Chapter 10

Ros checked the camera as knuckles rapped with a metallic echo on the van's back doors, then flicked the switch to open up. The welcome aroma of coffee drifted in and a plastic cup was placed into her hand.

"Thanks." She adjusted the headphones she was wearing and said irritably: "They're late."

"Boss's privilege." Callum slid alongside her and offered a packet of sugar. "Oh, sorry – you're bitter, not sweet, aren't you?"

Ros didn't bother glaring. Callum loved to pull the tiger's tail, and he was protected from her sarcasm by an ego that made the deflector shield on the USS Enterprise look like a sheet of tissue paper. She scrutinised the feed from the local CCTV cameras instead. She had expected to be doing this with Lucas, but Harry had sent him with Chen to backstop Khalida at Brixton Mosque. Ros hadn't argued. While the last thing she wanted was to spend three or four hours in the cosy intimacy of an obs van with Callum Reed and several thousand pounds worth of electronic surveillance equipment, she recognised that it was a sensible precaution for Harry to split his SCOs – especially after the events of yesterday evening.

"Hey up," Callum said, and pointed at one of the screens. "Here come Podgy and Bliss."

Ros took a gulp of her coffee to hide her smile. Callum was a cocksure little sod, but he did occasionally come up with a good one. Harry seemed relaxed, as if he really was just taking a friend to lunch; Ruth, on the other hand, looked more nervous than if she were being frog-marched to an unscheduled interview with the Thames House shrink. Ros groaned inwardly, and silently prayed that the analyst could pull this off.

"Your little gadget had better work then," she snapped.

"It will, Boss." He winked. "Trust me."

Over my dead body. The phrase made her wince. Dead bodies weren't a possibility that any Section D officer cared to entertain, even metaphorically. She watched the grainy figure of Harry guide Ruth in through the restaurant doors. She and Callum had been in place for over an hour, filming every arrival at and departure from the restaurant and feeding pictures back to the Grid. So far no-one, other than their colleagues and Sir Roger Pemberton, who had arrived alone twenty minutes earlier, had raised any flags, and Ros had seen no familiar faces.

"Right, here we go, then," Callum said confidently. "It'll take a few minutes until Harry gets it into position." He took a swallow at his own coffee. "How's Dominic? Reminds me of that awful bloody song. You know, the singing nun – Dominique-nique-nique …"

This time, Ros's icy silence seemed to register the tiniest blip on his radar. With a final abashed 'nique' he fell blessedly silent. The last thing she needed now was a reminder of Dominic Hastings. An early phone call had confirmed that he was still unconscious in the intensive care unit of St Thomas's Hospital. Ros's intervention at the scene of the accident had caused consternation among the police, a flurry of telephone calls between her, Thames House, and the Met, and the imposition of an immediate news blackout. The only information she had been able to glean was that Hastings had been mugged in a nearby square, and staggered into the path of a car while trying to outrun his attackers. The driver's stuttering version of events had been corroborated by the fact that Hastings had severe bruising to the face and head, plus a bad stab wound to his chest, none of which – surprise, surprise - was consistent with a gentle bump from a relatively slow-moving Vauxhall Astra. Ros had accompanied him to the hospital and arranged for an armed police guard on his room, her mind whirling with unanswered questions. She had instantly dismissed the possibility of a random mugging – the coincidence was just too much. It was far more likely that Hastings had been under surveillance. But then surely he would have been dealt with before he came to talk to us? That opened up a truly alarming possibility – that the surveillance was on MI-5 rather than Hastings. He must have been spotted at Thames House, making the attack on him punitive rather than pre-emptive. Then events made sense. They also meant that the bloody opposition most likely had eyeball on Section D's every move.

From outside … or in? It was Chen who had dared to ask the question, creating an ear-splitting silence and an embarrassed, uncomfortable fidgeting around the table. The easy, knee-jerk conclusion was the one Ros wouldn't contemplate. She was aware that some of her subordinates doubted the sincerity of Khalida Niazi's anti-Islamist zeal. It did sometimes sit uneasily with her dress code and her religious devotion, and Ros had overheard some fairly unsavoury comments about the young woman's habit of saying her daily prayers up on the roof of Thames House. She had slapped them down; the Service needed its Muslim recruits. Besides, Khalida was discreet, and one prayer mat did not a traitor make. Yet in the privacy of Harry's office, it was Lucas, of all people, who had uneasily suggested limiting this morning's op at Brixton to passive surveillance. To Ros's relief, Harry had vetoed that, but still, it was then that he had put Lucas in charge of it, leaving Ros to wonder if she was the only person who trusted Khalida a hundred per cent. Her silent fear now was that the young woman would deliberately take foolhardy risks just to prove the doubters wrong. Ros knew how easy it was to slip into that trap; in her early days in Five, and for similar reasons, she had done so herself.

