‘Fifteen of our people will be patrolling the grounds twenty four hours a day, plus uniformed Met police, high profile. ASU with infra-red in the air when the delegates arrive. If a mouse breaks cover, they’ll see it.’
‘Tech?’
‘Doppler microwave sensors ringing the area.’
‘You’re using fast-switching quad wireless?’
‘Unofficially. You know your stuff.’
‘I live in Tel Aviv; it pays to. Main gate’s the only way in or out?’
‘Yes, heavily guarded. And before you ask, water comes in through a four-inch main. Sewage goes out through six-inch pipes to a fifteen thousand gallon septic tank under the rear lawn. Air’s covered by radar, anti-aircraft guns and two Typhoons on standby. Apart from the jets, everything’s within the sensor perimeter, so it’s tamper-proof.’
‘And there’s no way it can be bypassed?’
‘Shit, were you born this paranoid or is it just practise? No, it can’t be bypassed, unless you can hack the government mainframes. The protocols are switched randomly every thirty minutes with four-core overlaps. You’d need a computer faster and smarter than anything commercially available to get round it, and someone to drive it. No, the perimeter’s secure. And even if anyone could get past it, we’ve got the best security devices in the world inside the building.’
‘Your famous Goshawk MLs?’
‘No. These.’ He pointed at his own eyes and turned to go. Peretz watched him jog down the wide stone steps to the drive.
Pride before a fall, he thought. Pride before a fall. He actually had a lot of respect for British intelligence, as far as it went. It just wasn’t far enough for his taste.
Peretz himself had been schooled in a much tougher way of working. After national service he had signed on as a regular in the IDF and quickly risen through the ranks to a point where he had to start lying to his family about just how he spent his days. At twenty-eight he was recruited into Sayeret Matkal, a Special Forces unit not unlike the British SAS or the US Deltas only with fewer screw-ups. For six years he had worked around the world tasked with counter-terrorism and hostage rescue. Then he had been head-hunted again and life started to get very interesting indeed. To the very few people with whom he could talk freely he was part of Kidon – a unit of secret service spooks who specialised in simply assassinating the bad guys rather than waiting to rescue the good ones.
But even that was only part of the story.
As the British agent’s black BMW crunched away down the drive, Peretz walked along the front of the building. The afternoon was hot and unpleasant – not the dry heat of Tel Aviv, but the clammy, stifling heat of an island under an approaching front. There would be another storm tonight.
Checking the locations of the uniformed officers who were wandering somewhat aimlessly around the croquet lawn or standing on the ha-ha watching swallows soar and dive over the meadow beyond, Peretz walked along the edge of the camelia borders towards the woods in the distance.
The wood was old growth, a mixture of ash and oak, and not natural. The trees were all the same age, most likely planted to give the impression of a royal hunting forest for the delight of guests at the house. It would also have been a very good shelter for the ice house.
All the ground plans showed the presence of the ice house, but even the earliest ones Mossad had sourced gave it only as a vague spot some twenty yards beyond the edge of the wood. That was not a problem; finding it was not Peretz’s concern. He just needed to be sure that no one else would find it. He wandered through the trees, constantly checking vantage points, views of the house, sight lines to the various security men patrolling the grounds. He knew he must still be inside the ring of doppler motion sensors: had he strayed over the invisible line there would already be a shit-storm rumbling up the slope towards him. That was good. The ice house, wherever it was, was as protected from intrusion as the main house itself.
After fifteen minutes picking his way through the trees he came to a fence with wheat fields beyond. He must have passed right over the hidden structure without seeing it. And if he hadn’t found a single clue as to its position, no one else would either.
He walked slowly back to the house.
Cohen asked him why he had been poking around so far from the house when he was detailed to look after the catering arrangements, but Peretz just said he needed some air. Nothing to be concerned about.
Everything was just as it should have been.
Commander Thorne was waiting for Leila when she arrived back at the CTC offices at Scotland Yard. The operations room was alive with activity. The junior detective who had brought the warrant to the bank took one look at his boss and quietly slipped into a side room.
