Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (33 page)

Luke thanked him, then walked beside Sangita as she gave him a whistle-stop tour round the task force. ‘Basically,’ she told him, ‘we’ve pulled together a lot of different disciplines from a number of different agencies and we’re all crammed into this one room.’ She pointed out various people at various desks but almost no one looked up. ‘So you’ve got Covert Surveillance over there, that’s my service. Next to them is Agent Handling, also MI5. Over there is GCHQ, Public Health England, the Metropolitan Police, and next to them you’ve got the National Crime Agency.’

‘And those four?’ asked Luke. He indicated a group sitting slightly apart, almost like a cell within a cell. They appeared to have an enclave all of their own at one end of the room, and he could just make out some graphic charts flickering on their screens.

‘They’re the scientists, the defence radiological experts from DRPS,’ she replied, lowering her voice for no apparent reason. ‘They’re absolutely key to all this. OK, it looks like Damian’s about to start so I’ll head off. I’m on extension triple-five-zero if you get stuck for anything. Best of luck.’ She flashed Luke the briefest of smiles, then let herself out.

Damian Groves was standing and looking at his watch. ‘Could I have everyone’s attention, please?’ he said, as he waited for phone calls to end and the room to settle down. ‘Before we begin to zero in on our intelligence targets,’ he continued, ‘we need to have a clear understanding of what we’re dealing with here. I want each and every one of you to be fully conversant with the nature of the threat we’re facing.’

The threat. How many others in this room, wondered Luke, had come as painfully close as he had to its sharp end? As a young marine, and later as an SBS operative, he had always held a certain disdain for deskbound analysts. But his months with SIS were whittling away that prejudice. Quietly spoken men and women he had dismissed as backroom pen-pushers were turning out to have rather interesting field records, running agents in the dark recesses of Moscow back streets, the souks of Dubai and
across the porous Turkish–Syrian border. Luke leaned forward and gave Groves his full attention.

‘So to that end, I want to introduce you to a subject-matter expert.’ He gestured towards the woman standing next to him. She was dressed in a black jacket and scarlet shirt with a wide, open collar and she had one of those frosty, brittle hairstyles that left not a single hair out of place. Luke put her at around fifty. ‘This is Dr Sheila Morton,’ continued Groves. ‘She’s from the DCU. That’s the Divisional CBRNE Unit based here in London. Anything chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear that’s liable to go off inside the M25 is their call.’

It occurred to Luke that it might be a bit presumptuous to narrow the target down to Greater London when they still didn’t have a fix on it, but day one on the task force was probably not the best time to interrupt.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ began Dr Morton. ‘I’ve been asked to give you a basic scientific briefing on what we think we’re dealing with here. RDDs.’ She looked round the room, searching for recognition. ‘There are essentially two types of radiological dispersal device – those that go bang and those that just quietly emit dangerous isotopes. Both can kill you if you get close enough and both are, potentially, a national security threat.’ She moved out from behind the desk and began to pace slowly up and down. ‘Now, we don’t yet know,’ she said, ‘which type of RDD the players are planning to detonate or where they’re hoping to hide it, but as of yesterday afternoon we’ve got every single radiological detection device out and deployed around the country.’ She stopped pacing and thrust both her hands deep into her jacket pockets.

‘Washington,’ said Dr Morton, ‘is understandably concerned. They’re sending over a team of nuclear physicists from the National Laboratory at Argonne, Illinois. If that man walked into A and E in Plymouth with acute radiation sickness, that means the material is not properly shielded. Which means that, wherever it is now, it should be detectable. We’re starting with Plymouth and working outwards from there. We’ll be using detectors in every major city up and down mainland Britain.’

‘Not Belfast, then?’ interjected an MI5 intelligence officer at the front. His voice carried a soft Ulster burr.

‘No. Our assessment is that if the players have gone to the trouble of bringing this thing ashore in Cornwall, then dumping the mini-sub that carried it in, they’re not going to bother shipping it off by sea a second time.’

‘Fair enough,’ said the Ulsterman, and scribbled a note on his pad.

‘So, let’s assume for now,’ continued Dr Morton, ‘that this is a classic RDD. That’s going to be a combination of high explosive with a radioactive isotope. The blast itself won’t kill any more people than a normal bomb would, but it will do two other things. It will aerosolize the isotopes into the atmosphere, exposing anyone within range to radiation.’
Aerosolize?
This expression was new to almost everyone and several people were jotting it down.

