Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (36 page)

‘Is he well enough to talk to us?’ asked Jenny, cutting straight to the point.

‘If he wants to. Yes. But I’m afraid you’ve just missed your chance for now. He’s back under sedation – he’ll be out for the next few hours. His body needs all the strength it can get to fight this thing. I can call you when he comes round . . . I must say, we were expecting you a bit sooner. He was wide awake just fifteen minutes ago. Was it the traffic then?’

‘
CAN’T SAY I’M
a fan of this coffee,’ observed Jenny Li, then, for the nth time that hour, glanced at her watch. ‘This is just so annoying,’ she said, jiggling her foot distractedly. ‘I can’t believe those two on the door blocked us like that. If they had any idea how much this is setting us back! And what if he never comes round? We’ll have missed our best chance. Aaargh.’

Luke had been using the enforced waiting time to read up on radiological half-lives and the different properties of caesium chloride. He smiled to himself. This was a very different Jenny Li from the cool, calm and collected individual who had come up to him in his lunchbreak. ‘You can’t blame the coppers,’ he told her. ‘They were only doing what they’d been told to do. And, besides, the patient may not know anything useful – or tell us, even if he does.’

‘In human intelligence,’ Jenny said slowly, ‘everything is useful. Every phrase, every offhand remark. Trust me, you let nothing go to waste. So when we get up there, Luke, we’d better make damn sure every second counts.’

Luke was about to reply when the receptionist rushed into the cafeteria. It was the same man who had welcomed them hours ago. ‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘He’s awake and lucid. Best be quick in case they change their minds upstairs.’ Luke and Jenny were on their feet even as he said this, cups abandoned on the table. Back
the way they had come, dodging past groups of hospital staff heading home after their day shifts, they half walked, half ran to the isolation room.

Tomasz Kracjek was in the anteroom, looking tired but animated, his Charles Tyrwhitt shirt less pristine now. ‘I can let you go in,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to put on these first.’ He pointed to a pile of what looked like white spacesuits. ‘They just go over the top of your clothes.’

‘Just us in there with him, right?’ checked Luke.

‘That’s the access we’ve been told to give you,’ replied the consultant. ‘But we’ll be watching from next door. On the monitor. If we think he’s getting distressed or needs medical attention, the interview has to stop as soon as I say so. I’m afraid that’s the deal.’

They nodded as they struggled into their protective suits.

‘One last thing,’ said Kracjek. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you. Just don’t touch the patient! OK, in you go.’

Luke wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he pushed open the door. A scene from the biological disaster movie
Outbreak
perhaps, with a man only vaguely visible beneath an oxygen tent. But there was no tent, no drama, just a solitary man in a light- green hospital gown, lying slack and listless, an IV drip in his arm, his scalp smooth as a billiard ball, his eyes barely open. They hardly registered a flicker as he and Jenny walked in.

Luke pulled up a chair and sat as close to the patient as he dared without actually brushing against him. Jenny remained standing in front of the closed door. There was a strange, sickly smell in the room that he couldn’t quite place. Urine? Yes, probably. He spotted a bag of golden liquid suspended beneath the man’s bed and winced inwardly: he had been in a bed like that not so long ago himself, recovering from his Afghan wounds, at the Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham, drips going in and tubes coming out. But he had made it, and one look at this man told him there wasn’t going to be a happy ending here.

There was no time for preamble or introductions. Luke decided to go for broke. ‘
Tu estás muriendo
,’ he told him flatly. ‘You’re dying.’ A flutter of eyelids in response. ‘These people here,’ Luke
continued in Spanish, gesturing to the door behind him and the hospital in general, ‘they’re doing their best to save you. They’re trying to help you, to make you comfortable.’ The patient groaned quietly and turned his head to one side, against the pillow. He didn’t look very comfortable. His eyes were open now but they were dull and vacant. If they were focused on anything it was the blank expanse of wall next to the window. Luke couldn’t even be sure that he was listening so he put his head closer still, close enough to hear the rasping of the dying man’s breath.

‘What did you do?’ Luke whispered. ‘What did you bring into this country? You need to tell me. You have nothing to gain by keeping it secret now.’

