'Now this you'll like,' he said. He placed the box and speakers on the coffee table and ran a power lead to the nearest socket.
'Acoustic noise generator. White noise, all frequencies. It'll absolutely render every type of listening device useless, providing that you're closer to the speakers than you are to the bug. Switch it on and sit close to it, keep your voice down and the white noise will swamp what you're saying.'
'Downside is, they'll know that I'm trying to keep something from them,' said Donovan.
'Not necessarily,' said Knight, flicking a small red switch. A red light glowed and the room was filled with a static-like noise. Knight turned a white plastic knob and the volume increased.
'They're more likely to think they've got a technical problem. Vary it. Turn it down when your conversation's innocuous, turn it up when you're secret squirrel. It'll drive them crazy.' Knight stood up.
'Right, why don't I sweep the downstairs, show you the weak points, then I'll fix the phones upstairs.'
He took a portable RF detector from the suitcase. It looked like a small metal detector with a circular antennae on one end that was the size of a table tennis bat. He showed Donovan how to switch it on and how to read the LCD, then ran it along the skirting board. Donovan was already familiar with the procedure: he'd often swept the villa in Anguilla himself.
The phone rang. Donovan walked over to the sideboard and picked up the receiver, automatically checking the lights on the monitor. The green light was on. Safe to talk. It was Robbie. Donovan expected him to apologise for running out of the house, but Robbie had something else on his mind he'd left his sports kit behind and he was supposed to be playing soccer that afternoon. Donovan said he'd take the kit to school for him and arranged to meet Robbie outside the gates at half past twelve.
They called it the Almighty. Major Allan Gannon wasn't sure who had named the secure satellite phone system, or when, but now it was never referred to by any other name. The briefcase containing the Almighty sat on a table adjacent to Gannon's desk when he was in his office at the Duke of York Barracks in London, a short walk from the up market boutiques of Sloane Square, and went everywhere with him.
Gannon was standing by the window, peering through the bombproof blinds at the empty parade ground, when the Almighty bleeped. It was an authoritative, urgent sound, none of the twee melodies so beloved of mobile phone users. The Almighty's ring broached no argument. Answer me now, it said. This is urgent. Not that Gannon needed to be told the urgency of calls that came through the Almighty. The only people who had access to the Almighty were the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Office, and the chiefs of MI5 and MI6.
Gannon strode over to the satellite phone and picked up the receiver.
'Increment,' he said curtly.
'Major Gannon speaking.'
The head of MI6 identified herself, and then began relaying instructions to Gannon. Gannon made notes on a pad attached to a metal clipboard which was pre-stamped with 'Eyes Only Top Secret. Not For Distribution'.
The call was short, less than two minutes in duration. Gannon repeated the information he'd been given, and then replaced the receiver. The major's SAS staff sergeant looked up from his copy of the Evening Standard.
'Game on,' said Gannon.
'Freighter heading for Felixstowe. Interception as soon as it's in our waters. Possible drugs consignment.'
'Customs?' asked the sergeant, a fifteen-year veteran of the SAS.
'Spooks,' said Gannon.
'Specific instructions not to liaise with Customs at this point.'
'They do like their little games, don't they?' said the sergeant.
'Force of habit,' said Gannon.
'Since the Iron Curtain went down, they've got bugger all else to do. Still, ours not to reason why. Eight bricks should do it.' The Special Air Service and Special Boat Squadron units that the Increment had access to were split into groups of four, known as bricks. Each brick had a vehicle specialist, a medical specialist, a demolition specialist and one other with an extra skill, such as languages, sniping or diving.
'We'll go in with inflatables, no need for choppers.'
'Fifty-fifty split?'
'I think so,' said Gannon.
'Wouldn't want our lads to think they were being left out of it. No choppers, though, we'll be using inflatables. Get the SBS to pull out a sub skimmer No reason to expect any firepower at their end, but we go in fully equipped.' The major looked at his watch.
'Full briefing at eighteen hundred hours.'
Donovan found Robbie's sports bag by his bed. He put it on the passenger seat of the Range Rover, and was about to get into the car when he had a sudden thought. He went back into the house and got the portable RF detector and ran it over the outside and underneath of the Range Rover, then climbed into the back and swept the antennae over the inner surfaces.
A car pulled up in the road outside. Donovan looked up, feeling vulnerable. He relaxed when he saw it was Louise, at the wheel of an Audi roadster. She waved and climbed out of the sports car. Donovan wondered what it was about girls who worked in the lap-dancing bars. They all seemed to want to drive powerful cars.
He got out of the Range Rover and waved back.
'I hope you don't mind me popping in on you like this,' she said. She was wearing a sheepskin flying jacket and blue jeans that seemed to have been sprayed on to her, and impenetrable black sunglasses.
'Kris told me where you lived.'
'No problem,' said Donovan. He looked at his watch.
'But I'm just on my way out.'
Louise's face fell.
'Oh. Okay. I just wanted to say thanks. Buy you a coffee, maybe.' She kept looking at the RF detector in Donovan's right hand while she was talking. Donovan put it in the back of the Range Rover.
'Tell you what, why don't you give me a lift to my boy's school? I've got to drop off his soccer kit. Then you can take me for coffee.'
Louise smiled. It was, thought Donovan, a very pretty smile. He'd only seen tears and a trembling lower lip when he'd been around at her flat. She turned and went back to the roadster and Donovan found himself unable to tear his eyes from her backside as she walked. He could see why she was able to afford a car like that. She looked over her shoulder and caught him watching her.
Donovan quickly looked away. He took Robbie's sports kit out and locked up the Range Rover. She was gunning the engine as he got into the passenger seat.
'Nice motor,' he said.
'My toy,' she said.
'You can navigate, yeah?'
'Does all right, doesn't he?' said Shuker, swinging the SLR camera around to photograph the departing Audi.
'First the blonde, now the brunette. Both lookers. See the body on that one?'
Jenner put down his binoculars and wrote down the registration number of the roadster. The blonde had turned out to be a lap-dancer, and Jenner was prepared to bet money that the brunette was in the same line of business.
'If you had the millions he had, you'd probably have totty like that, too.'
'Hey, I do all right,' said Shuker, offended.
'Of course you do. Tell them you work for HM Customs and they go all misty eyed, don't they?'
'It's the bike. Birds love bikes.'
'Nah, birds say they like bikes until they get married. Then they want you to sell the bike and buy a car.'
'Not the sort I go out with. But Donovan, he's got the lifestyle, hasn't he? What do you think the house is worth?'
Two and half. Maybe three.'
'Can't they sequester his assets?'
'He's the Teflon man. House is in his wife's name, I think. Or a trust. Untouchable, anyway. Even if anything
