Chapter Three:
Mycroft took a deep breath and stretched. It had been a long day. Looking out over the deer park from the dining room windows, he decided that he deserved a night in the country. Tomorrow would be challenging enough. The house had proved its worth, yet again, as a premise leased by the British Government to hold small confidential events for very important people who needed both security and privacy. This time it had been the venue for a very private meeting of the G8 Security Advisers. It was the UK's turn to host, and bringing it here to his own ancestral home made a point he needed to make to the others.
Balancing the competing agendas of so many different nations had not been easy. He had to walk a careful line between playing the role of a helpful intermediary while avoiding being seen as a manipulative force pursuing his own agenda, which, of course, he was. The French were annoyed with their American counterparts- "How dare you use illegal surveillance to trap one of our politicians into the humiliation of a rape trial in New York?" Of course, the CIA spies on you; they spy on everybody. But he held his tongue. It was a case of French amour proper that needed his conciliation skills. Then there were the Russians, at loggerheads with the Americans because of the cancellation of an important summit. Then don't offer asylum to one of their military whistle blowers, idiots. Of course, he didn't say that, but used his diplomatic skills to broker a compromise. He'd even found something meaningful for the Italian and Canadian security people to do, so they would not feel as useless as they generally did at such events, in the presence of the superpowers and the other dominant powers in the world. He always wondered at how on earth they had talked themselves into the G8 in the first place.
The layout of the dining room suited his purposes perfectly- forget round tables, this was a long rectangular table of Jacobean oak. His chair at the head of the four hundred year old piece of furniture commanded the room. It was helped by the full suits of mounted armour on both side of the room- yet another tangible expression of just who they were dealing with. My family has been serving Crown and Country continuously in war and peace for centuries, before some of your countries were even born. It was the arrogance of the aristocracy combined with the ruthless direction of purpose that he wanted to emphasise.
The morning schedule of meetings had been demanding enough, but in the afternoon there was still time for his all-important bilateral meeting with the US National Security Adviser. At long last, he had good news to report- and that was one of the reasons why the G8 meeting had been scheduled for today- to give the man a legitimate reason to be in the UK. Tomorrow night, Bond Air would finally get airborne. The plane had been readied, the bodies were being transported and loaded tonight. When the terrorist code had first been broken by GCHQ, the gold mine of data it provided needed to be protected, at all costs. Despite budgetary constraints and constant interference by the dolt of a Cabinet Secretary, the joint US-UK project was now in the very final stages. The cracked code revealed more than seven months ago that this flight would be targeted and the date the bomb would be placed.
But, if anyone thought faking a terrorist bomb on a plane would be a simple exercise, they needed their heads examined. Not only did the dead bodies to serve as victims need to be found, they had to be given back stories, historical documentation, and passport identification that would pass muster. When the world's media called looking for a passenger roster, it had to look real, even though every name was manufactured. When they wanted quotes from grieving relatives, they needed to be given contact numbers that would be answered by CIA operatives briefed with exactly the right message to give.
It had to appear to everyone watching that this was a genuine incident. Not only because that would protect against the terrorists realising their code had been cracked, but a mid-air catastrophe caused by a terrorist bomb would suit a US administration keen to justify the huge budget being spent on Homeland security. Two birds killed by the same bomb, was Mycroft's original assessment.
That meant the plane had to be real, and the flight needed to look like every other flight leaving Heathrow. The fact that the terrorists would plant their bomb in four suitcases to be loaded by a baggage handler who was one of their cell meant that the plane had to go to a proper Heathrow gate and have bags loaded from passengers who never actually checked in physically. Air crew composed of his people would wear the uniforms and board the plane in one door and out the other, so those in the departure lounge areas would not be suspicious. The rest of his people would take the role of passengers, so they too would be seen entering the gate area and leaving through the air-bridge, presumably to board the plane, but exiting via the catering trucks that would ensure no one saw them leave. Absolutely nothing had been left to chance. Faking the flight recorder had proved particularly challenging- it took hundreds of man-hours to figure out how to fake the data in a black box that was supposed to be tamper-proof. They needed to ensure that the recovery would find the data without the tell-tale information about the auto-pilot.
