Thank you for your patience, and my apologies for the very long wait since Chapter 12. A broken bone in my foot has been playing hell with my writing muse.
Chapter 13
"Nothing. Everything's clean." Lucas switched on the tap and was rewarded by two burps and a spit before it reluctantly disgorged its usual trickle of ochre-tinged water. As he rinsed his hands, he glanced over his shoulder at Ros, who was replacing their skimpy stock of groceries into the grubby cupboards. Her expression was hard, and he made a gentle quip to try and soften it. "In intelligence terms, I mean."
Ros irritably rammed the lop-sided cupboard door closed. "Yeah, well we need to keep it that way."
"We will, Ros." Lucas tried again. "Want some coffee?" Ros had been dismissive of most of the privations imposed on them by their legends, but he knew that she would never forgive Ruth and Callum for forcing her to substitute her usual freshly-ground Colombian coffee with a cheap jar of instant granules.
"Thanks," she grunted. "And start now," as he filled the kettle. "It's Penny."
Lucas bit back an equally tetchy response. It was she who had insisted on searching the flat for listening devices or any sign of intrusion, something he felt was excessively cautious and bordering on the paranoid when they had barely got a foot in the door of Crisis Crusade. Ros was so given to shredding the rule book into confetti when it suited her that her punctiliousness about a risk that at least for now seemed minimal, exasperated him. He didn't say so. Working undercover was a strain, and both of them were on edge. Besides, damn the woman, she was right, even if the search had revealed nothing. Calling her 'Ros' - even when they were alone - was sloppy, and in front of their new-found friends from Crisis Crusade, could be lethal.
"What time's your appointment at the Job Centre?" Her tone was less biting now, but that, Lucas thought, wasn't because Ros was any less angry; it was because Penny had asked the question. Reluctantly, he forced himself back into character.
"In half an hour." He added a third spoonful of sugar to his coffee. Penny and James's budget didn't stretch to many cakes, biscuits or sweets, so this was his only real concession to his sweet tooth.
"Have you got your CV? And your certificates? They'll want to know everything."
"I know, darling. I've got it all - don't worry. Are you going to do the shopping?"
"Yes. I made a list." She slid two scraps of paper across to him. One bore a list of things to buy; the other a list of questions he was to ask Khalida. Lucas memorised the questions, then burned them on one of the gas rings.
"OK. Do you want to come and wait for me afterwards? Maybe we could go and sit by the river. It'd be nice to get out for a while, wouldn't it?" Where I can report back without having to do it in code.
"All right." Penny didn't sound enthusiastic, but Ros's eyes signalled that she had the message. Lucas checked his watch.
"I'd better go, then." He got up. "See you later, sweetheart."
It was Ros Myers's silent, sardonic gaze rather than Penny's melancholy eyes that followed him out. He closed the door on it and started down the staircase, unable to suppress a wry smile. Hoist with your own petard. Ros positively loathed being addressed as 'darling' and 'sweetheart', but now her insistence on cleaving to operational protocol like a barnacle to the hull of the Titanic meant she was going have to tolerate it even more often.
The smile faded when he saw that council workers were still clearing up the mess left by the events of the previous day. Groups of youths had raided several of the charity shops that dotted the High Street, making off with armfuls of clothing and shoes. In several cases the volunteer staff had valiantly attempted to prevent them, and other shopkeepers had run to help, only to see their own premises sacked in turn. James and Penny had watched the ensuing mayhem from their window, James discreetly snapping the events with his mobile. By the time the increasingly overstretched police had arrived from the nearest station, five people had been taken to hospital, and the High Street looked like the aftermath of a hurricane in a garment factory.
"Bit of a mess," he said to an elderly black man in a high-visibility jacket sweeping broken glass from the gutter.