‘DS Reid,’ Thorne said, ‘my office. Now.’
He led her into the glass office and closed the door.
‘I’ve got the passport,’ she said. She placed the evidence bag on her boss’s desk.
‘That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. No, remain standing, DS Reid.’ He sat behind his desk and consulted a pile of papers.
‘Half an hour ago I received a call from a Mr Joseph Menkes at Gould’s Bank.’
‘OK…’
‘Anything I should know?’
‘Like what?’
‘He said you threatened him with a gun.’
Leila did not reply.
‘Is this true?’
‘Menkes was obstructing a time-sensitive search,’ she said. ‘He was aware of who I was and what my reasons were for visiting the bank but he refused to cooperate.’
‘He was waiting for the warrant. That is his legal right.’
‘I told him the warrant was on the way and asked him to show me the suspect’s safety deposit box. He refused. I had reason to believe that he was stalling in order to obstruct my search. It was a Section 17 judgement.’
‘You were only preventing serious damage to a person or property if your outlandish theory about another attack is correct. Which so far no one in this building believes it is. Any defence lawyer will rip you to shreds!’
‘The warrant was on the way, and reasonable force is permitted by TACT Section 114.2’
‘You threatened to shoot him!’
‘No. I drew my weapon, with the safety on at all times, to focus his attention.’
‘And you’ve blown the whole of that side of the operation! That was an illegal search. Any evidence you gathered will be inadmissible.’
‘I disagree, Sir. I saw Menkes in the corridor outside the vault with the warrant in his hand before I opened the safety deposit box. My actions in his office enabled me to access the vault more quickly, but the warrant enabled me to make the specific search.’
‘DS Reid, you are on very thin ice. Against my better judgement I allowed DCI Lawrence to bring you in on the peripheries of this investigation. You’re given a lot of leeway because you’re a talented investigator, but with this Menkes business you’ve shown yet again that you’re a liability to sensitive cases. You’ve screwed up an investigation before because of your disregard for the law. I won’t stand in the way of a prosecution if you’ve done it again now.’
‘Understood. Did my intelligence lead to discovering who in the US government has been helping Abulafia?’
‘Harris and Field are on their way to the Embassy now. They’re meeting with the Special U.S. Liaison Officer.’
‘Special Liaison? CIA?’
‘Unofficially.’
‘I need to be there.’
‘No. DS Reid, you need to take a break. Go home.’
‘Not when we’re this close, Sir.’
‘It’s not a request. Get some rest. Your imaginary noon deadline has passed and there’s been no further attack. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll reassess your position. The peace talks have been moved to Mapleton House; we’re going to need all the bodies we can get to cover it.’
‘They’ve been moved? Why?’
‘Downing Street decision.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense. They can’t have done proper security checks.’
‘We work with what we’ve got, DS Reid. The PM’s happy, so we’ve just got to make sure he stays that way.’
‘No. There’s more to it than that. There has to be. There must be a connection between yesterday’s events and this sudden change of venue.’
‘There is! The PM’s got nervous about exposing his guests to any danger in the city.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘It’s not about what we believe. It’s about working with what we know.’
‘Al Sahm are going to attack the peace talks.’
‘Then they’re going to have opposition. We’ve got CTC and MI5 in there, as well as uniforms. The Palestinians and Israelis are bringing their own people too. Mapleton’s far more secure than London was.’
‘And this was a decision made by the PM’s office?’
‘It was decided collectively through COBR. I was there. If there’s a plot, then everyone’s in on it: our own security services, government, the PM, diplomatic corps… though strangely I seem to have been left out of the loop. I think you’re right that the attack was aimed at disrupting the talks, but al Sahm have showed their hand too soon. They’ve created a problem for us, but if anything they’ve focussed attention on how important it is that the talks succeed.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Definitely.’
‘I want to talk to Jaafar again,’ Leila said. She sat down; Commander Thorne did not stop her. ‘He led us to the passport; he may have more useful information that he doesn’t realise is important.’
‘Jaafar’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘He was killed this morning.’
‘How? We had an armed guard on the door!’
