Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

It didn’t take long to find out. A taxi came along fast from Marylebone High Street, its orange ‘for hire’ light going on even before it had stopped. The driver braked sharply and came to a halt across the road from Mr Blakey’s block. Mrs Howson tutted to herself disapprovingly as she recognised the woman who got out. It was that blonde woman Mr Blakey insisted on referring to as ‘Mrs Ball’, and whom Ivy Howson never addressed at all.

She watched as the woman paid the driver, then swung her expensive-looking bag over her shoulder and started to cross the road. She was smartly dressed in a belted raincoat that reached just below the knees, showing off her well-formed calves, encased today in shiny black tights. I’ll bet they’ll be at it before the clock strikes seven, thought Ivy, then chided herself for her crudeness. Still, there was something that invited it in the way this woman dressed, and walked – she was on the pavement now and heading for the mansion block’s outer door.

It was then that the most amazing thing happened, something Mrs Howson would never forget. From out of nowhere all the blokes in the cars had suddenly appeared – there on the pavement. It was like magic, she later said to Stanley, who couldn’t understand why she’d been so surprised by the sudden appearance of six fellows who just had to be coppers. You don’t understand, she’d complained. It was like a conjuring trick. One minute they weren’t there and the next they were, and I never noticed it happening.

One of the chaps had approached Mrs Ball just as she was about to enter the building, and she’d smiled – Ivy could still remember the flirtatious curve to the woman’s lips. At the same time another bloke had moved in from the other side, taking her by the arm. It was then that alarm had replaced polite curiosity on the woman’s face. By now the taxi had left and the street was deserted – thinking back, Ivy Howson realised that she’d been the only witness.

But witness to what? The men had taken the Ball woman to one of the black cars, and you could see she wasn’t given any choice – she was going with them like it or not. But she hadn’t screamed; she hadn’t even looked around. She couldn’t have been abducted because she didn’t struggle. If she was being nicked, the odd thing was that she didn’t seem to mind. What Ivy remembered most of all was the way Mrs Ball had got into the back seat of the car with a smile on her face.

Paddington Green police station was a grim place, even grimmer than Liz had expected. A colleague had once described to her his interrogation of a suspect there and had said that it made Wormwood Scrubs look like a five-star hotel. Now, as she was escorted down two flights of stairs and along a narrow corridor, flanked by cells, Liz understood what he meant. Forbidding though the Santé prison in Paris was, at least it had a history, both fictional and real. Carlos the Jackal and Noriega rubbed shoulders in its corridors with characters from the novels of Alexandre Dumas and Georges Simenon. Here, in Paddington Green, there was no gloss of history, and the brutal concrete walls seemed to match the squalid violence of the modern-day terrorists whom it had been built to accommodate. It was, thought Liz, a truly awful place.

The police officer escorting her opened a steel door and stood back to let her enter the room, then followed her inside. A single light bulb illuminated a bare table and chairs, cement floor the colour of day-old porridge, and blank walls. Liz was expecting to find that the prisoner she’d come to see would introduce a note of elegance to these stark surroundings. She remembered the stylish even glamorous woman she had met in David Blakey’s office at the beginning of this whole business, and how she had admired, not to say envied, the understated linen dress the other woman had been wearing and her gold jewellery.

So she was startled by the appearance of the person sitting at the table. It was difficult to believe it was the same one. Katherine Ball was wearing a plain cotton caftan and long, wide trousers over flat pumps. At first sight Liz wondered if this was some sort of prison uniform, but Katherine Ball had not been charged and was entitled to wear her own clothes, so these must be her choice. Her face was bare of make-up and her hair, which Liz remembered as fashionably tinted blonde, was completely covered by an unflattering scarf. Only her bright blue eyes were unaltered and they seemed to burn as they stared at Liz.

‘Mrs Ball,’ said Liz, taking a seat across from her. ‘We met in David Blakey’s office some time ago. My name is Jane Forrester.’

Katherine Ball arched an eyebrow. ‘I remember you well. You work with that man who was a colleague of David’s when he was in MI6… what’s his name? Tall, dark and not entirely handsome. Fane – that was it. So you’re a spook too.’

‘I’m with the Home Office.’

‘Oh, I see, we’re talking in euphemisms. What you mean is that you’re MI5, not MI6. Isn’t that what you’re trying to say, Miss… Forrester. Now, tell me, what are you here for?’

‘ I was wondering – ’

‘Don’t wonder,’ said Katherine Ball fiercely, her eyes suddenly ablaze. ‘There’s nothing to speculate about, nothing ambiguous in any of this. Believe me: if you want to know about me, I’ll tell you. Frankly, I’m delighted you’re here; nothing will please me more than to say what I have to say to a representative of Western Intelligence.’

‘What is it you’d like to say?’

But Katherine did not need to be asked. Liz’s presence seemed to have breached the dam behind which she had been concealing her true personality and feelings.

‘You in Western Intelligence – you once had something worth defending and an enemy worth fighting. For all the shortcomings of life in the West, Communism was worse, much worse… corrupt, oppressive of its people, twisted. Getting rid of them was a just cause.’ She paused for breath and went on, ‘But when the Wall fell, so did your raison d’être. You didn’t have a role any more. Just what exactly were you fighting after that, and what were you defending? I mean, what does democracy consist of when a hedge fund trader makes three billion dollars trading off the back of some poor black people in Detroit who’ve taken out a mortgage?

‘So you became stooges of the Americans. Dancing to their tune. Fighting a war on terrorism – “those who are not with us are against us”. Anyone who thinks differently from them is a threat and has to be destroyed. And the rest of the world is supposed to admire this, and stick out their bowl for the thin gruel the likes of UCSO graciously bestow on them.’

‘So you chose an alternative solution.’ Liz kept her voice cool. There was no need to needle this woman to get her to talk.

‘I’d have thought that was obvious. There is only one positive ideology in the world today, don’t you think?’

Liz ignored the question and replied, ‘I’m curious to know how you found this cause. I know your husband was Middle Eastern, but my understanding is that he was Westernised.’

‘You know nothing about my husband.’

‘I’m told he was a businessman in Beirut.’

‘He was. But the 9/11 pilots were living quietly in America while learning to fly planes. You should know about cover stories, Miss Forrester. It’s your job – playing a role. But others can do it too. My husband played a role. He lived and breathed it and I’ve been doing it ever since he died.’

‘But why? What was he trying to achieve?’

‘He was half-Iranian, and always said he wished he’d been a hundred per cent Iranian. If he hadn’t died so suddenly, we wouldn’t be sitting here, Miss Forrester. I’d be in Beirut, helping him organise resistance to Zionist incursions. My husband made a lot of money and he used a good deal of it to underwrite Hamas.’