The lights changed; he set off again.

Eddie almost had to shout to be heard over the engine and road noise. ‘Remember John Brice?’

‘Of course I do. He quit two years ago. Why?’

‘He didn’t quit, he went into deep cover. He was up to some nasty shit in DR Congo for MI6. We caught him at it — and now he wants us dead to cover it up.’

‘I’m the head of SIS’s Africa desk. If we had an operation in the Congo, I’d know about it.’

‘This was the kind of operation that would need total deniability,’ said Nina. ‘From what Brice told us, only the people at the very top were in the loop.’

‘Brice told you? That sounds uncharacteristically sloppy.’

‘He didn’t think we’d stay alive long enough to tell anyone else,’ Eddie explained. ‘Unlucky for him, we did — and we got it on video.’

Alderley raised his eyebrows. ‘I’d… very much like to see that video.’

‘So would we,’ said Nina. ‘The problem is, it’s on a laptop — and Brice put a bullet through it. So we don’t know if we can recover it.’

‘We need to get somewhere we can talk properly,’ Eddie said. ‘By which I mean, not through the back of your fucking car boot. Do you keep this thing in a garage? We need to get out without anyone seeing us.’

‘I do,’ Alderley told him, only to realise what he meant. ‘Hold on. You’re telling me that John Brice is still secretly working for MI6 and has assigned watchers to follow me in the hope I’ll lead them to you… and you want to come to my house?’

‘Bang on. I can see why they promoted you now.’

‘Cheeky sod,’ he replied. ‘This is a very bad idea, you know. I’m thinking specifically for me, but it won’t go well for you either if they realise where you are.’

‘We’re not asking to rent your spare bedroom,’ said Nina. ‘We just need you to help us recover the video from the laptop.’

Alderley snorted. ‘Or I could just drop you off at the nearest Apple Store.’

‘There’s more to it than just the video, though,’ she went on. ‘We were in DR Congo on an archaeological expedition, and we found something in a lost city — something incredibly dangerous. And Brice has it.’

That caught his attention, sarcasm replaced by cautious concern born of his previous dealings with the couple. ‘What kind of thing?’

‘It’d be much better if we could tell you face to face. Also, it’s kinda cramped in here… and it’s really starting to smell of gas.’

‘It’s leaking again? I thought I’d fixed that…’ Alderley sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘You can get into the house from the garage, so you won’t be seen. I’ll talk to you once we get there. Having two people climb out of my boot will be quite a surprise to my wife, mind.’ Foreboding entered his voice. ‘I’ll have to warn you, though. If it turns out that Brice really is carrying out an authorised SIS operation, then not only can I not help you, but I’ll be obligated to report my contact with you.’

Eddie’s own tone became distinctly menacing. ‘You’ll turn us in?’

‘Not on the spot — I trust you that much. But you would need to leave pretty sharpish, because I’d have to make the call within… five minutes, let’s say. First things first, though. I’ll hear you out, and see if we can get anything off this laptop.’

‘That’s great,’ said Nina, relieved. ‘Thank you, Peter.’

‘I’d say “no problem”, but I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, do I?’ Alderley laughed. ‘By the way, Chase?’

‘Yeah?’ asked Eddie.

‘If my car really did start talking to me, and it had your voice… I’d have to get rid of it.’

The Yorkshireman’s rude retort was drowned out by the rumbling exhaust note.

‘Subject has reached his house,’ said one of Alderley’s watchers. ‘He’s backing his car into the garage… closing the door.’

Brice frowned. There had been no sign of Chase and Wilde on Alderley’s journey home. That they hadn’t tried to contact him suggested the couple had been somewhere else entirely — so why summon him at all?

‘House team,’ he said, ‘there was definitely no activity at the subject’s home, correct? Nobody came or went?’

‘No, sir,’ came the reply from a unit parked down the street. ‘His wife’s home, but she hasn’t left, and nobody else came to the house.’

‘No phone calls to the house or the wife?’ he asked Staite, who shook her head. ‘All right, then. Mobile units, return to base. House team, stay on site. They might try to reach him during the night. Do you have visibility on the surrounding houses in case they try to come through their gardens?’

‘We can see both neighbouring properties,’ the watcher told him. ‘Access from the rear is blocked by a railway cutting with a high vertical wall.’

‘Climbable?’

‘Unlikely.’

