In her fourth-floor office at Thames House, in the counter espionage branch, Liz was telling Peggy Kinsolving about yesterday’s experiences at the Old Bailey.
‘Gosh, thank goodness it was you, not me,’ said Peggy, shuddering. Peggy had also played a key role in the investigation that had brought Neil Armitage into court.
It had been over a year since the young desk officer had transferred from MI6 to MI5. After leaving Oxford with a good 2:1 in English and vague scholarly ambitions, Peggy had taken a job in a private library in Manchester. There, with few visitors using the library, she had been free to pursue her own researches, which was what she had thought she wanted to do. But the solitary days and evenings soon began to pall and when, quite by chance, she had learned of a job as a researcher in a specialised government department in London, she had applied. At the age of twenty-four, still with the round spectacles and freckles that had made her family call her Bobbity Bookworm, Peggy had found herself working for MI6.
Peggy was a girl who thought for herself. She had seen enough of life to take no one at face value. But for Liz she felt something like… she had to admit it to herself something like hero-worship. Or was it heroine-worship? No, that didn’t sound quite right. Liz was something Peggy would have liked to be. Whatever happened, she always seemed to know what to do. Liz didn’t have to keep pushing her spectacles back up her nose whenever she got excited; she didn’t wear spectacles. Liz was cool. But Peggy knew that Liz needed her, relied on her – and that was enough.
Peggy had applied to transfer to MI5 after working with Liz on a particularly sensitive case – a mole in the intelligence services – and though MI6 were not best pleased, MI5 had welcomed her with open arms. Studying her junior’s eager face, Liz realised that Peggy now felt completely at ease in Thames House. She’s one of us, she thought.
‘When will we hear the verdict?’ asked Peggy.
Liz looked at her watch. ‘Any moment now, I should think.’
As if on cue, Charles Wetherby poked his head through the open door. Smiling at Peggy, he said to Liz, ‘Armitage has got twelve years.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said Peggy with conviction.
‘I suppose he’ll serve about half, won’t he?’ asked Liz.
‘Yes. He’ll be retirement age by the time he gets out. How did it go in the Cabinet Office yesterday?’
‘I was just writing it up. We had a guest appearance by Sir Nicholas Pomfret. Apparently there’s something hot off the press from Six.’
Wetherby nodded. ‘So I gather. I’ve just had a call from Geoffrey Fane. He’s coming across in half an hour. I’d like you there.’
Liz raised an eyebrow. Fane was one of Wetherby’s counterparts at MI6, a complicated, intelligent and tricky man, primarily a Middle East specialist, but with a wideranging brief covering MI6’s operations in the UK. She’d worked with him before and had come to realise that it was safest either not to sup with Geoffrey Fane at all or to do so with a long spoon.
Now Liz said, ‘Why’s he talking to us about this? Shouldn’t it go to protective security?’
‘Let’s wait and see what he has to say,’ said Wetherby calmly. ‘You know the PM’s pinning a lot on this conference. God knows what happens if it fails. I think the Middle East is in what the Americans call the Last Chance Saloon.’
‘There were two men from Grosvenor at the meeting.’
‘Was Andy Bokus one of them?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Head of station. They call him Bokus the Bruiser,’ said Wetherby with a smile.
‘He had a sidekick with him, a guy called Brookhaven. He seemed rather nice.’
‘Don’t know him. See you shortly.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Liz. She paused a beat before asking, ‘Is Fane coming on his own?’
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
She shrugged. ‘He sent Bruno Mackay to the Cabinet Office meeting.’
Wetherby grimaced, then gave a wry smile. ‘No, it’s just Fane, thank God. He’s hard enough to pin down without Mackay muddying the waters. See you in a bit, then.’
He went off down the corridor and Peggy left to return to her desk in the open-plan office.
What a relief to have Charles back in charge, Liz thought. Charles Wetherby, formerly director of counter terrorism, had spent several months earlier in the year on compassionate leave, looking after his two boys when his wife was thought to be dying from an incurable blood disease. At the same time, Liz had been transferred to the counter espionage branch, working for the dreadful Brian Ackers, a long-time Cold War warrior who couldn’t get it into his head that the relationship with Russia had changed. Liz had had to manage Brian Ackers and Geoffrey Fane as well. That Irish business! She still shuddered at the thought. If Charles hadn’t come back at the last minute it could have been the end of her. It was bad enough as it was. Anyway, Charles had taken Ackers’s place, since his wife seemed to have turned another corner. It wasn’t clear how ill she was – Charles never spoke about it.
Liz looked again at the summary report she had started to prepare the day before for her weekly meeting with Charles. A lot was going on: yet another pass had been made by a Russian intelligence officer, this time to a low-level clerk in the Foreign Office who had reported the contact straight away; an Iranian posing as a Saudi was suspected of trying to buy anti-tank weapons from a UK manufacturer; the numbers in the Chinese Embassy continued to grow suspiciously. She’d finish it tomorrow, she thought, as Charles phoned to tell her Fane had arrived.
She stood up and locked the file in her cupboard, running a quick hand through her hair, pulling down her jacket.