A Gentleman's Game Read online

  A sudden perversity struck her, watching the multiple television images of the disaster, that this was happening just minutes away. She’d been on Oxford Street the night before, Selfridges and the Marks & Spencer, before heading home.

  By tube, of course.

  “Who’s claiming it?” Chace asked.

  “No one,” said Poole. He looked at her with a grim smile. “Yet.”

  She nodded slightly, scanning the wall, searching for any new facts to absorb. There were none, and she realized that both Poole and Lankford were watching her, waiting for the next move, the next step.

  “We won’t have marching orders until Crocker’s done with C,” she told them. “And probably not even then. Crisis call, they brought us in while waiting for another shoe to drop.”

  “Follow-up strikes?” Lankford asked.

  “Well, that’s one possibility, isn’t it, Chris?” she said. “Three in one go, there could be more waiting in the wings.”

  “Immediate panic dies down, then everyone holds their breath waiting for the next one,” Poole agreed. “Could be tomorrow, next week, who knows.”

  “If there’s more coming at all.”

  Lankford scowled at Chace, then Poole, then at the plasma wall. “So what do we do in the meantime?”

  “Nothing,” Chace said.

  “Nothing?”

  Lankford stared at her, and Chace wasn’t certain if it was outrage or simple impatience she was seeing in his expression. She wasn’t certain she cared, either. All of twenty-six, an inch or so taller than Chace’s five foot ten, black hair and blue eyes that combined with a lack of distinctive features to make him a perfect “gray man,” as they were called in the trade. Nothing about Chris Lankford leaped out upon first impression, or upon fifth, for that matter. But he had the energy about him, not of youth, but rather of inexperience. It charged him, made his engine race, made him want to leap into the breach, and might, Chace mused, get him killed sooner rather than later.

  She recognized it, because she had arrived in the Section with it herself. With more of it, in fact. A woman in the Special Section, she had come in believing she had a lot to prove. It had taken almost a year before she understood that arriving in the first place had been proof enough.

  Still, Lankford worried her, and this ill-concealed hunger for revenge only added to her concerns. He’d had one go into the field since being named Minder Three, hence his provisional status. It had been in St. Petersburg, six weeks back, and he’d gone with Chace as her backup, and had failed dismally at the outset, only to redeem himself—marginally—later in the op. Whether he knew it or not, Lankford was on thin ice with Chace and, worse, with D-Ops.

  “Nothing,” Chace repeated. “Unless you know something you’re not sharing with Nicky and me, Chris?”

  He took it in, the frustration visible, then let it go with a shake of his head and turned back to watch the plasma screens.

  “You two get down the Pit,” Chace told Poole. “I’ll go up to the Boss’s office, wait for him there.”

  “Bench-warming?” Poole asked.

  “You could go through the circulars these past six months, see if D-Int dropped anything that might point a finger.”

  “Will do.”

  “For whatever good it’ll be worth,” Lankford groused. “Bit too late to act on it, don’t you think?”

  “Not if there’s another one coming,” Chace said and, scooping up her helmet, headed for the lift and the sixth floor.

  3

  London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of the Chief of Service

  07 August 1720 GMT

  The SIS headquarters at 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall Cross, had many names, and few of them were complimentary. Five stories deep, towering over the Thames behind triple-paned glass and electronic countermeasures, crammed with fiber optics and copper wire, protected by gates and guards and more surveillance than even the most paranoid pedestrian could imagine, it was considered by many to be an eyesore, and far too ostentatious to house M16. Disparagingly referred to as Babylon-on-Thames, or the Ceauşescu Towers, or—Paul Crocker’s personal favorite—Legoland, it had an interior that was a maze of white corridors and nondescript doors with only the barest departmental labeling, part of the ever-present attempt to maintain secrecy in a Service that still winced whenever it hired anyone named Guy, Donald, or, worst of all, Kim.

  It worked, and more than one fresh-faced officer, new to the Firm, had found himself lost in the halls and in dire need of direction.