"You tellin' me, man." The council worker looked around him in disgust. "Kids like this, we get 'em at home, they put the birch to them. Teach them some proper respect, not this 'respect' they always talkin' about. No morals, man, it's all 'you got it, we wan' it'. Forty years ago when I come over, you wan' it, you work for it. Now look at it – up and down the country, same everywhere. Everyone got a grudge, everyone t'ink they entitled." He pushed his bin a few more yards down the road. Lucas kept pace with him, and probed gently.
"It's understandable, though, isn't it? I mean it's so hard to get work, and then you're paid peanuts for it. I'm not saying they're right," he added hastily, when the elderly man fixed him with an intensely disapproving look, "but I can see why people get angry. Cuts everywhere, and being told 'we're all in it together' when it's just not true. I don't see politicians tightening their belts. Crisis Crusade have got it right if you ask me."
The road sweeper snorted. "You t'ink these yobs, they Crisis Crusade, man? Come on, you an educated man. These Crisis Crusade people, I's all for them, yeah. Sure, they got it right, and the government, they listen to them 'cause they talk good, an' they know the right way to turn the screws an' make them politicians squeal. You got a problem, tha's the way. But what your Crisis Crusade don't know, 'cause they too decent, is not everyone play by their rules. Yeah, they clever, they all nice an' polite and they play like gentlemen. Tha's good, that work, man. But it give the other people ideas. And they not gonna wait for no change, they don't think with their head. They think with their fists and their feet, man. An' your Crisis Crusade people, the people in them shops and in the food banks, tryin' to help folk, they the first ones they go for." He poured a rush of broken glass into the bin. "You better believe me man. I got no time for this government, I been on demos an' protests and I go on more, but peaceful, man, peaceful. Someone don't get hold of this country we gonna end up in civil war. I'm tellin' you. You mark my words."
He pushed the bin away across the road, and Lucas walked on. In five minutes, the man had sketched as eloquent a picture of the current situation as Ruth or Lizzie could have painted after the same number of hours of research and analysis. He passed a Cancer Research shop where a well-dressed woman anxiously watched two men hammering boards over the shattered windows. The shop had been eviscerated, and the few goods that remained were strewn over the floor, looking eerily like emaciated dead bodies. Carefully, Lucas stepped around the smashed remains of the door and window frames and headed for the Job Centre next door. Though intact, its windows were daubed with abusive slogans in red paint, and immediately inside, two security guards the size of fridge freezers barred his way.
"Got an appointment?"
"Er – yes, yes, sorry." Automatically, he slid into the slightly defensive, embarrassed attitude of a man ashamed of his position. "James Anderson. I have an interview with Fatima Ismail. At eleven fifteen."
The second man checked a clipboard. "Right. Take a seat over there." He jerked his head. "You'll be called."
Meekly, James obeyed, even as Lucas's blood boiled at the security guard's dismissive tone. No wonder people get resentful. There were half a dozen other people already seated on the cracked and shabby plastic chairs, and three or four more listlessly perusing the pamphlets and posters scattered around the room. Lucas checked through the plastic file of documents he was carrying, mentally running over his report to Khalida and the points Ros had wanted him to raise with her. Any sign of Laverne? What news of the security sweep? Get the latest reports from Transatlantic. The last had made him slightly uneasy; communications with Transatlantic and Jocelyn Myers were Ruth's responsibility now. He and Ros were in no position to do anything about that part of the op, and Ros shouldn't be fretting about it. He hadn't told her so, firstly because she would instantly lose her temper at the suggestion that she was, but secondly, and far more important to him, Lucas still vividly remembered the Myers Silence version 4 (plain old miserable) that had prevailed while he wrote the letter to his father. Whatever the sour grapevine in Thames House believed, Ros was human. He couldn't heal her wounds, but he could avoid rubbing salt into them.
A shrill female voice over the intercom invited Mahendra Patel to cubicle one. Lucas glanced at his watch – almost a quarter to twelve. He wondered whether something had gone wrong, but his mobile phone showed no trace of call or message.
"They always run late." He looked round, startled, as a woman sitting opposite him gave a weary smile. "They used to have six or seven of them on duty. Down to three now, most times. Cuts – for a change."
