Close Call

Chapter 39

This time they were to meet in Fane’s office in the MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross. As she walked across Vauxhall Bridge from Thames House, leaning into the gusty wind that was blowing off the river, Liz recalled the email exchanges between Grosvenor Square and Vauxhall that had preceded this meeting. Their tone suggested that the encounter between Fane and Bokus was going to be as rough as the weather, and she was not looking forward to playing the role of peacemaker.

Fane’s office was a spacious room, high up in one of the semicircular protuberances at the front of the building. Its two large windows had a commanding view of the Thames – to the right Parliament and the MI5 building on the north bank, and to the left across to Kensington and ­Chelsea and upriver to Hammersmith. Somehow Fane had managed to acquire the sort of antique official furniture usually only to be found in the Foreign Office, and he had added some oriental rugs and a table that he had inherited from his grandmother. The whole effect was of a country gentleman’s study, and about as far as you could get from the bleak, functional office that Bokus inhabited in the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Liz knew that Bokus never felt comfortable in Fane’s office, and when she arrived he was standing by the windows, looking stiff and awkward. Fane’s secretary, Daisy, followed her into the room with a pot of coffee on a silver tray with china cups and saucers. Bokus waved her away when she offered him a cup and sat down heavily in one of the chairs round the table.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said as soon as Daisy had left the room.

Fane took the chair at the head of the table and gestured to Liz to sit down opposite Bokus. He took his time sipping his coffee before saying, ‘Thank you for the email, Andy; I think we are all sorry to learn that your source Donation has left Yemen. And very surprised to learn that he has gone to Moscow. I for one was not aware that he was in touch with the Russians. Were you, Elizabeth?’

Liz did not reply, and Bokus broke in, ‘Not Moscow. Our latest information is that he’s gone to Dagestan. We don’t know why. He may have arms-dealing contacts there, or maybe the Russians have shipped him off there to get him out of Russia. But it seems that somehow he’s got himself mixed up with jihadis – and got on their bad side; I told you his son was murdered. This is a man used to playing both sides from the middle, only suddenly he was squeezed from either end. The Yemeni government was growing fed up with him; now the jihadis have as well. So he’s done a runner. But instead of running our way, as he would have done if you’d been a bit quicker on your feet, he’s gone in the other direction.’

Fane shook his head and said, ‘You were handling Donation – we weren’t. If you’d been prepared to take a risk and be a little more generous, then maybe we would have got something back. Instead, the bird’s flown the coop and taken his information and his money with him.’

Liz was about to intervene, but as she drew in her breath to speak, Bokus snapped, ‘You can blame us all you like, but it isn’t the United States that’s at risk from this arms deal he was telling us about. It’s you, and you weren’t willing to do anything to keep him sweet and find out what he knew.’ Bokus looked angry enough to spit. ‘As always, you expect us to bail you out, and if we don’t, you scream bloody murder and say it’s all our fault. But you can’t pin this one on the Agency.’

Bokus sat back in his chair, his face red and his arms crossed over his stomach. Liz could see that Fane was taken aback by the American’s aggression. She had long suspected that Bokus’s usual front was a pose. The bluff, rough Yank who spoke in monosyllables was, she had always been pretty sure, put on for Fane’s benefit – a kind of defence mechanism against the smooth English gentleman. A tirade like this from Bokus was unprecedented, and unique for its articulate delivery, which meant that it came from the heart and what they were seeing was the real Bokus behind the taciturn façade.

Since Fane looked as if he was gathering himself for a counter-offensive, Liz decided to intervene before things got totally out of hand. She said calmly, ‘I think we need to move on. Donation’s gone, and we won’t get any more from him, wherever he is. We need to focus now on what we’ve learned.’

‘OK,’ said Bokus. ‘Donation was only the middleman. The coalface is this guy Atiyah. He’s the one you’ve got to worry about, and he’s been operating right under your noses. He’s a Brit, and you didn’t know anything about him.’

‘For God’s sake,’ broke in Fane, ‘how is that supposed to be helpful? We’ve got a British citizen gone bad – is that a unique situation? You want to tell me how the American Somalis slipped through your nets? Or the Boston bombers? Two can play at that blame game, you know.’

Liz broke in, ‘Or we can accept that we both face the same difficulties and work together to sort them out.’