  The nicest office, situated just below the top floor, belonged to the Chief of Service, currently Sir Francis Barclay or, in keeping with the tradition established by Mansfield Cumming in 1922, C. From the hall, it looked as nondescript as any other in the building. Inside the outer office, it had desks for not one but three personal assistants. But once one went through and into the inner office, everything changed, as if all pretension to modernity had been rejected in favor of those good old days when spying was deemed a Gentlemen’s Game. Thick Oriental carpet and a mahogany desk that could keep eight afloat should the Thames burst its banks, three modestly comfortable leather-backed chairs arrayed to face it, and its larger brother positioned behind, to make certain everyone seated knew their place in the room. A separate sitting area off to the side with two couches, two armchairs, and a coffee table. A sidebar heavy with crystal glasses and decanters, and the mandatory door leading to the private washroom, which, rumor held, contained not only the toilet but also a shower and a whirlpool bath.

  Paul Crocker hated the office.

  Sitting on the far right as he faced the desk, with Deputy Chief of Service Donald Weldon to his immediate left, and Weldon himself flanked by Crocker’s opposite number, Simon Rayburn, the Director of Intelligence, Crocker thought the only thing he hated more than the office was the man seated opposite him.

  “The bloody Harakat ul-Mujihadin?” Barclay asked, incredulous. “Are you certain?”

  “The Abdul Aziz faction, we think,” Rayburn replied calmly. He was a small man, slight and drawn, and his voice was the same, and Crocker often had to strain to hear him when Rayburn spoke. “But it’s only a working theory. The tape offers nothing to disprove it.”

  “But it doesn’t prove it, either?”

  “Not conclusively, no, sir.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  Weldon slid forward in his seat, saying, “The BBC, sir. Delivered to them via messenger shortly before the first train was hit.”

  “The BBC had advance warning, and they neglected to pass it on?”

  “The timing is in question,” Rayburn said. “They didn’t know what they had, and before anyone could review the tape, the events of the day overtook them. As soon as they realized what they were looking at, they handed it over to the Home Office.”

  “It’s a wonder it made it to us at all,” Barclay mused, and despite himself, Crocker found himself in agreement. The Home Office/Foreign Office rivalry was well known and ongoing and extended to an intense rivalry between the Security Services and SIS.

  A rivalry that justly took a backseat in light of the day’s events.

  “Well, let’s see it,” Barclay said impatiently.

  All four men turned in their seats to face the screen hanging on the far wall, above the sidebar. Rayburn targeted the screen with the remote in his hand, and a still frame of a young Pakistani male—Crocker didn’t put him a day over twenty—flickered to life, standing in front of a bare white plaster wall. The man wore khakis and a blue short-sleeved button-up shirt, and dirty white sneakers. Behind him, resting against the wall, was a well-used backpack, navy blue with black straps, and beside it what appeared to be a shallow stack of cardboard sheets, propped upright.

  “I’m not hearing anything,” Barclay said. “Why am I not hearing anything?”

  “No audio, sir,” Rayburn answered. “Only the video. If you’ll note, they’ve done an exceptionally good job staging this. The background tells us alm
ost nothing about where this was shot, or even when.”

  “They? How many?”

  “At least two, sir—the man we’re watching, and someone behind the camera. Here, you’ll see.”

  Rayburn moved his thumb, and the image went into motion, the young man kneeling to open the backpack, turning it toward the camera, demonstrating that it was empty. Then he rose and reached with both hands for something off screen. He returned to the backpack and set two clear glass liter bottles on the floor, then reached toward the camera a second time. A hand, presumably the cameraman’s, entered the frame and handed the young man a metal funnel. The hand had a similar skin tone, and Crocker supposed it was another Pakistani, perhaps, but that was only a guess. If it was the Harakat ul-Mujihadin, their ranks were filled with Kashmiri refugees as well as Arab elements. Composition of the Abdul Aziz faction was less known, but Crocker suspected that it drew recruits from many of the same locations.

  On the screen, the young man was now filling the bottles, using a red jerry can and the funnel.

