Stella Rimington - Breaking Cover

‘Can I see your pass, miss?’ Then: ‘Staff member to come through,’ he said into his radio. ‘Just wait a minute, miss. My colleague will escort you in. They don’t seem violent. Quite polite, in fact, as mobs go.’

Liz waited, listening to the chanting – ‘What do we want? No snooping. When do we want it? Now!’ – until a large uniformed officer arrived and said, ‘Follow me, miss.’

He headed straight into the crowd with Liz close behind him. ‘Move away, please. Step back now. Clear a space.’ They moved forward slowly into the crowd, which parted obligingly to let them through. Liz followed closely behind her brawny protector until they reached the bottom of the steps leading up to the front entrance of Thames House where a couple more policemen were facing the protesters, to deter them from getting any closer to the building. Her guardian turned to let her go ahead of him and, standing with his back firmly to the crowd, feet apart, hands on hips, said, ‘In you go, miss.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Liz, and she started to run up the steps when suddenly a man rushed forward. He was wearing sunglasses and a cycle helmet with a pair of outsize pink cardboard ears attached. He was shouting ‘ Stop snooping!’ and holding his placard with both hands in front of him, like a weapon. He hit the policeman on the side of the head with it, knocking him off balance, and rushed up the steps obviously intent on hitting Liz as well. He’d almost reached her when he was brought down in a flying rugby tackle by another policeman. As they both rolled down to the bottom of the steps, Liz ran forward and escaped inside.

‘Phew,’ she said to the security guard who was holding the door open for her, ‘that was a close one.’

Upstairs on the fourth floor she looked out of her window and saw that the police had now moved in on the crowd and were dispersing them. Some who resisted were being arrested. There was no sign of her assailant with the big ears.

Liz was lucky to have a window of her own to look out of. As in so many organisations – from publishers to law firms – most of the staff of MI5 now worked on open-plan floors. The pressure on space in the building, as staff numbers had increased to meet the increased security threats, meant that the days of offices for small teams, or even individuals, were over. Only Directors had their own office nowadays and rumour had it that even they might have to give up the privilege soon. However the Director General and his team, known as ‘The Private Office’, were still ensconced in their suite, which included a dining room and waiting room. The DG’s own office, lined as it was with panelling listed as of architectural significance, could not be altered.

Through some anomaly, two small rooms on Liz’s floor had remained untouched, and for the time being she had one of them. Though there was barely enough space in it for her desk and two chairs, she was not planning to complain. In fact she was keeping her head down and hoping the building administrators had forgotten about her.

From her desk she had a panoramic view, across the Thames to Lambeth Palace and upstream to Vauxhall and the MI6 building, Vauxhall Cross. Downstream, thanks to the twists and turns of the river, she could see, on a clear day, the tower blocks of Canary Wharf and, nearer, the pointing glass finger of The Shard. Liz was no fan of skyscrapers, but there was no denying their dramatic effect on the London skyline, particularly after dark. Today it was the nearer view that was capturing her attention, as she looked down on the heads of the crowd and the tops of their placards all intermingling with policemen’s helmets and TV cameras, like some weird modern ballet.

It wasn’t just the view that made Liz happy to have her own private space. Recovering as she was from a personal tragedy, she still felt more need for quiet and her own company than she had ever done before, so that she could think over everything that had happened. The Service’s psychiatrist, to whom she had been sent by the Personnel Branch, had advised her not to spend too much time alone, but she chose to ignore the advice and deal with things in her own way.

There was a faint knock on the door, and as it opened a familiar voice said, ‘Good morning, Elizabeth. What on earth have you and your colleagues been doing to cause all this fuss? It’s like a war zone out there.’

‘You wait, Geoffrey. It’ll be your turn tomorrow. Don’t assume you’re immune just because they think you’re all James Bonds.’

The man who now walked into the tiny office was in his early fifties, tall, with dark hair going grey over the ears, a long face and a thin, straight nose. He was distinguished-looking, and would have been handsome had there not been a distancing arrogance in his expression and a hint of the sardonic in his dark eyes. He was wearing a well-cut navy blue suit with polished black brogues and an Old Wykehamist tie – Liz knew about this because she had once offended him by complimenting him on the attractive colour combination. Shocked, he had told her it was his old school tie.

‘How did you get in?’ she enquired. ‘I almost got knocked out by a madman with enormous ears.’

‘Oh, I came in through the garage,’ he replied airily. ‘I got a warning that you were under siege.’

‘I wish someone had warned me. I thought I was going to be a stretcher case. Come in and have the chair or shall we go down for some coffee?’

Geoffrey Fane shook his head. ‘I had a cup just before I left Vauxhall Cross.’

Liz and he had worked together on various investigations over the years. It had been a successful partnership on the whole; Liz found him sharp, experienced, decisive – and as trustworthy as a snake. What Fane thought of Liz he never said but close observers of the two suspected that on his side there was an interest that was more than purely professional.

Fane ignored her invitation to sit down, and stood looking out of the window. ‘ Change and decay in all around I see ,’ he intoned, staring downstream towards the scaffolding and cranes marking sites where new buildings were being erected.

‘ O Thou who changest not, abide with me!’ responded Liz.

He turned round, and said with a wolfish smile, ‘If I thought you were serious I might take you up on that. I didn’t know you were a student of Hymns Ancient and Modern. ’

‘We sang hymns at school too, you know. Even if it was only a girls’ day school.’

Fane hummed to himself, and glanced back out of the window. ‘If they do move you out into the open-plan, I’m not sure you’ll miss this view. Look at it,’ he said scathingly, pointing across the water towards the towers of Canary Wharf. ‘The depredations of the money men have extended well beyond the City.’

There had always been a lugubrious side to Fane, but this seemed excessive, even for him. ‘Why so gloomy today, Geoffrey? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing yet. But our new Grand Mufti seems determined to rock the boat a bit.’

‘What’s he doing?’ Liz didn’t know much about the new Chief of MI6 across the river, but from the few bits and pieces she’d picked up he sounded like a good thing. His name was Treadwell and he was ex-Foreign Office, where he had dealt with intelligence in various posts; he’d also done a stint in MI6 in his thirties. So he was coming to the post familiar with the Service and, from Fane’s remark, must have ideas about how it should change.

‘Do you know what he’s proposing to do?’ Fane demanded.

‘Tell me. The smoke signals have not yet crossed the river.’

‘He’s worried about this sort of thing.’ Fane waved in the direction of the rapidly thinning crowd. ‘He thinks we need to create a better understanding among the public of what we really do and what we don’t do. According to him, there’s an unholy combination of civil libertarians and James Bond obsessives that’s obscuring our valuable contribution to the nation’s wellbeing.’