She looked vaguely familiar, but Lucas couldn't think where he might have seen her before. Just then the loudspeaker blurted tinnily: "James Anderson, cubicle 3!"
Relieved, Lucas hurried over to it and slipped in. Behind him the door locked automatically, leaving him facing a bulletproof glass window designed to protect the staff from outbursts on the part of frustrated job seekers. The confined space left a man of Lucas's build with his knees jammed against the counter and his shoulders almost brushing the dividing walls. He fixed his gaze on the table, forced himself to breathe deeply, and pictured the vast, empty carpet of the Siberian steppes rolling away to a hazy horizon as he had done so often in the overcrowded, stifling cell he had initially shared with five other men in Lefortovo.
"Good morning, Mr Anderson." He snapped his head up. Khalida, a dark blue scarf draped elegantly over her head and shoulders and a wide, warm smile on her face, settled into the seat behind the glass. "I am Fatima Ismail. Now, you have, please, your CV?" As she spoke, her eyes flicked up towards the grimy ceiling. Lucas followed her gaze and spotted the CCTV camera.
"Yes," he said in answer to both the spoken and the unuttered question. He slid his file across to her, and Khalida, her eyes on his, silently splayed the fingers of one hand against his file as she picked it up. Five minutes.
"So, Mr Anderson, you have just moved to Walton-on-Thames, isn't it? And how long is it, please, since you were last in employment?"
Awkwardly, stumbling over the words, James began to explain. Fatima kept an eye on her watch as she took notes and when James finished speaking, she examined it carefully.
"Now we may speak freely." She added reassuringly: "Nobody will be seeing a thing or hearing a tweety bird. Callum and Peter have done some jiggery-pokery and disabled the system."
Lucas half-smiled even as he cast a nervous sideways glance at the camera, wishing that Malcolm Wynne-Jones still ruled the tech suite. He gave himself a mental kick in the seat of the pants. Callum wasn't the most modest officer on the Grid, but his pride in his own technical abilities was fully justified. Either way, they were far in advance of Lucas's own, and an undercover officer who couldn't trust his own back-up team was doomed anyway.
"Good," he said firmly, as Khalida set a digital voice recorder on the desk.
"You first, please."
Aware that their time was limited, Lucas succinctly described their initial visit to St Christopher's and their contrived meeting with the Callaghans and Ryders. They had met a second time since then by mutual agreement. James, after a pint or two, had allowed the details of what had befallen his family to be coaxed out of him, shown flashes of anger and bitterness about it, and angrily agreed with the other two men, despite his wife's quavering remonstrations, that 'something ought to be done'. Meanwhile, Penny's timidity and her distress at being separated from her children were already winning her the sympathy and trust of the two women.
"And you are sure they do not suspect anything?"
Lucas shook his head. Both Alex Callaghan and Ben Ryder had been watchful and alert, but from the moment Alice had mentioned Crisis Crusade both he and Ros had expected that. So far both of them sensed scrutiny, but not suspicion. Neither couple yet gave any sign of doubting that James and Penny were exactly who and what they said they were, with similar grudges and grievances to their own.
"No. Not yet." Swiftly, he told her of the 'little get-together' to which Callaghan had invited James and Penny the following evening; they believed and hoped would be a Crisis Crusade meeting. Khalida nodded approvingly.
"That is good! I will put Ruth and Lizzie onto your new friends in a jiffy." She smiled encouragingly. "So, it is going well, na?"
"Well," Lucas agreed, and then added, "But slowly. Too bloody slowly." Both he and Ros were painfully aware that their careful infiltration of Crisis Crusade wasn't commensurate with the alarming speed at which the disorder and disruption it was causing was spreading across the country. Ros in particular was becoming increasingly impatient with having three state-of-the-art listening devices hidden in the bathroom picking up little but the sullen gurgling of the plumbing while they sat around doing what she caustically described as 'making Nero look like bloody Red Adair.' Lucas wasn't sure how much longer it would be before she 'forgot' her instructions and followed her own, less cautious instincts.
