‘You mucky little bugger,’ said Finberg, keeping the camera going on its motor drive, film winding out of the big bulk magazine clipped to its back. ‘Yuck. Must have huge laundry bills.’
Later, a van came to collect the equipment. Johnny took the film and the tapes to the office, in a square between Knightsbridge and the Brompton Road. A camera looked at him and the barrier into the car park lifted. He slotted his little Mazda sports car into a row of expensive toys, two Mercedes coupés, a hot BMW and a whole line of Discoveries. In the far corner were a couple of black taxi cabs and an LEB electricity van. A trick borrowed from the office for when surveillance transport really had to be invisible. A lift took him up to front reception where the girl was indeed just as pretty as Finberg had said.
‘Mr Kay,’ she said, giving him a big inviting smile, ‘I’m Sam. Mr Sibley’s expecting you. Second floor, straight opposite the lift.’
‘It’s Johnny,’ he said, returning the smile.
Sibley’s office had a bank of TV monitors on one wall, all showing horse-racing. The opposite wall was dominated by a huge and gloomy oil painting of red-clad British soldiers in close quarters combat with tribesmen, desert in the foreground, sombre rocky crags behind.
‘Did it go all right, Johnny?’ asked Sibley.
‘Fine. Ansell’s got some strange tastes.’
‘Get on all right with Adam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ve got something for you tomorrow. Bit different. A spot of B-and-E. Have to be late in the day. Nothing for you before that. It’s all set up, so take the day off and come in for a briefing at five p.m.’
‘Breaking and entering? Where do we stand?’
‘If you get caught, you mean? Same place you would have stood in the office. In it up to your neck, I’d say. But you won’t get caught, will you, Johnny?’
They walked through the college grounds holding hands and laughing and the few passers-by who took any notice must have thought how happy they were together. Maggie was quoting a long nonsense poem by Edward Lear at him because you always had something harmless going on, but he was genuinely enjoying it. For two people who had been introduced just an hour and a half earlier, they were doing pretty well. Maggie had been the only surprise at the briefing. Johnny was quite sure he’d never seen her before so she’d probably come from Century, not Thames House. She had a certain extra touch of colour and urbanity about her that went with MI6.
She came to the end of the poem and there was no one near by. ‘Pasteur House,’ she said as they passed a sign, ‘it’s the brick building at the end. See the double door?’
‘I see it,’ he said, remembering the briefing. ‘Inside, straight through the little kitchen and turn left. That way you miss the front desk.’
‘Ten out of ten. Got the keys?’
‘Of course.’
Johnny had arrived at the briefing room next to Sibley’s office on the dot of five after a day which started with squash, swimming and breakfast at the Lansdowne and then took in a quick dash down to Bisley for a session on the pistol range. This was his second day and apart from Sibley, Sam and Adam Finberg, he had still seen no one else there. He wondered if he was being kept out of the way of the others while he earned his spurs and showed he was there to stay. Two other people came into the room with Sibley. The first was a short black-bearded man with heavy eyebrows and a fixed, cross expression. Immediately behind him came a slender, elegant young woman with a deep tan and long shining black hair.
‘Johnny,’ said Sibley, ‘this is Maggie and this gentleman represents our client.’ He didn’t give a name.
The man looked hard at him and went to the podium. He pressed a button and the projector spread a map across the screen.
‘Queen Victoria College, Barnes,’ he said. ‘The medical research centre occupies three buildings at the south-east corner.’ He threw an arrow on to the map with a light wand. ‘Pasteur House is the one we’re interested in.’ He looked morosely at Johnny and Maggie. ‘There’s a man trying to make a reputation working in there. His name’s Matthew Quill. Officially, he’s doing research on behavioral effects of food additives. He’s been trying to prove some of the fast-food chains use special sugars to give their products a mildly addictive quality. Unofficially, we believe that’s led him into trespassing into an area with defence implications which overlaps with certain important work we’re doing.’
He handed a sheet of paper each to Maggie and Johnny and replaced the map on the screen with a list of names.
‘There is a dark green filing cabinet beside his desk in room 102P. In the top drawer there should be a file marked “Combination Effects”. We want copies of documents from that file which mention any of the ten compounds on this list.’
Ivor broke in, looking at Johnny. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be able to take that list with you.’
‘Well,’ said the other man sharply, ‘it’s not that difficult to learn, surely?’
The first compound ran to thirteen syllables and started with propylparahydroxy…
‘We would also like to see any paperwork in the file which mentions any of the following – and this one is certainly not a list you can take with you.’
The screen showed a short list, divided up into four groups. The first looked like place names: Maxton Heath, Westrop Manor and Flaxmore. The second was a list of names: J. Davies, G. Bacon, W. Collishaw. The third consisted of companies: PBD Biosystems, Chempropa International and Murray, Sinclair Hatton. The last had just two constituents, CN512 and Rage.
‘Take as long as you want,’ said Ivor, which was the wrong thing to say because for Johnny, it immediately became a matter of pride and when, three minutes later, Maggie said, ‘OK,’ he had to nod, even though he wasn’t yet completely sure.
‘Looking for those is just the first part,’ said the bearded man. ‘The trickier bit comes next. Three doors down from Quill’s office, in 108P, is a lab. Just inside the door on the wall to the right is a glass cabinet. Inside it, Quill has an experiment in progress which will end some time tomorrow and which, if he’s done it right, may confirm some ideas he has which we do not want confirmed. The cabinet is temperature controlled and if you simply open it, that will show up on the monitor graph.’ A photograph of the cabinet flashed up on the screen. ‘You have to note the temperature on the big dial, stop the monitor with the orange button here and then open it.’
He lifted the lid of a black leather case and brought out a small metal box with a battery pack attached. ‘In this box are four glass containers marked identically to the ones you will find in Quill’s cabinet and labelled consecutively starting with number sixteen. You will substitute these, leaving them exactly as the others are positioned, and bring back the four you find there.’
He turned and flashed the light pointer at the temperature dial. ‘This is very important. You must not take longer than one minute to make the switch. You must then close the cabinet and wait for the dial to get back exactly to the original temperature reading before you press the blue button to start the monitor roll moving again. That way there will be no visible discontinuity. If you do that wrong, Quill will know the cabinet has been opened and then he will know why his experiment has failed to give him the result he hoped.’
The double doors into Pasteur House weren’t locked. So far they were still in the clear, within the excuse envelope of two people looking for a friend who’d gone slightly the wrong way. The little kitchen was empty, a place of thin institutional hospitality judging by the open boxes of tea bags, a catering tin of coffee powder and a wooden rack of mugs. They went through it to a corridor, walking confidently, smiles on their faces to set the tone for any chance encounter. Room 102P had a Yale lock and this was the moment of crossing the Rubicon. They knocked quietly and there was no answer. The keys for the office and the lab were almost identical, but had the figures 2 and 8 scratched on the grips to show which was which. Johnny slipped 2 into the lock but it wouldn’t turn. He fiddled with it while Maggie looked at him, alarmed. It wouldn’t go. He tried the other one. The door opened. He let out a snort of irritation but she was past him, into the office, pulling him behind her. He closed the door quietly.