Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (17 page)

‘I don’t think so. She was very professional, and very good at her work.’ Katherine seemed to be backtracking. ‘I had the feeling everybody liked her.’ She paused and Liz could see from her expression that there was something she wasn’t saying.

This slant on Maria was rather different from the picture that had emerged from the thin file which the Athens Station had copied to Geoffrey Fane. That gave the impression of a serious professional young woman, soon to become thirty. Someone who was most unlikely to go clubbing – unless it was in the line of duty. But maybe the file was out of date. When Bruno Mackay had chosen Maria for this job, he didn’t seem to have bothered to update it. Most people had some sort of hidden self – why should Maria Galanos be any different? She might have had a whole web of emotional entanglements, one of which could have gone disastrously wrong. With the bare facts Liz had, it was impossible to tell.

She wanted to talk further about all this to Blakey, though not in front of Katherine. But the woman continued to sit there, as if expecting to be included in the rest of the conversation. Then Liz noticed Blakey give her a look and Katherine stood up. ‘I’d better get back to my office. Mitchell is supposed to be ringing me from Athens. Is there anything you’d like me to ask him?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Liz, and Katherine Ball left the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

After she’d left, Liz and Blakey sat in silence for a minute; Liz sensed he was uncomfortable. ‘I hope that was helpful,’ he said at last.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Has Katherine been working here long?’

‘Two years.’

‘And before that?’

‘Before that she’d had a bit of a hiatus.’ He gave a small smile. ‘She trained as a lawyer originally, and worked for a few years in one of the big City firms. Very good at it too, I gather. Then she married a businessman, quite a wealthy one; he had business interests in the Middle East and they lived out there in various places for over ten years. Then one day out of the blue the poor chap dropped dead – a heart attack. They didn’t have children, and Katherine didn’t want to stay out there on her own, so she came back to London and started looking for work. Someone suggested she come in for a chat, we hit it off, and I took her on as my deputy. Within six months she was irreplaceable.’

‘You’re obviously lucky to have her,’ said Liz.

They spoke for a few minutes more, and Blakey arranged for Liz to have copies of the CVs of the staff in both UCSO offices. As she left, she wondered again how much he had told Katherine Ball about the investigation. Had he told her of the suspicions about leaked information and why Maria had been taken on in the Athens office? Just how indiscreet was he?

Chapter 25

‘I hope you know the way,’ said Liz to Kanaan Shah as they emerged from Birmingham New Street station. ‘I’ve never been to this place.’

‘Yeah, I know it well. Our best bet is to get a bus.’

The MI5 office in Birmingham was a comparatively new development, set up after the invasion of Iraq had generated a burst of extremist activity in the area. Rather than send teams of people up from London, only to have to feed and water them and provide them with accommodation, it had been decided to open a regional office and post staff there or recruit them locally.

The bus stopped outside a rundown-looking Odeon cinema in an otherwise well-kept street in an inner suburb of the city. The building appeared to be undergoing restoration; its 1920s exterior was covered with scaffolding, and razor wire topped the two solid metal gates securing the site. Little more of the building could be seen through the security gates.

The entrance to the building itself was through a side door, which had obviously once been one of the exits from the cinema. Kanaan tapped a number into a pad on the wall beside the left-hand gate, and a small door clicked open. Liz followed Shah and they walked together into an extensive car park where a variety of cars and vans were parked.

In spite of its scruffy exterior, the inside of the building was clean and brightly painted. A number of small offices had been made out of what was once the entrance concourse of the cinema. Most of the doors were open but only a few of the rooms were occupied. As they walked past one door, a familiar, cheerful-sounding voice shouted out, ‘Hello, stranger.’

Liz stopped, took a few steps back and saw Dave Armstrong, her long-time colleague and friend, getting up from behind a desk. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in surprise. ‘I hadn’t heard you’d left Northern Ireland.’

