A Gentleman's Game

6

London-Mayfair, Hyde Park 13 August 1217 GMT It was one of the oldest espionage cliches in the Firm, certainly outdated, and in the current day and age of parabolic microphones and laser-beam listening devices quite possibly tragically insecure. But walking in Hyde Park was still Paul Crocker's favorite method of information exchange with the CIA, and he balanced the potential of compromise with the benefit of being able to talk out of the office, away from the alarmist eye of the Deputy Chief and the distrust of C. Meetings like today, the only person who knew for certain where he was and what he was doing was Kate, and she'd run dutiful interference should the need arise.

Cheng was waiting for him on a bench near the Park Lane entrance, and though he was certain she saw him coming, she didn't move until he'd reached her.

"You're late." She said it mildly and didn't bother to look at him, instead keeping her eyes on a couple picnicking with their two children some twenty feet away.

"Tube's still fouled," Crocker said, which was the only explanation he was willing to give, and truly the only explanation necessary. It had been just six days since the strikes, and even with crews working around the clock, the Central and Northern Lines were still down, and the Bakerloo had resumed service only that morning, and even that was limited. The economic impact of the closures had yet to be measured, but traffic in Central London had predictably become even more of a nightmare than it already was.

Cheng got off the bench, adjusting the linen jacket she was wearing. The jacket was navy blue, and the blouse beneath it a pearl white, and her trousers, linen as well, were black. She watched him take in the wardrobe, then looked him over in turn and cracked a smile.

"You must be burning up."

Crocker grunted, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket and getting one lit. It had turned unseasonably hot in the past week, and the air in the city had been still and heavy. Depending on where you were, you could still catch the scent of the smoke. Standing in his three-piece suit, Crocker felt as if he might spontaneously combust.

Cheng turned and began walking, heading deeper into the park, and Crocker fell in beside her. He had almost a full foot on her, and a stride that could easily outdistance Cheng's own, but the walking was habit as much as the meetings were, and they'd long ago worked out a rhythm. Cheng had been posted to London as the CIA resident a year after Crocker had ascended to D-Ops, and though they had never interacted in the field prior to that point, they instantly saw in each other a kindred spirit or, at the least, an ally against a common foe-the bureaucrats. Cheng would always put America's concerns first, as Crocker would put England's, but the friendship that existed between them was honest, if shaped by the respective demands of their assignments.

In the main, SIS needed the CIA more than the CIA needed SIS. But not always, and Cheng was wise enough to see that, even if her bosses back in Virginia weren't.

They walked, taking in the park, the smell of the grass and the trees, the summer hour. Scattered on the lawns, Londoners sunbathed or took lunch or kicked footballs, but it was quieter than normal, and Crocker knew there were fewer people out and about. That, and the abrupt lack of tourism, gave the park a strangely empty air.

"How're Jenny and the girls?" Cheng asked.

"Fine. I'd ask how whoever you're seeing is, but you're not seeing anyone."

Cheng smirked. "Not that you know of, at least."

Crocker blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. "So what do you have?"

"You talked to Rayburn?"

"Not since yesterday afternoon."

"He'll be getting our analysis of the tape sometime today. He'll be able to tell you everything I can."

"Angela."

"You are an impatient man."

"I have an impatient C, who apparently has an impatient Prime Minister. They want action, and they can't have that without a target."

"Speaking of action. Quite the stunt your Mister Kinney pulled on Tuesday morning."

"That wasn't Kinney, that was Chace."

"Chace killed three suspected terrorists in one sitting? There are folks back home who'd give her a medal."

"Four, actually," Crocker corrected. "One of them died in hospital from injuries sustained at the scene."

Cheng pursed her lips in a silent whistle of appreciation.

"It wasn't her fault," Crocker said, far more defensively than he'd intended. "They'd been made, there was reason to believe there was an explosive on scene, they had to move."

"Was there?"

"Was there what?"

"An explosive?"

Crocker flicked his cigarette away, watching it bounce off the gravel into the grass.

"It hadn't been assembled yet."

"You can't really take chances with that, though, can you."

"Which is something I've been trying to explain to Mister Kinney since Tuesday afternoon." Crocker glanced down at her. "The tape, Angela."

