Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (9 page)

The door gave directly on to a small foyer, containing a plain brown Government-issue table and four chairs.

‘Sit down, please,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll tell them you’re here.’

Liz waited again. She had been told that access to the Clarity Secretariat was extremely restricted, and she didn’t even know the name of the person she’d come to see. But at least they seemed to be expecting her, which was a step in the right direction.

After a few minutes, another, much more formally dressed woman appeared, carrying a folder.

‘Good morning. I’m Miranda Braithwaite,’ she said.

I bet you are, thought Liz. Just like I’m Jane Falconer when I choose to be.

‘I’m to take you through the indoctrination. When I’ve done that, you’ll sign this form and then you’ll be Clarity Blue, which is the first level of clearance. We’ll decide later if we need to up your clearance to Silver or Purple. But Purple is only for the top brass – and all of us, of course.’

You may be in for a surprise, thought Liz, but she didn’t say anything.

Miranda Braithwaite then told her rather less about the Clarity project than she had learned from Sorsky, and when she had finished, Liz solemnly signed ‘Liz Carlyle’ on a sheet headed ‘CLARITY INDOCTRINATION LIST. BLUE’.

Miranda nodded, looking satisfied, and got up. ‘Henry Pennington will see you now,’ she said, and motioned Liz to follow her.

Not Henry Pennington, thought Liz. What on earth was he doing here? She had last come across Pennington several years ago in the Foreign Office. It was at his instigation that she had gone undercover in the household of the Russian oligarch and almost been shot for her pains.

The figure sitting at the desk didn’t look up as Miranda and Liz came into the room, but went on reading a document on his desk.

‘Liz Carlyle is here,’ said Miranda. There was no reaction, and she left the room.

Liz looked round her. This was nothing like as grand as the room Pennington had inhabited in the Foreign Office on the last occasion she’d encountered him. She remembered a high corniced ceiling, marble fireplace and a large antique desk with chairs to match. Now he was sitting at a desk, large but much more ordinary, in an office with unadorned walls and no fireplace.

She wondered if he’d been demoted – probably not. The carpet was thick, the meeting table against the wall large, and the window wide. It was probably just that the MOD building was nothing like as grand as the Foreign Office. As she looked round her eyes fell on something she recognised. Propped up against the wall under the window, where a visitor couldn’t miss it, was a violin, the symbol that this was the office of a truly cultured man.

Liz did not like Henry Pennington. He was patronising but, worse, he was a panicker. When unexpected events occurred to disturb his vision of how things ought to be, he could be relied on to flap and do something unhelpful, as when he had suddenly offered Liz’s services to the Russian oligarch. So she was wary of anything that Henry Pennington was involved in.

Having established how very busy and important he was, Pennington looked up at last from his desk and acknowledged Liz’s presence.

‘I have a conference call in fifteen minutes,’ he said, by way of opening the conversation. ‘I hope this won’t take long.’

Same Henry, thought Liz as she looked at his thin, bony face with its prominent nose. You’re in for a shock, Mr P, she thought to herself.

‘I think you’ll find that what I have to say is just as important as your conference call.’

He frowned as Liz went on. ‘What I have to tell you is very much “need to know” so I must ask you to sign this indoctrination list for Operation Bravado.’

Henry flushed and tutted irritably. She was playing him at his own game and he knew it. He signed reluctantly on the form Liz presented and said rudely, ‘Let’s get on with it.’

‘We have learned from a well-placed source,’ Liz began, ‘that the existence of Operation Clarity is known to the Russians and also to another foreign power.’

Henry flopped back in his chair and started to rub his hands together in a washing motion. He said, ‘What do you mean? It can’t be true. Our security is top-notch.’

‘I’m afraid it is true. I didn’t know anything about Clarity until I was told by this source, who is himself foreign. What’s more important is that it’s possible that Clarity itself may have been infiltrated.’

The hand-washing accelerated. ‘That’s impossible. Everyone is vetted to the highest level. I just don’t believe it.’

