“Two,” the guy said, after a moment. “Two canisters are wired.”
“Definitely two?” I said.
“Definitely.”
“Which two?”
“I don’t know.”
“So how do you know there are two?”
“I saw the driver rigging the devices at the hospital. But I didn’t load them into the van. I don’t know which order they loaded them in.”
“You saw him open them?”
“No. The devices are attached to the outside. Just tell your people to look for the wires.”
I took a moment to reconstruct the interior of the van in my memory. The exact appearance of the canisters. And to push the thought of their contents out of my mind.
“OK, thanks,” I said, when I was ready. Then I reached behind me, took hold of my Beretta, and shot a glance at Melissa.
It’s OK. He’s bluffing.
“Agent Wainwright,” I said. “Would you like me to shoot him?”
Understood, her expression replied.
“No need,” she said, smashing her the back of her head into the guy’s face, then stamping down on his right knee and driving her elbow in his abdomen. “I think he’s changed his mind about that drive.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hurry up and wait. That’s how my father used to sum up the routine of life in the army. An unbroken cycle of frenzied action followed by long periods of doing nothing. He warned me to expect the same when I joined the Navy, but my experience has been pleasantly different. For one thing, I’ve had very little time on my hands over the years. And for another, the Navy really does try to keep what we call the ‘dead time’ - the meetings and the paperwork that follow every assignment - to an absolute minimum. But as I sat with Melissa in an office at Thames House the next morning, I began to suspect that things weren’t quite the same at MI5.
The chair I picked was still warm when I sat in it, but the man at the end of the table - the Deputy Director General, the officer in charge of the day-to-day running of the whole organisation - showed no sign of having noticed the person occupying it had changed. He was too busy cleaning his half moon reading glasses, carefully spraying them with clear liquid from a tiny silver aerosol and buffing them with a square of bottle-green silk.
Melissa took the seat next to me and we waited in silence until two more men came into the room. The first was the agent who’d fired the tazer through the gate at the compound in Croydon, and Melissa whispered to me that the other was her boss. They took seats with a space in between them on the opposite side of the rectangular table, but before they’d settled themselves the door opened again and Tim Jones appeared. Melissa beckoned him in, and he hurried to sit down at her side.
The Deputy DG moved his head for the first time as soon the door had swung closed. He held his spectacles up to the light, nodded, then used them to gesture towards Melissa’s boss.
“Introductions,” he said. “Chaston, get the ball rolling, will you?”
“Colin Chaston,” Melissa’s boss said. “Central Counter Terrorism Unit.”
“Phil Green,” the agent said. “Field Operations.”
“I’m Arthur Hardwicke,” the Deputy DG said. “I’m taking a personal interest in this mess. Our friend on the other side of the table is Commander Trevellyan, who’s joining us temporarily from Navy Intelligence. And everyone knows agents Wainwright and Jones, yes?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good,” Hardwicke said. “Now, we had a very close shave last night. A very uncomfortably close shave. Chaston – how do we smell this morning? Of roses? Or of the stuff they grow in?”
“I’m quietly optimistic, actually,” Chaston said. “We already knew we’d recovered the right number of containers, yesterday. Well, the lab boys have been burning the midnight oil, and they’ve now confirmed the correct amount of caesium was inside them. None had been syphoned off, diluted, stolen, or in any other way tampered with. So, any immediate threat has been avoided.”
“That’s good. But what worries me most about this whole bag of spanners is that we didn’t see it coming. It landed on us completely out of the blue. So, what else do we know? Who’s behind it? What were they planning?”
“Well, we’re progressing on three fronts. The hospital crime scene. The vehicle. And the criminals we apprehended with it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Well then, the simple answer is we’re in the dark.”
“Start with what’s happening at the hospital. Wainwright, that’s your bailiwick, yes?”
“Yes sir,” Melissa said. “Jones and I became involved when axe marks were discovered on the door to the caesium vault. These did not represent a credible attempt to gain access, so we’re working on the theory that persons unknown were attempting to cause the caesium to be removed, thus rendering it more vulnerable.”
“This was not successful?” Hardwicke said.
“No sir. The damage was only cosmetic, so there was no need to move the caesium at that time.”
“Who wielded the axe?”
“A fireman. Or someone dressed as one. We haven’t yet been able to establish his identity. Or, if he’s a real fireman, whether he was bribed or coerced.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sorry to report this sir, but the Met allowed the only witness to escape.”
Hardwicke picked his glasses back up from the table and carefully sprayed more fluid onto each lens.
“I assume you’re doing something about getting him back?” he said, catching an excess drop of liquid with the cloth before it could hit the table.
“Yes sir,” Jones said. “I’m taking personal responsibility for that. I’ll ensure he’s found.”
“Very good,” Hardwicke said. “And what about last night’s episode? A second try?”
“We believe so,” Melissa said. “It seems that someone learned their lessons and tried a more refined approach. The fire brigade believes the fire was started deliberately with some wads of insulation from a disused generator. The stuff was soaked with oil, so it gave off copious clouds of very dense smoke. And it was arranged around some pieces of an old x-ray machine, to give off enough of a radiation signature to prompt us to call the emergency hazmat team.”
“Ingenious.”
“Very. It was improvised, and highly successful. And because all the components were sourced from the hospital itself, it gives us very little to trace.”
“I see. And what about the van?”
“Nothing constructive, I’m afraid sir,” Green said. “The van, the tools, the hazmat suits, all completely clean. There were no prints, other than from the four individuals we apprehended at the scene, and nothing with any DNA.”
“Was it rigged in any way?”
“No sir. We don’t think it was intended as a come-on. Based on how the thieves reacted when we arrived, we think they were just waiting to hand it off to someone else.”