Fane was silent and Bokus gave her a long stare, but her words seemed to have a calming effect. Bokus threw both hands up in a parody of surrender. ‘OK. But I didn’t start this.’

‘Oh no?’ Fane said, ready to dive in again, until Liz gave him a look that could freeze stone. She continued quickly, ‘Why don’t we start with what we know?’ Before either man could say anything at all, she added, ‘Antoine Milraud the French arms dealer has decided to be a little more forthcoming. I’m not sure he’s telling us everything he knows, but it’s more than he was telling us before.’

‘How’d you manage that?’ asked Bokus. ‘Feminine charm?’ Liz was relieved to see him grin.

‘It was the French, actually, who got him to talk.’

‘Monsieur Seurat?’ asked Fane.

Give it a rest, Geoffrey, thought Liz, doing her best to ignore him. ‘The man Milraud met in Berlin, the black man in the museum, will be receiving a delivery of guns and ammunition in the next ten days or so, somewhere here in the UK. Originally the delivery was going to be in Paris.’

‘So what’s changed?’ asked Bokus. Liz rather liked the way he was always happy to ask the obvious questions – whereas Fane would hold back, unwilling to admit there were things he didn’t understand.

She said, ‘It’s looking increasingly likely that the arms aren’t for use in the Middle East – why bring them all the way to France or Britain if they were? We don’t know why at first it was Paris, but I’m now afraid they’re intended for a terrorist attack and that it’s going to take place here in Britain.’ She noticed that both Bokus and Fane’s eyes widened at this.

Fane said, ‘You say “all the way to France or Britain” – where do we think these arms are coming from?’

‘Milraud says it’s Dagestan.’

‘Where our friend Donation – Baakrime – is right now,’ said Bokus.

Liz nodded. ‘I doubt it’s a coincidence.’

Bokus said, ‘But he’s unreachable there – for us and for you. Neither of us has any permanent post in Dagestan and we’d never get anyone in there in time to find out anything useful. If we’re going to crack this open it’s not going to be through Dagestan or Baakrime.’

‘That’s right,’ Liz said firmly, determined that the ­question of who was to blame for Baakrime’s flight from Yemen should not be reopened. ‘But we still need Miles Brookhaven in Yemen on the case. If he can find out the identities of the British youths who went out to Yemen – the ones Baakrime said were planning on returning home for some purpose – then we can keep tabs on them if and when they come back into Europe.’ Liz didn’t really think Miles would be able to find out anything useful, but she felt it was important to keep the Americans on board. Which meant providing at least a pretence of a job for Miles Brookhaven to do in Yemen.

‘That’s if they haven’t got new false documents,’ said Bokus doubtfully.

She went on, ‘We’ve got two potential sources of information here: the young man Atiyah, who’s been the contact with Antoine Milraud – we’ve got twenty-four-hour surveillance on him. And this man Lester Jackson.’

‘That’s the black man from Berlin?’ Fane asked.

‘Yes. He owns a club just outside Manchester. He’s well known to the local Special Branch, but it’s all standard criminal stuff – drugs and the white slave trade. Since Jackson’s shipped women, he’ll know how to ship arms, I imagine. I bet he’s being employed for his expertise in trafficking.’

‘Trafficking from where?’ asked Bokus.

‘I wonder,’ said Fane caustically.

Liz gave a resigned smile. ‘Dagestan, of course,’ she said. ‘We know that at least one of the women in his club came from there. Anyway, we can’t do much besides watch Atiyah for now – if we brought him in, it could blow the case without our finding out what he’s planning to do. If he’s been terrorist-trained in Yemen, he’s not going to crack under questioning. We just have to hope he makes some kind of a mistake in the next week – you know, phone someone or send an incriminating email.’

‘Why don’t you turn him over to the Yemenis?’ asked Bokus, and Fane laughed.

Liz shook her head in regret. ‘I wish we could. But there’s the small matter of his being a British citizen. So we’ll watch him all right, but I think Jackson’s a better bet. He’s got no reason to think we suspect him – as far as he knows he got away in Berlin – but we know more about him than he realises.’

Fane said, ‘Who’s going to direct the operation to put the squeeze on this chap? Local Special Branch?’ He sounded sceptical.

‘No,’ said Liz. ‘It will be us. I’m going up to Manchester tomorrow.’

‘Rather you than me,’ said Fane, looking at the rain now lashing the windows and sounding pleased for the first time that day.