Stella Rimington: Dead Line

‘That’s nice. How did you meet?’

‘At a talk he gave at the Royal Society of Literature. It was on John Donne – that’s Tim’s speciality. OUP are going to publish his book,’ she added proudly. ‘I asked a question, and he came up to me afterwards. He said he didn’t feel he’d answered it properly.’

I bet, thought Liz. She could imagine it: earnest but pretty Peggy, with her freckles and glasses; the worthy Tim, impressed by her clever question, but also attracted in a strictly unintellectual way. The time-honoured way of all flesh, thought Liz.

Wally Woods knew this depressing block of 1930s flats just off the North Circular Road. Years ago when he was a young A4 surveillance officer, starting his career, he’d often sat outside it. In those days, at the height of the Cold War, the block had been home to a group of East German intelligence officers and their families. When the wall had come down in 1989 they had melted away like snow.

Wally and A4 had moved on to other targets. New, younger surveillance officers had been recruited and now he was a team leader. Apart from his partner, Maureen Hayes, he was the only one of the team who actually remembered the Cold War. Halton Heights had moved on too, though it still looked just as down at heel. Now it was home to some Syrian diplomats and their families.

It was a quiet day for A4. For once they had no big operation on, and Wally and his team had been briefed to observe the comings and goings at Halton Heights. The briefing officer, Liz Carlyle of the counter espionage branch, had told them that this was part of establishing background information on a new target. The job was to photograph anyone going out or coming in. But if any one of three men suspected to be intelligence officers appeared – and she had handed out rather poor-quality photographs which looked as if they had come from passports or visa applications – they were to follow him and report on his movements, as well as photograph whoever he met. It was the sort of job A4 hated – vague and promising little action.

By ten a.m. on this hot, sultry morning, nothing at all had happened. Wally was happy with his position, parked in a layby outside a line of small shops at the side of the flats. He had a good view of the ends of the semi-circular drive that led to the front door. Maureen was in the launderette, one of the shops in the row, putting some old clothes from the A4 store through a wash. If the call came to move, she’d just abandon them.

From where he sat, Wally could see Dennis Rudge apparently dozing on a bench just opposite the flats, with a full view of the front door, while a few yards behind him, in a little park, the youngster of the team, Norbert Bollum – they called him Bollocks – sat on another bench reading a paper. Other members of the team were parked up in nearby streets or driving slowly around in the vicinity.

Wally yawned and looked at his watch. Another four hours before the shift ended. Then his eye caught a movement – Dennis Rudge, whose head had been sunk on his chest, had suddenly looked up.

Wally’s radio crackled. ‘There’s action at the front door. One male. I think it’s Target Alpha.’

The door of the launderette swung open. Maureen came out and got into the car beside Wally. Several streets away a car did a three-point turn and two others that had been parked up started their engines.

‘He’s standing at the door. Looks as though he’s waiting for someone,’ came through from Dennis on the radio. As he spoke a black people carrier with smoked windows turned into the semi-circular drive.

‘There’s two, no, three men getting out,’ reported Dennis a few minutes later. ‘Leather jackets, short hair. They look military. They’re unloading big holdalls. I think they’re going to go inside.’

‘Get pictures – including the luggage,’ ordered Wally. Clutching her handbag, Maureen got out of the car, walked briskly across the road and past the flats. The camera concealed in her handbag would supplement the pictures Dennis got from his bench.

After everything was unloaded and all the men had gone inside, the people carrier drove away. Following his brief, Wally let it go, and kept his team at Halton Heights in case anyone left the flats. But by two o’clock, when their shift ended, no one had emerged, and Wally withdrew his people. Control at Thames House would make a preliminary report of their findings; Wally and his team would be debriefed in detail the following day.

Sami Veshara sipped his demitasse of Lebanese coffee and gave a small appreciative belch. The lunch celebrating his friend Ben Aziz’s forty-fifth birthday was almost over, and it had been a feast worthy of the name.

Not surprising, thought Sami, since most of the ingredients had been supplied to this London restaurant by his own company, and he had made sure nothing but the best was used for this meal. The mezze had been first-rate, especially the babaganoush and the fatayer , pastries stuffed with minced duck and spinach. Then the main course, lamb shawarma , had been mouth-wateringly tender, after its two-day bath in a spicy marinade. Dessert eventually followed: muscat ice-cream and a sesame tart with berry-rose mousse. All of it washed down with mineral water, and vintage Chateau Musar from the hillside vineyards above the Bekaa Valley, north of Beirut.

Beirut – you would not have had a better meal even there, he thought with some satisfaction. He looked idly at the plate of Turkish delight on the table, and decided he should show some self-discipline. So he only took one.

He sat back and lit a small cheroot, chatting from time to time with the dozen or so other friends of Ben Aziz gathered here. They were all fellow Lebanese, and often congregated for lunch in this small restaurant on a side street off the Edgware Road, just a few streets up from Marble Arch. Once the neighbourhood had been full of Yanks, Little America they’d called it. But those days were long gone, thought Sami with satisfaction, and now Arabs outnumbered the Westerners.

He contemplated the afternoon ahead of him. Business had been very good during the last twelve months, both the food-importing side of things that he was known for, and other activities he preferred not to be publicly associated with. He had been to the Bayswater offices of his import company that morning for a meeting with the accountants, and had been pleased by their low estimates of the year’s tax liability. A lot of thought had gone into that. He felt an afternoon off was well deserved.

Outside, his chauffeur waited in the Mercedes saloon. Sami’s wife and children were in Beirut for a pre-Ramadan visit to family and friends, staying in the large villa he had built off the Corniche when the troubles had subsided in the 1990s.

Normally, Sami would have found distraction in the arms of his mistress, an Italian beauty whose modelling career he was happy to subsidise. But she was on a shoot in Paris for two days, so he would have to find some other way to pass the afternoon. He thought fleetingly of other possible distractions, but he remembered there was a phone call due about a shipment coming in. And later a private meeting, where he would need to have his wits about him. Better to go home, snooze a bit, and read Al Nabad until then.

Gradually the lunch party dispersed. Sami went outside and stretched his arms, his eyes blinking in the bright sun. His driver jumped out of the car, and ran around to hold the door open. Malouf was Egyptian, an obsequious man, eternally grateful to his benefactor. He was almost seventy years old and he had a heart condition. Sami’s wife Raya wanted her husband to get a younger driver, but Malouf had been with him for twenty-five years, and Sami valued his loyalty. He also knew that at least half of the salary he paid the man was sent back to relatives in the slums of Giza, not far from the pyramids. They would suffer if he let Malouf go.