‘But no one thought to check the food. The doctors can’t say for certain until after to post-mortem, but they think someone managed to spike his breakfast with Xarelto. He suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Warfarin they could have flushed; the effect of this stuff’s impossible to reverse.’
‘Professional job. But how the hell did they know where he was? We made the connection between him and Abulafia, and as soon as we did he was locked down.’
‘We have no idea. Again, it seems they were one step ahead of us.’
‘Then we need to move faster. Did you get anywhere with finding Phillip Shaw?’ Leila said.
‘Trident are down there now. If he’s there, they’ll bring him in.’
‘Anything on his computer?’
‘Nothing of any use. The hard disk was missing. Forensics techs say there were fragments captured on a RAM drive when the machine was destroyed, but nothing that leads anywhere. Cyber Crime hasn’t found anything that ties him to yesterday’s events.’
‘They will. Whatever he was doing, he’s got enough that someone killed his family.’
‘Until we find him, we can’t say more than it is a coincidence. Probably a case of mistaken identity. You know what the Farm’s like. The gunman could have got the buildings mixed up, or misread the flat number, anything.’
‘Then why did he take papers from Shaw’s desk?’
‘We don’t know, and we’re not in the business of guessing.’
‘I’d like to see him when he gets here.’
‘Reid, go home. You’re seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any. We’ve got people here who can interview Shaw.’
The phone on Thorne’s desk rang. Leila stood to leave but he held a finger up at her.
‘Yes?’
His brow furrowed as he listened. He glanced up at Leila then wrote a few words on the notepad on his desk.
‘What? That was over three hours ago…’ he said. ‘No, you send intel up here and let us decide what’s relevant!’
There was a long pause while Thorne listened again.
‘I’ll send someone over, if it’s not too late,’ he said and put the phone down.
‘Trident have found Phillip Shaw.’
‘Good. I guess I’ll be staying then.’
Thorne looked at her across the desk.
‘What?’ Leila said.
‘The Waterboys have got him hidden. Apparently he says he’ll only talk to you.’
‘Why me?’
‘God knows. Is there something else I should know, Reid?’
‘He must have seen me in the flat last night. He must have been within sight of us all the time.’
‘And you’re not exactly discrete. Anyway, Stiles’s contact insists the boy has something worth hearing after all.’
‘You said they found him over three hours ago.’
‘Somehow the report ended up in Major Crime as a low priority. They only got to it ten minutes ago.’
‘Give me the address…’
‘I seriously doubt your ability to handle this, DS Reid. No, I’ll send someone else. He’ll come.’
‘Yes, I’m sure he will, but it’ll take longer. We don’t have time to negotiate and we can’t exactly arrest him. I’ll go. If he’s asking for me, then it’s the quickest way.’
‘OK. But I’m warning you, Reid: stick to protocol. If you mess up once more, you’ll be off active duty for so long the next time you set foot in here will be for your retirement party. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Go and get Shaw. Bring him here. Nothing more. Then go home.’ He handed Leila the note from his desk. ‘This is the address. Ask for Scaz Bones and he’ll take you to Shaw. I’ll expect you back within the hour.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And DS Reid,’ Lawrence said. ‘Leave your gun here. Bones is gang material. You go in there armed you’re likely to start another war. God knows, we’re going to see enough of that again tonight as it is.’
‘Understood.’
She turned to leave.
‘DS Reid,’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Have you spoken to anyone outside this investigation about what’s going on?’
‘Like who?’
‘The press? Bloggers? Your Facebook friends?’
‘Of course not. And I don’t have Facebook friends. Mark Ross still has to show me how to do email.’
‘Then you know nothing about this?’ He motioned her round to his side of the desk and brought an image up on his computer. It was a gruesome photograph of – Leila assumed – one of the three people who had been killed on the bus outside the hotel. A shard of plate glass still protruded from the victim’s neck and her eyes were open in a look of mute shock. Death must have been instant. The image itself was shocking, but it had been altered before being posted online. Someone had added the words ‘This is Islam’ in quasi-Arabic script.