Мик Херрон - Real Tigers

Lamb said, “Keep your hair on. It’s one of those e-cigarettes.”

“No it’s not,” Ho pointed out.

“It’s not?” Lamb examined the burning end suspiciously. “Crap. I’ve been ripped off.”

Ho cut his grumbled protest short when he realised Lamb had spotted the parking permit on his windscreen. “It’s cover,” he said.

“Cover,” Lamb repeated.

“And a safeguard against identity theft.”

Lamb’s laughter was two parts cough. He exhaled so much smoke he resembled a damp bonfire. “Identity theft? Trust me, kid. You couldn’t give yours away.”

Ho scowled.

Behind him, Lamb settled back and closed his eyes. Something erupted from his lips—the beginning of a snore or the end of a chuckle, hard to say—but after that he fell more or less silent while Roderick Ho, guided by satnav, drove them through and then out of the city, towards where Catherine was being held, or where they hoped she was being held.

“Diana,” Tearneysaid.

“I was just leaving.”

“Of course, my dear. Absolutely no need for you to stay late.”

“It’s already after—”

“But I was wondering whether you’d signed off on the invoices for the Data Removal people.”

Data Removal, rather than simply removal: these people were, after all, specialists, even if the end result was that boxes had been taken from one place to another.

Dame Ingrid followed Diana into her office, whose lighting automatically came on; a cool blue which approximated to spring sunshine, though caused the hairs on the back of one’s neck to prickle; a sensation Ingrid ascribed to an excess of electricity in the air, as if it leaked out through ill-fitting sockets. Strange how those hairs kept up their work, stoking creepy feelings, when the hair on the rest of her head had parted company with her when she was in her teens. No completely satisfying reason had ever been put forward for this, though Dame Ingrid would reluctantly admit that that was less a failing of medical science than an indication of her own disinclination to be, in the circumstances, completely satisfied.

Diana Taverner ran a word search without sitting down, frowning slightly as she bent over her screen, watching a jumble of folder-names weave in and out of themselves, none of them yielding the information she sought. “It’s somewhere here.”

“No hurry, my dear.”

She had learned long ago that the best way to fluster a subordinate was to assure them there was no need to hurry.

While waiting, Dame Ingrid gazed through the office’s glass wall at the kids on the hub; “kids” being the term regardless of age and experience. Loyalty had brought them to work here, though loyalty was an infinitely variable term; it began with a commendable desire to serve queen and country; could ascend to the even more virtuous heights of swearing fealty to the head of their Service, but at its worst could degenerate into a no-questions-asked desire to please their immediate superior, in this case Diana Taverner. If more than luck was involved in today’s sudden reversal of fortune, then whatever it was was likely to have its roots in this department: Ops. Of course, Diana was more than capable of implementing skullduggery on her own, but if it turned out she’d suborned her crew into helping with the dirty work, there’d have to be a purge. Which was fine: a good purge never hurt anyone. Well, except for those it hurt, but that was rather the point.

All of which was jumping the gun. If there’d been more than luck involved, she needed to know why, and what the endgame was.

“Here you go.”

The abruptness with which she spoke suggested that Diana Taverner was keen to be on her way. So Dame Ingrid waited a moment longer, lost in contemplation, before saying, “Ah, good. Yes. Would you print it out for me? I do find screens a nuisance, don’t you? At our age?”

Diana ate that one, but didn’t enjoy it. Two seconds later, the printer on the shelf behind her burped into life, and she handed the product to Dame Ingrid.

Who, after a moment or two’s study, said, “Expensive.”

“It was a problem,” Diana said. “It’s been solved. Anyway, I thought Finance were pleased? Didn’t you say so this morning?”

“I may have sweetened their response for the benefit of the gentlemen present,” Tearney said. “We girls have to look out for one another.”

“We certainly do.”

Dame Ingrid folded the invoice, glanced through the glass wall at the kids again, then said, “Does the name Sean Donovan mean anything?”

“Should it?”

“It’s a simple question, Diana.”

“I can have him checked out—”

“Personally. Do you have any personal knowledge of Sean Donovan?”

“The name rings a vague bell,” Taverner said. She adopted a thinking-about-it expression, swiftly replaced by one of dawning comprehension. “Didn’t he sit on a joint intelligence committee years back? Carrying bags for the MoD?”

“And you’ve had no contact since?”

“We didn’t exactly have contact then. He was just another uniform, one with hands-on experience of tackling insurgency.”

“I see.”

“Why do you ask? Is there anything I should know?” She indicated her team. “Anything we should be doing?”

Dame Ingrid subjected her to a long abstracted stare, as if she were trying very hard to remember something, and Diana happened to be in the way. It was a technique that could drag information from the most unwilling subordinate, but in this instance Diana maintained an expression of very slight concern mingled with willingness to help which at no point lapsed into speech. At length, Dame Ingrid shook her head. “No, my dear. His name came up, that’s all.” She waved the sheet of paper. “I’m sure this is fine. As you say, it’s a problem solved. Short-term cost, long-term benefit.”

“As per the brief.”

“Material up to Virgil level, correct?”

“Up to and including. Again, as per the brief,” said Diana. “Is there a problem, Ingrid? You look alarmed.”

“Alarmed? Of course not. I’m sorry to have kept you, Diana. Enjoy your evening.”

The corridors were quiet now. Even the clacking of her own heels sounded disjointed to her ears, as if slightly out of synch with her legs.

Back in her office she sat, not at her desk, but in the armchair in one corner, next to which was a low coffee table. It was where she sat when she took a gin and tonic of an evening: a quiet reward for a day well spent. Where she sat when preparing for her occasional public appearances, gingering up a phrase or two to be tweeted and tittered about in equal measure. And it was where she sat when she needed cover; when her desk felt too exposed.

There was a general belief among her staff, Dame Ingrid knew, that she was unaware that the current security codes were based on Thunderbirds, but it suited her to be underestimated in matters of no consequence. She was certain that the majority of her staff regarded her as pen-pusher-in-chief. She was also certain that the brief handed to Diana Taverner did not include relocating files classed Virgil, since Dame Ingrid had long determined that second-level secrets formed the perfect hiding place. Scott was where the sexy stuff hid: the cloak-and-dagger material that was any Service’s Crown Jewels. Virgil, for the most part, concealed data only of interest to a devoted number-cruncher with a fetish for budgetary matters: how much was spent on upgrading software, or subsidising the canteen, or replacing carpets. So, if Dame Ingrid had any black secrets hidden among the Service archives, Virgil was where they would be nesting.

And any keen Ingrid Tearney watcher knew that, far from being a mere pen-pusher-in-chief, she had black secrets.