LONDON-WHITEHALL, OFFICE OF SIR WALTER SECCOMBE, PERMANENT UNDERSECRETARY AND HEAD OF THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE (FCO)
"I heard it from the Foreign Secretary, who heard it from the Prime Minister, who heard it from C." Sir Walter Seccombe motioned Crocker to the large, leather-upholstered couch in his office. "And now I want to hear it from you, Paul. How likely is it that we'll be seeing Minder One's face on Al-Jazeera?"
Crocker rubbed at his temples, then sat down, heavier than he had intended to, on the couch. Seccombe's office was always dangerous ground, with its centuries of history, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves laden with leather-bound tomes, thick rugs that had been brought from the Orient during a time when "the Orient" still meant something very specific. It was a room that had housed men who had overseen the erection of the Empire, and its subsequent dissolution. It was a room that remembered.
"There's a chance, yes," Crocker said, taking the offered cup of coffee, certain it wasn't decaffeinated and sipping at it anyway. "But it's not as bad as it looked when C went to brief the PM."
"And that's why your PA called, insisting that I see you at the earliest possible moment?" Seccombe moved to one of the high-backed reading chairs, settled himself into place, running a palm over his silver hair. The PUS was well into his seventies now, Crocker knew, with over half a century in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office behind him, but, like the room itself, he might as well have been timeless. The PUS wielded enormous power; more power, in many ways, than C herself. While Crocker didn't work for Seccombe directly, SIS was a part of the FCO, and thus the PUS could bring remarkable pressure to bear on the Firm if and when it suited him. That if and when most normally followed after the desires of the Foreign Secretary, who in turn was beholden to the Prime Minister.
A conversation with Seccombe, therefore, was effectively whispering straight into HMG's ear, and Crocker's ability to do so was entirely at Seccombe's discretion, and never the other way around. They weren't friends, though there had been times when Crocker had suspected Seccombe held some sort of fondness for him, perhaps as his mentor, perhaps seeing him simply as an amusement. More than once, Seccombe had urged him to take a more active hand in the politics of SIS, to consider the job, the operation, yes, but also the effect of his actions within the Government, as well as without. It was a lesson that Crocker had refused, and he knew it had cost him dearly. Twice that he could think of, the PUS had saved his career, and those were only the times Crocker knew of; he was reasonably certain there had been many others, and, in fact, suspected that the only reason his job was still waiting for him when he had returned after his heart attack was due to Seccombe's direct intervention.
Crocker finished the coffee, set the cup in its saucer gently on the coffee table, then leaned forward, towards Seccombe in his chair. "Chace called into the Ops Room just after seven this morning. She's alive-wounded, but alive-and mobile."
"How badly is she wounded?"
"Badly enough that she'll need medical attention before we can fly her out of the country."
Seccombe sucked air through his teeth, clearly not pleased. "She goes into a hospital, she won't come out except in Sepah custody."
"I'm not sending her to the hospital," Crocker said. "I want your permission to bring her to the embassy."
The displeasure deepened, then dissipated, Seccombe's expression becoming curious. "Paul?"
"They've set up roadblocks, checkpoints, they are actively searching for her. Her last coordinates put her just under ninety kilometers from Tehran, but she's in the Alborz, and she's had to veer far to the west to avoid the major highways. There's a village, Nowjan, roughly at the midway point. I've ordered her to head there."
"To what end?"
"Ideally, to have the Station Number Two rendezvous with her there. He can put her in his car, drive her straight to the embassy. We can bring a doctor in to see her, to stabilize her enough for transport, and then get her the hell out of the country. With your word, she could be on a flight home by tonight."
The sucking noise again, air drawing through his teeth, as Seccombe considered, looking away from Crocker as he did so. "They'll be stopped. Once the Number Two heads back into Tehran, they're sure to be stopped."
"It's almost guaranteed," Crocker agreed. "But the Number Two has diplomatic credentials, and the vehicle will be from the embassy, as well."
"Meaning Chace will have diplomatic immunity."
"It's the only way I can think to bring her in, sir."
"The Foreign Secretary won't like it."
"I suspect he'll like seeing footage of her trial rebroadcast on the BBC even less."
"Indeed." Seccombe, still looking away, smiled, then returned his attention to Crocker. "She's on the way to Nowjan, you said?"
"Yes."
"Meaning you've already committed to the course of action. I daresay you've informed Tehran Station of what you wanted them to do, as well. Still seeking permissions after the fact, Paul."
"I'm not going to leave one of my agents to die in Iran."
Seccombe shook his head, dismissive. "Hardly the point. Even at this late stage of the game, you still insist on playing by your rules."
That made Crocker pause. "What do you mean?"
"Someone was going to end up on the chop for Coldwitch, Paul. Even if Chace gets out of Iran, someone might still. Could be you. The Americans were extremely eager at the thought of bringing Khamenei's nephew in for a few questions, never mind what we could've wrung out of him. Chace makes it home, very good for her, but the operation is still a disaster."
"I was against the operation from the start," Crocker said.
"I'm sure you were. But C certainly won't take responsibility for its failure any more than she already has, nor will the Deputy Chief. Unless you're willing to lay the blame on Minder One, it will have to come to rest somewhere. My understanding is that she is retiring from the Special Section anyway, yes?"
Crocker started to respond, could feel the argument forming on his lips. He felt very, very tired suddenly, as old as the room, and nowhere as well preserved. Seccombe was watching him, an eyebrow gently arched, curious.
"It's not the first time," Crocker said finally.
