military.’
Peggy came up the stairs, and they all sat down at the dining table with their mugs of coffee. Dave said, ‘You two have certainly put the cat among the pigeons up here. We got the briefing paper and the photographs this afternoon. The old chief constable, who’s supposed to be in charge up here, was already in a muck sweat, but now he’s absolutely shitting himself.’
‘Oh God. Is he going to be a nuisance?’ asked Liz.
Dave shrugged. ‘I’ll be interested in what you think. He’s scared of the Americans, doesn’t like the English, and acts as if women should never have been allowed the vote. Other than that, he’s fine.’
‘You mean he’s perfectly awful,’ said Peggy.
Dave grinned – he’d known Peggy since she had first been seconded from MI6, fresh-faced, innocent and very literal-minded. He seemed pleased she hadn’t entirely lost these qualities. ‘Don’t worry. Nothing your boss here can’t handle. I can guarantee that her well known charm will wear him down,’
‘Do shut up, Dave,’ said Liz.
‘I take it the Israelis know their colleague’s gone bad?’ asked Dave. ‘So if this guy Kollek does show up, presumably they’ll pinch the bugger.’
‘Yes. They know now.’ Between Liz’s visit to Ari Block, DG’s conversation with Tel Aviv and the telexes Teitelbaum had promised Miles he’d send, there couldn’t be any doubt among the Israeli delegation that Kollek had gone AWOL.
‘What about the military and the foreign office and all the other security folk here?’
‘Our beloved Binding is masterminding all the coordination from London, but in the morning Peggy and I will go round and make sure everyone’s got the right information and knows what they’re looking for. In so far as any of us does,’ she added ruefully. ‘I’m going to bed now. It’s been a long day – and it’ll probably be a longer one tomorrow.’
The chief constable in overall charge of security for the conference was a tall, gaunt man in his fifties wearing a uniform decorated with copious quantities of silver piping and braid. He sat at a large table in a makeshift command post that had been set up in the ballroom of the hotel, reading a document from a pile of papers. Behind him sat rows of police officers, some in uniform, some in mufti.
Liz recognised the man as Jamieson, from the Cabinet Office meeting, an occasion that now seemed months rather than weeks ago. She knew DG had rung to alert him to her arrival, and to tell him that she would brief him in detail on the threat from Kollek, so she was surprised at his manner when she introduced herself, even though Dave had warned her.
Jamieson hardly looked up from his papers, saying, ‘Just give me a moment, please.’
Irritated, Liz surveyed her surroundings, while Jamieson continued reading. The ballroom floor had been covered by temporary planking and on it, dotted around the room, were a number of circular tables, which looked as though they normally saw service in a dining room. Each table bore the initials of a different part of the security operation protecting the conference – local police, the Metropolitan police anti terrorist command, MI5, military intelligence. Each group had its own table, computers, telephones, communications equipment, and at each table casually dressed men and women sat tapping at keyboards, talking on phones and drinking coffee. And these were just the UK elements. The FBI and the Secret Service were in the room as well, but separated from the UK contingent by a low screen. Liz noted that the Secret Service had managed to commandeer twice as much space as anyone else. She looked round for the Arab and Israeli teams, but they must have been put in some other command post of their own. This looked like a coordination nightmare; she hoped Chief Constable Jamieson was up to the task.
As he showed no sign of finishing reading, Liz drifted over to the MI5 table where Dave Armstrong was in charge of a small team. ‘First round to the chief constable,’ Dave remarked as he offered her his chair. She ignored him and walked round the table to see what was up on the screens. She talked to a junior colleague for a few minutes, then an emissary from Jamieson came to say that the chief constable would see her now. ‘Kill him, Liz,’ said Dave in a breathy whisper, as she walked back with the policeman, her footsteps echoing loudly on the planking.
Brushing an impatient hand across his greying moustache, Jamieson said, ‘Yes, Miss Carling, what can I do for you?’
‘It’s Carlyle actually, and we’ve met before, chief constable, at the planning meeting at the Cabinet Office.’
He sniffed, but said nothing in reply. Liz wondered how much more of this she was going to take. Not a lot, she decided. She said, ‘I believe my director general has been in touch about a new threat that is particularly concerning us.’
‘Yes, he rang me last night,’ Jamieson said grudgingly. ‘You’ll appreciate we have a lot of potential threats right now, Miss Carlyle. What I suggest is that you talk to my deputy, Hamish Alexander, who will produce a risk assessment for me.’ He gestured to the tables behind his back. ‘We’ll consider it with all the others at our planning meeting this evening.’
‘We may not have until the end of the day. This requires your urgent attention.’
Jamieson shook his head wearily, as if he had heard this all too often in the last few days. ‘Young lady, I have to prioritise.’
The ‘young lady’ did it for Liz. ‘Has Sir Nicholas Pomfret arrived yet?’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking directly at Liz for the first time.
‘Why?’
Liz sighed. She’d had this kind of conversation before. On the last occasion it had been with Michael Binding of Thames House. Life might have changed unrecognisably for a professional woman in the past thirty years, but you still met the occasional dinosaur. She said mildly, ‘I ask because either you and I can discuss this now and agree what to do, or I’ll telephone the director general at Thames House, who will then call Sir Nicholas, who will then have a word with you. I’m happy to take that route if you prefer, though I’m sure everyone else involved will think it’s a waste of their time.’
‘Are you trying to push me around, young lady?’ he demanded.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it; I’m merely asking for cooperation. And I’d appreciate it if you could not call me “young lady”. I’m old enough
For a moment, Liz thought Jamieson was about to explode, but then some seed of sense must have planted itself. He seemed to think again, and quickly altered his demeanour. ‘Sorry if I was short. It’s just I seem to have the secret services of God knows how many countries trying to tell me what to do. And half of them barely speak English.’
‘It must be a nightmare,’ Liz said, trying to show a sympathy she didn’t feel. ‘Now let me make sure that you are fully briefed about this particular problem.’
She described Kollek as a Mossad renegade, highly intelligent and trained in covert techniques. She explained his background and the fear that in some sort of revenge for his grandfather’s death, he was going to try to sabotage the conference, possibly focusing particularly on the Syrian delegation. In case Jamieson was not up to date, which seemed only too likely, she told him that a brief and photographs had been circulated on intelligence channels. She gave him his own copy of the photographs, suspecting that whatever information loops were operating in the room, he was not necessarily a part of any of them.
Liz said, ‘I’d like the photographs circulated very widely among all the security on the ground at the hotel, please, and also on the perimeter. It would be very helpful if the local police in the neighbouring towns could have them, too. This man Kollek has been here before, so he knows the layout well. I’ll be talking with the hotel managers myself, so you can leave the staff side of things to me. I can’t stress too highly that this is a real danger. We don’t know where this man is, but we and the Israelis believe he has serious intent.’
Jamieson nodded tensely. He looked pale and was rubbing the palms of his hands together nervously. A picture of stress, thought Liz. This was obviously the biggest responsibility Jamieson had ever had; sadly, he seemed to be drowning rather than rising to it.
She went on: ‘If Kollek’s seen, I want him detained and put under guard. If he’s stopped, he’s certain to have a plausible cover story and all the proper credentials, but on no account should he be allowed to go on his way. He may well be armed, so people should be careful. Kollek’s very smooth, but he’s also lethal – we think he killed one of his own agents in London just a few weeks ago, so he won’t hesitate to kill again.’