"It's definitely Harakat ul-Mujihadin, this new wing, the Abdul Aziz faction."

"You've confirmed it?"

Cheng nodded. "They've got this program back at Langley, it can take the facial characteristics off an image, a photo or a video or whatever, run it against a database, establish an ID. It's pretty neat."

"Yes, we have that program, too."

"Difference is, ours works." She shot him a quick grin. "The young guy on the tape is named Tariq Ahmad Dar. He is-or was-a HUM militant out of Kashmir. We have intelligence that says Abdul Aziz recruited him for his faction in late spring last year."

"Where'd you get this?"

"Some of it from the Khalid Shaikh Muhammad bust. You remember the mad scramble we all went on after he was taken into custody?"

"Painfully," Crocker said. Muhammad had been, at the time, the al-Qaeda military chief. His capture had netted hundreds of pages of scattered intelligence, ranging from operations in progress to hints and whispers of other plans in development, most of which later turned out to be suspect when the Americans discovered a Syrian-manned al-Qaeda link to the prisoners in Guantanamo.

"Dar was on the watch list that came out of the bust."

"Almost all of that intelligence has been downgraded as a result of the compromised source. That's not enough."

"We have other means of verification, as I said."

"I'm not going to go to C with the fruits of your blown networks. Not on this."

Cheng's expression soured and hardened. "Not everything was blown by the Syrians."

"Angela, the CIA has been relying on networks ten and fifteen years old, built by agents later exposed as doubles. Between Ames, Hansen, and Wu-Tai Chin, your HUMINT has been shit, and the Company refuses to redress the situation. Ames himself recruited the majority of your informants out of Egypt and Afghanistan, agents later linked to al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda factions, and some of whom had direct contact with UBL. Unless you can verify an alternate source, it's fucking trash, no matter what your computers are saying."

Cheng glared. "The Company has done-is doing-everything it can to restore its security."

"It could start by admitting how bad the breaches were."

"I think we have."

Crocker snorted.

"I can't compromise the source, Paul. It's not my operation, and even if it was, you know I'm not going to share that kind of intel with you. Certainly not in the middle of Hyde fucking Park."

"Then, as I say, I can't run with it."

Cheng stopped on the path, forcing Crocker to stop as well and to turn back to her. Three young men walked by, two of them arguing with the third. Crocker heard just enough of their conversation to determine that they were discussing a woman.

When the three were well out of earshot, Cheng said, "We have someone inside."

Crocker raised an eyebrow. "Since when?"

She shook her head. "No. But we trust the source, and the source says that Tariq Ahmad Dar was HUM-AA. Dar was in a group of half a dozen HUM regulars who were flown to Saudi earlier that year, recruited by Abdul Aziz for broader operations."

They resumed walking, Crocker thinking on it. When he spoke, it was sourly, saying, "C will be delighted. You've just established a link between HUM-AA and al-Qaeda."

"Yeah, but I can establish a link between the Red Crescent and al-Qaeda, and so can you. You can't take it to the bank."

"Why bring them to Saudi?"

"Hell if I know. They probably ended up in a training camp somewhere teaching new recruits."

"That doesn't explain how Dar got tapped for a suicide run on the tube."

"No, it doesn't, but it doesn't much matter, does it? He did, he's dead, there you go."

"That would have put him in Saudi a year ago."

"About eighteen months ago."

"So something happened in Saudi in the last eighteen months to turn a HUM veteran into a suicide bomber."

"Suicide arsonist," Cheng corrected. "Maybe there's a manpower shortage?"

"Not in Saudi there isn't. They've got a surfeit of eager young men willing to blow themselves sky-high in the name of Allah."

"That's a rather broad brush you're using there, Paul."

Crocker glared at nothing in particular. "We both know who the enemy is here, Angela, and blaming HUM-AA or al-Qaeda or the Islamic Society of North America is only part of the bloody tree, not the roots. The Saudi government has spent four decades fomenting and funding Wahhabist extremism. They're not our allies, they've never been our allies, and all declarations to the contrary, they never will be our allies. It took al-Qaeda blowing up the foreign workers' housing complexes in Riyadh before the Saudi government took substantive action, and then they arrested, what, twenty people?"

