At Risk

11

The call reached Liz’s desk shortly after 3:30. It had come through the central switchboard, because the caller had dialled the publicly advertised MI5 number and asked for Liz by an alias she’d used a couple of years earlier when she was working in the organised crime section. The caller, who was in an Essex phone box, had been placed on hold while Liz was asked if she wanted to speak to him. He had identified himself as Zander.

As soon as Liz heard the code-name she asked for him to be put through, demanded his number, and called him back. It was a long time since she had heard from Frankie Ferris, and she was far from sure that she wanted to hear from him again. If he had sought her out after three years’ silence, however, and defied all the standard agent protocols by ringing the switchboard, it was just possible that he had something useful to tell her.

She had first encountered Ferris when, as an agent-runner for the organised crime team, she had been part of a move against an Essex syndicate boss named Melvin Eastman who was suspected of-amongst other crimes-moving large quantities of heroin between Amsterdam and Harwich. Surveillance had identified Ferris as one of Eastman’s drivers, and when gently pressured by Essex Special Branch he had agreed to provide information on the syndicate’s activities. Essex Special Branch had passed him to MI5.

From her earliest days with the service Liz had had an instinctive understanding of the dynamics of agent-running. At one end of the scale there were agents like Marzipan who informed on their colleagues out of patriotism or moral conviction, and at the other end there were those who worked strictly out of self-interest, or for cash. Zander was halfway between the two. With him, the issue was essentially an emotional one. He wanted Liz’s esteem. He wanted her to value him, to give him her undivided attention, to sit and listen to his catalogue of the world’s unfairnesses.

Discerning this, Liz had made the necessary time, and gradually, like flowers laid at her feet, the information had come in. Some of this was of dubious value; like many agents avid for their handlers’ approval, Ferris had a tendency to flannel Liz with half-remembered irrelevancies. But he managed to note and pass on the landline and mobile phone numbers of several of Eastman’s associates, and to list the registration numbers of vehicles which visited the Romford works unit where Eastman then had his HQ.

This was useful, and added substantially to MI5’s knowledge of Eastman’s operations, but Ferris was never admitted to Eastman’s inner circle, and had little or no access to hard intelligence. His days were spent as a glorified minicab driver, ferrying female croupiers from Eastman’s casinos to and from lunch with Eastman’s business associates, delivering smuggled tobacco to pubs, and distributing cases of bootleg CDs and DVDs around the markets.

In the end, it had proved impossible to build a satisfactory case against the highly security-conscious Eastman, and as a result he had grown stronger. And probably, thought Liz, moved into the sale of worse and more profitable commodities than dodgy CDs. He was certainly responsible for the regular distribution of Ecstasy to the many nightclub dealers in his area-a hugely profitable enterprise-and the Branch were certain that several of his legitimate businesses were covers for scams of one sort or another.

Essex Special Branch had remained on the case, and when Liz moved to Wetherby’s counter-terrorism section, the running of Zander was taken over by one of their officers, a hard-bitten Ulsterman named Bob Morrison. It was Morrison rather than Liz that Ferris should have rung.

“Tell me, Frankie,” Liz began.

“Big drop-off Friday, at the headland. Twenty, plus a special, from Germany.” Ferris’s voice was steady, but he was clearly nervous.

“You’ve got to tell Bob Morrison, Frankie. I don’t know what this means, and I can’t act on it.”

“I’m not telling Morrison any fuckin’ thing-this is for you.”

“I don’t know what any of it means, Frankie. I’m out of that game, and you shouldn’t be ringing me.”

“Friday, at the headland,” repeated Frankie urgently. “Twenty plus a special. From Germany. Have you got that?”

“I’ve written it down. What’s the source?”

“Eastman. Took a call when I was there a couple of days ago. He was furious-really done his bollocks.”

“You still working for him?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“You in a phone box?”

“Yeah.”

“Make another call before you leave. Don’t leave this as the last number dialled.”

They hung up, and for several minutes Liz stared at the scraps of phrases on the notepad in front of her. Then she dialled the Essex Special Branch number and asked for Bob Morrison. Minutes later he called her back from a motorway payphone.

“Did Ferris say why he called you?” the Special Branch officer asked her, his voice echoing indistinctly in her earpiece.

“No, he didn’t,” said Liz. “But he was adamant he wasn’t talking to you.”

There was a brief silence. Reception was poor, and amongst the static Liz could hear the whine of car horns.

“As a source,” said Morrison, “Frankie Ferris is a total write-off. Ninety per cent of the money Eastman pays him goes straight over the betting shop counter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using, too. He’s probably made the whole thing up.”

“That’s possible,” said Liz carefully.

There was a long moment of crackle.

“… going to get anything useful while Eastman’s putting money his way.”

“And if he isn’t any more?” asked Liz.

“If he isn’t, I wouldn’t give much for his…”

“You think Eastman would get rid of him?”

“I think he’d consider it. Frankie knows enough to bury him. But I don’t think it would come to that. Melvin Eastman’s a businessman. Easier to see him as a business overhead, throw a bit of cash…”

More car horns. “You’re…”

“… useful work out of him. They’re joined at the waist, basically.”

“OK. Do you want me to send you what Frankie told me?”

“Yeah, why not?”

They rang off. Liz had covered herself; as for the information being acted on, that was something else.

Once again she stared at the fragmentary phrases. A drop-off of what? Drugs? Weapons? People? A drop-off from Germany? Where would that have originated? If it was a sea landing, and the word “headland” suggested that it was, then perhaps she should have a look at the northern ports.

Just to be on the safe side-and it could be hours before Morrison got back to his office-she decided to have a word with a contact in Customs and Excise. Where was the nearest UK landfall from the German ports? Had to be East Anglia, which was Eastman’s patch. No small craft bringing dodgy cargo from the northeast was going to run the gauntlet of the Channel; they’d go for the hundred-odd miles of unguarded coastline between Felixstowe and the Wash.