Secret Asset (3 page)

5

W
alking down the corridor to see Wetherby, Liz felt a mix of trepidation and anticipation. She had seen him only briefly since returning to work, when he had come out to greet her on the first morning, then had to rush off for a meeting in Whitehall. She was very disappointed but in her heart of hearts not surprised that he had returned Marzipan to Dave Armstrong's control, but she hoped that he would have something else equally important for her. Goodness knows, there seemed enough to do—one of the old hands in Counter-Terrorism had said the day before that even at the height of the IRA bombings in London, life at Thames House had not been so frantic.

Wetherby was standing at his desk when she came into the room. As he motioned for her to sit down, she thought not for the first time how little she really knew about the man. With his neatly pressed suit and polished Oxfords, he would merge easily with any group of well-dressed men. But a close observer would have noticed his eyes. Set in his unremarkable, slightly uneven features, they had a quiet watchfulness which could turn suddenly to humour or to coldness. Some people misread his apparently mild demeanour, but Liz knew from experience that a penetrating intelligence and determination lay behind the gentle appearance of the man. On her good days Liz knew she was important to him, and not just because of her skill as an investigator. But this professional relationship remained cool, and pervaded by a subtle irony, as if they knew each other better in some other life.

Wetherby said, “I had an Irish nanny when I was a boy, who used to ask me, after any upset, if I was feeling ‘well within myself.' Funny expression, but apt. How about you?”

He was smiling but watchful, and she looked him in the eye when she replied, “You honestly don't need to worry about me.”

“I hear you've been down with your mama. She well?”

“Yes, she's fine. Worried about what the lack of rain will do to the young shrubs.” Liz paused, then asked politely. “And how is Joanne? Any better?” Wetherby's wife suffered from a debilitating blood disease, which had made her a permanent semi-invalid. Liz thought how odd it was that he always enquired about her mother and she after his wife—without either ever having set eyes on the object of their concern.

“Not really,” said Wetherby with a frown and a slight shake of his head, as if to dismiss the unwelcome thought and move on. “I wanted to see you because I've got an assignment for you.”

“To do with this operation?” she asked hopefully.

“Not exactly,” said Wetherby. “Though I want you to stay in the section and keep involved while you work on this. It's a supplementary assignment, if you like, though it's important.”

What could be more important than an imminent suicide attack in Britain? Suddenly she wondered if she was being demoted; it seemed the only explanation.

“Does the name Sean Keaney mean anything to you?”

Liz thought for a moment. “The IRA man? Of course. But isn't he dead?”

“Yes, he died last month. Before he died he asked to see one of his former comrades, a man called James Maguire. That was strange because the two of them had never got on. Keaney was as much in favour of violence as anyone else in the IRA, but he was willing to talk as well—he took part in the secret discussions with Willie Whitelaw in the seventies. But Maguire always said that even talking with the British was tantamount to treason. Apparently he even suggested that Keaney might have been working for us.”

Liz raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“The answer is no,” said Wetherby. “Keaney didn't ever work for us.” He paused, and gave a short laugh. “But Maguire did, though he was overtly so hard line no one ever suspected him. Except Keaney. That's why when Keaney knew he was dying he asked to see Maguire. He wanted to make sure that what he said to him would get back to us. And it has.”

Wetherby paused again and looked pensive. “In the early nineties the IRA's Provisional Army Council became paranoid about penetration by British informants. Keaney came up with the idea of turning the tables: he decided to try and infiltrate us. And he told Maguire just before he died that he had succeeded in planting a secret asset in the ranks of the British security services.”

“A secret asset? You mean a mole?”

“Yes, that's just what I mean.”

“What did he mean by British security services? Which service was it supposed to be?”

“He didn't specify. Whether he knew or not, I don't know, but if he did, he didn't tell Maguire. The only fact he told Maguire is that this secret asset went to Oxford and it was there that he—or she—was recruited by an IRA sympathiser. Presumably by a don, though possibly not. The point is, according to Keaney, the mole successfully joined the security services. But more or less at the same time, the peace talks began, and the Good Friday Agreement followed. Keaney decided the mole operation wasn't worth the risk. So, according to Keaney, his agent was never activated.”

“Why did Keaney speak up now? It's been almost fifteen years.”

Wetherby pursed his lips. “When the IRA were caught bugging Stormont, it almost derailed the peace process. Keaney said he was worried that an exposé of IRA infiltration of British Intelligence would set back the process again, this time possibly for good. All the leaks about
our
informers in the IRA were embarrassing for the IRA, but really just confirmed what they and everyone else had long suspected. But if they had managed to infiltrate us, the news would be explosive.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Liz.

“You mean Keaney's reason for talking now? I simply don't know. I'm afraid where he's gone, we can't question him.”

“Is it possible,” Liz asked tentatively, “that Keaney might have made the whole thing up? You know, as a last blow by a lifetime enemy against Her Majesty's Government.”

