Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (8 page)

He walked round to Farsi’s desk
to see how he was getting on with the analysis of the
Huang Zhen
manifest. 
His colleague had been compiling a list of companies who had used the ship to
transport their goods abroad.  Once finalised, each company would be run
through the internal search engine to find matches to persons of known
interest.

“Anything
yet?”
  Harvey asked, but a shake of the head told him all he needed
to know.

“Nothing so far, but I’ve only
been through a quarter of the companies.  The
Huang Zhen
is a ULCV,
or Ultra Large Container Vessel.  This beast is carrying close to two
thousand containers for just over twelve hundred companies.  It’s going to
take some time to get through them all.”

Harvey sympathised with his
friend.  If only investigations were like the movies, he thought, they’d
just have to wait for that one clue to drop into their laps and the mystery
would be solved.  Back in the real world, it was relentless hours of data
analysis which usually won the day.  It was just a shame the men in power
didn’t appreciate that fact; otherwise they would provide more people to get
the job done.  As it was, the vast majority of staff had been assigned to
identifying threats associated with the upcoming Olympics, which left Harvey
and Farsi doing work the analysts would normally power through in a few hours.

To make matters worse, the
equally under-manned UK Border Agency was forcing staff to take holidays in the
months leading up to London 2012 so that they would have all hands on deck for
the games.  It meant queues would be shorter during July and August, but
it left them woefully short-staffed in the lead-up, something that had been
flagged up on several occasions.  The politicians, however, refused to
believe that anyone posing a threat to the UK would turn up prior to the games,
instead expecting them to arrive when they were in full flow.  This
short-sightedness was a constant thorn in the security services’ sides, but it
was something they’d learned to live with.

The culmination of this was that
resources were stretched in just about every critical service and all of the
major newspapers had picked up on the fact.  Their coverage, in Harvey’s
eyes, was an open invitation to attack the country, and he was one of the few
people who could do anything about it.

Harvey shook the thought off and
went back to his desk, where he found an internal message which informed him
that a secure fax had been received.

He took a walk down to the
communications office and handed over his identity card, despite knowing the
receptionist and her recognising him from multiple previous visits.  The
rule was simple and rigorously enforced: no valid, current ID; no entry. 

After a quick inspection of his
card he was given a smile and offered a seat while the receptionist placed a
call through to the inner office.  A moment later a junior clerk appeared
and handed over the communication.

Harvey saw that it was the call
records he’d requested from the High Commission in Singapore.  As well as
a list of calls made to and from Hughes’s registered mobile number, there was a
handwritten note at the bottom of the page:

A second mobile was found on
the body, unregistered.  Here is a list of calls we extracted from the
SIM:

There were just four entries
underneath the note, and Harvey had a feeling that one of them would be
significant.  He rushed back to his office and compared the numbers with
those of Carl Levine and found a match on the last entry.  The mobile
number Hughes had called from also matched the incoming phone records they held
for Levine.

Any suspicions they had that
this was the Timmy they were looking for were now confirmed, and he asked Farsi
to cross each of the company owners with the names on Hughes’s call log.

“I know it’s a major pain, but
if we can tie Hughes to that ship somehow...”

“Then what?”
 
Farsi asked.

“I’m not sure,” Harvey
admitted.  “But I have a feeling there’s a lot more to Farrar’s request
for help than just finding Levine and Campbell.”

*
* *

People were beginning to drift
out of the office and a glance at the clock told Harvey that it was almost
six-thirty in the evening.  He’d taken half of the manifest from Farsi and
was also running company names through the computer, but for the last few hours
he had come up empty.

When he met Wallis, it was
usually at seven in Armando’s restaurant a few streets away, which meant he’d
have to make a move soon.  He locked his half of the manifest in a drawer
and grabbed his jacket as he headed for Ellis’s office to deliver his
end-of-shift report.  He found her gazing intently at her monitor.

