The Run Around

together?’

‘You know I do,’ said Zenin.

‘I want to say it,’ she blurted, with the shyness of a young girl. ‘I love you.’

She looked at him expectantly, so Zenin said: ‘I love you, too.’

Chapter Thirty-one

As the senior intelligence controller guarding the American delegation Roger Giles spent almost the entire day in and around the banqueting rooms at the President Hotel in which the reception was to be held, formulating and supervising all the security arrangements and coordinating with Brigadier Blom, who personally supervised the Swiss input.

For the first time it gave Giles the excuse to dictate rather than defer to the Swiss intelligence chief and he utilized it fully, ordering that all the hotel staff involved in the catering and employed on the floor occupied by his delegation should be vetted by his own officers. He insisted on some of them being stationed in the kitchen, as apparent workers, and on more being dressed as waiters and hotel employees, to mingle among the guests during the actual event. Further, disguised again as hotel staff, he deployed more of his own people throughout their permanent floor: if the Secretary of State or any of the senior officials were a target Giles considered a professional more likely to attempt to penetrate their official but temporarily deserted quarters and lay in wait than make any sort of frontal assault at the crowded reception.

In the diplomatic pouch from Washington he’d had flown in electronic equipment adapted by the CIA’s technical division from the hand-held metal detectors used at airports. The devices were smaller but more sensitive than those in commercial use, capable of being carried in a man’s pocket and of triggering an alarm within a ten- metre radius of any metal object the size of a knife and certainly of a pistol or grenade dimensions. Giles issued these to ordinarily dressed officers who were to circulate among the guests, as well as to those disguised as waiters. Also from the technical division came X-ray machines once more adapted from airport equipment. With the agreement of the hotel management and of the brigadier he installed these unseen in the closets to be used as cloakrooms, with instructions to the operators that all deposited baggage should be surveyed against a bomb being left to explode when the reception was at its height.

Giles was also specific in the orders he issued to every officer, particularly in the use of specialized weaponry he handed out to some whom he individually selected for a specified function. The normal operating procedure on such foreign operations was initially a Halt and Explain demand to any suspicious person, with the drawing and firing of a handgun understood to be a last resort. Giles decreed there should be no delay. If any of them – and especially those stationed at all times within a five-metre radius of the most senior officials – detected the approach of anyone by whom they were alarmed they were to shoot immediately, with no preliminary challenges.

His final briefing were to those agents individually selected. To each were issued a further consignment from the CIA’s technical division, the adaptation this time of the sort of stun grenades developed by the Israelis against aircraft hijacking. Each man was given two of the grenades, together with earplugs to defeat their function and enable him to remain conscious afterwards. If there were any sort of concerted attack by a terrorist group, Giles ordered that the grenades should be exploded irrespective of the temporary unconsciousness they would cause to everyone, the essential requirement only the immobilizing of the attackers before they could commit any outrage. Giles’s final instruction was that those protected by the earplugs should ensure that every attacker was completely neutralized before bothering to summon any medical assistance for the unconscious guests.

The senior and supervising agents all had their linked communication earpieces and throat microphones, connected not just to each other in the reception area but above, on their accommodation floor, as well.

As a matter of courtesy, Giles involved the Swiss intelligence chief throughout the security preparations and just before the reception began Blom said: ‘So you are still taking the British warning seriously?’

‘I take my job seriously,’ said the American, diplomatically.

‘I thought to work effectively stun grenades needed a confined space like an aircraft fuselage?’ queried Blom.

‘They do,’ agreed Giles. ‘Our training is that the best way to defeat an assassination is to deflect it. If anything happens I’m gambling on the grenades being sufficient to disorientate, to give our people time to block off the attack and get some shots in themselves.’

‘I’m sure it will all be unnecessary,’ said Blom, confidently.

‘I hope it is,’ said Giles, sincerely.

Giles had chosen to put himself at all times close to the Secretary of State, the assistant Secretary of State and the American ambassador to Switzerland. It placed him initially near the receiving line, so he saw Barbara the moment she entered. She moved swiftly along the line, seeing him when she was halfway along and smiling. She approached him hesitantly and said: ‘Is it all right if I stand with you?’

‘Talk to any other guy and I’ll break his legs,’ said Giles. It had seemed natural that she should come – he’d wanted her to be with him – but Giles thought suddenly of what would happen if there were an attack.

He got her a glass of champagne from a genuine passing waiter and she said: ‘So this is what you call work!’

‘There’s a lot of mental strain!’ he said, trying to match her mood, pleased at her lightness.

‘Isn’t that thing in your ear uncomfortable?’

‘You get used to it.’

‘Martha Bell is more attractive in person than in all the newspaper pictures.’

‘She works hard at it.’

‘That sounds as if you don’t like her.’

‘I don’t know her.’ Giles spoke never looking at her but all around, not at his agents but carrying out his own surveillance. He said: ‘Don’t think I’m ignoring you.’

‘I know you’re not.’

‘I’m afraid this is how it’s going to be for the next few days.’

‘I expected it,’ she said. ‘I thought I might take a trip on the lake tomorrow: there’s an afternoon cruise.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Giles. ‘I’m going to be tied up longer tomorrow than I have been today.’

‘I can wait,’ said Barbara. She paused and said: ‘Until tonight, at least.’

Giles looked fully at her for the first time, smiling. ‘You sure?’ he said.

‘Very sure,’ she said.

‘Wonder what everyone around us would think if they knew what we were talking about!’ he said.

‘I don’t give a damn about everyone around us.’

‘Right now I wish I didn’t have to, either. Just a few days,’ he agreed.

‘Let’s not rush away when the conference finishes,’ Barbara suggested. ‘Why don’t we stay on, so you can rest up after all this nonsense? Properly plan?’

‘Fine,’ agreed Giles. ‘Whatever you say.’ He talked looking away again, studying the room, which was how he saw one of the staff members from the Secretary of State’s office approaching, as the receiving group broke up and started to circulate around the room. The man’s name was Dawes, he remembered, from that afternoon’s introduction: or maybe Hawes. A head-thrust-forward, eagerly smiling young man, prematurely balding and awkward because of it.

‘Hi, Roger!’ he greeted. He was the sort of State Department careerist who always remembered names, even given ones.

‘My wife, Barbara,’ introduced Giles.

‘Ma’am,’ said the man, politely, and with further politeness saved Giles the embarrassment by introducing himself: ‘John Hawks,’ he said, offering his hand.

Close, decided Giles. But his job was not diplomacy, just keeping its practitioners safe. He said: ‘Everything