"I said, how's reception?" She started violently as Callum lifted one of her headphones and spoke directly into her ear. "Sorry." He didn't sound it. "You were on another planet."

Ros couldn't deny it, so quickly, she focused back in, and realised that she could hear Ruth Evershed so clearly that the analyst could have been sitting in Callum's seat.

"It's good." She glanced at him. In the bluish glow from the screens, he reminded her vaguely of Bilbo Baggins. She dismissed the fanciful thought impatiently, and concentrated on the audio feed.

No, it's charming. Ruth, she thought irritably, sounded like a genteel Jane Austen heroine.

I thought you'd like it. Harry, sounding like what he was – a smooth, experienced operator. Ros flinched at a burst of white noise, presumably caused by Harry moving the device Callum had given him.

"Can you lower the volume of their voices?" she asked. "Enhance the background?" Callum started to tap at his computer keyboard just as her mobile rang. Lucas calling.

"Hi. Everything OK?"

"Yep." Lucas's voice, Ros was relieved to hear, was calm. "She's just going in."

"You sure it's her?" Ros asked. When she had seen Khalida in full niqab this morning with nothing but her eyes visible, it had occurred to her that Lucas and Chen could easily end up monitoring the wrong woman. It had been left to Chen to point out that Khalida had a limp, inherited from botched surgery in Afghanistan as a child; she could, and often did, disguise it, but this time she was under strict orders not to. When Lucas said yes, Ros added, "No heroics, Lucas. If you think she's pushing it, pull her out." After endless, heated discussion it had been agreed that Khalida would wear a wire under the copious layers of her robes. It was a risk, but not, Ros thought, an excessive one. Brixton Mosque didn't have a reputation for radicalism; probably the reason Mahmood had chosen it as a base. They were unlikely to be frisking worshippers, and if they were, Khalida could always abort.

"Keep me posted." Ros clicked the call off. She could now hear Ruth and Harry having an innocuous conversation about the galleries of Paris, plus two other, louder male voices. She blotted out Ruth's babbling about the Musee d'Orsay and concentrated on the latter.

"It's Pemberton." For once, Callum's smugness didn't grate on her. His device worked perfectly. This time, he was entitled to be pleased with himself.

"Well done. How about the other one?"

"Dunno." Callum started playing a toccata on his keyboard again. "I'll try and isolate it, send it back to the Grid."

Ros grunted agreement. Screening out Callum's tapping as he worked to fine-tune the sound quality, she concentrated, and scribbled notes. Whoever Sir Roger's companion was, he spoke the unaccented, slightly quaint English of a foreigner with a public-school education. It was clear from the conversation that the matter under discussion was oil – a great deal of oil.

"Sounds like he's making some kind of a deal," Callum said.

Bravo, Sherlock. Ros didn't answer. Both Sir Roger and his as-yet-anonymous companion were using carefully-coded, diplomatic business-speak, but she had heard her father use it often enough not to need an Enigma machine to mentally 'translate' as she went along. Sir Roger Pemberton was negotiating what sounded like the final details of an agreement with the representative of a country or company as yet unknown, to buy large quantities of crude oil over a very long term – fifty years. He was the government's chief energy advisor, so it was a safe bet that he wasn't trying to secure petrol supplies for the Mercedes in which they'd seen him arrive. An even safer bet was that he wasn't doing this off his own back. The Gnome in the Home Office, as Callum had once labelled him, couldn't possibly be unaware of it. What he hadn't counted on was Section D – which was still, Ros recalled uneasily, supposed to be engaging only in 'arms-length' surveillance of Sir Roger – finding out. She wondered how long he considered the Section's arms to be.

"Forgive me, Sir Roger." She heard the chimes of a ringtone and the sound of a chair being pushed back. "I must just take this call; will you excuse me, please?"

Ros glanced round. "Callum, check CCTV. If he comes out, make sure you get a shot of him. Several. Send them back to the Grid and get them to run face recognition immediately."