Slowly the man turned back to face Luke. He seemed to be trying to raise his head and now his lips were moving. Luke strained to catch the words. Even Jenny Li had left the safety of her post to edge closer to listen.

‘
Es . . . es una bomba.
’ His head sank back onto the pillow, as if the effort of saying just those four words alone had exhausted him.

‘Where?’ There was no point in asking complicated questions. For all he knew, this was the man’s last hour on earth. ‘Where is the bomb hidden?’

Again his lips moved, soundlessly this time. Luke could see he was trying to purse them but they were trembling. ‘Ma . . . Mancha . . .’ Luke looked at him sharply. La Mancha was Spanish for the English Channel and he knew the device was already ashore. But the patient hadn’t finished. His lips were still moving. ‘Manchest . . .’ he gasped.

Luke looked at Jenny. She had heard it too.

‘Manchester?’ repeated Luke, making eye contact with him. He needed to make sure he had heard him right.

The sick patient didn’t move, didn’t say anything in response, but his eyelids blinked twice. Then he closed them and was still.

THE LIGHTS WERE
burning long after dark at Vauxhall Cross that evening. Nothing unusual about that: sometimes they stayed on all night, blazing like a candelabrum across the muddy waters of the Thames.

It was after seven o’clock when Angela Scott knocked on Sid Khan’s door. For once, she didn’t wait for an answer but marched straight in and confronted him.

‘I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to be free,’ she barked. ‘Just what kind of an operation are you running in Colombia?’

There were other directors who might have taken great offence at her tone, but not Sid Khan.

‘And good evening to you too, Angela. Please, have a seat.’ Khan waved at a chair and put away his glasses. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you.’ Angela remained standing, her pale, freckled face slightly flushed. ‘I want to know why you allowed one of my team – and you know who I’m talking about, Luke Carlton – to be sent off on an extremely hazardous assignment without giving him the full intel picture.’

‘Sorry, I’m not following you.’

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, Sid.’ She walked up to his desk, placed her hands flat on its polished surface and leaned towards him. ‘I’m talking about Tradewind.’

Khan flinched, but said nothing.

‘When were you going to tell him we have another agent in place? An agent who just happens to be absolutely crucial to this whole operation?’ Khan studied her but still said nothing. ‘Because d’you know what I’m thinking?’ said Angela, her face more flushed than ever now. ‘I think you’ve done the dirty on Luke Carlton. If I didn’t know you better I’d say you set him up to fail. You may be two ranks my senior but I swear to God there had better be a good reason for this or I’m taking it upstairs.’

‘Please, Angela, it’s just us in here.’ Khan looked rattled now but he gestured once more at the empty chair. ‘I’m asking you to sit down.’

Reluctantly, she did so, straightened her charcoal-grey skirt and faced him square on.

‘I spoke to Carlton over at Thames House today,’ she began. ‘I needed to bring him up to speed on that Joint Intelligence Committee meeting we attended.’

‘And?’

‘He wasn’t born yesterday. He’s not some spotty school leaver who’s watched too many episodes of
Spooks
and happens to have passed the psych analysis and come up clean on developed vetting. He’s already served his country with distinction. He’s an ex-Special Forces officer, for Christ’s sake, with a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. He pretty much worked it out for himself.’

‘How’s that?’ said Khan. His forehead had started to shine with sweat and she couldn’t help noticing that damp patches were appearing at the armpits of his polo shirt.

‘How’s that?’ she repeated sarcastically. ‘Try looking at what’s been coming in from Bogotá station. Luke’s been given access to everything Clements sends us from Colombia but he’s noticed some material he didn’t recognize. It didn’t match anything from Langley or Foreign Liaison with the Colombians either. So he asked me to check it out with Agent Comms. Turns out it came in on a separate, stand-alone satellite feed. You’ve been running Tradewind off-the-books without telling him.’

‘I hear you.’ Khan held up an admonishing hand.

‘I haven’t finished yet. Ordinarily, I’d say this is none of my
business. But given the current threat level – and the fact that Luke was tortured and narrowly escaped being macheted to death – I’d say it’s every bloody bit my department’s business!’

‘Angela. You’ve been in this organization long enough to know some things are so sensitive that the fewer people with access the better – for everyone. Tradewind is one of those situations. I can’t tell you who he – or she – might be. There is an extremely tight circle of people who know about this, all within this Service, and we need to keep it that way.’

