Greg Rucka: A gentleman_s game

"Nerve agent?"

"No, it's not a Tokyo scenario," Lankford said.

"They bomb them, what?"

"Fire," Poole said. "In the tunnels, at the stations. Hard to tell just how bad, but there're reports of people being trampled at the stations, asphyxiating on the tracks."

Chace nodded, fixating on the wall, trying to see everything at once. Images of bodies being carried from station entrances, soot- and smoke-stained passengers with oxygen masks pressed to their tear-streaked faces, of dead firefighters and rescue workers laid out in lines on the pavement, being covered with opaque plastic sheets. Men and women, young and old, and children, in all of London's colors and diversity. Curling clouds of black smoke, so thick she thought she could see the oil in it, billowing from tube vents, rising over Oxford Circus.

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 amp; 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.

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 Ceausescu 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.