As his PA came back into the room, he turned away from the windows.
"That's the last one despatched to Heathrow, sir."
Mycroft put his empty tea cup back on the sideboard. "I've sent the boys and girls go home for the afternoon, my dear. That includes you, too. Get one of the drivers to take you back to London."
"You'll be staying the night here then?"
"Yes. Useful every once in a while to remind the estate staff that this is still a home. The Government lease might not last forever."
She tilted her head. "When you retire, sir?"
He rolled his eyes at that. "Hopefully, not soon; I'm not that old."
If his response was a bit acerbic, she didn't let it bother her. "Well, it's been nice to get out of London for a while. All this…reminds one that there are other priorities."
"Do enjoy the time off, my dear. I am assuming that your blackberry is not surgically attached, so do turn it off for a while. You and the rest of the team will need a good night's sleep before tomorrow." They both knew that, after seven months of work, in just over twenty four hours, the final preparations would be over and the show would finally get underway. As soon as Flight 007 took to the air at 6.30 pm on its way to BWI airport in Maryland, they would all be on a 24 hour shift in a control room to manage the consequences of the explosion four hours out from Heathrow.
The whole process had been a nightmare of precision planning, leaving nothing to chance. And it had been hideously expensive. His Security Service Liaison Team had been selected to mastermind the project because the Americans did not trust MI 5 or 6 to be free of "moles" planted by the terrorists. It stretched his resources unbearably, and raised the stakes of the project enormously. Mycroft's innate caution screamed about the risk involved (too many eggs in this one dangerous basket), but his objections had been overridden. The only serious blip had been when the MOD man had been caught doing something silly with a tiny bit of data relating to the project- that's when the Americans demanded that his service take on sole responsibility for it. So, quite simply, everything was riding on the success of this operation- his personal reputation and the future of his small, but perfectly formed team that he had built up over the twenty years of his career.
After he watched her car leave, he stood and thought through the final checklist. As the shadows lengthened on the lawn, his mobile phone on the table rang. He turned to pick it up, wondering if his PA had forgotten something and was ringing to tell him yet another detail. He frowned at the screen because he did not recognise the caller number. A text had come in on his personal number- something very few people had. He hoped it wasn't something from Sherlock- he didn't need the distraction tonight. He'd worked very hard to keep his brother at arm's length from this operation and from anything that might remotely be dangerous. He opened the text-
4.38pm Jumbo Jet. Dear me Mr Holmes, dear me. JM
For a moment, Mycroft forgot to breath. Then his body caught up with his brain and he drew a ragged gasp of horror, before training kicked in and he shut down any emotional reaction. No time for panic; I have only a few seconds to decide what to say in reply, if anything. He used those seconds carefully. Moriarty- the only "JM" that he could think of in this context. He knew. He had no time now to find out why or how the project had been compromised- it didn't matter in the final analysis. If the flight left the ground and was allowed to explode, then the Irishman would expose the truth and then every conspiracy theorist in the West would feel vindicated- this was yet another example of the intelligence services committing atrocities and then trying to pin it on the terrorists that they needed to justify their ridiculous ambitions. It was the 9/11 twin tower conspiracy all over again. Only this time, they'd be right. With exceptions, of course. Nobody would actually die and the greater good was served by keeping the fact that their code had been broken from the terrorists. Now Moriarty could do that anyway, even if the flight was cancelled. He holds all the cards. In seconds, Mycroft had understood the challenge, calculated the odds and come up with a plan. Stall.
4.41pm I'm listening.
He didn't include his initials. That affectation was pointless- the man was calling on his personal line, for God's sake. He sat down at the dining room table, and ran his hands over his face, as if to calm himself. Then he waited to see if this would be a negotiation, or a simple execution of Mycroft's career.
