I am SO sorry for the endless wait for this chapter. Long holiday, jet-lag, laryngitis, you name it. I hope some of you still want to carry on reading and haven't forgotten where the last chapter ended! Thank you for your patience! Rosemary
Chapter Eighteen
Lucas didn't realise who was helping him to a chair until he managed to bring the room back into focus and recognised Khalida's slim brown fingers on the glass of water being eased into his hands. He gulped it straight down and cautiously lifted his spinning head.
"I'm all right." Khalida nodded, but she continued to watch him anxiously. Chen looked ashen with shock; in contrast, Callum's face was ablaze with anger. Ruth was tearfully speaking to Harry, and though Lucas's ears were still buzzing, he could see that her words weren't weren't making much impression. Harry wasn't even looking at his wife; his eyes, implacable in a face that looked as if it had been hewn from granite, were fixed on Lucas.
"I'm all right," Lucas repeated directly to him. Harry didn't answer, and his eyes moved to the view of the pods through the open door. Finally, he spoke.
"Callum." The word split the air like the crack of a whip. "You and Peter work on that recording. Clean it up and enhance the sound. I want any other voices identified, any extraneous sounds that will give us a clue as to where the call was made from isolated. Triangulate - if you can." There was the slightest pause. " Check the print of that voice against Ros's, and then I want anything and everything we've had from our bugs. Move!"
"Sir." All traces of Callum's usual mocking flippancy had vanished, and Lucas glimpsed something of Ros in the cold fury in his face and voice.
"Chen!" The young Chinese snapped out of his paralysis as if the barked word had broken a magic spell. "I want a secure message out over my signature to every Chief Constable and their deputies. Top priority, Code Arrowspeed. We may need squads on standby to move fast to trouble spots if these tax protests get out of hand. Arrowspeed means a critical national security issue, so take no guff about budget cuts or staff shortages. Clear?" Chen nodded and almost stumbled over his own feet in his haste to comply. "Khalida, red-flash Tom Quinn at Transatlantic Security. I want him on the Grid as soon as he can get here. Then get in touch with the Watchers teams for their latest reports for the slightest trace of Thomas Laverne. Have we got an alert out on Callaghan's car?" Khalida nodded.
"Chen organised that in double quick time when Lucas contacted us this morning, Harry."
Harry nodded approvingly. "Good. Ruth, make sure someone's permanently on that." Lucas followed Harry's gaze to William Towers who, flanked by his bodyguard and his private secretary, was emerging from the lifts. "Meanwhile, take them into my office. Serve Towers coffee and keep his blood pressure down. Do not tell him about that phone call. I'll be there in ten minutes."
"But - but Harry, what about - " Ruth protested. The words died on her lips as Harry cut across her.
"That's an order, Ruth. Do as you're told. Go!"
Ruth glanced at Lucas, but he wasn't about to play marriage guidance counsellor. He followed Harry into the conference room where Harry slammed the doors shut and, for good measure, slid the locks home too.
"Sit down," he snapped. Lucas remained standing. His only advantage in a confrontation with Harry was the five-inch height difference between them. He knew the other man was expecting to be bombarded with emotional demands that they rush collectively to Ros's rescue. Instead, and with an effort, he lobbed the ball back into his superior's court.
"Sorry, Harry." He shrugged. "But I think I'd run out of time."
Harry gave an impatient, dismissive wave. " Forget it. It was the right decision. Besides, we have more immediate problems to deal with now."
Like a missing officer? Lucas waited as Harry paced the width of the table two or three times, his arms folded and his lower lip pushed out in thought.
"What's your gut feeling - has Ros been playing away all along, or did they rumble her?"
Lucas hesitated. Out of gratitude to Ros for her support during their Olympic operation, not to mention his feelings for her, even if the depth of them wasn't reciprocated, he didn't want to offer Harry the slightest pretext for putting her any lower on his list of priorities than he knew circumstances already dictated. Ros had stuck her neck out for him when she had had absolutely no proof that he wasn't a traitor and then risked both Harry's wrath and her career to obtain it. And yet … even while despising himself for it, he had doubts.