“I’m done for the day,” he said
when Ellis looked up.  “We haven’t been able to come up with anything that
says the
Huang Zhen
is linked to Levine and Campbell, but we still have
a lot of companies to go through.”

Ellis stretched and stifled a
yawn.  “Nothing coming from Farrar, either,” she said.  “It’s as if
he’s given up the search.”

“Should we do likewise?” 
Harvey asked, hoping for — and getting — a negative response.

“No, we carry on.  There’s
a link in Asia, I’m certain of it.  That was Abdul Mansour’s last known
location and now Al-Qaeda chatter has gone off the charts.”

“As happened just before 9/11,”
Harvey mused. 

“Exactly,” Ellis said.  “A
lot of it is rubbish — a smokescreen — but the sheer volume makes it near
impossible to pick out the relevant stuff.”

She rubbed her temples and let
out a sigh.  Harvey could see she was under an enormous amount of pressure,
as were they all, but as head of the organisation she bore the brunt.  He
wanted to cheer her up by letting her know about the meeting with Wallis, but
if he mentioned it she would no doubt ask what information he had shared in the
past.  That wasn’t a conversation he wanted to get into right now.

“I’m heading home,” he said, and
Ellis nodded as he made for the exit.

Outside, the sky had clouded
over once more, heralding yet more rain in what had already been the wettest
May in recent years.  It was only a ten minute walk to Armando’s and he
arrived just as the heavens opened.  Inside, he found a table near the
back, and the drinks arrived just as Wallis dashed through the door.

“I’m beginning to see why my
wife wants to go home,” he said, bringing a smile to Harvey’s face.  He
knew that Doug loved his current assignment, and the more his wife complained
,
the more determined he was to stay.

Wallis hung his coat on a stand
and sat opposite Harvey.  They enjoyed their drinks in silence for a
moment, Wallis favouring a pint of bitter to Harvey’s lager.

“So what have you got for me,
Doug?”

Wallis savoured his beer before
putting the glass on the table and leaning closer to Harvey.

“The order to keep it under wraps
came from the Home Secretary himself,” Wallis said, and saw the expected
surprise on his friend’s face.  It quickly turned to curiosity.

“So who were the prisoners?”

“The one he was concerned about
was Sam Grant.”

Harvey made the quick transition
from curious to
confused
.  He’d never heard the
name, and was certain he hadn’t seen it in any recent reports.

“Who is this Grant guy?”

“We don’t know.  Colonel
Travis Dane, commander of the Special Activities Division on Jolo sent his
picture over to Langley and all they got back was the name and an order not to
share with anyone, not even you guys.”

Harvey wondered why the minister
would want to withhold information from his own security services, and the
obvious answer was that it wasn’t an operation that he wanted the Intelligence
Services Commissioner to know about.  The commissioner is responsible for
service oversight and can visit any of the security services at his discretion,
requesting documents or information relating to any case.  Each year he
reports his findings direct to the Prime Minister.  This report is then
laid before parliament and subsequently published. 

If the Home Secretary didn’t
want this case becoming public knowledge, it could only mean one thing. 
But who would carry out such an operation?  It would have to be someone
with access to the system.  He made a mental note to check with Gerald
Small to see if any of the sub-nets fit the bill, but one leaped immediately to
mind.

Farrar.

Ellis had said that even she
didn’t know who he worked for, which pointed to his role being covert. 
And if it
was
Farrar, did this mean that this Sam Grant was one of the
passengers he was expecting?

“Who were the other prisoners?”
He asked.

“Simon Baines and Len Smart,”
Wallis said.

“Are you sure?”  Harvey
asked, a little louder than he intended. 

Wallis nodded.  “I read
through the report just before I left the office.  According to Dane, one
of his troops caught three armed men wandering around the jungle and brought
them in for questioning.  They wouldn’t talk, so Dane sent their pictures
to Langley, who sent back the details.  All they got for Sam Grant was a
name, a photo and that’s it.”