‘Gamma rays go through human tissue, so anyone who comes into contact with it will be affected,’ she added. ‘The closer you are, the higher the dose, and the more chance you have of being poisoned, possibly fatally.’

‘And the second thing?’ The Ulsterman at the front again.

‘The second thing is panic.’ She was perched on the edge of the desk now, facing the room and swinging her legs. ‘When radioactive dust settles on surfaces after an explosion we call it “groundshine”. Depending on which isotope is used, it can take years to decay. It’s called a half-life – some of you might remember that from GCSE science.’ There were knowing nods from her trio of colleagues in the DRPS cell. ‘In some cases you’re looking at a half-life of thirty years. Imagine what that can do to the centre of a city like London. It could make several boroughs uninhabitable for a generation.’

Her briefing had plunged the room into a mire of introspective gloom. Truck bombs, IEDs, suicide bombers, marauding machine-gun attacks and kidnappings were the staple fare of the terrorist plots that MI5 had been working to prevent. Known threats of a known magnitude. But this was a whole new order of terror. A young woman from Public Health England raised her hand with a question.

‘Yes?’

‘I understand that there are ways of mitigating the effects of radioactive contamination. I mean, it can be cleaned up, can’t it?’

‘Yes . . . it can,’ Dr Morton answered with some hesitation. ‘But I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that that’s all in a day’s work. It’s intensely laborious and eye-wateringly expensive. Believe me, I’ve seen the projections. It would still take months to pronounce the centre of a city the size of, say, Leeds free from that sort of contamination.’

Dr Morton tilted her head to one side and appeared to reconsider the question. ‘But you’re right. New treatments are being developed the whole time. There’s some great work being done by the US nuclear research people over at Argonne. Spray-on and peel-off polymer gels that soak up the isotopes, that kind of thing. But let’s not beat around the bush. An RDD going off in Britain would still be the worst terrorist attack this country has seen since . . . well, ever. The economic impact alone would be catastrophic.’

Another young woman had her hand up, her long, silky black hair cascading halfway down her back. When she spoke, Luke detected a very slight trace of a Chinese accent. ‘You mentioned earlier,’ she said, ‘that an exploding RDD wouldn’t kill any more people than an ordinary bomb. Is that right?’

Dr Morton stiffened, misunderstanding the question. ‘Excuse me, are you questioning my analysis?’

Groves got to his feet, ready to defuse the situation, but the woman was ahead of him. ‘Not at all,’ she replied hastily. ‘I just wanted to make sure I’d heard you right.’

‘Oh. I see. Sorry.’ Dr Morton’s shoulders relaxed. ‘Yes, that’s right. At least in the initial blast. Give or take one or two extra casualties, that’s our projection. It’s the after-effect and the ensuing panic that would raise this thing to another level.’

‘Dr Morton, I have a question.’ It was the Ulsterman again. ‘I’m still not completely clear why this RDD threat is such a big deal. What exactly does this stuff do to you?’

She got up and walked over to where he sat. ‘D’you ever watch
films?’ she said, facing him square on. ‘Go to the cinema? Watch Netflix at home?’

‘Yes, of course. Why?’

‘Ever seen a Harrison Ford film called
K-19: The Widowmaker
?’ She turned to address the entire task force. ‘Because I recommend that when you go home tonight you should all order it up and watch it. Just fast-forward to the bit where the Russian sailors enter the crippled submarine’s nuclear reactor core to try to repair it. Because that is about the most graphic depiction of acute radiation sickness you’ll ever see on telly. Skin peeling off, raw welts and blisters, vomiting, men collapsing as their legs give out from under them. And it’s a true story, by the way. Everyone who went within a few metres of that radioactive core died soon afterwards. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we’re up against.’

THE TURRET LODGE
Guest House in Plymouth was not the sort of place where anyone would want to spend their holiday if they had the choice. Its grimy pebbledash walls and scratched frosted-glass windows had seen better days. Outside, on the pavement, discarded polystyrene fast-food cartons skittered along in the wind. A newspaper, curled and yellow with age, had made a home for itself wedged between the wall and a rusting lamp post. The Turret Lodge was cheap: it offered rooms for £29 a night. No breakfast, no Wi-Fi, no questions asked.