"Well when I left, our covers still seemed watertight. Ros was … frustrated … that we weren't making faster progress. Wanted to take more risks. I suppose it's possible that with the cat away, she may have decided to - " He shrugged. He desperately hoped not, because by evading Callaghan's watchers, he had irrevocably deep-sixed both their covers and possibly Ros with them. "But I think it's more likely they rumbled her. God knows how - maybe someone realised she was photographing the Crisis Crusade meeting. Or the incident on the riverbank - Callaghan may have overheard us."
"Or Kallima blew both your covers. Wait until I get my hands on that bastard." The words were grated more to himself than to Lucas, and Harry's fingers flexed as if in rehearsal for what he intended to do. Lucas swallowed hard, then forced himself onwards.
" Harry, there's something odd though … that tape. It sounds like Ros, but Ros - " a lump in his throat almost prevented further words. "Ros doesn't beg for help. Ever. I've never known her do that. It's so - so … out of character."
Harry sighed. "Once. I've seen her do it once." His tone became brisk again. "That's why we're checking, Lucas. More important - is it your professional judgement that she wasn't batting for the other side?"
There was the tiniest emphasis on the word 'professional' that Lucas knew was a warning not to let his heart rule his head. He held the other man's gaze without flinching.
"Yes."
"Right," Harry said crisply. "I need to go and soothe jangling nerves." As Lucas failed to check an involuntary grimace of impatience at the need - yet again - to waste valuable time bolstering a politician's ego, he shook his head. " I'll bet you a penny to a brass farthing the government's panicking and losing its collective nerve - exactly what Crisis Crusade wants it to do. You know the bloody politicians' syllogism - 'We must do something. This is something, therefore we must do this' - God knows what fat-headed, dangerous ideas they'll come up with. Towers has a bloody silver tureen heaped full of hot potatoes on his desk right now. I know it's fire-fighting at its worst, but if we can keep him from having a major meltdown, we might just be able to prevent the entire Government responding like Pavlov's dogs to Crisis Crusade's provocation and doing their damned job for them."
It made sense. Lucas nodded. "What do you want me to do in the meantime?"
For a split second Harry's grim expression softened as if he had heard the missing words - about Ros - that Lucas had somehow compelled himself not to say.
"For now, come with me. If, as I suspect, Towers is going to cart me off to spend every damned daylight hour playing vampire in the Cabinet Office basement, then you're going to have to run the show here. Tom Quinn can back you up once he arrives."
Lucas blinked. "But you decom - "
A faint, infinitely weary smile. "To paraphrase the Good Book, the Head of Counter-Terrorism sendeth away and the Head of Counter-Terrorism taketh back, Lucas. I got Internal Security to clear him for regular access when Trans-Atlantic took over My - Zagadka."
"OK," Lucas said uncertainly, as Harry unlocked the doors. It looked horribly as if the Section Chief had already been written off and replaced. He was about to display all the emotional vulnerability that Harry had sometimes rebuked him for by raising the issue, when the older man stopped.
"I'm not abandoning her, Lucas, but if the Government loses control of the country, then Ros will be just one of many victims. We're doing as much as we can for the moment. Stabilising the situation has to come first. Wherever she is, Ros will understand that. So do you."
It didn't help that Lucas knew both parts of that statement were true. He nodded reluctantly and followed Harry across a buzzing Grid to his office. Towers's bodyguard, a slightly-built officer from the Met's specialist Close Protection unit, nodded an acknowledgement to Harry and ran a calculating gaze over Lucas as they slid open the door. Ruth looked up with unconcealed relief. Both William Towers and his private secretary had coffee cups in front of them, and Lucas noticed that she had also raided the anything-but-secret stash of shortbread biscuits that Harry kept in his desk drawer. Unfortunately, the soothing effect of her hospitality looked to have been spoiled by the BBC News channel. It had split its screen and was helpfully showing interviews with demonstrators outside a selection of Inland Revenue offices in one half, and the movement of the Stock Exchange in the other. The numbers of both demonstrations and participants were clearly going up. The value of every asset on the Stock Exchange was fast tumbling downwards. Towers's greeting made it clear that his blood pressure was copying the former rather than the latter. He jerked his head at Lucas.