  “Petrol?” Barclay asked.

  “Presumably,” Rayburn said. “There aren’t many liquids more flammable, and it’s easy enough to acquire. Which may be the point in showing us this.”

  The young man set the jerry can aside, then screwed a cap onto each bottle. Finished, he placed the bottles upright into the backpack, then rose again and reached in the direction of the camera. The same hand presented him with a pistol, then with a clip, and then with a box of ammunition.

  “The gun is an FN P-35, for the record,” Rayburn said softly.

  “Thank you, Simon,” Barclay said drily.

  Crocker frowned, looked toward Rayburn, and saw that the Director of Intelligence was glancing to him in turn. It made Crocker’s frown deepen. The FN P-35 was known more commonly as the Browning Hi-Power, a popular enough firearm to those who used it, and in and of itself, nothing more needed to be noted. Except the fact that the Browning was the sidearm of choice for the Special Air Service, and while the gun itself was produced by Fabrique Nationale, a Belgian concern, and named after an American gunmaker—John M. Browning—there were many who thought of the weapon as Very British Indeed.

  The young man was very deliberately loading the clip, one round at a time, to capacity. When he finished, he closed the box of ammunition, slid it away, and seated the clip into the pistol. Then he racked the slide, chambering the first round, and set the safety.

  “Interesting,” Crocker said.

  “Yes,” Rayburn murmured.

  Weldon turned in his chair, looking first to Crocker, then to Rayburn, confused. Opposite him, Rayburn tapped on the desk.

  “Explain.”

  “Very practiced, sir,” Crocker said. “He knows just what he’s doing with that weapon.”

  “One would expect as much.”

  “No one wouldn’t, not necessarily.” Crocker tried to keep his tone civil. “A suicide bomber doesn’t need training, sir, he needs indoctrination. You put him in a madrassa and fill his head as full of Wahhabism as it can hold. You tell him he’s got Allah and infinite virgins waiting for him on the other side. But you don’t worry about training him as a fighter, because it’s a waste of both your time and his. His job is to wear a bomb and die in the name of God, and your job is to make sure he does just that and doesn’t have second thoughts along the way. You don’t worry about training him in the proper usage of a firearm.”

  “You’re reaching, Paul,” Barclay objected. “That boy isn’t older than twenty, and God knows there are plenty of ten-year-olds on the Subcontinent who know their way around guns. Pakistani, from the looks of him, too. Probably fought in Kashmir.”

  “I agree, sir,” Crocker said.

  “Then you see my point.”

  “And you’ve made mine. If he’s a Kashmiri veteran, why waste him on a suicide run?”

  “You’ll want to pay attention to this next bit,” Rayburn said, gently enough that Crocker wasn’t certain who was being admonished.

  The young man had finished loading the backpack, leaving it open, and now was taking up the cardboard that had remained propped against the wall. He got to his feet once more and, holding the cardboard sheets against his chest, began showing them, one at a time, to the camera. The writing on each sheet was clear, all caps, written in black marker.

  The first read:

  JIHAD IS THE SIXTH PILLAR OF ISLAM

  “No, it isn’t,” Weldon muttered, annoyed. “There is no Sixth Pillar of Islam.”

  “Wahhabism at its best,” Rayburn agreed.

  The young man let the first card drop, turning the second to the camera. The man’s expression, Crocker noted with some alarm, wasn’t much different from the look his wife, Jenny, wore when she was teaching preschoolers.

  YOU, ENGLAND, WE CALL YOU KUFAR—INFIDELS

  The card dropped, and the third was turned.

  A NATION OF MUSHRIKUN CANNOT STAND, SO SAYS THE ONE GOD

  “Mushrikun?” Barclay asked.

  “Polytheists,” Rayburn said.

  “Since when has C of E been polytheism?”

  “Since God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost entered Christian dogma, sir. But it’s not the C of E that’s being targeted here. Wahhabist doctrine indicts capitalism as a form of polytheism, the love of money being akin to worship, etc., etc. The wealth of the West, namely the First World, versus the poverty everywhere else.”