Another frown. Chase and Wilde’s actions made no apparent sense — and an unpredictable opponent was dangerous. ‘Double-check that there’s no access from the railway,’ he ordered as his phone rang. ‘Yes?’

‘Brice.’

He knew the voice, and immediately became deferential. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Anything to report?’

‘Nothing yet, sir.’

‘Hmm.’ For such a small sound, it was laden with meaning: disapproval, and disappointment. Brice felt a flash of humiliation. ‘Tell your team to continue, then. The meeting you requested will be in one hour, my office.’

He checked his watch. ‘I’ll be ready, sir.’

‘Some good news would be a helpful ice-breaker, Brice.’ The older man ended the call.

Brice lowered his phone, trying to conceal his tension from his subordinates. He had envisioned a world-changing use for the Shamir almost immediately after seeing it in action, developing the plan on his flight from the Congo. When he had proposed it to the man with whom he had just spoken, there had been considerable scepticism — understandable, without a demonstration of the strange stone’s destructive powers. But Brice had convinced him enough to take the plan higher… and now it would get a hearing.

The future of the entire country hinged upon the decision made an hour from now. He had to push his case as strongly as possible. Ensuring there was no way anyone could prove a connection between the Shamir and SIS would help enormously.

To do that, he had to find — and eliminate — Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase. ‘I just spoke to C,’ he told his operatives both in the room and in the field with resurgent anger. ‘He wants results. These targets are a threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Find them!’

Peter Alderley leaned back in a chair, shaking his head wearily. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, interrupting Nina and Eddie’s explanation of recent events. ‘Let me try to get my head around this. You found the lost palace of King Solomon in the jungle, and inside was the actual Horn of Jericho from the Bible — a stone that when it’s brought into the light causes some kind of sonic vibration that can literally level cities. Correct?’

‘More or less,’ said Nina. Alderley’s wife Poppy had indeed been surprised that he had brought home guests, but was more annoyed that he had asked her to leave the room so they could hold a private discussion. A compromise had been reached, in that he had left the room to talk with his visitors in his small home office-cum-den while she watched television in the lounge. ‘I don’t think it’s so much light as some kind of radiation that activates it, though. Cosmic rays, or neutrinos.’

‘Neutrinos,’ Alderley echoed dubiously. ‘At the same time, John Brice, who had faked his resignation from SIS to work undercover, was secretly supplying secessionist rebels in eastern DRC with arms and funding so British companies like Monardril could get first dibs on mining concessions in the newly independent state. Yes?’

Eddie nodded. ‘You were listening, then.’

‘I was, yes. It’s the believing I’m struggling with.’

‘It’s all true,’ Nina insisted. She held up the broken laptop. ‘The proof is on this — if we can retrieve it.’

‘That’s quite a big if. Bullets and computers generally don’t mix. But what you said about Brice freeing Philippe Mukobo from US custody while in-flight over the Atlantic, in the process destroying an American airliner? That’s the most unbelievable part, never mind magic stones.’ Alderley leaned forward, speaking more insistently. ‘If he really was acting in the capacity of an SIS officer, it wouldn’t just cause a diplomatic incident. It would quite literally be an act of war — against our closest ally!’

‘That’s what he told us,’ said Eddie. ‘If we can get the video off that laptop, then you can hear him say it for yourself.’

‘It’s why he resigned, at least officially,’ Nina went on. ‘To give the British government total deniability. Hell, maybe nobody in the government even knew about it,’ she said as a new possibility came to her. ‘It might just have been Brice and somebody higher in MI6 acting on their own.’

Alderley shook his head. ‘Contrary to popular belief, SIS doesn’t start major operations off its own bat. Our job is to implement policy, not create it.’ He sensed a certain scepticism. ‘What? It’s true! I’m in charge of British intelligence activities over an entire continent, and I certainly couldn’t unilaterally say “the President of Togo’s been a bit rude about us lately, I think we should overthrow him. Get to it, chaps!” Something like that would have to be approved at a higher level — a political level.’

‘Somebody did approve it,’ Eddie told him. ‘Brice said he had total immunity under the James Bond clause. Someone had to sign off on that.’

‘The person who authorises Section 7 immunity for SIS officers is the Foreign Secretary,’ Alderley replied — then he froze, eyes widening.

‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

‘The Foreign Secretary… Brice resigned, or supposedly resigned, two years ago.’ There was a rising undercurrent of alarm to his words. ‘Which means his operation in DR Congo was approved at least that long ago, right?’