"What's he doing here?" Even under the most extreme provocation the politician usually at least tried to remain polite. Not today.
"Home Secretary." Harry shook hands. "I'm afraid we'll have to ask Mr Breckenridge to await you downstairs before we discuss confidential information. One of my junior officers can accompany him." He called in a young staffer, who obediently guided the discomfited bureaucrat out of the Grid. Harry and Lucas sat down, and Ruth poured more coffee.
"Mr North came in to make a field report," Harry lied smoothly. "The progress of the operation - "
"Progress! " The spluttered ejaculation made Ruth jump and Lucas's coffee landed on his cuff rather than in his cup. "Is this - " a disgusted gesture towards the screen, "what you call progress?"
"I was referring to progress in intelligence terms, Home Secretary. Political progress is the government's responsibility." Lucas winced as the politician's complexion deepened to a dangerous shade of red.
"This is not politics, Harry, this - " again a plump finger quivering with indignation in the direction of the screen - " this is a deliberate, organised attempt to cause a national uprising!"
Lucas bit his lip to keep it from curling in disdain. That's the U-turn to end all U-turns. When Ros had warned him about the risk of exactly that, Towers had made a pompous speech about people being entitled to express their discontent and dismissed her assessment as 'crude scare tactics'.
"Which your operation," the Home Secretary continued, "was to prevent! The PM even agreed to the release from prison of a convicted traitor as part of your Operation Saladdin - in order to stop precisely what is happening nationwide right now! An operation, might I remind you, most of whose vastly expensive and apparently ineffectual details have been kept secret from the government that authorised it in order 'not to compromise its effectiveness!" He paused as if he expected a response, but Harry, who had clearly decided that his best tactic was to let the storm blow itself out before setting sail, merely cocked his head politely as if inviting him to continue. Towers gave a harrumph of disgust.
"Well since any effectiveness it may have had appears to have been compromised out of existence by MI-5's finest without the slightest need for a helping hand from government, perhaps you'd care to indulge me by lifting a modest corner of your impenetrable veil of secrecy and explaining what the hell - if anything - you've been doing?"
"Home Secretary." Harry's voice was flat, but Lucas and Ruth, who both recognised the tone of old, exchanged glances; the sarcasm had stretched always fragile elastic of Harry's patience to its outer limits. "With all due respect," he ignored Tower's mutter of 'with none whatsoever', "the Service has kept you and the government informed of Operation Saladdin in so far as it could without compromising operational integrity - meaning the safety of the officers involved, for whom I am responsible. I have reported to COBRA twice, and as you know, I have spoke to you unofficially on several occasions, which is certainly not something I would have felt secure in doing with every Home Secretary with whom I have worked." If that was meant to smooth ruffled feathers, Lucas thought, looking at the politician's congested face, it had failed. "Rosalind Myers attended COBRA meetings twice in my absence."
Towers snorted. "That was before the operation - " he stopped abruptly. "Where is the Myers woman?" His choleric gaze switched to Lucas. "If you're here, where's she?"
"I'm afraid Rosalind's current whereabouts are classified, Home Secretary." Harry intervened smoothly - and just in time, Lucas thought, as he tried to beam a silent message to a panicky-looking Ruth to keep a better poker face.
"No!" The slam of Tower's fist on the table top put paid to that. "Enough confidentiality! Enough secrecy, enough cloak and dagger. COBRA is going into session in forty-five minutes. Permanent session, which - operational integrity be damned, Harry - will start with full disclosure of every single step the security services have been taking to neutralise this threat - other than playing 'Nearer my bloody God, to thee!'" He shoved his coffee cup away, muttering, " Saladdin indeed … childish pseudo-intellectual nonsense."
Ruth - whose suggestion the name had been - bristled, but before she could begin to explain the significance of the Arab warrior's victory over the Crusaders, Harry's mobile rang. He listened, said crisply: "Send him up. Ruth, Tom's on his way. Bring him up to speed. Lucas," as the younger man begin to rise as well, "a moment, please."
