The Geneva Trap

Chapter 14

Liz Carlyle disliked visiting the Ministry of Defence. Its building, white and cold, sat at an awkward angle between Whitehall and the Thames. All those stiff-backed men walking smartly up the steps to its grand door made her feel like an alien. And once inside, there was a certain disapproving hostility about its security arrangements, which made it the least welcoming of all the government departments.

Now, having survived the first layer of security, and with her pass pinned to her lapel, she sat waiting to be collected by someone who would take her inside the Secretariat of Operation Clarity. Except that it wasn’t called that here. It had turned out that the codename itself was top-secret and she had been told to ask for Sy3A.

She watched as a military officer, dressed in what looked to her like a musical-comedy uniform, was ushered through the security barrier by a young Major who had greeted the visitor in a language Liz didn’t recognise. Serbo-Croat perhaps? she wondered idly as they disappeared up a long escalator.

Eventually, a voice at her elbow asked, ‘Miss Carlyle?’ and she got up to follow an attractive young woman, dressed surprisingly casually in trousers and a flowing top. She looked as though she might be pregnant. No uniform, Liz noted with relief.

They rose up through the building via escalator and lift to a floor near the top where the corridors were long, narrow and silent. Her escort stopped at a windowless, unmarked door, which clicked open in response to some numbers she tapped into a keypad.

The door gave directly on to a small foyer, containing a plain brown Government-issue table and four chairs.

‘Sit down, please,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll tell them you’re here.’

Liz waited again. She had been told that access to the Clarity Secretariat was extremely restricted, and she didn’t even know the name of the person she’d come to see. But at least they seemed to be expecting her, which was a step in the right direction.

After a few minutes, another, much more formally dressed woman appeared, carrying a folder.

‘Good morning. I’m Miranda Braithwaite,’ she said.

I bet you are, thought Liz. Just like I’m Jane Falconer when I choose to be.

‘I’m to take you through the indoctrination. When I’ve done that, you’ll sign this form and then you’ll be Clarity Blue, which is the first level of clearance. We’ll decide later if we need to up your clearance to Silver or Purple. But Purple is only for the top brass – and all of us, of course.’

You may be in for a surprise, thought Liz, but she didn’t say anything.

Miranda Braithwaite then told her rather less about the Clarity project than she had learned from Sorsky, and when she had finished, Liz solemnly signed ‘Liz Carlyle’ on a sheet headed ‘CLARITY INDOCTRINATION LIST. BLUE’.

Miranda nodded, looking satisfied, and got up. ‘Henry Pennington will see you now,’ she said, and motioned Liz to follow her.

Not Henry Pennington, thought Liz. What on earth was he doing here? She had last come across Pennington several years ago in the Foreign Office. It was at his instigation that she had gone undercover in the household of the Russian oligarch and almost been shot for her pains.

The figure sitting at the desk didn’t look up as Miranda and Liz came into the room, but went on reading a document on his desk.

‘Liz Carlyle is here,’ said Miranda. There was no reaction, and she left the room.

Liz looked round her. This was nothing like as grand as the room Pennington had inhabited in the Foreign Office on the last occasion she’d encountered him. She remembered a high corniced ceiling, marble fireplace and a large antique desk with chairs to match. Now he was sitting at a desk, large but much more ordinary, in an office with unadorned walls and no fireplace.

She wondered if he’d been demoted – probably not. The carpet was thick, the meeting table against the wall large, and the window wide. It was probably just that the MOD building was nothing like as grand as the Foreign Office. As she looked round her eyes fell on something she recognised. Propped up against the wall under the window, where a visitor couldn’t miss it, was a violin, the symbol that this was the office of a truly cultured man.

Liz did not like Henry Pennington. He was patronising but, worse, he was a panicker. When unexpected events occurred to disturb his vision of how things ought to be, he could be relied on to flap and do something unhelpful, as when he had suddenly offered Liz’s services to the Russian oligarch. So she was wary of anything that Henry Pennington was involved in.

Having established how very busy and important he was, Pennington looked up at last from his desk and acknowledged Liz’s presence.

‘I have a conference call in fifteen minutes,’ he said, by way of opening the conversation. ‘I hope this won’t take long.’

Same Henry, thought Liz as she looked at his thin, bony face with its prominent nose. You’re in for a shock, Mr P, she thought to herself.

‘I think you’ll find that what I have to say is just as important as your conference call.’

He frowned as Liz went on. ‘What I have to tell you is very much “need to know” so I must ask you to sign this indoctrination list for Operation Bravado.’

Henry flushed and tutted irritably. She was playing him at his own game and he knew it. He signed reluctantly on the form Liz presented and said rudely, ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘We have learned from a well-placed source,’ Liz began, ‘that the existence of Operation Clarity is known to the Russians and also to another foreign power.’

Henry flopped back in his chair and started to rub his hands together in a washing motion. He said, ‘What do you mean? It can’t be true. Our security is top-notch.’

‘I’m afraid it is true. I didn’t know anything about Clarity until I was told by this source, who is himself foreign. What’s more important is that it’s possible that Clarity itself may have been infiltrated.’

The hand-washing accelerated. ‘That’s impossible. Everyone is vetted to the highest level. I just don’t believe it.’

‘For the moment we have to assume it’s true. My job is to follow this lead, and to find out what if anything is going on in Clarity. What I need from you is a list of those employed on this project.’

‘They are all either American or British,’ he broke in. ‘There are no foreign powers, as you put it, involved.’

She ploughed on. ‘As I understand it, this is the Secretariat. The development work is being done elsewhere. Where is that?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Pennington desperately. ‘You’re only cleared to Level Blue.’

‘Well, you’d better get me cleared to Level God. Because I not only need to know where the project is, but I or one of my colleagues will need to visit it and talk to whoever is in charge.’

‘You can’t. Access is totally denied to outsiders.’

‘Look, Henry, you can try to block me if you like, but you’re just wasting your time – and holding up an important investigation. This is already at DG/PUS level and may shortly go up to Ministers. So let’s stop all this and give me the information I need so I can get on with the job.’

Pennington slumped in his chair. His thin face had gone very pale and his large nose seemed even more prominent. He said nothing for a second or two, then muttered in a broken-sounding voice, ‘Our security can’t have been breached.’ Liz could see that visions of his shattered career were floating before his eyes.

‘Don’t worry, Henry,’ she said soothingly. ‘It may not have been. We don’t know for sure that Clarity itself has been infiltrated. Only that there’s someone working for a foreign government who has some sort of access to Clarity material.’

But Pennington had given up. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked weakly.

‘The details of the UK Head of the Project and an introduction. Believe me,’ said Liz, looking at his slumped figure, ‘no one hopes more than me that this information is wrong.’

‘More than I, I think you mean,’ said Pennington with a sniff.