  The fourth card was presented:

  A NATION OF VERMIN WILL BE GASSED IN THEIR TUNNELS

  “Veiled reference to Israel, perhaps,” Rayburn said. “Perhaps an oil reference as well, possibly directed at our presence in Iraq specifically, the Middle East generally.”

  The man raised the fifth card.

  WE ARE THE BROTHERHOOD OF HOLY WARRIORS

  “The English translation of Harakat ul-Mujihadin,” Rayburn said. “Also can be the ‘movement’ of holy warriors.”

  The last card was raised to the camera.

  THERE IS ONE GOD, ALL PRAISE TO HIM

  The young man turned the card and kissed it, then folded it along the middle and slid it into the backpack, between the bottles of petrol. He zipped the backpack closed, then settled it onto his shoulders before walking out of the frame. The camera remained focused on the empty wall, then went to static.

  Rayburn switched off the monitor, and Crocker and Weldon turned with him to face Barclay once more. Barclay remained focused on the dead monitor, brow furrowed, and Crocker wondered what, exactly, his C was thinking. Much as he detested Barclay, Crocker couldn’t—and wouldn’t—deny the man’s intelligence.

  “Why no audio?” Barclay asked after a moment. “Why not simply tell us who they are and what they’re doing? Why the signs?”

  “No clues,” Crocker said.

  Barclay looked at him sharply. “Are you editorializing, or is that an answer?”

  “They didn’t want to leave us anything we could use, sir.”

  “I agree with Paul,” Rayburn said. “The whole production is designed to give us only the barest essentials, and even then to leave several questions unanswered. There’s no way to tell when the video was shot. The presumption is that it was made this morning sometime, but it could easily have been shot three months ago, and we’d be none the wiser. My people have yet to do an in-depth analysis, but I’ll stake my job that they won’t pull anything we can use, sir.”

  “No ambient noise, no way to target their safehouse,” Weldon mused. “No idea where they’re working from, or if there are more of them waiting somewhere in London.”

  Barclay waved a manicured hand at Weldon. “That’s Box’s problem, thankfully, not ours.”

  “It’s all our problem if there are others set to do it again,” Crocker said.

  “Domestic issues, it falls under the Home Office and the Security Services. Our problem at the moment is what, exactly, do I tell the Prime Minister when he summons me back to Downing Street? I cannot go to him four hours
after the fact and say we’re still exploring leads. The Government is already desperate to formulate a response, and an appropriate response, and that cannot happen without a target.”

  Crocker resisted the instinct to wince at Barclay’s words. It was a given that HMG would respond, and Crocker believed not only in the right to retaliate but in the necessity to do so. But for Crocker, any response would be as a necessity of security, would have to demonstrate not only to the enemy who had attacked them on their own soil, but to those other enemies watching and waiting in the wings, that such violence would not go unanswered. It was an issue of domain, of self-defense, not one of vengeance, and Barclay’s choice of words confirmed Crocker’s suspicion that his C could not discern a difference.

  It was only one of the legion of problems Crocker had with Barclay, both professionally and personally.

  While Crocker had entered SIS out of the Army in the late hours of the cold war, Barclay had come in through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. While Crocker had begun his career in the Special Section as a Minder, Barclay had begun behind a desk in London, then moved to other desks, abroad, until he had become Head of Station in Prague. It was in Prague that the two men first encountered each other, though they had never actually met face-to-face during Operation: Landslide. Instead, all of Crocker’s contact had been through the Prague Number Two, Donald Weldon, the man now seated to his left.

  History, Crocker mused, is a hamster wheel.

  Prague had gone horribly wrong, Crocker had been shot, the man he’d been sent to retrieve murdered by the Czech army as he’d tried to break through the fence at the border. Crocker blamed Barclay for abandoning not just the operation but the agents involved. Barclay blamed Crocker for playing cowboys and Indians with both the KGB and the Czech SSB.