‘Your spies have let you down again,’ said Dave with a huge grin. ‘They moved me after I came out of hospital. I can’t say I was sorry to leave beautiful Belfast.’

‘I don’t expect you were.’

Liz and Dave had last worked together on an investigation into a renegade group of Republican terrorists who were trying to kill police and intelligence officers in Northern Ireland. They had had some hair-raising experiences during the operation, and Dave had ended up badly hurt.

He looked at his watch. ‘I’m coming to the briefing for your meet,’ he said, following Liz out into the corridor and nodding at Kanaan Shah, who was waiting for her.

The briefing room had once been the auditorium of the cinema and not a great deal had changed. A few of the rows of red plush seats had been removed, but most were still in place. Now they were occupied by twenty or so casually dressed men and women, some white, some Asian, some young, some middle-aged. Most of them were new faces to Liz, but she recognised a few from Thames House and gave them a wave before sitting down at the end of a row near the back with Dave and Kanaan Shah.

The briefing was for the A4 surveillance operation that was going to cover their meeting that evening with Kanaan Shah’s agent, Boatman. Liz wanted to meet Boatman herself; it was crucial to find out if he knew anything about Amir Shah and how he came to be involved in hijacking an UCSO ship off Somalia.

The room fell silent as the A4 controller, Larry Lincoln, climbed on to the stage. Behind him was the screen on which the faces of Errol Flynn and Clark Gable had once appeared, to the delight of Birmingham audiences. Now it showed a collage of photographs of a young, thin, lightly bearded Asian man. In some he was wearing skullcap and robes, in others a suit or jeans. Liz looked with interest at the images of Boatman.

Lincoln, known to his teams as ‘Lamb’, began by welcoming Liz, then he turned to the A4 teams. ‘Tonight it’s the usual routine for Boatman meetings. The only difference is that Liz Carlyle will be with us. The meeting will be held in “Pie Crust”.’ A picture of a red-brick Victorian villa came up on the screen. It had a green-painted wooden gate that led to a small overgrown garden; the villa’s front door was obscured by a tall, unkempt privet hedge.

‘Most of you know that there’s a primary school along the road from Pie Crust and it gets very parked up from fifteen hundred. Then when the Mums leave, the commuters start coming back into the area. So we need to get all cars in place considerably before then. That includes comms and photographers. Comms will be tested as soon as teams are in situ. After receiving the all clear by bleep, Liz Carlyle and K will each go, but separately, to Pie Crust. K to enter at sixteen hundred; Liz at sixteen thirty.

‘Two foot teams with drivers in cars will be in Boatman’s street from seventeen hundred to carry out anti-surveillance. Foot teams will follow Boatman when he leaves his house at seventeen-thirty. Can you confirm, K, that Boatman knows what to do?’

Kanaan nodded. Lincoln went on: ‘Boatman will walk with anti-surveillance cover, by the route he’s been given –’ he cocked an eye at Shah, who nodded again ‘– to Pie Crust, where he’ll knock and enter at about eighteen hundred hours. We’ll give a heads up to you in Pie Crust when he’s a couple of minutes away. If any surveillance is detected, he’ll be approached by an officer standing outside the primary school and asked the time. He will then abort the meeting. All OK with you, K?’

‘Yes. He has his instructions.’

‘While the meeting takes place any untoward activity in the surrounding streets will be assessed in the Control Room by Dave Armstrong, who will decide on any further action. OK Dave?’ A nod from Dave Armstrong.

‘When the meeting is over, Liz or K will ring to alert Control who will check round and confirm all clear. Anti-surveillance will follow him home. All A4 please stay behind now to get your positions. Any questions from anybody?’

A few hands shot up and some details were thrashed out, then Liz, Dave and Kanaan Shah left the auditorium.

‘That’s pretty thorough,’ Liz said to Dave. ‘I see Birmingham is now hostile territory.’

‘Hostile enough,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t give a lot for Boatman’s chances if his pals at the New Springfield Mosque knew he was talking to MI5.’

