The Watchman

Three

Secret Intelligence Service Officer Thomas Vale stared at the message on his monitor in the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross in London, and wondered what the hell was going on. It had just arrived on the internal Secure-X system, yet was timed over an hour ago.

Vale checked his watch. It was already 10.30. He’d be late, which he hated. He called immediately for a duty driver in the services section to meet him downstairs. Getting round to the Cabinet Office, room 2/15, where these cross-departmental meetings often took place, was going to take a few minutes.

‘Have you seen Mr Moresby, Joe?’ he asked the driver.

‘About twenty minutes ago, Mr Vale, on his way out of the building.’ Joe eyed him in the mirror with a raised eyebrow. They had known each other for four years now and got on well. ‘I didn’t think you were included.’ Joe always seemed to know a lot more than he should for his pay grade. Typical ex-army driver.

The devious little shit, Vale thought angrily, the thought aimed at Colin Moresby, Operations Director 4 and chair of the meeting. One of the new brand of directors appointed in the recent re-shuffles of the security community, Moresby had hit the ground running and seemed unconcerned by the need to make allies in the corridors of SIS unless they could further his career. He had a love of meetings, which he used as weapons to denigrate his enemies and as forums to suck up to those more important than himself. Sleek and confident, he was too fond of marketing-speak for Vale’s liking, which the older man saw as a means of obfuscation.

He thought about the note again, trying to decide whether the delay in receiving it and the lack of any earlier notification was carelessness or a deliberate move to freeze him out. A senior field officer for many years, he was approaching retirement. But with a shortage of skilled personnel undergoing training, he’d been offered a consultancy post within the organization and asked to stay on for the foreseeable future. His role was no longer in the field, but more of an oversight function on operations. As such, Moresby was obliged to include him in all aspects of field officers’ and agents’ work abroad. It was, Vale knew, little more than a box-ticking exercise to meet new monitoring standards, but still an essential footbrake function for those with less field experience.

People like Moresby.

The car eased to a stop near the Cabinet Office. He hopped out and told Joe he would walk back; he had a feeling he might need the fresh air. Passing through security, he made his way up to the second floor, room 15. He could hear the buzz of conversation from inside, and felt unaccountably like a pupil arriving late for a lesson.

The talking stopped as he opened the door, and a number of familiar faces turned towards him.

‘My apologies,’ he said easily, addressing nobody in particular. He noted Moresby, sitting at the head of the table. He looked as if he had swallowed a bug. ‘I didn’t get the note until a few minutes ago.’

‘Really?’ Moresby grunted. ‘You’d better take it up with IT. Probably a systems glitch.’

There were no gaps at the table, Vale noted. Significant or accidental? He grabbed a chair from against the wall beneath a dubious portrait of Gladstone, and dragged it to a spot between Bill Cousins, Controller Africa, and Peter Wilby, Controller Middle East. The two men shuffled sideways to let him in.

He nodded and sat down, noting that each person present had a folder on the table in front of them. There were no spares.

Bill Cousins moved his folder so that Vale could share.

‘As I was saying,’ Moresby resumed, his face stiff with disapproval, ‘this is an all-hands notification that we will be running a contact mission within the next two weeks, possibly sooner. The location is in east Africa, on the Somali/Kenyan border near the coast, and the precise timing is as yet unconfirmed, but will be reactive, depending on outside bodies.’ He glanced around the table, hovering just a moment on a man Vale knew as James Scheider, the deputy chief, CIA London station. He was an up-and-coming figure to watchers inside SIS, and Vale instantly recognized Moresby’s tactics: make powerful friends before they reach the top and they are likely to boost one’s own rise to prominence.

Moresby referred to the folders on the table and continued, ‘Two weeks ago our Nairobi liaison officer was approached by a known middleman named Ashkir Xasan. Xasan is thought to be of mixed Somali/Kenyan parentage, and has acted as a mediator several times over the past two years in the release of tourists and other hostages in the region, taken mostly by pirates but also other non-aligned groups. He secured the release of two cargo vessels taken by pirates further north, one in the Gulf of Aden, the other off the coast of Oman. Both vessels, one the Madras-flagged Oonyong, the other the Belladventure from Rotterdam, had been held for three months near Hobyo, Somalia. Their crews were released unharmed.’

