Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (39 page)

The doorbell rang. Sir Adam checked his mobile phone and saw there had been a missed call and an SMS from Khan:
Need to see u urgently. Coming over now. Sorry re short notice.
He knew his director of Counter-terrorism too well to question why he was disturbing him at home on a Friday evening. Jobs like theirs inevitably came with certain intrusions.

The armed policeman from the Met’s Diplomatic Protection Group checked Khan’s ID and showed him in. ‘Mr Khan to see you, sir. He says you were expecting him?’

Sid Khan made rather an elaborate show of wiping his feet on the bristly doormat as Sir Adam took his coat.

‘Will you stay for dinner?’ asked the Chief. ‘I’m sure there’s enough to go round.’

‘Very kind, C,’ replied Khan, ‘but I’ve had my tea already.’ He turned to the other three. ‘Apologies, one and all, for interrupting you.’

‘I think you may know Yves Moreau, my opposite number in Paris?’ said Sir Adam, making the introductions. ‘Director, this is Syed Khan, my director of Counter-terrorism.’

‘My pleasure,’ said the Frenchman. ‘Yes, we met when you came to Paris.’

Khan followed the Chief into his study next door, adding over his shoulder, ‘I’ll try not to keep him too long.’

The Chief closed the door behind them and motioned Khan to one of the two heavy leather armchairs. ‘Drink? Can I pour you a whisky?’

Khan gave him a quizzical look and the Chief slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry, I always forget. Of course. Something soft then – lime cordial?’ He walked over to the sideboard, his limp as
pronounced as ever, and spoke with his back to his guest: ‘Is this about the Estonia incursion?’ He handed Khan a tall glass of cordial, tinkling with ice.

‘No, it’s a bit more serious. It’s the other matter,’ said Khan. ‘We’ve heard from Tradewind.’

The Chief faced him, still standing. Khan had his full attention now. ‘When was this?’

‘Agent Comms called me just over an hour ago. As soon as I read the printout I came straight over. Thought you’d want to see it for yourself.’ Khan passed him a single sheet of paper.

The head of MI6 put on his glasses and spent a full minute reading and rereading it. He was emitting a low humming sound, the giveaway signal that he was less than satisfied. He turned it over in his hand, as if expecting more information on the other side, but there was none. ‘This changes everything,’ he said, sweeping his spectacles off his face and placing them on the bookcase. ‘If García is making preparations to pack up and leave the country it can mean only one thing.’

‘That he’s moving into the endgame?’ said Khan.

‘Precisely. That would certainly be my assessment. He knows what’s coming down the line once this thing goes off and he’s getting out while he can . . . Panama, she reckons?’ Sir Adam looked across at Khan, one eyebrow raised.

‘That’s what she says in her transmission,’ said Khan, waving at the paper still in the Chief’s hand.

‘Can we intercept him?’ asked Sir Adam. ‘Get the Colombians to grab him before he leaves the country?’

There was a soft knock on the door and Margaret popped her head in to give Sir Adam a meaningful look. She was wearing a simple but elegant black dress beneath a necklace of blue lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, almost the sole benefit she had derived from her husband’s Kabul posting. ‘Darling, your guests. They haven’t come here to see me, you know!’

He lowered his head and raised a hand in submission. ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. Can you tell them I’ll be out very shortly? This is rather important what we’re discussing here.’

‘I’m sure it is, but I think Monsieur le Directeur next door has heard about as much as he ever wants to about my grape-picking days in Provence. It’s your turn now.’ She left the room, closing the door behind her.

‘It’s risky,’ said Khan, picking up their conversation from where they had left off. ‘If we can even get a trace on where he’s flying out from, lifting him now might bounce his people into detonating this thing early. The Security Service and the Met are working flat out to track it down before they do. They need every day they’ve got.’

Khan hadn’t touched his lime cordial, the Chief noticed.

‘Or,’ said Sir Adam, ‘if we can take their principal player out of operation it could just decapitate their whole operation.’ He paused. ‘I think we need Langley to step up their game on this one. After all, Latin America is more their backyard than ours.’

‘Well, there’s always the JSOC option,’ said Khan. ‘Joint Special Operations could finish the job our man Luke started. Go for the full takedown of García’s operation, with assistance from the Colombians. But I’m not sure that’s the right route to go down.’