Surprised, Lucas resumed his seat as Harry turned again to the Home Secretary. "William, I understand your position. I will keep COBRA fully briefed, but I cannot run my team by remote-control from two floors underneath Whitehall - especially with my second-in-command in the field. I will need to return to the Grid -"
Towers raised both hands to stop him. "I'm sorry, Harry." Now that his anger - which both Harry and Lucas knew was fuelled by fear as much as anything else - had subsided, he looked and sounded weary and discouraged. "This is out of my hands now. PM wants action. Action that works." He rubbed his face and blew out a sigh. "Yes, I know this is a policy problem, but nobody can decide policy in a burning house that's under siege." He locked eyes with the other man. "You were in Belfast. Think back to the Balkans. We've both seen what happens when societies implode. Here … God, the 2011 riots will be child's play. We have to stop Crisis Crusade. Discredit them. Something."
He must be channelling Ros. He'd certainly vindicated her. Lucas felt his throat tighten. If only she'd been here to see him do it.
"We will." Harry got to his feet; Towers followed suit. "Mr North will stand in for me during my absences." Lucas noted the casual plural. Harry would be making visits to COBRA, not taking up permanent residence. "Lucas, contact me with every significant development. On any front. Understood?"
Loud and clear. Lucas cleared his throat. "Yes, sir." He accompanied them to the door, conscious of numerous nervous pairs of eyes on him as they left. The Grid had become used to Ros automatically stepping into Harry's shoes. In a pure popularity contest among senior officers, she wouldn't even provide Lucas with decent competition. But unlike her, he wasn't a natural leader. He hadn't Ros's arrogant self-assurance that paradoxically offered reassurance even as it got under people's skin. Yet officers were rattled and in need of precisely that reassurance. They needed leadership to rally behind and for the moment only he, however inadequate, could provide it.
So do it, North. It seemed a fairly safe - if sickening - bet that James and Penny Anderson no longer existed except in an MI-5 legends file, and the last place anyone claimed to have seen or heard of Penny/Ros was at the home of Alex and Miranda Callaghan. The Callaghans' next move was more significant than Laverne's whereabouts, which the Watchers had had pathetically little success in elucidating so far. Their forces could be divided, with at least half being put onto the Callaghans. Maybe he could even wheedle another team out of Section A. Good. Lucas strode across to where Khalida was just finishing a telephone conversation.
"Khalida, can you get me Hannah Wheeler on the phone, please?" Spontaneously, in a way that he would only recognise much later as an appeal for exactly the reassurance he was supposed to be offering the team, he told her why. The young Pakistani smiled with anxious eagerness.
"Yes, that is a fine pukkah idea, Lucas! We must not let this wretch slip between our fingers now." She stabbed in four digits, and relayed the request. "Lucas!" as he was turning away. "Do you think - do you think it is he who has nabbed Ros?"
Lucas swallowed hard. Khalida was clasping and unclasping her hands as she asked the question, and worse, her luminous hazel eyes were suddenly sparkling with tears. She was fiercely loyal to her mentor, warts and all. Before he could reply, she rushed on, "What is happening now, I have seen so many times Lucas, at home and in Pakistan … it cannot happen here! Not in Britain! My English teacher in the camp, Abby, she taught me about the 'island race'. It is the one place, the one country … in Peshawar, it is what we all wanted - to come here. Because it was safe. Because British people will never turn on each other like like a pack of wild dogs. We must not lose that now! And we cannot lose Ros!"
"We won't." Lucas spoke briskly, firmly, and with less sympathy than he actually felt. Khalida had more reason than most of her fellow-officers to fear instability, and in Ros Myers and the island race she had chosen two unlikely - and possibly endangered - heroes. But this was no time to let her indulge her feelings or let her glimpse his, and a sharp tap on his shoulder reminded him of it.
"Lucas." He turned sharply at Ruth's murmur and found himself facing the shrewd, bright, pale blue eyes of Tom Quinn. The other man gave him a brisk nod and held out his hand.
Warily, Lucas shook it - despite his positive early impressions, he still had some doubts about Quinn and his operation, plus there was an issue of status to be dealt with here.
