Stella Rimington - Secret Asset

She said, “Did you see any more than that?”

Sohail shook his head. “Not then. I didn’t stay; I didn’t want them to think I was paying much attention.”

“Why do you think they were watching it? I mean, if the Imam was there anyway.”

Sohail paused for a moment. “I have thought carefully about this. It came to my mind that he had come here to tutor the men. Maybe to prepare them.”

“Prepare them?”

Sohail added quietly, “I think he was preparing them for a mission. Perhaps a suicide mission. They talk about these things in the shop.”

Liz was surprised. This seemed a very dramatic conclusion. The Marzipan she had known had been calm and levelheaded; now he seemed frightened and overexcited. Liz asked calmly, “Why do you think that?”

Suddenly Sohail reached down and brought a small paper bag out of his knapsack. He slid it across the table. “Here’s why.”

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“I brought the video. The Imam left it behind, along with the other tapes. I went upstairs and watched it just before we closed.”

Liz quickly put the video into her bag, pleased that Sohail had brought it, but also appalled by the risk he was taking. “Well done, Sohail,” she said, “but won’t they notice that it’s gone?”

“There were many other videos upstairs. And I am sure no one saw me go up there.”

“It will have to go back quickly,” she said firmly. “But tell me first, these three men, how old were they?”

“The young ones were about my age. The other one perhaps in his late twenties.”

“You said they were British. Did you notice anything about their accents?”

“It is difficult to say.” He thought for a moment. “Except the older one. I think he came from the North.”

“Would you recognise them again?”

“I can’t be sure. I didn’t want to look at them too carefully.”

“Of course,” said Liz soothingly, for she could see that Sohail’s eyes kept returning to the door. “Do you have any idea where these three have gone to?”

“No, but I know they’ll be back.”

Liz felt her pulse pick up. “Why? When?”

“The same time next week. Aswan asked if he should bring the machine down. But the owner said not to bother, as it would be needed again on Thursday. That is why I think they are in training. There is a series of videos for them to watch. It is a sort of course they are doing.”

“How do you know it will be the same men?”

Sohail thought for a moment. “Because of the way he said it. ‘Leave it,’ he said, ‘they’ll need it again next week.’ The way he said ‘they’ll’ could only mean the same men.”

Liz considered this. They had some time, then, though not very much, to put an operation in place before the group reconvened. She thought hard for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. “Tell me, could you meet me again later this evening? I’d like to go and copy the video, and also collect some photographs for you to look at. Photographs of people. Can you do that?”

Sohail nodded.

“Let me tell you where to go.” She gave him an address in one of the anonymous streets north of Oxford Street and made him repeat it back to her. Then she said, “Take the Underground to Oxford Circus and walk west. Do you know where John Lewis is?” Sohail nodded. “So this is what you do to get to the house. We will make sure you aren’t being followed, but if we are not happy, someone will stop you on the street and ask you for the time. They’ll ask you twice—and if that happens do not go to the safe house. Walk straight on, catch a bus and go home. And just in case you run into anyone you know, have an excuse ready for what you’re doing there.”

“That’s easy,” said Sohail. “I’ll say I’ve been looking for CDs at the HMV shop on Oxford Street. They stay open late.”

Liz looked at her watch. “It’s now seven-thirty. I will meet you there at ten o’clock.”

“Will you be my contact again from now on?” he asked.

“We’ll see,” she said mildly, for in truth she didn’t know herself. “It doesn’t matter, you know. We all work together.”

He nodded but there was a look in his eyes which Liz at first took for simple excitement, then realised was partly fear. She smiled reassuringly at him. “You are doing a brilliant job. Just go on being very careful, Sohail.”

He smiled back at her a little bleakly, his eyes darkening. She added, “If you ever feel you are in any danger, you must tell us at once. Use the alert procedure. We do not expect you to put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

She knew these were empty words. Of course he must be in jeopardy; in such operations risk was inevitable. Not for the first time, Liz questioned her participation in the subtle psychological game of agent running: cautioning the agent to be careful, acknowledging the danger he was in, reassuring him that he would be protected, encouraging him to obtain the information that was needed. The only justification was the harm she was trying to prevent, but faced with a Marzipan, it seemed a difficult balance to preserve.

But Sohail said simply, resolutely, “I will do everything I can.” Liz was moved but his words did nothing to relieve her feelings of guilt. He was so very young, and yet so very brave. If these men in the bookshop were happy to blow themselves up, she hated to think what they would be happy to do to Sohail. Involuntarily almost, she shook her head and turned away.

Liz hailed a taxi at the bottom of Primrose Hill, and directed the driver to the Atrium restaurant on Millbank. From there it was a short walk to Thames House, the massive heavy-set building on the north bank of the Thames, which was the headquarters of MI5. It was a good moment to drive through the West End. The rush hour was over. The theatre crowds were all inside. The pubs glowed with light and warmth that in the ordinary way would have attracted her. Within twenty minutes of leaving Marzipan she was back at her desk.

There was much to do before she could get back to Sohail Din. The video had to be copied, the arrangements for the safe house confirmed, a fresh A4 team conjured up to replace Wally Woods’s, now going off duty.

Then Liz sat down to think. Was there an immediate threat? If so she would need to contact Charles Wetherby—dining as it happened with his MI6 opposite number, Geoffrey Fane. If Marzipan was right there was a threat, but not an immediate one. She decided to defer the decision until she had seen him again, and then reached for the telephone and dialled Counter-Terrorist Investigations. Judith Spratt, on night duty, answered.

Judith was an old friend. The two had joined the Service on the same day over a decade before, and both had worked in the counter-terrorism branch now for six years. But while Liz’s talents had taken her in the direction of agent running, Judith’s sharp analytical skills and attention to detail had turned her into an expert investigator. With almost obsessive tenacity, she and her team of colleagues followed up all the pieces of information that came into the counter-terrorism branch in addition to what the agent runners produced. They were constantly in touch with colleagues overseas, sharing leads, producing identifications, making connections. Investigations Section was the sheet anchor of the whole counter-terrorist effort of Thames House, taking unassessed information and making sense of it.

So it was to Judith that Liz now went for the portfolio of British Asians suspected of some kind of involvement in terrorism. Liz gave her a quick précis of what Marzipan had said, but none of it connected with anything Judith and her team were currently working on. Clutching the large leather portfolio Judith gave her, zipped tight and locked, she took the lift down to the basement garage and collected one of the anonymous fleet vehicles housed there. With three-quarters of an hour still to spare she drove back north, up Regent Street through Oxford Circus, eventually turning into the quiet streets of once-grand eighteenth-century houses, now the consulting rooms of doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, and other specialists serving London’s wealthier residents and visitors. Finally, she turned under an arch and into a dark, faintly lit mews of small houses, the former stables of the grand houses. A garage door swung up when she pressed the bleeper in the car, and she drove straight into a small, lit garage.