"No." Seccombe considered him a moment longer. "But it may be the last."
"So you believe I've stayed too long, as well?"
"I didn't say that, Paul. You clearly still have a contribution to make. But you have also made it clear that, when the time comes, you've no intention of going gracefully."
"I could say the same about you, sir. Twenty years as PUS now?"
"It'll be thirty in January. I'm still in the process of grooming my replacement, you see."
"I haven't gotten that far yet."
"Something for you to consider, at any rate." Seccombe nodded, rose fluidly from his chair, scooping up Crocker's empty cup. "Go ahead and inform Tehran Station to proceed, if you haven't done so already, Paul. I'll expect the good news from you before close of play today." Unlike C, Crocker had no Bentley at his beck and call, in fact no official vehicle of any sort, and while he could have justified a taxi fare that morning, he needed time to think, time to clear his head, and the walk back to Vauxhall Cross could provide him that. He set out, walking south, passing Downing Street and then the Treasury, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his overcoat, eyes ever wandering over the faces making their way along the street. It was early yet, but not so early that the work of Government wasn't already in full swing, and he saw faces he recognized, this one from the Admiralty, that one from the JIC. Some nodded in recognition when they met his eyes, others looked quickly away.
Seccombe had been correct on almost every account. In the handful of minutes between the red phone ringing in his office, where he and Poole had been sitting in silent commiseration, pretending to go through the morning's paperwork, and Crocker's reaching the Ops Room to make contact with Chace, he had already constructed the frame of what would become the new exfil plan. He'd ordered Mission Planning to bring up the map of Iran, working from the coordinates Chace had already relayed, and God bless them one and all, they were ahead of him, had already picked out Nowjan as the best location for a pickup. It was Chace's wound that had made any further considerations moot; the embassy route was the only possible way to save her.
Crocker had no sooner cut the connection with Minder One than he'd picked up the still-open line to Barnett in Tehran and told him what he wanted, how they would make it happen. Barnett, in turn, had reported that Lewis and MacIntyre were on their way back from Noshahr, that they would make the pickup on the way into Tehran. He'd have a doctor waiting for Chace at the embassy, he promised. They'd get his girl back to him in one piece.
There had been one other option, of course, the one that C had almost, but not quite, been willing to put voice to as she was leaving her office to brief the Prime Minister. Crocker could have told Chace that there was no way home, that there was no help coming, that she was on her own. He could have told her how dire the situation looked. He could have concluded by saying, simply, that she could not let herself be taken alive. And if that hadn't made the point painfully clear, he could have asked, finally, if she had managed to arm herself. The instruction would have been implicit. She would have understood.
Whether or not Chace would have put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, Crocker didn't know. He was profoundly grateful that he hadn't been forced to find out.
C hadn't been entirely callous when she'd said that things would've been infinitely easier if Chace had died. At that moment, with the little knowledge available to them, capture had seemed imminent. Objectively, then, the death of Minder One would have spared them the political shitstorm that would've come with her arrest.
As soon as Chace had made contact, however, everything had changed. She was mobile, and she was still at liberty, and that meant there was the possibility-the very strong possibility-that they could get her out of Iran before Shirazi managed to lay hands on her. If they could do that, the political fallout of Coldwitch's failure, at least in the public eye, would be minimized. The Iranians could scream and shout to their heart's content, could blame SIS and HMG and the CIA and the Mossad, too, for the death of Hossein Khamenei, but there would be no proof, and in the end, then, it would be only what it so often was out of Tehran: noise, loud and incomprehensible, designed to mask their true intentions.
He was passing the House of Commons now, Big Ben just beginning to strike the hour, walking along Millbank. Ahead of him, still on this side of the river, just past Lambeth Bridge, stood the headquarters of Box, the Security Services. He turned before reaching it, started across the Thames on the bridge.
Doubt was nagging him, and he tried to isolate it, identify it. He'd been correct about Coldwitch, but he knew, as well, that he was wrong, that he was missing something, but he was damned if he could see what it was. If Falcon had only ever been bait, why had Shirazi waited so long to close the trap? Even after missing Chace, why hadn't he taken Lewis and MacIntyre, diplomatic immunity notwithstanding? The rental in Noshahr wasn't the embassy; that far from Tehran, Shirazi could have easily brought both men in for questioning, made his apologies later.
He stepped off the bridge, turning south once more, now walking along the Albert Embankment. He could see the SIS Head-quarters in the distance, the absurd cubic pyramid of tinted and mirrored glass, as distinctively unsubtle a work of modern architecture as ever beheld. From this angle, at this distance, its nickname of Legoland had never seemed more appropriate.
Seccombe had been trying to tell him something at the end, Crocker realized, had been trying to warn him, perhaps, that this was the last favor, the last back-channel chat they would be having. Another person ringing the death knell for Paul Crocker's career.
Crocker shook it off, producing his pass as he approached the gate. The watch logged him back in, and he crossed the enclosed courtyard to the entrance, showed his pass a second time, then, inside, swiped it through the reader as he passed through the metal detectors. He couldn't count the number of times his career had been threatened. Frances Barclay, Gordon-Palmer's immediate predecessor as C, had practically made a sport of it, in fact. Yet Barclay was gone and Crocker was riding the lift back up to his office as he had done hundreds, even thousands of times before.
There would be fallout from Coldwitch, Crocker had no doubt. But he couldn't worry about that now, wouldn't allow himself to be distracted. For C, for Seccombe, for Seale and the CIA, Coldwitch was over, was bust.
But not for Crocker.
Not until he could bring Tara Chace home.