"Ruth's filled me in." Tom smiled, a brief tight smile that, like Ros's, suggested that it was a waste of precious energy that could be better invested in work. "What do you want me to do?"
oOoOoOo
Within half an hour of Quinn's arrival on the Grid, most of Lucas's concern about him had melted away. Tom deferred to his authority without a song and dance, and he was quick and confident in offering advice when sought. As the crisis intensified and the relentless pressure from COBRA for some kind of breakthrough was cranked ever higher over the next couple of days, Lucas's mixed feelings about the other man morphed into gratitude for his support. He only wished it had helped them achieve more. The additional Watchers team Lucas had cajoled out of an exasperated Hannah Wheeler had been put onto Callaghan's tail too late; all it was able to confirm was that his home and that of Ben and Alice Ryder, were closed up and empty - the birds had flown. After consulting with Harry, Lucas had ordered the team to switch its focus to Patrick Alastair and Martin Cowley, who might still be in touch with the others, instead. Ruth had issued a discreet nationwide 'locate' order on the Callaghans and Ryders, which infuriated Lucas; convinced that wherever Callaghan was he had Ros with him, he was desperate to make the search as wide and as public as possible. That was vetoed by Harry with Tom's support; Callaghan's sudden vanishing act seemed to confirm a build-up to the kind of 'final blow' that Alex had mentioned to James. As long as they had so little inkling of what shape or form that would take they couldn't risk letting him realise he was a hunted man.
"Lucas?" he jumped, and turned to find Ruth at his shoulder holding out a plate bearing a sandwich and an orange. Impatiently, he waved her away, but Ruth stood her ground. "Lucas, you haven't had a proper meal since you came back; you must eat something, or you'll end up making yourself ill -"
Lucas had been living on his nerves since Ros's disappearance - seventy-two anxiety-ridden hours ago now - now they snapped. "Ruth, I'm fine. for Christ's sake, will you stop fussing and do something useful!"
Ruth's eyes flashed in a rare anger, but before she could say anything more, Tom's voice said quietly, "Ruth's right, Lucas." He smiled at the analyst and added, "Take ten minutes. I'll bring us both a coffee." He and Lucas had been drinking prodigious quantities of caffeine; both had elected to stay at Thames House to avoid time-consuming commutes, and had been snatching rare and uncomfortable snoozes in the emergency rest-room off the Grid.
"I'll get it." Lucas seized the escape opportunity with both hands. It wasn't just stress and exhaustion that had made him lash out at Ruth. He couldn't cleanse his mind of a clogging sediment of professional doubt about her; after all, they had no proof that she hadn't betrayed Jocelyn Myers. More corrosive still was his personal resentful suspicions that Ruth, in their absence, had stirred up Harry's doubts about Ros's reliability. Every time he looked at her he had a sickening mental image of Ros captive somewhere, waiting for the help she had pleaded for that wasn't coming.
In the kitchen he discovered that dwindling supplies left a choice between a jar of instant granules and decaf. The latter would be as much use as a a sponge submarine. He spooned the granules into two mugs, trying not to let himself think of the shudder of revulsion Ros would give if she had to drink such gnat's pee.
She might be grateful for the chance right now. He hastily shoved that thought from his mind, too. Hideous nightmares about Ros's fate had contributed much more to keeping him awake than couches that managed to be simultaneously rock hard and built for midgets. He dared not let her intrude into his waking hours too - at least not beyond the involuntary flinch he couldn't prevent every time he saw her unmanned desk. Tom had intercepted one such glance, read it perfectly and said gruffly: "They don't come any tougher, Lucas. Ros'll come through. When this is over, we'll get her back."
When. If. Across the country police forces were still doggedly making overwhelmed officers scurry ineffectually from demo to picket, protest to skirmish, but more and more, small spontaneously organised grass-roots groups were springing up to try and keep local order in areas where they were fast losing control. As yet, no-one had spoken the V-word aloud on the Grid, but Lucas knew it was in everyone's mind. On Harry's last visit he had confided that an increasingly panicky COBRA was giving serious consideration to calling up reservists and deploying army units to the most dangerous flashpoints. Crisis Crusade had thrown open the lid of Pandora's Box, and every class, racial, religious and political demon was scrambling to burst out. 'If ' seemed an increasingly remote possibility. No-one was talking any more about 'when'.