Khalida discreetly cleared her throat, and he hastily summoned himself back to the present moment. Fatima had other, genuine job-seekers to see. "So, what progress your end?"
" Alas, we have not managed to nab Thomas Laverne." There was a note of apology in Khalida's voice. "Not yet. But the contact of his wife, you remember, Suzanne Anderson. Here we have news. Anderson is her former name. Now she is divorced but lives with a man who used to be an army officer. In paratroops. His name is Clive Curran." She slipped several sheets of paper into James's file.
"Retired?" Lucas asked.
"No." Khalida glanced at her watch. "That perhaps would be less worrying. In one of the early rounds of budget cuts to the armed forces his unit was disbanded, and he lost his job."
Lucas grimaced. "And where do we think he fits in?"
"Organisation," Khalida answered. "Harry has been saying the way Crisis Crusade is operating has what he calls 'the military mind' stamped all over it. Efficient, disciplined, and jolly fast. And this Suzanne, she is one of the main spokesmen of the hospital protests. You have seen them on TV?"
Lucas nodded acknowledgement. A week earlier, a current affairs investigative programme had broken a story about infirm elderly patients being discharged to 'unsafe conditions' at home because of unsustainable pressure on beds and resources. Lucas knew that with an ageing population, the issue had been a suppurating, if clumsily bandaged, sore for some time; his own father had fulminated against it from the pulpit. When the programme also revealed how many deaths had been ascribed to it, Crisis Crusade leapt on the scandal instantly, their action buoyed by a wave of intense national anger that carried it – and yes, at remarkable speed - outward from Chertsey across the nation. He had seen the results with his own eyes. Penny was still under treatment for depression, and James had accompanied her to her recent session at the mental health unit in St Peter's Hospital. Crisis Crusade, careful, as ever, to avoid breaking the law, had erected a makeshift picket just outside the grounds. There, activists collected signatures on a petition, handed out leaflets and photographs, and gave what seemed to be a round-the-clock series of press interviews. Both Ros and Lucas had been struck by the numbers of medical staff involved, some of whom were openly supplying the activists with the names of patients they described as being 'at risk'. A few months ago, NHS 'whistle-blowers', liable to lose their jobs and even end up in court, had been understandably hesitant to stick their necks out. Now they were tearing up contracts carrying 'non-disclosure' clauses in full view of the TV cameras, and to hell with the consequences.
"So Harry thinks … what, that we've got the whole show being fronted by clerics and run by colonels?" The words came out more sharply than Lucas had intended, not because he couldn't believe it but because it seemed horribly, chillingly feasible. Khalida flushed at his tone.
"He thinks there may be some involvement, yes. There has been resentment at the military cutbacks; you know that. Chen and Lizzie are doing checks on all the officers with whom he served. We are monitoring phones. Callum and Tariq are getting access to e-mails, but always we have the same problem; these people are jolly wary of the net, Lucas. Ruth is looking at the language in their e-mails for patterns, to see if they are coding messages in some way. In this you know she excels, but -" she shrugged helplessly. "Lucas, we truly are making progress in identifying people. But these are – how is it, the foot-soldiers. To know who they are is not enough. To know what they mean to do, we need to identify the generals, na, and for that, we really need you and -"
Lucas raised his hands to stop her, then raked them through his unkempt hair and blew out a deep breath. Shit. Police, prison service, NHS, now the army. The rot's spread to the last redoubt. The words reminded him of Ros's instruction to ask about Jocelyn Myers.
"What's the position on Zagadka?" He was startled by the young woman's response; Khalida's long fingers twitched nervously with the folds of her scarf as if they were choking her, and she swallowed hard. "What is it?"
"I am afraid this is not good news. There has been an – er - an incident." Khalida gulped again. "Perhaps Transatlantic's arrangements were not so watertight. I do not know; Harry did not go into details of exactly what happened."
