“So I recall.”
“Besides, the incident was done and dusted inside twenty minutes. When I left, the young man was being, ah, chided by our head of security.” She sipped again at her tea. “Are you sure such matters are worth your attention? I’d have thought there were weightier issues on your desk.”
Though the question of how he’d become aware of Cartwright’s frolic almost before she had was a matter Dame Ingrid definitely didn’t consider minor.
“I deem few things beneath my attention,” he said, adopting the plummier tones ex–public schoolboys use when bringing words like “deem” into play. “And certainly not those issues which call into question the integrity of our national Security Service.”
“‘Integrity,’” she said. “Really?”
He leaned back in his chair. “More tea?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure? You don’t mind if—?”
She shook her head.
He refreshed his cup, and stirred the contents slowly, not taking his eyes off her.
“Minister, precisely what is this about?”
“Well, it’s quite simple, Dame Ingrid. Tell me, are you familiar with the term ‘tiger team’?”
Dame Ingrid lowered her teacup.
“Oh dear,” she said.
The taxi left Monteith outside the multistorey car park. It was a drab, soulless building, precisely because of its function: if an architect ever designed a car park the sight of which lifted the heart, civilisation’s job would be done. Monteith made a mental note to drop this aperçu into conversation next time he was with Peter Judd, and walked down the slope into the structure. Even with heat rising from the pavement, the lower storey carried a grave scent of damp earth and mildew. He stepped around an oil patch on the scabbed concrete, and pulled open the heavy door into the stairwell.
A different splash of odours, urine among them. Civilisation’s job was one long uphill battle round here.
He took the stairs two at a time. Into his fifties, he remained proud of his physical condition: barely smoked, and then only good Cuban; never drank port or liqueurs; red wine just three evenings a week (white the rest). If this didn’t precisely add up to a fitness regime, it gave him a head start. Besides, he was a leader, not a foot soldier. When River Cartwright had taken him by the lapels earlier, he’d felt no physical fear precisely because of that difference between them. Cartwright was a pawn, and didn’t know it. Monteith’s place was among the kings, and today’s work would serve to consolidate that.
Pawns don’t take kings. Basic rule of nature.
Donovan was waiting on the top storey, by the van. Another case in point, Monteith thought. Sean Donovan could have been wearing Monteith’s shoes now, near as damn it, if he’d understood the game. But that was the problem with coming up through the ranks—there was a reason the phrase was officer class. It came with breeding, wasn’t something they could drill into you.
None of that showed in his voice when he called out, “Donovan!”
Donovan didn’t respond.
Another oil patch to skip around. The light was better up here; the sides open to the city, technically allowing for airflow. But the midday heat shunted around as if in blocks. Every time you encountered it, it was like walking into a wall.
He resisted the temptation to run a finger around his collar. Appearances: you kept tight hold of them.
“Donovan,” he said again when he was no more than a yard away. “Everything in order?”
“So far.”
When he’d pictured this moment, Sly Monteith realised, he’d imagined it as one of high-fiving celebration—a plan brought to fruition; the pair of them delighted with each other and themselves. But Sean Donovan seemed, if anything, even less inclined than usual to unbend.
It didn’t matter. Monteith didn’t need Donovan’s approbation. The real celebrations would come later.
Because say what you like about Peter Judd, he knew how to mark a job well done.
“A tiger team,” Ingrid Tearney said.
“A tiger team.”
“I know perfectly well what a tiger team is,” she told him.
That feeling she was getting now was of Judd’s fingers round her throat.
Tiger teams were hired guns, essentially. Hired not to wipe out your enemies but to test the strength of your own defences. You set a tiger team to launch a simulated attack: recruited hackers to stress-test security systems, assigned a wet-squad to put a bodyguard team through its paces, and so on. Earlier that year, she had herself overseen a Service-propelled assault on one of the city’s major utility providers, to verify concerns that the capital’s infrastructure was dangerously vulnerable to attack. The results were mixed. It was, it turned out, surprisingly easy to cripple a large energy provider, but in the wake of recent price hikes, people seemed mostly in favour of doing so. Besides, the populace at large evidently regarded a global wine shortage as a more serious threat to its well-being than terrorism. In rather the same way, Dame Ingrid was now realising, that the greatest threat to the Service—and her own role within it—seemed to be emanating from the Home Secretary rather than its more traditional enemies: terrorists, rival security agencies, the Guardian.
“And this was your doing,” she said.
He nodded, pleased with himself. This was not in itself an unusual sight—being pleased with himself was Peter Judd’s factory setting—but at this close distance, it made Tearney want to throw the teapot at him.
“Can I ask why?”
“Why are these things ever done? I wanted to reassure myself that the Service’s protocols are in tip-top order. Not much point in relying on a security provider which can’t secure itself, is there?”
“Then you’ll have been relieved at the result,” she said. “No harm done.”
He wagged a finger at her. With most people this would have been a metaphor, but the Home Secretary’s tendency towards pantomime ensured that an actual finger was involved. “One of your agents was taken off the street. Another was induced to attempt a data theft from your very own precincts.”
“And failed.”
“But shouldn’t have got even that far. There are procedures, Dame Ingrid. The moment he was approached, your boy should have escalated the matter upwards. He didn’t. That’s a severe lapse by anyone’s standards. And by the standards I expect to appertain while I am minister in charge, it’s a shortcoming that requires action.”
After several years of dealing with a minister who could be reduced to jelly by the very thought of taking action, it was salutary to be reminded that not all politicians covered arse first and made decisions afterwards. It was galling that it had to happen on her watch, though.
“This . . . tiger team,” she said. “Who, precisely, are we talking about?”
“Chap called Sylvester Monteith.” Judd had the air of one explaining that he’d had a little man from the village round to prune his hedge. “He runs an outfit called Black Arrow. Ridiculous, really. Still, goes with the territory, I suppose.”
“Black Arrow.”
“No reason it should have crossed your radar. Mostly corporate security, to date. You know the kind of thing, give the company firewalls a rattle, see what’s loose. All on home turf, mind. No foreign adventures.” Judd placed his cup and saucer on his left knee, which he’d crossed over his right. “Gave the Afghan shenanigans a wide berth, sensibly, if you want my opinion. Plenty of money in that line, of course, but the premiums are crippling.”
“How very distressing for all involved,” Tearney said. “And you’re telling me you hired this man?”