Close Call

Chapter 2

Liz Carlyle was sitting at her desk in Thames House, the London headquarters of Britain’s MI5, frowning at the pile of papers neatly stacked in the centre of her desk. She’d just got back from a three-week holiday walking in the Pyrenees and was wishing she’d stayed there. A spectacled head poked round the door, followed by the rest of Peggy Kinsolving, Liz’s long-standing research assistant and now her deputy in the Counter-Terrorist section that Liz ran.

‘Welcome back,’ said Peggy. ‘Did you have a good time? You must be fit as a flea. It’s never stopped raining here since you went away.’ She waved a hand at the pile of paper. ‘Don’t worry about that lot. I’ve read it all and it’s just background stuff. The top one is the only important one – I’ve summarised where we’ve got to in all the current investigations. You’ve got a meeting with the Home Secretary on Friday to bring her up to date. If you like I’ll come with you.’

Peggy stopped to draw breath and Liz smiled fondly at her younger colleague. ‘It is actually great to be back, though I didn’t feel that when I woke up this morning. We had a wonderful time. Walked miles, ate too much, drank some great wine. Martin is fine, though he’s still wondering whether to leave the DGSE and go into private ­security work. He fancies getting out of Paris and living in the South – his family home was near Toulouse. But it’s a big step to leave government service and go private and there’s a lot of competition in the private security field – just like here. Anyway, how are you? And how’s Tim?’

Tim was Peggy’s boyfriend, a lecturer in English at King’s College, London University, a very bright lad if a bit of a sensitive soul. Peggy said, ‘I’m fine, and so is Tim, thanks. He’s still doing the vegetarian cooking course – advanced level now. I hadn’t realised it could be so tasty. I’m quite converted.’ They both smiled and Peggy went on, ‘There’s one thing you won’t be too pleased about. We’ve been given an extra responsibility. I was only told about it on Friday. It’s a “watching brief” – whatever that is – for under-the-counter arms supplies to the Arab Spring rebels.’

Liz knew all too well what a watching brief was. It meant extra responsibility with no additional resources. Then if anything bad happened you were to blame. She sighed. ‘Is there any intelligence that arms are going from dealers in this country to the rebels?’

‘Not that I’ve heard. It’s not so much the rebels per se that anyone’s worried about; it’s the jihadis who’ve infiltrated them. The Foreign Secretary went to a meeting in Geneva last week and this was on the agenda. There’s a lot of concern about al-Qaeda-type groups leaking into the Arab Spring countries. There were some gruesome pictures on TV while you were away of what they were doing to their captives.’

‘I saw them on French TV. But I would have thought they could get arms quite easily from the countries who support them.’

‘I know that seems more likely. But the conference decided that each country should put measures in place to ensure that no undercover supplies from the EU countries get to these jihadis. It seems to be more of a matter for Eastern Europe than us, but DG told me on Friday that it’s been decided that we were to have the “watching brief”.’

‘Great. But what about Six? I wonder what they have on this.’

‘Quite a lot, I imagine. But guess who’s running their part of the show – your favourite officer, Bruno Mackay. Bruno rang me on Friday to welcome us on board. Said he’d like to come over to see you when you were back.’

Liz put her head in her hands and groaned. ‘Did I just say I was glad to be back?’

Peggy grinned. ‘Bruno told me something quite interesting. Do you remember Miles Brookhaven, who used to be in the CIA station here? Andy Bokus’s deputy?’ When Liz nodded she went on, ‘Apparently he was nearly killed a few months ago. He was under cover in an aid charity the Agency had set up in Syria, running a source in a rebel group, and he was attacked in the souk. They aren’t sure if his cover had been blown, or if it was just an opportunist attack, but from what Bruno said, it sounded planned to me. Miles needed a series of blood transfusions – they had to get him out of there pretty quickly.’

‘Poor Miles. He was a bit naïve when he was here. He tried to recruit me once – he took me on the London Eye in a private pod and plied me with champagne. It was fun, and I enjoyed watching him waste the Agency’s money. I wonder if he’s grown up.’

‘I hope so.’ Peggy got up to go. ‘I’ll leave you to catch up.’

But as Peggy walked out of the door she bumped into someone coming in. ‘Whoops. Sorry, Geoffrey. I was just going. Liz will be delighted to see you!’

The tall, heron-like figure of Geoffrey Fane, a senior MI6 officer, sauntered into the room. ‘Good morning Elizabeth. Delighted to see you looking so fit and well. Been on holiday I hear. I hope you had a wonderful time and that our friend Seurat is in good form.’

One of Geoffrey Fane’s characteristics, which drove Liz mad, was his inquisitive interest in her private life and his delight in showing how much he knew about it. She would much have preferred him not to know that she was seeing Martin Seurat of the French Military Intelligence Service, the DGSE. But he did know, and she suspected that he had learned about it from Bruno Mackay, who had been the deputy head of MI6’s Paris Station when she’d first met Martin.

What she didn’t like to acknowledge, though everyone else knew it, was that Geoffrey Fane himself would have liked to be in Martin Seurat’s shoes. He was divorced, a lonely man and evidently deeply attracted to Liz, who though she admired and respected his professional skill, couldn’t disguise the fact that on a personal level she found him pompous and patronising. What she couldn’t – or wouldn’t let herself see – was that much of his manner towards her was a cover for his feelings. So he went on calling her ‘Elizabeth’, though he knew that she preferred to be called ‘Liz’, and she went on grinding her teeth at the sight of him while everyone marvelled that they seemed to have such a successful working relationship.

Now Fane folded himself elegantly into the chair that Peggy had just left and crossed one long, tailored leg over the other, showing a length of subtly striped sock and a highly polished black brogue. ‘I was delighted to learn we’ll be working together on the arms supply front,’ he said.

‘Yes. I’ve just heard about it from Peggy. I gather we’ve been given a watching brief and no extra resources, so I don’t suppose we’ll be doing much active investigation. Anyway, Peggy told me that there’s no specific intelligence about any UK arms dealers being involved, and we certainly haven’t the time to go looking.’

Fane leant forward in his chair. ‘That might have been true last week, but things are moving on. I had a call from Andy Bokus over the weekend. They’ve just posted a new man into Yemen. An old friend of yours if I’m not mistaken. Miles Brookhaven. I’m sure you remember him from when he was here at Grosvenor with Bokus. I gather he was quite smitten.’

Liz gazed at the languid figure in the chair, clenched her jaw and said nothing. Fane smiled slightly and went on, ‘He had a bit of a rough time on his previous posting but he’s recovered now. The Agency have sent him to Sana’a to pick up a rather promising contact of the Embassy. Bokus seems to think there may be something interesting to come out for us as well as for the Agency.’