“Could be,” said Wetherby. “But even if there's a chance that what he said might be true, we can't ignore it. If there really is a member of one of the intelligence services who was happy to spy for the IRA…who apparently joined on that basis…”

“But was never activated.”

“No,” said Wetherby. “But the fact he could have been is quite bad enough; someone like that might get up to anything. We've got to find out more about this, Liz. We can't just do nothing.”

Liz saw at once that he was right. Now that they had Keaney's confession, it would have to be followed up—she shuddered to think what would happen if it came to the attention of their political masters or the media, that they had taken no action. The prospect of another Burgess and Maclean, or worst of all, Philby or Blunt, exploding all over the tabloids' front pages didn't bear thinking about. And if MI5 were seen to have pooh-poohed the whole thing, it would ruin the reputation of the Service.

“So we need to conduct an investigation into this. And I want you to do it.”

“Me?” said Liz, unable to contain her surprise. She'd already concluded he would want her involved, but to run the inquiry? She had no false modesty about her work, but she still would have expected a more senior officer to handle such a case. But then perhaps it wasn't quite as important as Wetherby was making out.

“Yes, you.”

“But, Charles,” said Liz, a little nervously, “I've no experience in Counter-Espionage and very little of Northern Ireland.”

Wetherby shook his head. “I've discussed this with DG. For the moment it is to be left in our hands. We certainly don't want a Northern Ireland expert on this. I need a good investigator, someone with your flair, who is not well known in Northern Ireland, but has
some
knowledge of the place. You had a brief posting there—a few months, wasn't it?” Liz nodded. “Not long enough to get sucked in,” said Wetherby.

Liz suddenly felt rather flattered.

“If we don't know MI5 was the target, what about the other services?”

“I've talked with Geoffrey Fane,” he said, referring to his counterpart at MI6. “We both agreed that it was most likely that the target service was MI5. Fane has talked to C and they are not at all anxious to have an internal investigation at present. After all, we took over Northern Ireland from MI6 in the eighties; according to Keaney, the mole joined sometime in the early nineties. It would be MI5 they'd be aiming at. So Fane has agreed we begin by focusing here. He wants to second someone to the investigation, just to keep him informed”—he looked expressionlessly at Liz, who knew that though Wetherby respected Fane's professional skills, he did not entirely trust him—“but it will be someone junior. You're in charge.

“Now, you'll need a cover story for any interviews you conduct once you have a list of…” He paused momentarily, searching for the word he wanted, then said, “candidates. If you're making new enquiries about certain individuals, we have to have a good reason or it will soon get out and the mole will be alerted. I've agreed with DG that the cover story will be this: the Parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee is concerned that the security vetting of members of the intelligence services is not reviewed frequently enough. They think it should be done more often. So DG has agreed, on an experimental basis, to redo the vetting of a random sample, to see if it produces anything useful. That's what you will say if anyone asks why you are making enquiries about colleagues. You should use the corner conference room for any private meetings—I've reserved it for your use only. Otherwise, use your normal desk. As far as your colleagues are concerned, you are still in Counter-Terrorism. I think that's enough for now; we can sort out any other details later. Do you have any questions?”

“Just one. I'd like to talk to Maguire's controller.”

Wetherby gave a sad smile. “Not possible, I'm afraid,” he said. “It was Ricky Perrins.”

“Oh no.” Perrins had been killed in a car accident three weeks earlier—it was one of the first things Liz learned on her return to work. It was especially heartbreaking, as Perrins had two small children, and a young wife expecting a third.

“Obviously you should look at his report. You might want to talk to Maguire—but I don't think you'll get much more out of him. I gather that having said his piece to Ricky he didn't want any more to do with us.”

6

I
t was the three men on the street that alarmed her. Doris Feldman was used to all sorts of comings and goings in that shop across the road with all those strange young men—how oddly they dressed; she would never get used to that—but they were as regular as clockwork, and it was always quiet by seven-thirty in the evening.

Doris lived in the small flat above the ironmonger's shop she still owned and ran in Haringey. As she was fond of saying, she was London-born and London-bred, though she was happy to acknowledge that her father had been foreign, arriving from Minsk when he was barely in his teens, with a sack of gewgaws over one shoulder. He'd had a market stall at first, selling flowers, before graduating to fruit and veg, then when he'd scrimped and saved enough to lease a property of his own, it was the hardware business he went into. “There's money in nails,” he'd liked to say, even in the years when nails were literally ten a penny.

Never married, Doris inherited the shop when her parents died, which meant nothing much more than some stock and the long working hours needed to sell it. The growth of DIY stores had almost been the death of her small shop, but in this dense and not very prosperous part of North London, not everyone had a car, and her long opening hours and her encyclopaedic knowledge of the stock she kept in the boxes, drawers and shelves of her shop attracted sufficient custom to keep her afloat. “Mrs. Feldman, you are the Selfridges of Capel Street,” one of her customers once told her, and she'd liked that.