‘Yes?’ she said uncertainly. ‘And that’s sounding seriously bad because…?’

‘Because the man who was Foreign Secretary two years ago has got a new job since then.’

‘Going to guess it’s not selling fish and chips at a Harry Ramsden’s,’ said Eddie.

‘Oh, I wish,’ Alderley continued. ‘The Foreign Secretary two years ago was Quentin Hove.’ He saw that they both recognised the name, but pressed on regardless. ‘Who is now the bloody Prime Minister!’

Brice regarded the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with an expression of neutral deference. Behind it, though, he held the politician in a certain amount of contempt. Quentin Hove had usurped his predecessor in a leadership challenge eighteen months earlier; even though she had put the process of Brexit into motion, it had not been fast or hard enough to satisfy the Europhobic wing of her own party. The smooth-skinned, chinless Hove had been the surprise last man standing after his rivals knifed each other in the back, by all accounts a mediocre intellect despite an expensive education and whose chief achievement as he rose through the ministerial ranks was being less fractionally loathed by the public than his colleagues, using them as lightning rods.

But he was now in charge; other than the monarch, whose role was now almost entirely ceremonial, the highest power in the land. The man Brice had to convince of the importance — and necessity — of his plan.

He had begun with the stick rather than the carrot.

‘You’re telling me that… that the mission failed?’ Hove had slightly bulging, watery eyes, and his dismay as he realised the implications made him appear on the verge of tears. ‘And not only that, but our involvement might come out?’

‘We’re doing everything we can to minimise that possibility, sir,’ Brice continued. ‘We’ve already secured what physical evidence there is, and are working right now to make sure that any hearsay is silenced.’

‘Should I ask how?’

‘SIS is, as always, doing everything in its power to maintain full deniability, Prime Minister.’ Sir Kirkland Armitage, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service — ‘C’ — was seated behind his desk, having watched impassively as Brice explained the situation to their political superior. ‘We’ll tell you anything you ask to know, of course, but I sincerely believe it’s in your own best interest to leave operational details to us.’

‘Of course. Of course,’ echoed Hove, taking a couple of paces across the office before turning back to Brice. ‘But — you crashed a plane! An American airliner, with over three hundred people aboard!’ Despite his efforts to maintain a commanding air, panic was not far beneath the surface. ‘That wasn’t what we intended!’

‘I was authorised to take any and all actions necessary to secure British interests in the Congo,’ said Brice. ‘Philippe Mukobo was a vital part of that plan, and it was the only way to free him from American custody.’

‘But if the Americans even suspect British involvement, it’ll be an absolute disaster. Anglo-American relations will be ruined — no, they’ll be destroyed! At the exact moment we’ve pulled away from Europe, we’ll have turned our closest friend against us. We’ll be left completely isolated, a pariah.’ Helpless anger entered the politician’s voice. ‘And the plan for the Congo, the whole bloody point of the exercise, has been wrecked now Mukobo’s dead. All those people on the plane, including British nationals — they died for nothing!’

‘Not for nothing, sir. There’s been… a new development.’ This was the key moment, Brice’s chance to hook him. He waited for Hove’s response.

It came with a hint of hope behind the watery eyes. ‘What kind of development?’

‘Something extraordinary. You’ve heard of Nina Wilde?’

‘The archaeologist? Of course. She found King Arthur’s tomb.’

‘And a lot more besides. Some of her discoveries have proven ancient myths to be real. What she found in the jungle is one of them. An ancient artefact… a biblical artefact.’ He knew that Hove was a practising Christian; as he’d hoped, the revelation impressed him. ‘I’ve seen its power with my own eyes. I don’t know if it really does come from God, but I do know what it can do. What it can do for this country.’

‘And what would that be?’

Brice delivered his reply with every ounce of confidence he could muster. ‘It will save it, sir. It will ensure that you win the election next month. Not only that, it will keep you in office for the foreseeable future, while wiping out the Opposition as a political force for years — and doing the same to the elements in your own party who are working against you. You will not only remain Prime Minister after the election, you’ll emerge even stronger than ever.’

The promise of holding on to power in an election where the opinion polls suggested political decimation had indeed hooked Hove. ‘How… how would it do so?’ he asked, licking his lips.