‘No,’ replied the Chief. ‘Neither am I. We need a subtler approach. How close is Tradewind now to the main player? Can she discover where they’ve hidden the weapon? I’m talking about over here. Because that, more than anything else in the world, is where our Service could deliver a difference. We started this thing. We should be the ones to finish it.’

Khan looked down at the glass of lime cordial in his hand, as if suddenly remembering it was there. He took a swig. ‘Tradewind is in a good place,’ he said. ‘We’ve placed her about as far upstream in that organization as we can hope to get, without turning one of his most trusted people. But even if she can find that information for us, there’s no knowing when she’ll next have a chance to transmit. We don’t even know if García is planning to take her with him.’

‘How’s he getting out of Colombia?’ asked Sir Adam.

‘Probably flying below radar cover at treetop height across the Darien Gap. It’ll be from one jungle airstrip to another. Then he’ll
want to disappear with a new identity to sit back and watch his work here unfold on CNN or BBC Mundo.’

‘All right. So what do you propose?’ said the Chief. He knew that Khan would not have come to his home bearing problems without solutions.

‘García still has an exploitable weakness,’ replied Khan. ‘His health. That’s how we got Tradewind in. So I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I can’t really see any way round it. It has to be Operation Sicarius.’

The Chief gave a heavy sigh. ‘We’ll need sign-off from the PM for that. And from the attorney general. I’m seeing the PM first thing in the morning. He’s going to ask what the chances are that it will work. So, what are the percentages?’ Sir Adam’s jaw was set firm.

‘Tradewind is the only agent we have in place who could do it,’ replied Khan. ‘She’s had minimal training for something like this and we’d still need to get the material to her. But it’s all we’ve got left in the toolbox at this stage. I’d give it about a seventy-five per cent chance of success.’

‘Do it.’ He was moving towards the door and back to his guests. ‘Execute.’

NO ONE COULD
accuse Luke Carlton of being superstitious. By the time of his seventh birthday he had rumbled his dad for dressing up as Santa Claus. Even before he’d lost his parents on that terrible afternoon in Colombia his enquiring mind had already decided there were no such things as ghosts. But Luke did sometimes wonder if he possessed a sort of sixth sense, an antenna that alerted him to trouble just ahead of time. It had kicked in more than once on those Special Forces night raids back in Afghanistan, made him look twice at his plans, his routes in and out, prompting the minute adjustments that ended up saving lives. On his own side, not the enemy’s.

That morning was one of those moments. Four days had passed since his visit to the isolation ward and he had already had Groves at MI5 asking him, twice now, if he was absolutely certain the patient had said ‘Manchester’. If Jenny Li hadn’t been there to hear it too, he might have started to doubt his ears. The preventative measures and the non-stop searches put in place around Greater Manchester were costing millions of pounds and questions were being asked about how long this could go on.

Yet Luke now had a deeply uncomfortable feeling that forces beyond his control were shifting into gear and that he was about to be affected in some way. It had started the night before, when he’d got back from work at Thames House. He was surprised, to
put it mildly, to open the door to his home and see two expensively dressed young men lounging on the sofa as if they owned the place. Brothers, he guessed, but not twins. One was vaguely familiar.

‘Hiya, babes,’ said Elise, greeting him with a kiss and steering him into the room. ‘Did you get my text?’

Luke hadn’t looked at his phone since that morning. It had remained switched off while he was working inside MI5’s main building and he had forgotten to turn it back on when he left for the day. ‘I didn’t, but that’s my fault,’ he replied. ‘Hi, I’m Luke,’ he said, reaching out a hand to the two unknowns.

‘Yah, I know. I’m Hugo Squires,’ said the nearest of the two, returning the handshake. ‘We’ve met before. And this is my bro, Jackson.’

I don’t believe it, thought Luke. I’ve let myself get ambushed in my own bloody flat. He had to hand it to Elise, this was smart work. She had moved fast after their late-night chat about his career, which he had pushed to the back of his mind. But he didn’t let his smile falter. ‘Can I get you both a drink?’ he asked.

‘Nah, we’re good, thanks,’ said Hugo.

‘How was work today?’ Elise asked Luke, joining them as she sat on the edge of the sofa.