When the two men with wind-burned faces and Latin looks had asked to check in without producing ID, the landlady had scowled at them. Meg Tucker was well used to taking in strangers, but there was something about these two she didn’t care for. ‘Thirty-eight pounds a night,’ she grunted. ‘Take it or leave it.’ They had taken it. All the next day they had kept to their room, ordering pizzas to the front door and watching TV on the small boxy set that sat on top of the cupboard. Meg Tucker reckoned they were up to something and tiptoed onto the landing to listen outside their door. Soap operas: that was all she could hear. Twice she’d had to bang on the door to tell them to turn it down.

The second time, the door had opened a crack and she’d caught a glimpse of the younger man lying on the single bed by the
window. He did not look well. She detected a faint smell of vomit mixed with stale pizza. ‘Is he all right, your friend?’

‘He is OK,’ said the other man, gently pressing the door against her furry slippered foot.

‘He don’t look well to me,’ she insisted. ‘D’you want me to call a doctor?’

‘No. Is fine,’ said the older man, and closed the door on her.

It was later that evening, after she’d finished her tea and tidied away her things, when she heard a car draw up outside. Meg Tucker peered out from behind the net curtains of her tiny kitchen window – she always liked to know who was coming and going. It was a radio taxi from Dial-a-Cab: she recognized the illuminated logo on the roof but she didn’t recall ordering one for any of her guests. The driver was opening the back door and the two foreign men were getting in. One didn’t look at all well – his friend seemed to be holding him up as he walked. She couldn’t be sure in this light, but he seemed to have blotches all over his face. She’d have to give that room of theirs a good going over when they left.

Meg Tucker put it out of her mind as she sat down to watch
The Graham Norton Show
. But half an hour later, when she heard the taxi return, she was sure only one pair of feet went up to the room. She padded back onto the landing outside for a listen, but this time there was silence, not even the TV. It was an odd business, no doubt about it, and she thought about calling the police, but what would she tell them? After all, they hadn’t done anything wrong and they’d paid up front, in cash. Besides, she needed the money. There was not a lot of demand for rooms at this time of year at the Turret Lodge Guest House.

LUKE BOUGHT A
sandwich from the trolley for lunch and ate it at his desk in Thames House. Avocado and bacon on wholemeal bread. He chewed it methodically as he worked at his laptop, hovering the cursor over an interactive digital map of the UK. As it passed over certain points a box would flash in the top right-hand corner enclosing a brief set of data. These were the CTUs, the Counter-terrorism Units, distributed around the country, showing where MI5 had combined forces with the police, running agents into local communities. ‘SECTU,’ read the first line in the box as he paused at a village just north of Oxford. Then ‘South-east Counter-terrorism Unit,’ followed by the name of a detective superintendent, the head of ops and their mobile numbers.

Next, Luke pulled up a page of statistics from the Met’s Intelligence Unit detailing every criminal conviction among the 200,000-plus South Americans living in England and Wales, with their registered home addresses and place of arrest. He cross-referenced that with data supplied by Colombia’s National Crime Bureau on known criminal gangs smuggled into Britain, mostly by Eurostar, often on forged Mexican passports. He sighed and leaned as far back in his chair as he could, closing his eyes and ruffling his hair. This really wasn’t his thing. Sid Khan had asked him to do it, to send a report back to VX that combined what SIS knew about Colombian international criminal gangs with
whatever the Met, the NCA and MI5 had on their activities in Britain. Which, as far he could see, wasn’t very much.

Luke could certainly see the value in this as a starting point. If they were to have any chance of catching the people holding the weapon, they had to start second-guessing where they would most likely be hiding and with whom they would be in contact. Unless, of course, it was a completely self-contained cell sent in for this sole specific purpose. In which case they were in even deeper trouble. But this was an analyst’s job: Luke saw himself as an operator, not a desk jockey.

‘Need any help?’ It was the girl with the Chinese accent and the long silky hair. She was standing over him, hand out in greeting. ‘Jenny Li. I work here at Five, as a case officer.’ She had delicate Asiatic features but not fully Chinese. Mixed parentage, he guessed.