white with two sugars. Suzy got black without; me, white without. The Golf Club never forgot a detail.
She sat down in her seat and bent to pick up one of the briefcases. The cuff rattled about on its chain as she manoeuvred the case on to her lap and flicked open the locks. The Yes Man passed a couple of his pages to her, and glanced briefly in my direction before returning to the ones remaining on the table. ‘So glad you could make it on time.’
I looked at Suzy. ‘I think I’m early, actually, even without the prompt at my door. Sir?’ I hated calling him that, but I had to attract his attention somehow. ‘Can I talk to you alone?’
‘What?’
‘There’s something I need to discuss with you.’
One glance at Suzy and she got the hint and made herself scarce, closing the door behind her. Yvette stayed where she was. A private word with the Yes Man automatically included her.
‘Well?’
He hadn’t even looked up. I knew I was on a loser straight away.
‘Sir, I have a personal problem that I need to deal with urgently. I just need a little time to sort things out.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? You have no personal problem, because you have nothing that is personal. That headcase of a child stays with her grandparents, or goes home. It’s as simple as that. What happens to her really doesn’t matter, because you’re going to stay here and do what you’re paid for.’
‘Sir, I understand but—’
‘No buts. Shut up and get on with your job. Do you understand?’
I nodded. For now, what else could I do? Storm out of the flat and straight into two regulators who’d like nothing more than to park me all over their garage? It was too early for that. There had to be another way.
16
He straightened himself on the settee as Yvette went to let Suzy back in. His eyes stayed on his files as the two women passed him, and Yvette handed Suzy and me a Jiffy-bag each from her briefcase. I checked my passport. It was in the name of Nick Snell again. Everything was in order: the date of birth was correct, but some of the stamps had been changed. For starters, the Malaysian holiday visa had disappeared. I checked the worn-looking Bank of Scotland credit cards, making sure they were still valid.
Yvette was helping herself to a sip of brew.
‘Is it the same CA?’
She nodded.
I looked at Suzy, who was doing the same as me, but much more enthusiastically. Her eyes shone, but she was trying to control her excitement in front of the boss.
The Yes Man had put his file to one side when the phone rang again. The Golf Club picked it up and left for the kitchen, although she didn’t need to: it was impossible to hear what she was saying from more than six inches away.
The Yes Man leant forward to pick up his brew, and fixed his gaze on Suzy. That was fine by me. I wanted to be anywhere but here, and it helped if I didn’t have to look at him. ‘The wine bottles that were collected in Penang contained pneumonic plague . . .’ He let the words hang, as if waiting for a reaction. He wasn’t going to get one from me: I wouldn’t have been here if it had been Fat Bastard Chardonnay.
‘That was the last batch produced for JI. We have no idea how much they’ve stockpiled in the last eleven months, but we know they’ve been planning bio attacks for some time now, mainly Far Eastern targets. Meanwhile, ASU [Active Service Unit] members have been disappearing from Malaysia. It seems they have ambitions to move further afield, which can only mean one thing. They consider themselves third wave.’
By the look on his face, he probably hoped we’d have to ask him what it meant, but it wasn’t rocket science. Third-wave terrorism just meant these people were switched on and highly technical. They weren’t knuckle- draggers: their greatest weapon was their brains. They knew it wasn’t that hard to access information and, scarier still, they knew where to look. They had already learnt how to develop biological agents – and it was probably only a matter of time before they figured out how to split the atom in the kitchen.
Suzy twisted on her chair. ‘Is that why the barriers are up around the Houses of Parliament?’
He shook his head. ‘The sort of attack they have in mind can defeat any barrier.’ He put down his mug and stared at it for several seconds before jerking his head up and re-establishing eye-contact, this time with us both. ‘The problem we face, as of six hours ago, is that there are already up to six bottles in this country, possibly more. It appears they were brought in as duty-free wine by one of the four-member ASUs. Every available bit of CCTV footage from all ports of entry is being looked at to try and identify who they are – and then, of course, find them.’
The Yes Man’s cell rang yet again in the kitchen, and Yvette answered as she came back into the room, then cut the call. His eyes followed her as she headed for him. ‘We have a source on the ground but so far very little information. The fact is—’ The Golf Club whispered into his ear.
‘You sure?’ He was a worried man.
The Golf Club gave a yes as she went to her chair.
‘Right, source int says that there are twelve bottles, but we still do not know where they are or when they will be used.’ He paused, checking us both to make sure we’d taken in the full weight of his words. Yvette, calm as ever, picked up her coffee and sat back in the chair with the barest rustle of Gore-Tex.
‘How would you do it, Susan?’
She took a breath. ‘Is it contagious?’
The Yes Man stared gloomily into her eyes. ‘Extremely.’
‘Then I’d concentrate on densely populated areas with transient people traffic, so that those infected move on swiftly and infect others, like their families. Their kids pass it round at school, their wives or husbands pass it on to friends and colleagues. The chain is endless.’
Suzy was more or less on the edge of her seat as the Yes Man took a sip and placed his mug carefully on the table, keeping his focus on her. I might as well not have been there. ‘Remember the anthrax attacks in the US?’
She hung on his every word.
‘People afraid to go to work, afraid to open mail? The US suffered huge economic damage from a microscopic amount of agent. And how many deaths? Five?’
Suzy kept nodding. If she wasn’t careful, her head was going to fall off.
‘It was the psychological effect that was most damaging. But this would be far worse.’
I thought I’d chip in with my twopence-worth now, before their love fest developed into a full-scale shag. ‘So, those experts who argued that JI’s goals didn’t fully engage with the global aspirations of al-Qaeda weren’t absolutely on the money?’
The Yes Man turned and fixed his eyes on mine, probably surprised I was using words with four syllables. ‘Exactly. And because everybody is focusing on the Arabs, South East Asians are slipping through the net. See an Arab today and the public think they see a terrorist. See a South East Asian or Indian and they just think he runs a takeaway.’
‘So what does this stuff look like?’ Suzy asked. ‘How is it disseminated in an attack, and what protection do we need? More important, where do we start looking?’
He kept his look of derision on me a second longer, then turned back to her. ‘Not even the government has been completely informed about this situation. The cabinet would overreact, and Number Ten leaks like a sieve – we’d have anarchy on the streets within hours. Which is why you are here. It simply mustn’t come to that.’
The cell started to warble again, and the Golf Club disappeared back into the kitchen. The Yes Man carried on. ‘The words “plague” and “pneumonic” will not appear on any report or briefing paper. You will refer to the agent as Dark Winter. I say again, at no time will the words “pneumonic” or “plague” be mentioned. It is Dark Winter. Have you