He had the distinct impression he was coming in on the tail end of a conversation that might well have involved him. ‘So-so.’ For a second he wondered what would happen if he gave them an honest answer, if he shouted across the room, ‘You want the truth? Work is going fucking abysmally! There’s a radioactive dirty bomb somewhere in this country and we can’t find it! Why, how was work for you today?’

Instead he shrugged, then spoke quietly to Elise. ‘Can you give me a hand with something next door?’

As soon as they were in the bedroom he shut the door abruptly and turned to her. ‘Elise – what the hell?’

‘Easy, tiger. I sent you a text – I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to read it. You remember the conversation we had a few nights ago? About a possible career change?’

‘I do. I just didn’t expect you to move this quickly.’

‘Well, the boys were free tonight so I thought, Why not? Look, I’m only trying to do what’s best for us here. And you did say you’d hear him out – Jackson, that is. Well, he’s here now and he was keen to meet you.’

Luke regarded her for a long moment. She was so beautiful, with her long, graceful neck, that sparkle in her eyes and those full lips. He was on to a good thing and he knew it. For the second time, he found himself saying, yes, he would hear out what Jackson had to say. ‘Any thoughts on supper, though? We could always pop in to the Woodman just down the road?’ He was playing for time but she was ahead of him.

‘No need,’ said Elise. ‘I’ve put a lasagne in the oven and Hugo’s made a salad.’

‘Hugo’s made a
salad
? Who
are
these guys, Lise?’

‘Don’t be a caveman. Just come next door and be nice.’

To everyone’s relief, the evening passed off peacefully. Luke, it had to be said, couldn’t quite bring himself to like Hugo Squires but he thanked him for looking after Elise on the dreadful evening of the phone call in the restaurant. He did, though, warm to Jackson. Everyone knew the meeting was all about seeing if Luke would consider shifting careers, yet they avoided talking about anything to do with investment management. When the two brothers departed in a cab Luke agreed to meet Jackson in a week’s time. He knew he couldn’t keep putting things off indefinitely. Sooner or later it was going to come down to him having to make a choice – Elise or the Service – and it would be a tough one. But he also had a feeling that bigger events were about to intervene.

AT SEVEN FORTY-FIVE
the next morning a black BMW X1 with tinted windows, the MI6 Chief in the back, pulled into Horse Guards Road. At the police checkpoint that guards the discreet rear entrance to 10 Downing Street the car turned right and slowed but didn’t stop. Certain cars in Whitehall have revolving numberplates and this was one of them. Inside the police post the officers on duty recognized the registration number they’d been given and lowered the cylindrical barriers, allowing the BMW to sweep into the forecourt and park in the far left-hand corner.

By eight thirty C’s meeting with the Prime Minister had ended. He left the room, grim-faced, with the PM’s signature on a document, countersigned by the attorney general, tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Operation Sicarius had been authorized from the top.

Sir Adam Keeling walked briskly along Tudor Passage, the corridor connecting Number 10 to the nearby Cabinet Office. Now he had to brief a hastily convened meeting of the senior members of the National Security Council. Taking his place beside Sid Khan, he faced the room. ‘We are holding this meeting,’ he began, ‘because a situation has arisen with our principal player in Colombia which leaves us little choice. We’ve looked at all the options but I’m afraid we’re going to have to go for a termination.’

No one at the table said a word. The way things were going or,
rather, were not going, with no breakthroughs in locating the ticking bomb, everyone had expected something like this.

‘Let’s not delude ourselves here,’ continued Sir Adam. ‘This still doesn’t give us any guarantee we can stop the detonation. But with the principal eliminated it is our assessment –’ he coughed – ‘it is our assessment that his other operators will lose their incentive to go through with the attack. If anything, we expect it to set off an internal leadership battle within the cartel.’

While the Chief was speaking, a balding man in a dark, pinstripe suit had let himself quietly into the room and taken his place at the other end of the table. ‘I would just like to add a word here,’ interjected the newcomer. ‘As Attorney General, I have looked long and hard at this. Is it legal? Is it proportionate? Does it comply with international law? Well, Sir Adam and I have gone over every angle with the PM. I need hardly say that it would be infinitely preferable if our Colombian friends could capture the man alive and bring him to justice.’