She looked at Denise from the library who was standing talking to an agent runner who’d just walked into the room. There was no chance at all that Denise didn’t have the degree in library science or whatever professional qualification she claimed to have, or that the agent runner, who was now rather obviously flirting with her, had an undeclared wife somewhere.
On the other hand, there were spies working within the intelligence services. People who led a double life for years without being discovered. The most famous British ones, the Cambridge spies, were recruited before there was any kind of vetting. They just recruited each other. But there had been others much more recently, in Britain as well as in America.
She looked down again at the CV on her desk. She’d better talk to Liz about Mr Berger.
Liz was on the phone but she waved Peggy into her office and, while she waited, she stood by the window, looking down. The sun was out, and the Thames looked blue and sparkling and much cleaner than it really was – though she’d read that fish were now coming up the river as far as Westminster. Perhaps MPs, she thought, smiling to herself, would soon be fishing from the terrace of the House of Commons.
Liz put the phone down. ‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked. ‘Don’t say there’s some good news for a change.’
‘I wondered what you’d make of this.’ Peggy put the sheet of paper on the desk and sat down opposite her.
‘Mitchell Berger,’ Liz said aloud in surprise. ‘Don’t tell me he didn’t go to college either?’
‘No, everything checks out so far. He was in the military, he did some contract work for the State Department, and he’s worked for a bunch of NGOs. He was even a journalist – I found a couple of articles by him in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘It’s where he was – and when. I’ve highlighted the dates and places on his CV.’
Liz looked carefully at the document. ‘El Salvador and Nicaragua in the seventies; Lebanon… that was when the Marines got blown up there, wasn’t it? Haiti. What was going on there then?
‘A coup.’
Liz nodded. ‘Then the Dominican Republic. That must have been a few months before Reagan sent troops in. Then Kosovo in the nineties, and Afghanistan after nine-eleven. And now Athens?’ She looked up at Peggy with a hint of a smile. ‘Bit of a soft option after all that. He must have got tired of hot spots. But I see what you mean.’
‘It’s as if he’s always wanted to be where the action is. A cynic might say he had a death wish.’
‘Or else that he was paid to go there.’ Liz raised her eyes from the CV and looked at Peggy. ‘I know what you’re thinking. This is either the résumé of a retired CIA officer or someone who’s gone to almost inconceivable lengths to pretend he’s one. I know which option my money’s on.’
‘Do you think Blakey knows?’
‘He didn’t say anything to me, but you’d think he’d have spotted it when he appointed the chap. Blakey is ex-Six, after all.’
‘What I was wondering is whether he appointed him because of it. Does that mean there’s something going on in UCSO that we don’t know about? And do you think Geoffrey Fane knows?’
Liz sighed deeply. ‘He didn’t mention it. Which, with Fane, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know.’
‘Do you want me to do anything?’
Liz put her head in her hands. ‘No. I’ll have to go and talk to Geoffrey. And I was hoping not to have to see him for a while… fat chance of that now!’
Chapter 30
It was eleven o’clock and Technical Ted and his colleague, Sammy de Silva, were strolling down the street where Boatman’s uncle had his hardware shop. Ted, the Service’s electronic wizard, had abandoned his favourite working clothes (biker boots and leather jacket), had removed his gold earring, and had tied back his long black dyed hair in a pony tail. He was dressed now, as was Sammy, in unremarkable shirt and jeans. Carrying their leather bags in their hands, they might have been tradesmen of any kind.
They stopped outside a café and seemed to be discussing whether they should go in. It was a café run by a Muslim family, which during the day was frequented by all and sundry from the flats, shops and offices along the street. In the evening, though, when the offices were closed, rather like Tahira’s shop its customers were mainly Asian youths.
Ted and Sammy went in and sat down at a table by the window, putting their bags on the floor beside them. They ordered coffee, which they drank slowly. By the time they paid the bill and left the café, any conversation that took place at that particular table could have been heard in the Odeon cinema some distance away, which now served as MI5’s Birmingham office. But until it got to 6 p.m. no one was listening.
The familiar voice shattered the silence like an explosion. In the back of the van, freshly resprayed and with new number plates, Dave Armstrong almost jumped out of his plastic chair.
‘So how are you, brother?’ Boatman’s words boomed over the speaker in the van. Dave watched Sammy turn down the volume on the amplifier control. Next to Dave, perched on the edge of another plastic chair, sat Kanaan Shah, looking excited.
‘I’m well,’ said another voice. This must be Malik, Boatman’s friend from the mosque. Boatman had arranged to meet him at the café after work. Under direction from Shah, Boatman had arrived at the café early, when it was still quiet, and had sat down at the table in the window. He probably thought it had been chosen because it was visible from the street. He didn’t know that their conversation was being overheard.
The van was parked in a cul-de-sac less than five hundred yards from the café. In addition, one pair of A4 officers sat in a parked car a short distance from the café; another pair, an Asian couple, were in the café itself, sitting at a table near Boatman and Malik. Dave had an uneasy feeling about Malik, particularly since he’d heard that it was he and a pal who’d attacked Liz. He didn’t think it was likely that there would be any trouble that evening, but he had laid plans to create a diversion, just in case.
‘And how is my married friend?’
It took Dave a moment to realise that Malik was referring to Boatman himself.
Boatman said, ‘It’s going very well.’ He hesitated. ‘She is being very devout.’
‘Ha,’ said Malik with a throaty laugh. His voice was deep, with a Birmingham accent. ‘That’s not how a new wife’s meant to behave – with her mind always on Allah and never on you. She’s a very pretty girl, Salim. I hope you are making the most of it.’
Boatman didn’t respond. Knowing him, Dave thought he was probably uncomfortable with the sexual overtones of Malik’s banter. But Malik didn’t seem to notice as he shifted the conversation on to football. He was a keen Aston Villa fan and spent several minutes discussing their manager and whether he would survive another season, and bemoaning the unwillingness of the owner to invest on the same scale as the moguls of the Premier League. There was an Asian boy in the youth team, but Malik didn’t rate his chances of graduating to the first eleven. ‘Too slow,’ he said dismissively.
‘You’ll miss the football, won’t you?’ said Boatman.
‘Yeah,’ said Malik casually, and Dave could visualise his shrug.
Then Boatman asked, ‘Are you ready for your trip?’
Beside him, Dave saw Kanaan nod intently, happy the conversation was getting down to business. Too soon, thought Dave, worried that the sudden shift of subject was too clumsy. Boatman had no subtlety and that put him at risk.
A waiter must have arrived at the table, for Malik said, ‘Orange squash,’ and Boatman asked for apple juice. There was a pause, then Boatman asked, ‘How soon will it be then?’