Stella Rimington: Secret Asset

He felt absolutely jubilant. He knew that upstairs on the street the police would be reeling with confusion as they discovered the crashed van contained fertiliser that had not exploded: the detonators he had given Bashir were useless—they wouldn’t light a cigarette, thought Tom, much less set off a bomb.

The local reaction, as news spread like wildfire about this near-disaster, would be relief, though Tom was certain Oxford would never know another public Encaenia procession. But further away, at Thames House, the reaction would be altogether different. In Thames House, he reckoned, the inhabitants would be having a collective heart attack.

For they would have no idea where he was, and no lead to finding him. They would be worried sick that he would strike again—and they were right to worry. Oxford was just the beginning, and he could see no reason why he could not stay one step ahead of his former colleagues for a long time to come. He looked at his watch. In three hours he’d be in his hotel room on the outskirts of Bristol. In little more than twenty-four, his plane would be preparing to land at JFK.

In the short term as well, he had given MI5 plenty to cope with. Their embarrassment at this close call would rapidly give way to anxious post-mortems, internal inquiries, a media storm, questions in the House, the blame game, the indisputable damage to the reputation of the intelligence services. “Why had they failed to stop the bombers?” “What if the detonators had worked?” And that was before they’d even begun to grapple with the knowledge that for almost fifteen years, they’d had a mole in their midst. A mole they couldn’t catch.

Now a policeman let them out at last, and they all trooped up the staircase that led directly out onto the Broad. Tom lagged a little behind, for safety’s sake, and was very glad he did. Twenty feet short of the exit, he looked out at the street from the top stair and saw the familiar figure of Liz Carlyle standing in the middle of the road, talking to Charles Wetherby.

At first, he didn’t believe his eyes. How had they got on to him here? How had they known his target? It didn’t make any sense; he had been so careful.

Could they have turned one of the bombers? No, for only Bashir had known the exact target—Khaled had been content not to know, and Rashid was too weak ever to be trusted either by him or Bashir. Bashir would never betray a cause he was so willing to die for. And if any of them talked now—he assumed they would have been captured minutes before—they would know nothing that would let either the police or Tom’s former colleagues find him.

Who then could have given him away? Had O’Phelan talked before Tom had got to him in Belfast? It seemed inconceivable—why would the lecturer have rung Tom and warned him that Liz had been to see him, asking nosy questions?

There seemed no obvious answer to what had gone wrong, but he had no time to think it through. Turning back, away from the door, he moved back into the building. One of the Blackwell’s assistants touched his arm—she had been like a Border collie, herding them up the stairs from behind—and he flashed the charming smile he’d learned to use like a weapon. “I left something behind,” he explained.

She’d smiled back, and let him go. Patience, he told himself. Don’t panic. But you’ve got to get out of here fast. This was just stage one, after all. He mustn’t be stopped now.

The marksman in the Sheldonian’s cupola was still there. Turning round, Liz noticed another sniper, holding his carbine, on the roof of Blackwell’s music shop at the corner.

Something about the scene was bothering her. She looked at Charles, and suddenly a thought came from nowhere. “I think Tom is here,” she suddenly said. “He’ll want to see all this.”

Wetherby was startled. “Really?” he said doubtfully. Then he seemed to think about it. “Maybe you’re right. As far as he knows, we’re still in London, wondering where the devil he’s gone.”

Matheson came back to them again. “We’ve got about thirty people still in Blackwell’s, downstairs in the Norrington Room. We put them there for their own safety. I’m about to let them out, unless you have any objection.”

“No, that’s fine,” said Wetherby, and Matheson was on his way to the bookshop when Liz called after him. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could we just check everyone as they leave?”

He looked at her, surprised, then turned to Wetherby, who nodded approval and said, “If you bring them all out through the same door, we could have a quick look.”

They walked over, and stood at the Trinity College end of the shop front, where at the back of a small ground-floor room a steep staircase led down to the cavernous Norrington Room. Matheson and a tall policeman stood with them outside as the customers—most looking impassive, a few irate—emerged.

There was no one they recognised.

“I need to find out what they’ve done with the suspect they arrested,” declared Wetherby. He turned back to Dave and Liz as he set off. “Have a final look inside to be extra sure.”

“Can you keep someone here in the front?” Liz asked Matheson.

“All right,” he said reluctantly, clearly thinking he had better uses for his men.

And Dave was shaking his head. “I know great minds think alike,” he said, gesturing first at the retreating figure of Wetherby, then pointing his finger at Liz. “But if Tom had been anywhere near here, he’d be long gone by now. And if he was in the bookshop, wouldn’t he have just gone out the back door?”

“No.” It was a Northern voice, and belonged to a stocky man in a check jacket. “I’m from Blackwell’s,” he said. “When the police said they wanted everyone downstairs, I locked the staff exits at the back. It was more to keep anyone from wandering in than to keep anyone from leaving. But it would have done that too.”

“Come on,” said Liz to Dave. “Nothing to lose by looking.” He shrugged, and they went together through the shop’s main entrance. They stood for a moment on the ground floor, looking at the tables stacked with newly published books. “It’s much bigger than it looks from outside,” said Dave without enthusiasm.

“Let’s split up,” said Liz. “You start downstairs. I’ll go to the top floor and work down. We can meet in the middle.”

“Okay,” said Dave. “Watch yourself,” he added, but by then Liz had started up the staircase.

The first floor was eerily empty. The café was deserted, though its tables still held coffee cups and half-eaten pastries—clearly people had been moved out at speed. She looked down towards the other book-lined end of the first floor, also deserted. The effect was slightly spooky—Liz felt as if she were in a museum after closing time. Noises filtered through from the street, dimly audible, but here inside there was only a heavy silence—except for the sound of her footsteps, which clattered on the wooden stairs.

She moved on to the second floor and kept climbing—she would cover these lower floors on her way down. Reaching the top floor, she found a swing door on her left and a sign for the toilets. Liz went through cautiously, then opened the door to the ladies’ room. Both cubicles had their doors wide open; there was no one in the room.

Slightly hesitantly, she went into the men’s room. The single stall was empty, but the window was open at the bottom. Ducking down, she peered out. The vast front quadrangle of Trinity loomed in the distance. Sticking her head out, she saw directly below her a small, inner courtyard. From the window to the paving stones was a straight drop of almost fifty feet. Tom wouldn’t have survived that, thought Liz.