‘For the moment we have to assume it’s true. My job is to follow this lead, and to find out what if anything is going on in Clarity. What I need from you is a list of those employed on this project.’

‘They are all either American or British,’ he broke in. ‘There are no foreign powers, as you put it, involved.’

She ploughed on. ‘As I understand it, this is the Secretariat. The development work is being done elsewhere. Where is that?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Pennington desperately. ‘You’re only cleared to Level Blue.’

‘Well, you’d better get me cleared to Level God. Because I not only need to know where the project is, but I or one of my colleagues will need to visit it and talk to whoever is in charge.’

‘You can’t. Access is totally denied to outsiders.’

‘Look, Henry, you can try to block me if you like, but you’re just wasting your time – and holding up an important investigation. This is already at DG/PUS level and may shortly go up to Ministers. So let’s stop all this and give me the information I need so I can get on with the job. ’

Pennington slumped in his chair. His thin face had gone very pale and his large nose seemed even more prominent. He said nothing for a second or two, then muttered in a broken-sounding voice, ‘Our security can’t have been breached.’ Liz could see that visions of his shattered career were floating before his eyes.

‘Don’t worry, Henry,’ she said soothingly. ‘It may not have been. We don’t know for sure that Clarity itself has been infiltrated. Only that there’s someone working for a foreign government who has some sort of access to Clarity material. ’

But Pennington had given up. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked weakly.

‘The details of the UK Head of the Project and an introduction. Believe me,’ said Liz, looking at his slumped figure, ‘no one hopes more than me that this information is wrong.’

‘
More than I
, I think you mean,’ said Pennington with a sniff.

Chapter 15

Peggy Kinsolving was beginning to panic. Holding the steering wheel with one hand and her map with the other, she was driving slowly along a track between wide fields where bright green shoots of some sort of crop were just beginning to emerge from the ground. ‘You have reached your destination,’ her SatNav kept repeating, though she could see no building of any kind, not a barn or farmhouse, far less anything that could be Brigham Hall. The last town of any size that she’d passed through was Brandon and then, as instructed by the charming-sounding lady on the SatNav, she had turned off down a narrow road. Then the road had turned into little more than a track and here she was, lost, miles from anywhere with the useless SatNav shouting at her.

The track entered a small dark wood and out of the corner of her eye Peggy spotted what looked like a drive on the left, with an open five-barred gate. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she thought to herself, and turned the car through the gate and proceeded up the drive, bumping and rattling over the cracks in the asphalt. After about fifty yards she saw, ahead of her, a security fence and a barrier next to a small wooden guard post. Made it, she thought to herself, as she got out of the car, clutching her Ministry of Defence pass.

But the guard post was empty. The only sound was the cooing of wood pigeons and the occasional creaking call of a pheasant.

So much for security, she thought, wondering what to do next. She wished Liz had come with her, but Liz had felt obliged to stay in London, in case a call came from Geneva and she had to leave at a moment’s notice for the next rendezvous with Bravado. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she’d reassured Peggy. ‘This should be right up your alley. Just don’t let anyone try and push you around.’

Peggy hoped Liz was right. By choice she preferred deskwork, intelligence analysis and research, to dealing with people. She had always been like that. As a girl she’d been teased for her owl-like glasses and bookish ways – she used to hide in the library when it was time to play netball. But her studiousness had paid off: she’d gone to Oxford, where she’d read English and taken a good degree. After that she’d found a job in a private library in the North. At first this seemed ideal for her: there was lots of new material to catalogue and plenty of time for pursuing a research project of her own.

But after a bit it had begun to pall. The work had started to seem dry as dust, and even her own research largely pointless. Moving to London and a bigger library hadn’t helped; by then the whole world of libraries and research projects had lost its appeal. When a chance remark by a friend had led to the invitation to an interview with MI6, she’d swallowed once, swallowed twice … and gone for it. The rest was history. She’d joined MI6 as a researcher, been temporarily seconded to MI5 to assist Liz Carlyle in an investigation, and had stayed – something she didn’t regret for a moment. She liked working on cases in the UK, liked the feeling she could make a difference, and both liked and respected her boss. Liz was clear, direct, sometimes tough, yet always encouraging and supportive.