“Do you have the report with
you?”  Harvey asked, more in hope than expectation.

“Sorry, buddy.  You know
the deal, completely off the record, and that means no hard copies.”

Harvey understood.  “So
what happened to the prisoners?  Where are they now?”

“Dane said the three of them
went missing during the attack.  The guard house was hit and they must
have escaped.  Apparently your people were pissed when they turned up to
collect them.”

“
My
people?”
  Harvey asked, once more confused.  “Are you sure
they were from Five?”

“Langley assumed they were, but
the look on your face tells me otherwise.”

“They certainly weren’t sent by
anyone I know,” Harvey said, but he didn’t add that it once again pointed to
James Farrar.

He recalled that the
Huang
Zhen
had left Malaysia on Monday the 23
^rd
, while the attack on
the base had taken place just three days earlier.  That meant Baines and
Smart would have had three days to travel to Port Kelang.  His search
through Hughes’s file had shown that he owned a yacht, but could it make the
journey in that time?  He’d have to wait until he got back to the office
to work that one out, and the introduction of the mysterious Sam Grant into the
mix meant he wasn’t prepared to wait until the morning.

“I have to go and check a few
things out,” he said as he rose.  “Thanks for the info, Doug.  I owe
you one.”

“Big time,” Wallis agreed.

It took Harvey less than five
minutes to jog back to Thames House, and once in the office he went straight to
his desk and logged onto his computer.  He was waiting for the security
settings to synch when Ellis approached him.

“I thought you’d gone home,” she
said.

“I’ve got some new information,”
Harvey told her.  “I need to do a search for Sam Grant.”

The welcome screen appeared and
he began typing into the internal search engine.

“Where did you get the
name?”  She asked as they waited for the results to come back. 

“A completely anonymous and
deniable source,” Harvey told her with a smile.  “I could tell you but
then I’d have to kill myself.”

The screen showed six results
and they went through each one, Harvey looking for anything that could link him
to the current investigation.  The first four were quickly dismissed, but
when trying to open the fifth record he was shown a dialog box which requested
a password.  He entered his account login and a flashing message filled
the screen:

Access Denied.

“Okay,” Ellis said, looking at
Harvey.  “You got my attention.  Who is this guy?”

“I’ve got no idea. 
However, find Sam Grant and we find Baines and Smart.”

He gave her a breakdown of the
information he’d got from Wallis but stopped short of revealing his identity,
despite Ellis asking more than once.  She suggested they try to access the
file using her credentials, which had a higher level of access.  When they
got to her office and repeated the process, the outcome was the same.

“If the Home Secretary
personally gave the order to withhold Grant’s file from the CIA — and from his
own people — then it smells of black ops to me,” Harvey said.  “That means
we’re dealing with a team who have the minister’s ear, a team who are off the
official grid but still have access.  And if Grant was with Baines and
Smart on Jolo, that team would not want you looking for that particular pair,
even if they were solid leads to finding Levine and Campbell.”

He looked Ellis in the
eye.  “So who does that sound like?”

Ellis had to agree that it pointed
the finger fair and square in Farrar’s direction, but it wasn’t conclusive.

“We need to pin this to him,”
she said, rubbing her palms together as she concentrated.

“Then what?”
 
Harvey asked.

It was a very good question, one
she hadn’t got round to considering.  If the passengers were in fact the
mysterious Grant and the two men Farrar didn’t want her searching for, what was
she to do about it?  If she interfered in an order signed by the minister
himself, she knew she could kiss her career goodbye.  On the flip side,
she had proof that Farrar had ordered someone to intercept them, and the phrase
‘ensure no onward journey’
sounded very much like a kill order.  If
these people were who she thought they were, could she stand idly by and allow
a state-sanctioned hit on British citizens?  She knew she wouldn’t allow
another nation to get away with it, so why shouldn’t those same standards apply
to her own government?