"Twenty-one."

"And promptly denied us the opportunity to interrogate any of them by rushing them off for public execution. They didn't want uncomfortable questions asked, anything that might point a finger back at the Palace. The Saudis were covering their asses."

"You're in a mood," Cheng observed.

"I'm always in a mood."

"And here I was about to blame it on the heat."

"Blame it on whatever you like, it goes back to the same problem. Until Saudi Arabia changes its policies, we reap the result of institutionalized hatred."

"You ought to run for office," Cheng said.

"You know that the belief of Islam spreading through the sword is a myth, don't you?" Crocker asked suddenly. "Not many people do, they believe the propaganda-Christian propaganda, a thousand years old. Islam is not a religion of violence, despite certain individuals and organizations doing their damnedest to paint it as such."

"Wahhabism isn't Islam."

"That's my point entirely, thank you."

"Really pisses you off, doesn't it?"

"On the scale of my daily outrage, it ranks an eleven," Crocker confirmed.

They continued walking, now past the Albert Memorial, turning south in the direction of Rotten Row.

"I heard the folks at Box found another one of the safehouses," Cheng said. "I assume Kinney has been by to rub your face in it, or if he hasn't, he soon will be."

"I won't ask how you know that."

Cheng tapped the side of her nose. "About the safehouse, you mean? I know what C had for breakfast this morning, too."

"Weetabix, to keep him regular, I'm sure." Crocker scowled. He hadn't known about Box finding another safehouse, and he didn't much relish the inevitable visit from Kinney, especially given the events of Tuesday morning.

They found a bench, took it, and Crocker broke out his pack once more, lit another cigarette.

"We're going to hit back," Crocker said after a moment.

"That's a given, isn't it? Unless the rules have suddenly changed."

"No, the same rules still apply."

"You sound uncharacteristically reluctant."

He sighed out a cloud of smoke. "I don't object to retaliatory action. I object to committing to retaliatory action with undue haste. It wasn't three hours after the strikes that C was ready to order me to send the Minders on a bloodletting."

"This is the same C who thinks the Special Operations Directorate is a waste of time, money, and a danger to the Security of the Free World?"

"That's the one."

"Changed his mind right quick when he wanted to show the PM that you boys can kick some ass, huh? Sounds like you'll be sending Minders to Pakistan."

Crocker opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again as a couple passed in front of the bench, holding hands. Cheng waited, tilting her head back against the seat, catching sunlight on her face as she watched the lovers kiss.

"If it is HUM that was behind this," Crocker resumed. "Those eighteen months leave that open to question."

"HUM and HUM-AA are two different groups, don't forget that. Same origins, different agendas."

"In which case it's Minders to Saudi."

Cheng chuckled. "Like that will ever happen."

"They've got their knickers in a twist, it might just get authorization."

"No, it won't. Covert action in Saudi? You'll never get that kind of directive, even if your masters decided it was warranted. They'd go to the MOD for SAS instead, wouldn't they?"

Crocker grunted the concession. "Still presuming your intel is correct, that Dar was HUM-AA. Just as possible he fell in with another organization."

"My intel is correct."

Neither of them spoke for a time, and Crocker finished his cigarette and flicked it away much as he had the first.

"You'll let me know if anything else crops up?" he asked.

"Hey, we're in it with you," Cheng replied. "There's more than a couple of folks Stateside saying, 'Hey, that could've been us.'?"

"New York."

"New York, San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., the list goes on and on." She got to her feet, waiting for Crocker to follow suit. "I'll see if we can't find out exactly what Dar was doing in Saudi."

"I'd appreciate it."

She smiled, began to turn, then stopped, struck by a memory. From her coat pocket, she removed a gift-wrapped package of blue paper with a crushed pink ribbon, which she offered to Crocker.

"It was your youngest's birthday this week, wasn't it? Ariel?"

"She turned eleven."

"Tell her I said happy birthday."

"I shall."

He took the package, waited for her to turn away. Cheng didn't move. "You want to keep us in the loop on this, Paul."

"That's been my intention."

