She turned the Yale lock and slipped inside. There was a sound coming from upstairs: someone was moving about at leisure, unaware that she was in the house. She stepped back into the garden and dialled the emergency services on her mobile. The woman instructed her not to confront the intruder but to wait at a distance from the house, which was what she planned to do once she had retrieved a baseball bat she kept in her umbrella stand. She darted inside again, but as she seized the bat a dark shape appeared at the top of the stairs. She dived from the house, conscious only of the need for room to swing the bat. In almost no time at all, the man had rushed the stairs and taken hold of her, and was trying to drag her inside. She screamed and slipped from his grasp, then let the bat slide through her hands until she felt the knob at the top of the handle. She drew it back over her shoulder and brought it down against the side of the man’s head, causing him to yell out. A second, much cleaner shot concentrated all her energy into the fat end of the bat and felled him, unconscious, into the path of another man who had come down the stairs. The obstruction gave her a fraction of a second to run through the gateway and dive behind the hedge, but in that moment she registered that the man had pulled a gun from his waistband. A bullet whistled through the hedge and tore into a car parked in the road, setting off its alarm. She spun round and ran a few yards down the street to shelter behind a van, hearing the screech of a police patrol car in the road. Two officers tumbled out just before bullets exploded in the bodywork and windscreen of their vehicle. A stocky man in trainers and an oversized leather blouson stepped into the road. The policemen had dropped behind the patrol car, but instead of running off, the gunman kept moving forward, taking aim and firing with cool deliberation. Herrick popped up and saw his close-cropped head through the front windscreen of the van and decided that unless she did something, he would kill the officers.
Crouching low, she hurtled along the gutter and rounded the front of the van. The man was obscured from her, but from the sound of two further deafening shots she judged he was only a matter of feet away. She moved a few paces, saw his back then lunged at him, leading with her left foot and bringing all her weight down with the blow. She connected squarely with the back of his neck and knocked him forwards. But the gun was still in his hand. She jumped to the right, knowing that she had just one chance, and struck him with all her might across the shoulder, aware of the tennis-serve grunt that escaped her lungs. The man was still on his feet, but the gun had flown from his hands and landed under the van. For a split second they looked at each other, then he scrambled away, his feet slipping momentarily on the snowfall of almond blossom, to flee down the centre of the road with his arms working double time like a character from a silent movie. Herrick crouched to retrieve the gun and without straightening, swung round and fired at the retreating figure. She missed, aimed again but didn’t pull the trigger because one of the policemen yelled at her. ‘Hey, Stop that. Put the gun down!’ She stood up and handed it to him, and both officers set off after the man, but by now he was fifty yards away and opening a car door. In one movement he slid behind the wheel and started the car engine. Seconds later his car had vanished.
With a burst radiator and a flat, the police car was hardly in a state to pursue him. The officers radioed details of the fugitive and returned to examine the injured man, who had come round but was still lying on the ground in a daze. His head was bleeding copiously and Herrick went to fetch a cloth from her kitchen to stem the flow. She told the policemen that the incident should be regarded as a security matter and that she would need to make a call. They stood looking a little bemused as she phoned one of the Chief ’s assistants at Vauxhall Cross and asked him to get in touch with the local station.
The injured man struggled to a sitting position and began to curse and wail in a foreign language.
One of the officers knelt down beside him. ‘What the hell’s he speaking?’
‘I think you’ll find it’s Albanian,’ replied Herrick. She looked down at the stocky little man with russet-coloured skin and slightly protruding ears. He could be the Albanian interrogator’s brother.
‘With the way you must have hit him, miss, he’s lucky to be alive.’ He pressed the cloth to the gash on the side of the man’s head. ‘But by heck, I’m glad you dropped the other fellow. He meant business.’
The other officer looked at the gun and read the inscription on the side of the barrel. ‘Desert Eagle fifty AE pistol - Israel Military Industries Limited.’ He paused. ‘You only have to see what it’s done to the car to know you don’t want to be in the way of that thing.’
People began to gather in the street and soon afterwards an ambulance and three other squad cars arrived. The man was taken away for treatment under guard while Herrick went inside with one of the two constables to find the house turned upside down. The policeman observed that burglars normally made a pile of the things they intended to steal, but in this case the obvious items of value - the TV set, jewellery, CD player, and odd bits of antique silver - had been left untouched.
‘What would two Albanian villains be wanting to search your house for?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ she said.
She made a statement, which he took down at laborious speed in his notebook, contriving to extend two or three minutes’ action into a forty-minute feature. Herrick tidied and filled the drawers and cupboards while he spoke.
‘What do you do for a living, Miss Herrick?’ asked the constable finally.
‘I’m civil service,’ she replied. ‘And I have a very important meeting in an hour.’
‘We could give you a lift into town and I can fill the gaps in your statement while my colleague drives.’
‘Fine, but I have to shower and eat and clear up a bit.’ She thought for second. ‘It would make my life a lot easier if you would get me two bacon and egg sandwiches and a cup of coffee from the café on Rosetti Road, just round the corner.’
‘Two!’
‘Yes, two, unless you both want something, in which case I’ll treat you.’ She proffered a twenty-pound note. ‘Really, it would be a big help.’
He examined her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Not suffering from shock or anything?’
‘As a matter of fact, I’m feeling pretty damned good. It’s not every day you get the chance to knock out a man with baseball bat.’
He took the money and went to the door, just as the bell rang. Herrick looked round from the kitchen to see him open it to a man in a chauffeur’s uniform.
‘Yes?’ she called out.
‘Miss Herrick? A package from the Nabil Commercial Bank. You are expecting me. I have it for you, here.’