‘Prime Minister, that’s another operational detail we believe should be limited to those directly involved,’ said C. ‘However, Brice has told me his plan, and while it’s not without risk, I believe it has a very high probability of success.’

‘What risk?’ said Hove.

‘If our involvement became known to anyone outside this room, the consequences would be… unfortunate. However,’ he went on, before the alarmed politician could object, ‘the chances of that happening are small — as Brice said, we are actively working to prevent it. It’s what I would classify as a high-risk, high-reward operation. If it comes off, then it will not only keep you in power, but also entirely justify your proposals to strengthen the intelligence services to protect this country — rather than cutting us off at the knees in the name of civil liberties, as the Opposition intends.’

‘But if it doesn’t…’

‘If you want us to do nothing, sir, that’s your prerogative as Prime Minister,’ said Brice. ‘I’m merely offering a possible course of action.’

Hove looked between the two men, then went to the large bulletproof window overlooking the Thames and gazed out at the city beyond. ‘I have to say that I don’t like the sound of this,’ he announced after a long, contemplative silence. ‘First you tell me that the plan for the Congo has ended in total failure, in a way that could not only damage the country as a whole but implicate me personally. Then, you offer me a solution, but only in the most vague terms, and which seems to rely on the supernatural.’

‘Not supernatural, sir,’ Brice said firmly. ‘I’ve seen it for myself. It’s science, just something we don’t fully understand yet. But we will. The artefact has been secured, and even if you choose not to proceed with my plan, it will still be Britain’s to study… and use. It has enormous potential as a weapon.’

‘A weapon?’ Hove turned back to him. ‘Then your plan — it’s some sort of attack?’

Armitage gave Brice an irritated look. The younger man blanched; he had said too much. ‘More a projection of force,’ C told the politician reassuringly. ‘It’s not a gun, a missile or a bomb. But just as in the Bible, when it’s used, it will be decisive.’ He stood and crossed the room to stand beside Hove. ‘I can assure you, Prime Minister, that the difference to your election hopes will also be decisive.’

‘That sounds almost like a threat,’ said Hove, drawing back slightly from the bigger man.

‘Not at all. We both want the same thing: to guarantee this country’s security and strength in a changing and unstable world. I believe that Brice’s proposal will provide it. But it will require great strength and resolution on our own part to see it through. Make no mistake, though,’ C continued, ‘the entire country will be united behind you. The entire world, even. As Prime Minister, everyone will look to you to provide Britain with strong leadership. You will be the man to bring the nation into a new age. The decision is yours.’

Hove licked his lips again. ‘I… I need some time to consider this.’

‘We have a very limited window of opportunity,’ said Brice. ‘If we’re going to proceed, it has to be tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘We need a decision as soon as possible, sir,’ said C. ‘Brice has preparations to make.’

‘What would I need to do?’ asked the politician.

‘Just give the word, sir,’ Brice said. ‘And one other thing… I’d strongly suggest that you miss tomorrow’s Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament.’

‘It’s the last PMQs before the election,’ Hove objected. ‘I can’t miss them — it’ll give the Opposition a field day! They’ll say I’m afraid to stand behind my own government’s record. And…’ He trailed off, a first hint of understanding dawning as he realised the significance of Brice’s advice.

Armitage shook his head. ‘There will be an extremely urgent national security matter that you need to discuss with me. As Prime Minister, you can nominate any cabinet minister to act as your representative for PMQs. I’d suggest someone who has been… challenging.’

Hove looked between the two SIS men again, his expression that of a prisoner — but also one who had seen a way out only reachable by trampling on others. ‘A national security matter, yes,’ he eventually intoned. ‘I have to put the future of the country before petty party politics, of course…’

C nodded. ‘Of course, Prime Minister.’

Brice stood straighter, like a soldier awaiting orders. ‘So shall I proceed, sir?’

There was no verbal answer, but the politician gave a very small nod. Brice responded in kind, seeing that Hove was utterly unwilling — or afraid — to say anything out loud.

‘I think that will be all, Brice,’ said C.

‘Yes, sir,’ the younger man replied. ‘Thank you for your time, Prime Minister.’

‘I never met you,’ Hove told him firmly. ‘And if asked, I’ll deny to my grave that this discussion ever took place.’

C smiled faintly. ‘Such is the nature of the job, sir. Brice, you have your assignment. Do whatever is necessary to ensure the security of the realm.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Brice too had a small smile on his face as he left the room, but his was considerably more ruthless.