"Yep." Callum swivelled his chair slightly. "By the way, they're heading for dessert. Harry and Ruth." His eyes gleamed impishly. "One chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis, and two spoons. The old romantic. Didn't reckon Harry had it in him."

Ros glared. "Get on with it." As he did so, she picked up her mobile and called Lucas again. "How goes it?"

"Khalida got in all right, and her wire's operating. It's sermon time. Not one of their firebrands; sounds fairly mild to me." He hesitated. "Maybe a bit too mild; he's getting a bit of heckling, by the sounds of it."

"Any sign of Mahmood?" Ros asked.

"Not that we've seen." Now the hesitation was more marked. "But Khalida did report that Hamid's here, Ros."

Ros felt her stomach clench. She kept her tone light. "Slumming it a bit, isn't he?" The businessman owned a house in Surrey. "He's got a perfectly good mosque in Woking." It wasn't likely that Mamnoon Hamid had come so far to attend prayers merely out of a feeling of solidarity with his co-religionists unlucky enough to live in Brixton rather than Byfleet.

"Yeah. I – ow, shit!" She jumped at Lucas's sudden exclamation and the feedback and interference that accompanied it.

"Lucas? What is it?" She had winced herself, and held the phone away from her ear slightly.

"Sorry." Lucas sounded tense. "Sounds like the natives are getting a bit restless. Lot of shouting and …" he broke off. "What? Yeah – yeah, no, wait." He came back on. "I have to go. Something's happening in there – row's broken out or something. Chen, hang on. Ros, I'll get back to you."

"Lucas! Get Khalida out of there. You hear me? " She stopped as she realised that the connection had been broken, and felt sweat on the palms of her hands. Bloody stupid thing to say, Myers. Whatever was going on in Brixton Mosque, Khalida couldn't be safely extracted by either a white, obviously non-Muslim male, or an ethnic Chinese Scouser with short sight. Shit. Now what do we do? From here, there wasn't much she could do, except mutter a quick prayer to Joshua, patron saint of spies.

Callum interrupted her racing thoughts. "Ros?" She turned on him, about to erupt, and then saw his face. "He's gone back in. They've I.D'd him on the Grid. Minor member of the Saudi royal family. Some cousin umpteen times removed. Sheikh …" he looked at a scribbled piece of paper. "Jamal bin Fuad bin Abdullah al-Saud. Studied over here, did five years at St John's, Oxford."

I could have told you the last bit. Ros yanked her headphones back over her head and clamped them onto her ears, as if the act of doing so would drive her anxiety for Khalida and the others out of her mind.

"Harry and Ruth still there?" she snapped.

"Yeah. Moving on to coffee." Callum was looking curiously at her, but for once he uncharacteristically refrained from any flip comments.

"Keep an eye on the street," Ros ordered. "Anyone loitering, any cars which pass more than once. Note every anomaly, and God help you if you miss so much as a dachshund peeing up a lamppost." Reluctantly, she switched off her phone, then closed her eyes tightly to block out any visual stimuli that might disturb her concentration, and listened as the footfalls of Jamal al-Saud returned to the table.

"Do forgive me, Sir Roger. I knew that there were … meetings being held in Jeddah, but the decision has taken a little longer than I expected to filter through. Liquid bubbled into a glass. I am honoured to tell you that the Kingdom will be able to accept the terms of our agreement with Her Majesty's Government." There was an infinitesimal pause, and Ros could have spoken the next words for him. "Subject to one or two small assurances. Very minor, I promise you. May I?"

"Please do." Pemberton's voice sounded quite equable, but Ros, who had heard her father use exactly the same tone and known that silent rage was bubbling behind his impassive politeness even as he spoke, guessed it belied his feelings.

"His Majesty has been rather concerned for some time about security problems here in the United Kingdom." The smooth voice paused for a moment, and cutlery tinkled on china. "Please forgive me for mentioning such sensitive and delicate matters. But If our country is to commit to a long-term energy agreement with yours, on terms that I am sure you will agree are very favourable …" again a pause until, Ros presumed, he received the nod of agreement that she couldn't see. "My government would appreciate formal assurances from yours that your extremists - shall we say your … home-grown radicals … have been dealt with. Brought under control." Ros heard Callum mutter something about it wasn't Saudi Arabia's bloody business how they dealt with their 'extremists', and hissed at him to shut up. For once, she agreed with him, but these weren't the ideal circumstances for marking the day in red on the calendar.