At 4.30 that afternoon Liz rang the doorbell at Pie Crust; it was opened straight away by Kanaan, who must have been standing behind the door waiting for her.

Liz had been in many safe houses in her career. This one was larger than normal – a detached house unlike most of them, particularly those in London, which were usually flats of various kinds. But in every other way it was familiar. Off the square hall was a sitting room containing two well-used sofas covered in a familiar flowery fabric which Liz had seen before. It made its appearance in many MI5 safe houses and was known to the agent runners who used these places as ‘Ministry of Works chintz’. A couple of chairs with wooden arms, dating from the eighties, and a coffee table of light veneer, marked by white rings where hot mugs had rested, completed the furnishing of the sitting room. Poking her head round the door of the dining room next door, Liz found it similarly spartan. Safe houses were one of civilisation’s dead ends. Strictly utilitarian, they were kept stocked with essentials for making coffee and tea, but there was never any food in their kitchen fridges, which contained nothing but milk.

Liz had once had to live in a safe house for almost a week in order to keep up a cover story. They had been some of the gloomiest, most uncomfortable days of her life.

On the dining-room table, K had put a small pile of photographs; there was also a new notebook in the sitting room, and a bottle of mineral water and three glasses stood on the coffee table. ‘Boatman will only take water,’ he said, seeing Liz looking at his preparations. ‘He doesn’t drink tea or coffee.’

Liz spent some time looking through the photographs in the dining room before going to join Kanaan in the sitting room. He was sitting on one of the flowery sofas, scanning the
Guardian
. She sat down opposite him on the other sofa and they made desultory conversation. But as the time for the meeting drew nearer, they fell silent. Even after years doing this sort of work, Liz still felt a tension in her stomach, a quickened beating of the heart, as she waited for the phone to ring. Kanaan must be much more nervous, she thought, though to do him credit he didn’t show any sign of it.

The phone rang, breaking the silence; one ring and then nothing. Kanaan went to the front door and looked through the peephole; then, just as Boatman walked up the path, he opened the door and closed it again as soon as the young man was inside.

Liz heard them in the hall exchanging greetings. ‘
Salaam alaikum
,’ Boatman said to Kanaan.

‘
Wa Alaikum as-Salaam
,’ Kanaan replied. ‘I have brought someone to meet you like I told you,’ he said, as they walked into the sitting room. ‘This is Jane. I work with her. She can be trusted.’

Boatman peered at Liz, then nodded. She smiled and nodded in reply. The young Asian was wearing a white embroidered skullcap and the traditional white
shalwar kameez
; his feet were in sandals. His face was young but his expression very serious. He looked, Liz thought, as though he had considered the follies most young men opt for and rejected them. If the weight of the world was not yet on his shoulders, his expression seemed to say, it was only a matter of time. Liz was used to agents being scared, even sometimes cracking jokes to allay their nerves. But Boatman seemed entirely composed and serious – almost forbiddingly so. There was a rather chilly air of religious probity about him.

Kanaan said brightly, ‘How is married life treating you?’

‘Very well, thank you,’ Boatman answered gravely, like a potentate accepting a subject’s best wishes.

‘How long have you been married?’ Liz asked, though she knew from her briefing that his wedding was four months ago.

‘Not long,’ he said, then his voice brightened. ‘But I find I like my wife more and more each day. She is very kind, and more intelligent than I expected.’

Liz was startled, then realised that it would have been an arranged marriage. It was not a practice she approved of, but at least Boatman seemed pleased to have discovered unexpected virtues in his bride.

‘How are things at the mosque?’ asked Kanaan, getting down to business.

Boatman shrugged. ‘They have stopped pressing me to go to Pakistan – they accept that with a new bride, I don’t wish to go away. Especially . . .’ he said, and Liz understood at once – especially since he might then never see his wife again.

Boatman went on, ‘The others are going. We still meet together once a week, but there are meetings to which I am not invited.’