He was just filling the mugs when the door flew open and Khalida ran in. Lucas tensed in well-rehearsed anticipation of yet more bad news, and then realised that she was smiling.
"What is it, Khalida?"
"One of the Watchers has just arrived, Lucas. From the team that was tracking the wife and family of Thomas Laverne. Mrs Laverne made a call earlier on her mobile phone - this she does not usually do in the street, na? Then she is most unfortunately getting mugged." Khalida's eyes gleamed, and it took Lucas a second to catch on.
"By the Watchers?"
Khalida nodded. Her smile lit up her face. "Tom has already tapped their knuckles for over-stepping their brief, of course."
"Of course." Lucas couldn't help smiling back. He hurried out behind her, a coffee cup in each hand, and almost cannoned into Tom, who was heading full-speed for the tech suite, his eyes riveted on Belinda Laverne's phone. He stopped just long enough to take a deep swig of his coffee before leading their posse into Callum's domain.
"Puzzle for you, Callum. Can you crack this open?"
Callum picked the device up and gave a derisive snort. "Can Susan Boyle sing?"
"Bad comparison." Quinn gave his short bark of a laugh. "Everything. Last dozen calls made - we want those first. Fast as you can."
"I'm on it." Callum turned aside, and the others took the hint and withdrew. Tom glanced at his watch. "I'm going to check in with my team."
"Right. Harry should be back soon." COBRA meetings hadn't (yet) adopted the American habit of 'eating at my desk'; Harry was usually able to escape and return to the Grid around mealtimes, even if he didn't actually manage to have a meal. Though if the situation got any worse, Lucas reflected grimly, even the meal-breaks might be a thing of the past. On Harry's desk was Chen Liu's latest hourly collation of reports from the nation's Chief Constables. Lucas started to speed-read through it, scribbling notes and marking significant new incidents onto what Chen had christened The Mayhem Map as he went; it all made blood-curdling reading.
"Lucas?" Ruth again. As ever, a cursory knock had followed, rather than preceeded her entrance. The analyst looked pale, which Lucas put down to apprehension at his possible reaction. "Callum wants you."
Lucas glanced at his watch, startled to see that just over an hour had his surprise, Tom, Chen and Khalida were already in the tech suite, and they all turned like a Greek chorus to face him. Lucas frowned. Something's wrong. It took him a second to recognise the feeling permeating the crackling atmosphere. Shock.
"What is it?" he snapped at Callum. The technical specialist held up Belinda Laverne's dismantled phone.
"Last call from here was to an unregistered mobile number three hours ago. I've managed to locate it - North London, within a three mile radius of the O2 tower at Media City. "
Холера! It had, he supposed, been a forlorn hope that the phone would reveal very much of use, but Lucas had been clinging to it like a drowning man to a soggy straw.
"There's something else though," Callum added. "That emergency call from Ros."
Lucas winced. "Callum, you confirmed it was her voice. That's enough; I told you to leave it; it's not our priority right now!"
"Yeah, I know." Callum looked defiant. "I cleaned it up, like Harry said. It is her voice, but the message doesn't make sense. Come on, Lucas, when did anyone last hear Ros Myers begging for help?"
Lucas hesitated. That was exactly what he had said to Harry. "So?"
"So we listened to it over and over again." It was Chen who broke in. "Took away as much of the background noise as we could; it was easier then - "
"Get to the point!" Lucas exploded. Chen cringed, but he went on.
"She isn't asking for help, Lucas. Her speech is a bit slurred, but she didn't say 'help', we're sure she didn't."
"Then what did she say?" Simultaneously, everyone turned to the door. Harry Pearce, his tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, and with a crumpled jacket slung over his shoulder, had asked the question.
There was a moment of profound silence punctuated by uneasy looks. Chen Liu gulped audibly. Even Tom seemed nonplussed. Finally, Callum met Harry's eyes.
"I think it was a name, Harry. She knows who Kallima is. She was trying to give us his name."
Lucas's throat went dry. "Whose name?" he and Harry demanded simultaneously. No reply.
"Whose name?" Harry roared. His eyes swept the room and landed on his target. "Ruth, whose name?"
oOoOoOo
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