Lucas felt the cold sweat of panic on the nape of his neck. The panel walls seemed to closing in on him, and he fought down the impulse to lash out and thrust them away. That's impossible. There can't have been a leak. He had come away from his meeting with Tom Quinn absolutely convinced of both his skill and reliability, and that of the man's hand-picked, thoroughly vetted team. And other than them, only three people – Harry, Ros and I – knew where Myers was.
"Is the asset OK?" he rasped.
"He was but slightly injured, alhamdulillah. Ruth is in constant touch with Transatlantic to work out what went wrong." Khalida hesitated. "Lucas, perhaps this is not such a fine thing to tell Ros -"
"I'll decide that," he interrupted. "No!" when Khalida tried to speak. "No, my call." They had been in the cubicle for over twenty minutes. He swallowed to compose himself. "Time, Khalida. Anything else?"
The young Pakistani looked very unhappy, but she too could see that time was running out. "Harry had a meeting with the Home Secretary yesterday. Cabinet is in almost permanent session – with all the - the violence, you know." She bit her lip. "They are most worried, Lucas. In a lot of places the police are getting overwhelmed, and in others – well, you have seen. They have even been talking about calling out the army, but …" she trailed off, and Lucas nodded at what she didn't needed to say – the implications for any such decision if Harry's assumption about military involvement with Crisis Crusade was correct.
"And I suppose they're turning the screws on the Service," he said. "Demanding the usual instantaneous solution." After months of 'holding the line' and dismissing warnings from more perspicacious officers like Ros as if they were the incoherent ramblings of an over-wrought Cassandra. About the only truly collective decision the Cabinet ever made was to place the blame for failing to solve a problem on some other branch of government – and Thames House was usually an easy target. After all, 'Regnum Defende' guaranteed that however often they were used as a political scapegoat, the security services could still be counted on to uphold the status quo and keep manning that final, impregnable wall against the marauding hordes. Except – and Lucas's stomach knotted at the thought – Ros had kept ministers blissfully unaware that that wall might have been breached. His mouth felt dry. What progress they had made now looked pathetically insignificant in the light of what he had learned; all of it confirmed that they had to move faster to get inside Crisis Crusade – whatever risks that might entail.
"What about the security sweep?" He got up as he spoke; Khalida followed suit.
"No action has been taken against anyone, Lucas – not so far as we know. Perhaps Ruth is better informed, but Harry is keeping things tip-top secret now, especially after what has happened with Zagadka."
I'll bet he is. Lucas's head was spinning, and when Khalida thrust a cardboard folder bearing the slogan of the Government's latest 'Back to Work' initiative on it, he stared at for a moment in utter bewilderment.
"These will provide you with some helpful background reading, Mr Anderson. When you are ready to speak to us again, you can please send us an e-mail." Her dark eyes stared meaningfully into his. "This will always get a swift reply, na?"
"Er yes … thank you. I'll be in touch." Lucas pulled himself together with an effort as Khalida released the lock. A bored voice announced, "Marilyn Tyndall, cubicle three," and a woman glared at him as she brushed past.
"Jesus, what were you doing in there? Plotting to overthrow the sodding government?"
No, plotting to keep it in office. James muttered an abashed apology, and turned for the doors. One of the security officers gave him a knowing leer.
"Skinny Liz out there yours, mate?" He gestured out into the street. "Been hanging about for you, lucky bugger." Lucas followed his pointing finger and saw Penny trying to peer in through the paint-streaked windows.
Lucas's temper flared, and he burned to shove his official I.D. under the man's nose to wipe the insolent sneer off his face. Instead, James ignored the mocking laughter that followed him out and joined Penny on the pavement. As she said plaintively, "They wouldn't let me in, and you've been so long!' he put his arm around her waist and kissed her.
"Sorry darling. I've got lots of news, though! Let's go down to the river, shall we; I'll tell you all about it."