She waited for him to say more. So far he had told her nothing.

‘Okay,’ said Khan, relenting now. ‘We do have an undeclared agent down there. That person is in deep cover, really deep cover. Their ability to communicate with us is severely limited but the product we get – when we get it – is pure gold.’

Angela took a deep breath and shook her head.

‘Would you mind closing the door?’ he said.

‘Why? They’ve all gone home on this floor. That’s why I waited until now.’

‘Can’t be too careful. Remember what happened in Baku? Anyway, I’ll level with you, Angela. Tradewind is placed extremely close to the principal we’re focusing on. So close that most of this building doesn’t even know.’

‘And you chose to keep this from Luke? You don’t think he deserves to know? Given that he’s been down there at the sharp end, not you or me?’

Khan shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I’ve said all I’m going to say on this. You’ll just have to manage the situation. I’m sure you’ll find a way.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, it’s getting late, and I’ve still got a heap of stuff to get through here.’

‘All right.’ She got up to leave. ‘I’ll defer to you on this one. You’re the director of CT, not me. If there’s a reason to keep Luke in the dark, I can accept that. But, please, just make sure it’s a good one.’

BY THE TIME
Luke got home it was nearly midnight. Day one on the Thames House task force and already he felt exhausted. The second he and Jenny Li had left the isolation room at UCH they had paced quickly down the corridor until they found a quiet corner to call in what they had gleaned from the desperately sick patient. They agreed that Jenny would call Groves, while Luke would alert Khan. They stood a few metres apart, their backs to each other, beside a broom cupboard on the second floor.

‘It’s Manchester,’ said Luke. ‘At least, that’s what he’s telling us. And he says it’s a bomb. Which we pretty much knew.’

‘Go on,’ said Khan.

‘That’s it. That’s all there was. Believe me, it wasn’t easy getting that out of him.’

‘Young man,’ replied Khan, ‘you need to go straight back in there and try again. We need a lot more than you’ve just told me. Like, where in Manchester? The town hall? The cathedral? The Etihad Stadium? Come on, we need names, addresses, phone numbers.’

Luke waited for him to finish. ‘Sid, I don’t think anyone’s told you just how far gone the man is. He’s at death’s door – he can barely speak. He is very, very sick. We can give it another go, if they’ll let us back in, but I thought you should know about Manchester straight away.’

‘You did the right thing,’ said Khan. ‘Is he fit enough to be polygraphed?’

‘Not in his present state,’ Luke replied.

‘Do we believe him?’

‘Hard to say. I think he knows he’s at the end of the road, so what’s he got to lose by telling us?’

Khan was silent, digesting this new development. ‘Does Groves know about this?’ he asked eventually.

‘One of his case officers is telling him now.’ Luke ended the call and turned to Jenny.

‘Let me guess,’ she said, and they recited in unison: ‘Names, addresses, phone numbers!’ It was the only light moment in a very dark day.

After that Jenny had left quickly, heading back to Thames House to work with Groves and others on the Manchester angle. Luke had stayed on at the hospital, waiting for the green light to revisit the patient, but it never came. A different consultant had taken over for the night shift. Every half-hour or so he had come out to see Luke: the patient was alive but unresponsive. At 11 p.m. Luke had called it a day and caught a cab home to Battersea.

Which was where he found Elise, still up, dressed in a black and silver kimono, and holding a glass of wine. She came over to greet him, put a slender arm around his neck, pulled him towards her and gave him a lingering wine-wet kiss. ‘Welcome home, babes,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve missed you today.’

After the day he had just had, which seemed to Luke to have lasted about thirty-six hours, he had envisaged tiptoeing quietly into bed and crashing straight out. Now he slumped on the sofa, resting his head on the back and closing his eyes. Elise walked round behind him and reached down to loosen his tie, then gently massaged his shoulders. ‘I won’t ask you how your day was,’ she said, ‘because I bet you can’t tell me. Instead I’ve booked us a nice surprise.’

‘And what might that be?’ asked Luke, looking up at her from his position on the sofa. ‘A Secret Escapes weekend for two? A visit to Victoria’s Secret?’