Vale breathed easily and scanned the briefing notes passed to him by Bill Cousins. So far so mundane. He wondered where this was going. Moresby was perfectly entitled to run operations wherever his brief allowed, especially where there were intelligence implications. But Vale had the strongest feeling that his own name had been left off the list deliberately and he wasn’t sure why. But it couldn’t be good news. Moresby was making a power play of some kind and signalling that old-timers like Vale were no longer needed, oversight roles or not.

‘As a backgrounder,’ Moresby continued, ‘several weeks ago a group of aid workers was taken hostage by pirates off Djibouti. They were on a combined fact-finding mission to visit refugee camps set up by three aid agencies.’ He paused for effect, scanning the faces. ‘Unknown to the kidnappers, two of the people taken were advisors to the United Nations; one British, one Dutch.’

A sigh whispered through the room as they each considered the implications. Aid workers were an easy target for extremists, although often left alone by kidnap groups because they usually had little real ransom value. But serving UN personnel were like gold dust, with an appropriate value to anyone negotiating for their sale.

‘What the hell were they doing there?’ queried Ruth Dresden, the Cabinet Office representative. ‘And why go in by sea? Don’t they like flying?’

Moresby gave a hint of a shrug. ‘Regretful, I know. My understanding is that they were going in by the back door to avoid being picked up on the airport radar by the Somalis.’

‘Why? We’re on friendly terms with them at the moment.’

‘True. But they wanted to gain an insight to the problems on the ground without being shadowed by government minders every step of the way.’

‘Well, that worked a treat, didn’t it?’ muttered a gaunt individual from the Ministry of Defence. ‘I suppose they now want us to drag them out of there?’

‘Actually, no.’ Moresby looked around the room. ‘In fact, we’d had no contact with them or their kidnappers until Xasan came forward.’

‘Is he one of the gang?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware. But he claims to know the group holding them and says he can secure their release unharmed if we’re prepared to talk. There was no mention of the sum involved, but there was a condition attached.’

Was, Vale noted. Past tense. So the build-up to this has already taken place without being broadcast. ‘What kind of condition?’

‘They want to enter formal negotiations, but we have to supply a representative on the ground at a location to be advised once we give the nod.’

‘Why?’ Bill Cousins shifted in his seat. ‘What do they think this is — an agreement on extended trade credits?’

By his tone, Vale wondered if he wasn’t the only one who might have been left out of the loop. Cousins clearly hadn’t been fully briefed, either.

Moresby nodded. ‘According to Xasan’s latest communication, which came in yesterday afternoon, the group holding the hostages is led by a clan chief — that’s Xasan’s description, not ours — named Musa Yusuf Musa.’

‘Clan chief my arse,’ Peter Wilby, the Controller Middle East muttered in disgust. ‘He’s a terrorist; al-Shabaab down to his toenails. And right now they control a large part of the country around Mogadishu — whatever the African Union Forces say. How come we didn’t hear about this?’ Like Cousins, he looked irritated, but sounded more cautious.

‘Because I didn’t want to make it known more widely until I had formulated a plan.’ Moresby seemed unconcerned by any shortcomings in approved procedure, and stared hard at both controllers, who said nothing. He gestured at the folders, which contained a map showing the distribution of forces in the country, including government, Kenyan and other African troops … and the huge Islamist-controlled region in the centre around the capital.

‘But you’re correct. The Islamists do have a serious foothold. However, they don’t control every clan. The plan — my plan — is simple: we will send an officer to meet with Xasan and Musa at a time and place of their choosing. They will state their demands and we will negotiate the release of these hostages. They have also indicated that there are other groups known by Musa looking to do similar deals for hostages and boats held along the Somali coast.’

‘Seriously?’ Ruth Dresden again. ‘How do we know we can trust them?’

Moresby tapped the folder in front of him. ‘Because we must. This is, lady and gentlemen, the opening I believe we’ve long been waiting for: the chance to secure the release of hostages and shipping on a scale nobody has managed before.’ He smiled suddenly as if warmed by his own brilliance, and looked round as if for approval. ‘Anyone care for coffee?’