He heard the soft footfall of a woman.
'It was a good question, Mr Hegner. He met neither the facilitator nor the bomb-maker. He says he heard men talking last night. They were fearful, both about the target reconnaissance and the makeup of the device. What he heard, was not supposed to but did, the Scorpion and the Engineer would have returned next week or the week after. I suppose that means they're out of the country. Does that help you, Mr Hegner? Is it enough to justify your trip?'
'Thank you, Captain, you done good.'
On the drive out to the runway where the small jet was parked, he phoned Cindy in Riyadh and told her what he wanted. He apologized to the senators and their staffers, already strapped in their seats, for having caused the delay in their schedule, and nestled down to doze.
They chewed it, dogs with a dry, meatless bone.
In Riverside Villas, Dickie Naylor shuffled between meetings. The building's lights now blazed down on the Embankment and spread far enough to glimmer on the river. All day, he had stood his ground firmly enough to dictate that it was he who ran the section, not Mary Reakes, and would run it for one further week.
He hustled along a gloomy upper-floor corridor and she was in his wake.
He rapped on the door of the assistant director, Tristram, to whom he reported. It would be the last meeting of the day, and his age wearied him. He had been up since six, out of his front door by seven and in his office by eight. Tiredness seeped through him. He had met with the surveillance people, the immigration teams who watched over ferry and airports, the duty liaison man from Special Branch, the Anti-Terrorist unit and, last, the security official from the Dutch embassy. The assistant director had driven back from a family christening in the north-west.
Naylor was called inside. He gave a résumé of what he knew, precious little.
Maybe he'd stumbled over his words too many times.
Mary would have done it better, more crisply, but he had the determination. He finished and pushed across the table the three photographs of a boy from a distant land: one showed a shadowed figure, black and white, caught on a CCTV camera at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport; another, similarly grainy, revealed the same boy coming into Arrivals at Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport, same T-shirt, easily recognizable. The third was a colour portrait of the boy, Ibrahim Hussein, who wore on his head and shoulders a loosely wound khaffiyeh cloth. In none of the pictures was there an indication of threat, danger. He had a pleasant face with a wisp of shyness in his eyes and modesty at his mouth. Naylor was reflecting that it was impossible, from the boy's features and expression and from the calm of his gait at King Khalid and at Schiphol, to believe that the threat and the danger were real. A pencil tapped the table in front of him and his head started up. Beside him he glimpsed Mary Reakes's eyebrows roll upwards.
'You all right, Dickie?' Tristram asked.
'Yes, yes.'
'Don't mind me saying it, but you look knackered.'
'I'm fine, thank you.'
'Well, that's that…So, where do we go? Let's throw it around.'
He had his hand over his mouth as if that would hide his yawn but it engulfed him. 'Sorry about that. We go with the intelligence. If it's necessary for a lock-down in London, so be it. We jack up the threat status. I don't see the alternative.'
There was the hiss of Mary's breath. Then she chipped, 'It's hardly "intelligence", more like a bucket of supposition. What we have is a deception about a visit to family in Yemen and a flight to Holland. The rest is all theatrical. I suggest we wait until the Dutch have brought us more, picked him up or provided proof of his leaving their territory. Simply put, we don't have enough.'
Sensing the opportunity, Naylor hit out, 'It will not be me, I assure you, who will ever lay himself open to the accusation that I was the man who ignored the intelligence, or supposition, indicating the risk of an imminent atrocity.'
The assistant director kept his silence but twisted the pencil faster.
She said, 'That's a cheap shot, Dickie. I'm saying we don't have enough to ratchet the threat status. The intelligence isn't there. We cannot do lock-down — with all that it costs, and the manpower — until we know more. We should watch, listen and learn, then decide. In my experience, the American community are paranoid and hysterical. Bluntly, they cry, "Wolf."'
Her experience, Naylor knew, was substantial and growing. She had been fast-tracked after a degree in Islamic Studies, first-class honours, was fluent in Arabic, had worked in Northern Ireland with distinction, then run a desk in D Branch and had been integral in the team that had put seven young Muslims from the home counties into the cells at Belmarsh. If Mary Reakes hadn't been snapping at his heels, hadn't had the paint chart ready, he would have admired her. But he could feel her breath on his ankles and he loathed her. 'I doubt we have time to dither,' he said.
How many times had he sat in meetings since Nine-Eleven, more particularly since Seven-Seven1 where scraps of intelligence had been thrown into the ring? Endless hours spent digesting little morsels of information. Mornings, afternoons and evenings exhausted with staring at fuzzy or focused photographs of the supposed enemy, and all the little bastards smiled at whatever camera had caught them.
'Emotive language, Dickie,' she said. 'Only trouble is that you don't have enough for lock-down.'
There was a knock at the door.
Tristram called, 'Please, come in.'
It was Penny. She tiptoed across the carpet, dropped an envelope on to the table, and was gone.
Naylor opened it. A photograph spilled clear and a three-line note. He read, then passed the note to Mary. No satisfaction showed on his face. He stared down at the grey images. He saw her jolted, and she pushed the note across the polished surface.
In a flat voice, Tristram intoned, 'Well, Immigration's cameras at Waterloo's terminal would seem to me to suspend the argument. Rather fortunate that our friend is wearing that ludicrously recognizable T-shirt. What is it — a swan? Peculiar, bizarre, but it's him and he's here.'
Mary said, 'Actually, it's The Threatened Swan, by Jan Asselyn, early seventeenth century, housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Last year, on a trip with my art-appreciation group, I saw it. It's impressive and—'
'I think, Mary, that it is not the moment for an assessment of Asselyn's work; I'll brief the director in the morning, but you can take it as read. It's lock-down and bugger the budget. Thank you, Mary. Dickie, would you, please, stay on for a moment?'
She swept up the photograph and the note and left them.
He was waved back to his seat and offered a drink. Didn't usually accept alcohol at work, but said he'd have a Scotch with ice and liberal water. It was given him and the assistant director perched on his desk, let his feet swing.
'She's a bright girl, has a brain on a computer's scale, just needs a bit of polishing round the edges — please, Dickie, don't huff and puff, because you're not good at it. You're right, of course. You saw it coming before that wretched photograph surfaced and that's because you're an old-school warrior. Suspicion, like malaria, gets into the veins and stays there. You've got it, a bad dose…Anyway, cheers and good health.'
Glasses were raised, clinked.
'I'm going to miss you, Dickie. Very sincerely, I will. Two reasons. First, my being something of a protégé of your father-in-law but, second, for your common sense and good reasoning. I'd, keep you on if I could. Human Resources wouldn't hear of it. I can't. On Friday night, Dickie, you finish. Now to the point. You wouldn't disagree with me if I suggested that we wriggled through by the skin of our teeth after the Underground and bus bombs — what the Iron Duke said after Waterloo is appropriate: "The nearest run thing that you ever saw." The knives were out for us but we were only nicked, and that won't be repeated. Another major catastrophe in London and there'll be a wholesale cull of the veterans, and those bloody little people in Anti-Terrorism will be crawling all over us and taking primacy. Lifetimes of endeavour, Dickie, yours, mine and many others', will be reduced to dust and ashes. You're following me?'