"All the way, that's what I'm saying."

It took him a moment to see it. "What was the final tally?"

"Eighteen," Cheng said, and she turned away, beginning her walk back to Grosvenor Square and the American Embassy. "Most of them were college kids."

Crocker watched her go before slipping the gift into his pocket and making his own way out of the park, thinking of the eighteen Americans and the twenty-three French and the seven Germans and all the rest who had been murdered in the tunnels of the Underground. • He was back at Vauxhall Cross at eighteen past one, passing through the security first at the gate, then in the lobby, and then at the elevators, and at each point he showed his pass to the guards, then swiped it through the reader. He stopped on the fourth floor, ducking into Rayburn's office in the hopes of finding him, and instead got D-Int's PA, a perpetually grumpy young man named Hollister, who informed him that Director Intelligence was presenting to the JIC, and would D-Ops like to leave a message.

"Yes," Crocker snapped. "Ask him why the CIA knows more about what Box is doing at any bloody given moment than we do."

Then he went to his office, to find Kate waiting for him, and before he'd even come through the door she was up and coming around from behind her desk to intercept him.

"Bloody Box," Crocker said.

Kate cringed and motioned toward the inner office, where the door was ajar, and Crocker groaned inwardly.

"How long has he been waiting?" he asked.

"Twenty minutes."

"I assume you cleared my desk."

Kate looked indignant and didn't bother to respond.

"Coffee," Crocker told her, and then pushed his door open the rest of the way, to see David Kinney seated in one of the chairs facing his desk. He paused again, taking a breath, reminding himself that Kinney was good at his job. Kinney's people were good at theirs.

But that didn't change the fact that Crocker hated the man's living guts, and the feeling was mutual, and their encounters were always exercises in barely restrained civility. Tuesday had only made matters worse.

Interservice rivalry had existed from the word go, when the Special Operations Executive had become SIS following the Second World War. Where SIS was responsible to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Security Services, more commonly known by their short-form official mailing address, or their "Box," reported to the Home Office. In issues of security and domain, SIS and Box were almost constantly tripping over each other's toes. An SIS operation in Gibraltar, for instance, would lead to Box screaming that Crocker had overstepped his bounds-Gib still being viewed in the Home Office as "home territory."

The legacy of Empire.

Kinney didn't rise and didn't acknowledge Crocker's entrance. Crocker removed his jacket, hung it on its peg at the stand, then took his seat behind the desk. The desk was bare, and he appreciated Kate's efforts. He hadn't left anything compromising out-he never left the office with anything on his desk that should be in a safe-but all the same, it gave him comfort knowing that Kinney wasn't sneaking a peek at anything he shouldn't.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Crocker said. "If I'd known you were coming, I'd have stayed out longer."

Kinney's smile was sincere, in that Crocker saw in it the man's desire to gut him. "It's all right, I could use the pause. Been running nonstop since Chace's little bloodbath."

"Better late than never. What can I do for you, Mr. Kinney?"

"We located a flat in Southwark," Kinney said. "Where one of them staged from, looks like. We're working back from the lease, have a list of names. We're running those down but don't expect to find much on them, obviously. But there's the issue of money, how it was supplied to them, and I thought you might like to lend a hand there."

"Meaning you've hit a dead end."

"Meaning the inquiries we wish to have made need to be made in Germany and Greece." Kinney pulled a folded sheet from inside his jacket, set it on the desk at the edge so Crocker had to lean forward to take it. "We'd appreciate it if you looked into it."

Crocker took the paper, opened it, reading names and numbers.

"Normally I'd have done this through channels," Kinney told him. "But time is of the essence, I'm sure you agree."

Crocker grunted, set the paper back down, and got up from his chair. "I'll put people on it today."

Kinney rose, taking his time about it. "And you'll let us know, of course."

"I thought it went without saying."

"No, Mr. Crocker, with you, I like to hear the words straight from your mouth."

"Any findings will be delivered to your people."

"Nice to cooperate, isn't it?" Kinney said. "Nice being friendly."

"Yes," Crocker said, holding the door for him. "It's always nice to play make-believe. Kate will see you out."

As soon as Kinney was through, he slammed it closed behind him.