"Of course, it goes without saying that the decision on how to do that lies with London, al-Saud continued. Indeed, His Majesty has been extremely impressed by the measures your security services have taken since the dreadful bombings of 2005 to … stabilise the situation." (Thanks for nothing,chum, Callum muttered sotto voce.) "The Olympics, and of course Her Majesty's magnificent Diamond Jubilee, both went without a hitch. A most admirable display of organisation, and not a hint of disorder or a threat of disruption." Ros remembered the quantity of threats or 'challenges' (the Government's word for them) that the Service had had to deal with, and dismissed the memory instantly. 'Indeed, the smooth running of those events and the very positive and … yes … relaxed atmosphere in which they took place have played a key role in influencing my government's decision to make this agreement with you. A year or so ago, with riots across the country, racial and religious tensions high … to be frank, their decision then might have been very different."

Pemberton clearly felt that it was time he put a word in. "The British government will be gratified to learn of your country's positive assessment of the situation. I will be sure to convey it to the Cabinet."

"Please do. Ros bared her teeth at the gentle irony. But you do still have certain … individuals … on your soil - agitators, stirring up some of your more impressionable youths. Leading them into let's say, erroneous paths? Agitators that your government seems either unwilling, or unable to deal with as decisively as might seem advisable."

"I am a scientific advisor. It is not my position to comment on Government security policy, as I'm sure you'll understand." Ros opened her eyes and stared around the angular shadows of the obs van to re-orient herself and shake off the ghosts. The man's tone and language were so familiar that she could picture Jocelyn Myers at the table.

"Of course. But you are authorised to speak for your government as I am for mine. Were we not, we should not be here. His Majesty's Government merely seeks an official assurance that the security situation in the United Kingdom is stable, that the terror threat level is low and that the forces of law and order can contain and control it. It would, after all, be irresponsible of my country to enter into such a crucial agreement as this without it. Were a major incident to occur, irreparable damage would be done to our reputation in the world, and it could also have a serious impact on our domestic situation. We realise that under your political system the Home Secretary would not be able to give such an assurance in public - or even in private. But we would be more than satisfied with such an assurance on his behalf from you, Sir Roger. Then we could move to sign and announce the agreement as soon as possible. I'm sure you'll understand."

Ros snorted. Smug little bastard. She waited for the reply.

"Of course. In fact, the Home Secretary anticipated that you might have such concerns." There wasn't a flicker of emotion in Pemberton's voice, and Ros, remembering his performance during his 'police' interview, felt an unwilling admiration for the man. "While a 100% guarantee would, of course, be impossible to give, I assure you, with his complete support, and authority, that the security situation in the United Kingdom is safer and more stable now than it has been since September 2001. Her Majesty's security services are thoroughly on top of the situation, and there is currently no substantial terrorist threat to this country. Nor is there likely to be one in the future."

"Splendid. Then I shall recommend to my government that we move to signature within the week. At our embassy, I think. Will that be acceptable?"

"Perfectly." Ros caught the sound of two hands firmly clasping together. "Then perhaps we should be going."

She pulled off her headphones, sat back, and threw them down on the desk. No substantial terrorist threat to this country. Just Pemberton's bloody son somehow mixed up with Islamic radicals. Cold sweat was trickling down her spine as if someone had opened a tap between her shoulder blades. She felt Callum's eyes on her.

"And Towers knew about this," the technical specialist said. "No wonder he was so bloody twitchy." For once there was no flippancy in him. "Harry's going to love that."

I'm not singing the bloody Hallelujah Chorus about it myself. Ros switched her phone back on. "Where are they?"

"Harry's just settling up," Callum answered. "Home, James?"

"Yes. Step on it," Ros snapped, as Callum scrambled into the driver's seat. "We need - " she stopped as her phone signalled a voice message. Ros opened it up. Lucas. She put it on speakerphone.

For a second, she could barely distinguish his voice above the shouts and screams. A rhythmic, metallic thudding sound punctuated the noise – fists pounding against the sides of the obs van.

"Ros!" Lucas was shouting, and she could hear the engine catching and stuttering in the background. "We've got a bloody riot here … too dangerous … they know we're – shit – they know we're here. I'm pulling out - " There was a shattering of glass and a scream, a distant wail of sirens, and then the phone went dead.

