were forbidden in the main building.
Jules handed the woman at Reception some ID that looked like a credit card and she swiped it through a reader. ‘Good evening, Mr Drogba.’ She passed him a form to sign, checked it, and passed me a red badge. ‘If you could hand that back in when you leave, Mr Lampard?’ She didn’t bat an eyelid.
We hadn’t even got past the main reception area before we hit another layer of security. This time it included the electronic equivalent of a full body search. We carried on and followed a circular walkway that ran inside the building. Everyone called it the Street. It felt a bit like being in an airport terminal, with open-plan offices leading off both sides. Glass cases displayed exhibits from GCHQ’s history, including the radio set used by the Portland spy ring to send messages back to Russia in the fifties and sixties.
‘I don’t know what the layout was before, Nick, but now the linguists and analysts work on the upper floor. They’ve had to squash up to accommodate CSOC.’
The cross-governmental Cyber Security Operations Centre was another new one on me. It had recently been set up to deal with any threat Britain might face from the Internet - and to carry out some cyber attacks of its own.
All the guys on the upper floor spent their time studying intelligence on everything from terrorism and nuclear proliferation to serious organized crime and counter-espionage. It was no place for the likes of me. Neither was the basement. I remembered the huge halls with endless rows of blinking computers. In all there were about ten thousand square metres of the things. They generated so much heat they needed a cooling system that used a lot of local water. During the floods in 2007, the mains were cut and special supplies had to be tankered in.
We passed something I didn’t remember from past visits: a small memorial honouring the number of GCHQ staff who had died in service. More had been dropped in Afghanistan in the past few years than anywhere else.
6
I followed Jules from the bright, fluorescent corridor into a room where the only light seemed to come from the glow of plasma screens mounted on a walnut-veneered wall.
As I closed the door behind me, the hum and chill of air-conditioning took over. A dozen solid walnut chairs sat around a huge oval walnut table. The room was carpeted with Axminster’s finest, and it smelt like it had only just been laid. I wondered if it was the fruit of some kind of government initiative to boost local industry or Tresillian cocking his leg and marking out his territory. If they’d given Anna the cheque-book and an hour in Ikea she could have saved the taxpayer thousands.
At the far end of the table, below a vibrant plasma screen, I saw the world’s most pissed-off face. There were far too many wrinkles in it for a man in his early fifties. His hair was thinning on the top and swept back. Either it was wet with sweat or he’d stepped straight from his office shower.
Charles Tresillian looked like he’d sprung from a grainy black-and-white of Shackleton’s final expedition and spent his Saturdays running from office to office, encouraging the troops. The set of his jaw certainly suggested he had a country to protect, and he expected to lead from the front.
A map of Moldova, wedged between Romania and Ukraine, north of the Black Sea, was spread across the screen behind him.
For fuck’s sake - these guys must see me as a one-trick pony.
Tresillian kept his brooding gaze on me as I crossed the carpet. He slid two files across the table at no one in particular. I went to the right and Jules to the left.
‘You’re our man, are you? Are you as good as Julian says you are?’ His voice was deep and clipped. His finger provided the punctuation. ‘He tells me you’re shit-fucking-hot.’
People expected the shits and fucks to tumble from mouths like mine because they assumed we wouldn’t know the difference between a thesaurus and a brontosaurus. But from a posh well-educated lad like Tresillian they somehow carried the same gravitas as one of Churchill’s soundbites.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I am.’
‘Well, I’m the shit-fucking-hot man with the big picture. Sit.’
Jules and I took chairs facing each other. I leant forward and dragged one of the buff-coloured folders towards me.
‘Gentlemen, shall we?’
Tresillian opened his folder and we followed suit.
‘This is the situation, Mr Stone. It is one that you will endeavour to make good. Hector Tarasov is a friend of the UK in Moldova. Our sources in-country tell us that his daughter has gone missing. We want to find her for him, in as covert a way as possible.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s an industrialist.’ He tapped the printout of the map. ‘Here, in Transnistria.’ His finger stayed on the narrow sliver of land to the east of Moldova. ‘When it was part of the Soviet Union, Moldova had its share of factories, many of them military. With independence, in 1991, the eastern strip of the country, known as Transnistria, east of the Dniester River, seceded.’
I tried a smile. I wasn’t comfortable with the Mr Stone business, and even though my head was starting to pound again, I wanted to see if I could lighten the tone a bit. ‘Sounds like one of those lunatic names the head sheds give a country during battle training.’
It wasn’t going to happen.
‘If only, Mr Stone. Transnistria was Moldova’s most industrialized region, as well as its most Russified. Moscow intervened to stop a civil war over the secession, and since 1992 Russian troops have watched over what is being termed a “frozen conflict” that has left Transnistria isolated, unrecognized by any nation but Russia, and Moldova divided.’
He raised a finger at the plasma screen. ‘The reason our friend is very important to us is because this strip of land is a major producer of Russian arms for worldwide export. It has the largest steel-production plant that the Russian Federation has access to.’
‘What does Tarasov’s factory make?’
‘Tons of mind-your-own-fucking-business.’ His lips pursed and his frown added another ten years to his age. ‘This operation is about the daughter.’
I looked down at an eight-by-five colour picture of a young woman with dyed blonde hair that reached her shoulders. The roots showed through in the centre parting. She’d gone for the Goth look; her pale, almost translucent skin made her look like she belonged in a teenage vampire film. A bare male arm hung loosely round her neck. She was trying hard to smile into the camera, as you do at family events when you’re having a shit time. The image almost filled the page. There was no information about where or when it might have been taken.
‘Her name is Lilian Edinet. She’s twenty years old. This picture was taken approximately seven months ago. We have, of course, checked on all social networking sites to see if we could get any information on her whereabouts or any more recent photos.’
Another image was pasted over the map on the screen - the wide shot her face picture had been lifted from. She stood in front of a T55 tank mounted on a stone ramp surrounded by plaques: a monument to the great wheat harvest or whatever. The arm belonged to an older man, who looked a lot happier than she did. He was in his mid- forties and had very dark, almost jet-black hair and a dental plan that only money, not God, could give you. Peas out of the same pod, they looked like a double act. Behind them was a massive chunk of boring grey factory. Red signage proudly covered the top third of the building.
Tresillian looked up. ‘That is Hector Tarasov.’
He turned to Jules. ‘I don’t care too much for Facebook myself. I can’t see why anyone would want to make so much information freely available. It’s out there for ever. Good for us, though, eh?’
My head filled with questions. ‘Can I make contact with Tarasov? Find out what he knows? What about her mother?’
‘On no account must there be any contact with Tarasov.’
‘He must be taking steps of his own to—’