But it didn't help her sleep. Why was it as she entered first her seventh and then her eighth decade, she seemed to have more rather than less trouble getting through the night? Come two o'clock she'd tend to find herself waking slowly until her mind felt clear as a bell. She'd toss and turn, put on the light, turn on the radio, turn off the light and toss and turn some more, then give up—and finally get out of bed. She'd put on her dressing gown and heat up the kettle while Esther, her cat (and almost as old as Doris, at least in cat years), slept in her basket by the stove like a baby.

Which was why, this Friday night—Friday? What was she thinking of? It was Saturday already, three o'clock in the morning—Doris Feldman sat in the armchair warming her hands on her mug and looking out of the window at the street. How this neighbourhood had changed, though oddly, perhaps, it was quieter than it used to be. In her childhood there had been her kind, of course, immigrants from Russia and Poland, mixed with the Irish, who sometimes cut up rough, especially on a weekend night after too much time in the pub. Then after the war, the coloureds. Decent people many of them, but goodness they could make a noise, with their music and dancing and life lived on the street.

Then most recently, the Asians moved in, really the strangest of them all. Quiet people, well behaved—closing time for them meant locking up their newsagent shops, not for them a night out in the pubs. They certainly seemed to pray a lot—she had long got used to seeing the men going to their mosques at all sorts of hours. They'd think nothing of closing their shops right in the middle of the day. But not the bookshop across the street—someone always seemed to be there. People in and out all day long, though they didn't seem to buy a lot of books.

Yet at night the shop was closed, and there was never any sign of life in the building. So this Friday night as she sipped her mug of tea she sat bolt upright when she saw three men suddenly appear in the street and gather in a huddle by the front door of the bookshop. They were dressed in dark clothes, jeans and anoraks, and one man wore a leather jacket. You couldn't see their faces. One of them pointed towards the back of the building, another shook his head and then as two of the men stood on either side, looking up and down the street, the third man was right up against the door—what was he doing—fiddling with the lock? Then suddenly Doris saw the door open and the next minute all three men had slipped inside, and the door closed quickly behind them.

Doris sat there, astonished, briefly wondering if she had seen the men or just imagined them. Nonsense, she told herself, my body's getting old but I'm not going cuckoo. She had never spoken to the bookshop owner, didn't even know his name, but someone was breaking into his shop. Or maybe not—maybe they were friends. Didn't look like it. Up to no good, at this time of night she was sure. Plotting, she wouldn't be surprised, like so many of these young men. She shuddered at the thought, and it was from a sense of duty as well as concern that she got up and dialled 999.

         

Inside the shop the three men worked quickly. Two went upstairs, and, making sure the curtains were tightly drawn, searched with a torch until they found, at the very back, a square trapdoor in the ceiling which gave access to the loft. Standing on a chair, one of the men pushed away the trapdoor and hoisted himself up with a boost from the man below, who then handed up to him a small tool case. Holding his torch low so it wouldn't accidentally send light outside, the man in the attic examined the beams until he found one directly above a corner of the large room below. Within sixty seconds he was drilling, a slow process since the drill was underpowered to keep its decibel level low.

Suddenly his colleague was standing below the open trapdoor, speaking urgently. “That was Special Branch. The local police have had a call from a neighbour, someone across the street. She saw us entering.”

“Bugger. What are they going to do?”

“They want to know if we're done in here. There's still time to leave before the car gets sent.”

“No. I need at least ten more minutes.”

“Okay, I'll tell them.”

He went away and the man in the attic resumed drilling. He had just come through the beam and was about to put the probe and microscopic camera gently down the hole he'd drilled when his colleague came back. “The car's on its way, but they know we're here. They're going to go and speak to the neighbour who called. Apparently it's some old lady.”

“Okay. That shouldn't be too much of a problem.”

And ten minutes later, having carefully brushed away the sawdust made by his drill, and carefully closing over the small drilled hole with filler, the man jumped down and, getting up on the chair, replaced the trapdoor. “I'm done up there. Anything else need doing?”

His colleague shook his head. “I've got two mikes in—one's in the plug in the corner, and the other's in the back of the VCR.”

“Have you checked them with Thames?”

“Yes, they can hear them loud and clear. Come on.” They went downstairs and collected their other colleague, who had put three listening devices in place, one above the inside of the shop's front door, another in the owner's small office, and a third in the stockroom in the back. Now even the faintest whisper made on either floor would be heard in Thames House.

Across the street, Doris Feldman poured hot water onto a tea bag for the nice young policeman who had rung her bell. He knew all about the strange goings-on across the street, and had even suggested they might want her help. She didn't see the same three figures slip out of the front door of the bookshop and disappear into the night. But by then Doris was no longer worried.