"Stop!" Ros yelled at Callum. She checked the audio feed. Dead as a dodo; Harry and Ruth must have left the restaurant. She hit the door release, leapt out of the van to see them just reaching Harry's car, and raced down the street. Both turned, startled.

"Something you need to know." Ros gulped in air. "Now." She panted out the news about the team at Brixton.

"Get in the car." Faced with the overt alarm of his usually imperturbable section chief, Harry didn't hesitate. When Ruth opened the front door he shook his head. "No Ruth, you go back with Callum, please. Both of you, work on re-establishing comms with Lucas, and most important, find Khalida."

"But Harry - " Ruth protested.

"No. Go." Harry gave her a brief kiss on the cheek and then slid into the driver's seat. Ros slammed the passenger door, and the car squealed away from the kerb and headed for the river.

oOoOoOo

"I should never have let her go in there." Ros drained her glass and resumed her restless pacing to and fro across the room. "I should have known."

"You couldn't have known." Lucas's words were muffled by the bag of ice cubes that he held against his swollen jaw. "Brixton's never been considered extremist. The file had no indication of radical activity."

"File." Ros stopped by the window and stared into the darkness. The wind was bending a young sapling almost double, and a gust dashed raindrops against the pane like someone hurling a handful of pebbles. "Since when did I ever make a decision based on a file, Lucas? She brought me the bloody report that something was going on there herself, and still I sent her in. I knew."

Lucas went to reply and grunted in discomfort. Ros looked round.

"Want some more painkillers?" When he nodded gratefully, she brought two from the bathroom. He was lucky only to have a black eye and bruises from the stone that had smashed through the window. Chen Liu had needed stitches for cuts from flying glass and had lost a tooth when enraged young men had poured from the mosque and attacked the supposed delivery van from a local fruit and veg shop. Ruth had furiously torn into the junior analyst who, by assuming that Google could replace thorough research and thereby failing to discover that the shop in question had closed down six months earlier, had almost sacrificed Chen and Lucas to a lynch mob. They had been dragged from the vehicle and the collective boot was just going in when the police arrived. That was bad enough; infinitely worse was the disappearance of Khalida Niazi in the chaos of the riot. Harry had over-ruled Ros's objections and ordered her, Lucas and Chen to leave immediately while he orchestrated a police search of the area. By that time, torrential rain was cooling tempers and clearing the streets, but it failed to dispel the mystery of what had happened to Khalida. They had a bomb attack to prevent. Her comms were dead. All they could do for the moment, Harry told Ros, his eyes compassionate but his tone resolute, was trust to the young woman's skill and experience, and pray that she wasn't. He had headed for Paddington Green to check on some of the men arrested, and since Lucas couldn't drive, Ros had taken him back to her flat. Neither of them felt able to sleep, so they went over and over the day's events while Lucas nursed his bruises, and Ros carved her tension into the warp and weft of the carpet.

"Come and sit down," Lucas urged gently now. "She's not a child," as Ros, despite herself, leaned wearily against him on the sofa. "If she's really got herself into a tight corner, she'll know what to do."

"If?" Ros jerked up again, causing him to drop the ice cubes, which skittered wetly across the floor.

"I meant - " Lucas began.

"I know what you meant!" Ros exploded. "If it wasn't she who told them the obs van was there. If she hasn't been leaking information. If she isn't a traitor. You don't trust her either. None of you have ever really considered her one of us and you still don't!"

She stormed into the kitchen, brought back a bowl and floor cloth and started angrily cleaning up the spilled ice cubes. She knew she was defensive about Khalida, and she knew why – because the young woman was, albeit for different reasons, an outsider on the Grid just as she herself had always been. She had over-reacted, but she was damned if she was going to apologise. The tensions of the day were making her chest ache, and she impatiently took a dose from her inhaler.

"Here." Lucas knelt down alongside her. He spoke quietly but firmly. "Let me."

Still silently fuming, Ros did, and straightened just as the front door bell rang. Lucas looked up, surprised, and Ros froze. She rarely had visitors, and never casual ones. The ringing, staccato and erratic, continued, and now a scraping and tapping sound joined it. Ros fetched a carving knife from the kitchen drawer. She gestured to Lucas to position himself behind the bedroom door, then advanced slowly down the hall. The judas revealed nothing but a deserted landing. The sounds had stopped. Ros slid the bolts back, eased the door open with infinite caution, and, knife at the ready, looked out.

"Lucas! Lucas!"

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