It was only when she took the fat brown envelope from him and recognised the handwriting on the address label that she realised this was the package Sally Cawdor had promised her.
It occurred to her that the contents of the package were the only thing that anyone could want from her. But why were two Albanian thugs looking for it? Some twenty minutes later as she sat at her kitchen table, working her way through the crusty bread bacon sandwiches, she began to put a theory together.
‘Cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity,’ said the Chief quietly. ‘Are you familiar with that aphorism, Isis? It comes from the Earl of Chesterfield, who knew that cunning is a substitute for talent and originality. In this particular situation someone is being very cunning indeed, so perhaps it is simply a matter of looking around us and settling on the least talented.’ She knew he was referring to Richard Spelling and Walter Vigo.
‘Despite everything, I wonder if the business at my house is really a side issue, Sir Robin,’ said Herrick, wanting to get off the subject of what the men were looking for and why they might have been sent by Vigo.
‘If you really think that is the case,’ he said, ‘I am happy to leave it, at least for the moment.’ He turned to the window with his glasses lodged in the corner of his mouth. ‘Do you know how many people are under surveillance by the Security Services, Special Branch and us, Isis?’ he asked suddenly.
‘No.’
‘About five hundred and fifty require close attention. And that’s in this country alone. Outside, the number reaches into the thousands.’ He paused and turned from the view. ‘Yet the preponderance of our effort is deployed watching nine people.’
‘I feel rather responsible for that. I’m—’
‘You did your job. It is the reaction to the discoveries you made at Heathrow that is flawed, and I am more than responsible for that.’
‘But the Prime Minister only has to say the word and we bring all the foreign intelligence services into the operation and immediately diminish the commitment as well as the exposure.’
He nodded slowly. He couldn’t say it, but she understood that Spelling and Vigo had monopolised the advice going to the Prime Minister. ‘Who knew that you would not be sleeping at the Bunker after your shift? You had your bag with you, so it was a fair assumption that you would be staying there.’
‘Only Andy Dolph, I think.’
‘So anyone else might imagine your house was free to be searched at leisure today?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And you say they were definitely Albanians?’
‘The second man wasn’t apprehended, but the one in hospital is certainly Albanian.’
‘Interesting,’ said the Chief. ‘But as you say, this is beside the point. I think we should move on to Karim Khan.’
He pressed a button on his desk and got up. ‘I have made a lot of calls on your energy and I’m going to ask that you give a little more over the coming week. I hope that will be in order.’
He showed her to the door at the side of his office and they made their way to a room sealed off from the outside world, reputedly armoured and protected from every known surveillance device. They sat down at the table and the Chief looked expectantly at the door. After a few seconds it opened and Colin Guthrie, the head of the joint MI5-MI6 anti-terrorist controllerate and his main aide, Gregor Laughland, came in. They were followed by Charles Harrison, head of Security and Public Affairs, his deputy Christine Selvey, Philip Sarre and three men she had not seen before. The group had a marked conspiratorial air about it and Herrick was intrigued that both Guthrie and Selvey were in attendance, since they had originally been supporters of RAPTOR. Perhaps they’d thrown their lot in with the Chief knowing they’d be thrown out under the new regime. More likely the Chief had encouraged them to attach themselves to RAPTOR to find out what was going on and report back to him.
The Chief began speaking in a quiet, uncertain tone that gave the impression he did not know quite what he was going to say. ‘Time is short and I believe we have only a matter of days to act.’ He gestured to the three strangers. ‘These gentlemen are from a security firm that specialises in hostage negotiation. In a moment I will ask the firm’s head of operations, whom I will call Colonel B, to speak about the plan he has been putting together for us in the twenty-four hours since we heard that Karim Khan had been flown for interrogation to Cairo. Colonel B’s team will remain anonymous to all but myself and Colin Guthrie. It is Colonel B’s condition that their involvement in this matter will not be referred to outside this room and so I stress to you all that the need for secrecy has never been more imperative.’
He stopped and looked round his staff, seeking a sign of consent in each person. Herrick understood that it was not simply for the consultant’s peace of mind. The Chief was going beyond his powers as specified by the Foreign Office and Parliament. Despite the studied calm and modulation of his voice, this was a desperate last move and might very well also be Herrick’s last work for the Service.
‘Over the next few days,’ he continued, ‘we plan to remove Karim Khan from the custody of the local intelligence service and question him in the proper manner. It is my belief that this man possesses crucial information about future terrorist attacks in the West. In particular he can identify two, maybe even three, terrorist leaders who have so far escaped our attention. The first problem is that Mr Khan is being questioned simply as an operative who may, or may not, be involved in a particular attack. Mr Khan’s knowledge is, I am certain, of a much more general and historic nature. He knows much, but is not in a position to appreciate what he knows, or how valuable it could be.
‘The second problem is that our American friends are convinced Mr Khan knows things that are of immediate worth. They are therefore content to allow the Egyptians to torture him until he talks. Previously the Egyptians have been constrained by the requirement to produce foreign suspects in court, which entails exposure of their methods. But there will be no court case for Mr Khan because he is being held as Jasur Faisal and a sentence has already been passed on him, in his absence. So the Egyptians will have a free hand. Hence our need to move quickly.
‘Now, we already have good information about where he is being held. Up until 6.00 a.m. today he was in a holding cell in police headquarters in central Cairo. At some stage he will be removed to a facility attached to a very secure prison on the southern outskirts of the city, at which point we may give up all hope of freeing him. According to our people, there are no signs of that yet. We have pulled out all the stops on this one and the sources of information are proving fast and responsive to our requests, so I am confident that at least in this regard we’re not working in the dark.