Everyone agreed.
Steven walked back to the Home Office wondering why he didn’t feel a whole lot better than he did. The capture of what looked to be the whole terrorist strike force was a major triumph, and yet he found himself feeling uneasy without knowing why.
‘Wonderful news,’ said Jean Roberts when Steven walked in. ‘Aren’t our police wonderful?’
‘We are indeed blessed,’ replied Steven, tongue in cheek.
‘Oh, come on, Steven, I know you and Sir John have had your differences with the police and intelligence services over the years, but you have to admit they’ve come up trumps this time.’
‘You’re right; they have.’
‘All the health boards you asked about have now reported back. None of them knew anything about any new scheme coming into operation in the autumn.’
‘Thanks, Jean.’
Steven had barely sat down in his office when the phone rang.
‘They’ve caught them! I can hardly believe it,’ said Tally.
‘It’s real enough.’
‘This is just what we need to get on top of things,’ said Tally. ‘It’ll give us time to get everyone vaccinated so even if there’s another attempt we’ll be prepared. Is something wrong? You seem a bit distant.’
Steven struggled with a response. ‘Something is wrong,’ he confessed, ‘but I don’t know what.’
‘I know that feeling,’ said Tally. ‘Sometimes I get it with the kids at the hospital. All the lab results are telling you one thing but you know in your heart that it’s not the whole story: there’s something else going on.’
‘That’s it exactly,’ said Steven. ‘The jigsaw looks complete but you’re left with one piece in your hand.’
‘Go and see Sir John,’ said Tally. ‘You and he have this thing… You can probably work it out between you.’
Steven called John Macmillan’s home but was told by his wife that he was at the hospital having a check-up. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope,’ said Steven.
‘Far from it. He wants to go back to work.’
Steven sympathised with her and made arrangements to call round later. He spent the next few minutes standing at the window looking out at the traffic, trying to decide what to do next. He took out his mobile phone and flicked through the contact list till he got to John Ricksen, then hesitated for a few moments before pressing the dial button.
‘Ricksen.’
‘John, it’s Steven Dunbar. How are things?’
‘Sci-Med calling MI5 to ask how things are? I don’t think.’
‘There’s just so much cynicism in the world today…’ Steven lamented.
That drew a laugh from Ricksen. ‘Out with it, Dunbar. What are you after?’
‘All right. I’d like to talk.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘You can buy me lunch.’
The two men arranged to meet at the Blue Boar, a pub by the river, at one o’clock.
Although not close friends, Steven and Ricksen, an intelligence officer with MI5, had crossed paths several times over the years, and had come to respect each other despite the lurking departmental rivalry which had MI5 believing Sci-Med had a little too much freedom to operate as they saw fit, and Sci-Med asserting that MI5 lacked imagination.
The two men shook hands, and Steven ordered a couple of beers. ‘You guys must be feeling pretty pleased with yourselves,’ he said as they sat down. ‘I take it it was 5 who made the breakthrough?’
Ricksen took a sip of his beer. ‘Not exactly,’ he said slowly.
Steven let his expression ask the question.
‘It’s all a bit embarrassing. The informant gave details of all four proposed attacks on pumping stations but our people on the inside knew nothing at all about any of them. The same goes for Special Branch.’
Steven frowned. ‘If the operation was being kept that secret, how come one informant knew details about all four attacks?’
‘Exactly. The information had to have come from the very top, but we’ve no idea who. That’s a worry. It suggests that there may be home-grown terrorist operations out there that we know nothing at all about.’
‘And MI6 are still certain they didn’t come in from abroad?’
‘Absolutely. In fact, we know that the eight in custody have never been outside the UK in their lives. All are under twenty — they’re been-nowhere, done-nothing dumbfucks full of Islamic shit that someone rammed down their throats till they believed it. And here’s the killer
… They were all actually on our books.’
Steven’s eyes opened wide. ‘Now I can understand where the embarrassment comes in.’
‘We keep an eye on all the young firebrands in the Asian communities who sound as if they may be destined to cause trouble. Mostly it’s just running off at the mouth, but they invariably attract the attention of local recruiters and the next step can involve them disappearing for a “holiday” to the old country to see their roots for the first time — visiting Great-uncle Asif or some such crap. They actually spend their time in the training camps on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and come back ready for business — able to strip down a Kalashnikov blindfold and handle Semtex like it was Play-Doh. But these eight were different: they were obviously recruited, but not through the usual channels or we would have known about it, and none of them went abroad.’
Steven let out a low whistle. ‘So the organ grinders are here in the UK, not just the monkeys.’
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘But one of them blew the whistle.’
‘How lucky was that?’
Steven digested this comment in silence for a few moments before asking, ‘I take it none of them is saying very much?’
Ricksen smiled wryly. ‘I think the truth is that none of them knows very much. They’re all low-level operatives, told exactly where to go and what to do, and all of them are so full of holy shit that they didn’t question anything.’
‘You don’t think the fact that someone informed on them might change their outlook?’
Ricksen shook his head. ‘Because none of them knows anything about the size of the organisation they were working for, they just assume that someone somewhere up the chain of command betrayed them and will get his just desserts in the life to come. One of them did say something interesting, though. He claimed he was set up.’
Steven saw the difference. ‘Set up, not betrayed; that is interesting. Name?’
‘Anwar Khan, caught in Glasgow, possibly one of those who carried out the attack in Edinburgh.’
As they sat with coffee, Ricksen said, ‘I can understand Sci-Med’s interest in the fact that it was a cholera attack but why the interest in who carried it out?’
‘I wish I could give you a straight answer,’ said Steven. ‘I just have this feeling that something’s not quite right. Ostensibly I’m looking at a terrorist attack on the UK using a biological weapon. But when I consider the overall picture, the bug they used, the people who carried out the attack, the fact that they were betrayed — or set up — there’s something not quite right.’
‘You mean they’re going to hit us with smallpox while we’re all patting each other on the back?’
‘Christ, I hope not…’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Steven went over to see John Macmillan at four o’clock and found him in excellent spirits. ‘A better day, eh, Steven? Not only have I been given the all-clear to return to work on a part-time basis but the security services finally get their act together and nail the terrorists.’
‘It turns out they had little to do with it, John.’ Steven told him what he’d learned at his lunch-time meeting with Ricksen.
‘Damnation,’ said Macmillan. ‘I’d assumed that Special Branch or one of 5’s insiders had come up with the goods.’
Steven said not. ‘One unknown person, apparently in full possession of all the details of four separate operations, gave the lot away to the police.’
‘But why?’
‘Why indeed. It must have been someone at the top of the chain to have access to that much information.’