As she stood outside the guard post, considering her options, Peggy noticed a CCTV camera mounted on a metal post. Presumably someone was monitoring the camera and would turn up in a moment to find out who she was. She peered ahead down the drive, to see if she could see Brigham Hall – she had no doubt now that she’d arrived at the right place – but the drive curved sharply and all she could see was a mixed stand of oak and ash. As nothing seemed to be happening, she pushed open the guard-post door and reached for the phone.

Simultaneously a voice called out, ‘Hello!’ Looking up, Peggy saw a man coming round the bend of the drive towards her. He was slightly built, dressed in a Harris tweed jacket that had seen better days, with a tie sitting slightly askew on his blue shirt.

‘Miss Kinsolving?’ he asked, sounding breathless as he approached the booth. ‘I’m Charlie Fielding.’

‘There was no one here,’ she said, pointing vaguely at the guard post.

‘Jim’s at lunch,’ he said, looking apologetic. ‘I’m afraid we only run to one guard. Budget cuts – you know how it is. We don’t get many visitors.’

I’m not surprised, she thought, even if she
was
surprised about the apparently casual attitude to security. Though given the remoteness, the difficulty of finding the place, and the security fence and camera, perhaps it wasn’t as casual as it seemed.

‘Have you had lunch?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thanks. I got something at a service station.’

‘Sounds a bit grim. But to be frank, you wouldn’t have done much better here,’ said Fielding with a smile. ‘We’re pretty much sandwiches and crisps only at midday. Leave your car. There’s no spare parking space up at the house. It’s not much of a walk.’

The drive ran through the woods for a couple of hundred yards until suddenly the trees stopped and the asphalt gave way to a circle of flattened gravel in front of a large Victorian house. Cars were parked all around it. The house had two Gothic gables and was built of brick that over the years had turned the colour of burned oranges. Dormer windows jutted from the heavy tiled roof, with intricate fretwork decoration. On the ground floor the wooden porch shielding the entrance was ornamented with delicately carved bargeboard trim.

‘Golly,’ said Peggy. ‘What an unlikely building to find in this spot.’

‘It was put up by a brewer who liked peace and quiet. More Betjeman than Pevsner,’ said Fielding. ‘Though neither would have approved of what we’ve done inside.’

They went through the porch into an entrance hall with a colourful tiled floor. On one wall coats hung from wooden pegs, and in the centre a dusty mahogany table stood below an elaborate crystal chandelier that dangled from a fraying cord. At one side of the hall a dark oak staircase ascended to the house’s upper floors.

Fielding opened a door and they went into a large front room that looked like an old-fashioned parlour – except that against the far windows two modern desks were covered with print-outs and several computer monitors. A man in a sweater and jeans sat at one of the desks. He turned in his swivel office chair as they came in.

‘Hugo,’ Fielding called out cheerfully, ‘meet Peggy Kinsolving.’ He turned to her. ‘Dr Cowdray is my deputy, for his sins.’

The other man stood up and shook hands. He looked to be about forty, with regular features and striking blue eyes. His hair was the colour of summer corn and very neatly cut, almost military-looking with its sharply trimmed edges. ‘Welcome to Brigham Asylum,’ he said with a smile.

Peggy laughed. ‘Well, it’s certainly got more character than most government buildings. Do you all live here as well?’

Fielding said, ‘Not really. The team’s usually based in London. They mostly drive up when they need to. If the weather gets too bad in the winter, people can stay in the upstairs bedrooms. Jim’s wife does the housekeeping.’ He pointed to Dr Cowdray, saying, ‘Alas, Hugo and I have to be here for longer hours than most of the others. We’re sharing a rented house in Downham Market. Sometimes Mrs Cowdray joins us, which improves the level of cooking dramatically,’ he added with a laugh. ‘Anyway, let me show you the rest of the place.’