He did precisely that as they walked down Bridge Street. Despite the unbroken, growling flow of traffic he automatically kept his voice to a murmur. Ros listened intently; her expression never changed, although Lucas could gauge her reaction to what he said by the frequent tightening of her grip on his hand. Her eyes flickered continuously over the passers-by and several times she stopped, ostensibly to scrape something from the sole of her shoe or to point something out to him in a shop window. Lucas recognised the tricks of the counter-surveillance trade, which Ros had a reputation for being able to perform better than any officer in the Service. Once they had branched off down a much quieter and greener residential side road and emerged onto the tiny marina, he paused. He had shared all that Khalida had told him … except the news of the 'incident' in the Transatlantic safe-house.
"Do you fancy an ice cream, Penny?" He pointed towards the boathouse looking out across the gun-metal grey waters of the Thames.
Just for a second the irony of Ros Myers glinted in Penny's eyes. "Are you sure we can - "
He cut her off. "I'm sure." He wasn't; for the sake of authenticity, the operational budget had been kept very tight, but he wanted to delay having to break the news. "Why don't you sit down there and relax," he pointed to a fallen tree trunk at the edge of the water, "and I'll bring you one. Won't be a minute."
Chance would be a fine thing, he thought, as he purchased two of the most inexpensive cornets available. Ros and relaxation didn't mix at the best of times, in character or out, and his fingers still felt bruised from the silent intensity of her reaction to some of what she'd already learned. He glanced idly at the gleaming boats moored in the marina as he made his way along the waterfront, struck by the contrast between the wealth they represented and the cheap take-away outlets and shabby discount shops that he and Ros had passed on their walk here. It was almost as if, in less than half a mile, they had crossed a border between the Republic of Austerity and the Realm of Affluence.
He ducked through the trees at the edge of the path and skidded his way down the bank, holding the dribbling ice creams at arms length like an Olympic torch-bearer to avoid embroidering the sleeves of James's only decent jacket with chocolate chip. Ros turned from dabbling her bare feet in the water and accepted the one he held out to her.
"Thank you." She licked at it and gave him Penny's wan smile. "This is Tim's favourite, too."
Lucas remembered that from the details of their legends; Ruth and Chen's thoroughness had left no detail of their 'family' uncovered. He straddled the tree trunk and took a lick of his ice cream just as she added without the slightest change of inflection: "What aren't you telling me?"
He choked on a blob of chocolate chip. The voice was Penny's, but the penetrating stare was all Ros. Lucas wiped his mouth on a paper napkin to give himself time. He knew he hadn't betrayed Jocelyn Myers's location, and however divided and riven with discord the country might be, he could not believe that Harry Pearce was playing for any side other than the side of right. Ros had risked her life for the Service more than once; she was acknowledged to be one of its finest officers. And yet … there were flaws in the dazzling record, question marks over her concept of loyalty. Harry had insinuated as much. 'Ros doesn't bind to organisations or systems. Ros's loyalty is to people.' Which people? Lucas hated himself for entertaining doubts, but the question gnawed away at his mind, eating away at his logic and trust. It couldn't be … and yet …
"Tell me!" He looked up; Ros had jumped up; her eyes were blazing, but her next words told him that unlike him, she was still in character, and focused on the job. "James, you promised there wouldn't be any more secrets, and I deserve your trust!"
That last comment struck home. He gripped her arm and said rapidly: "Look, something's happened. There's no need to panic, but it's your father - "
Behind him, foliage rustled. Ros's gaze flicked away from his face and over his shoulder. Bewildered, Lucas turned as well, and saw Alex Callaghan crunching down onto the pebbled shoreline.
"Didn't you hear me calling up there?" The amiable smile slid from his face as Penny wrenched her arm from her husband's grasp, then pushed him away and started to cry. "Penny, whatever is it?" He looked towards Lucas, who, caught completely flat-footed by the sudden turn of events, was doing a good imitation of Lot's wife, and his expression hardened. "James, what the hell is going on?"
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