“Two weeks from it, then. And don’t think for a minute that I shall let my attention wander from you, Crocker. No, my eye will be on you up until the moment you leave this building for the very last time, of that you can be certain. You may leave now.”
Crocker left the office without another word.
Alison Gordon-Palmer caught him just as he was stepping into the elevator, preparing to ride back down to the sixth floor.
“Paul!”
What he truly wanted then was to be alone, at least for a moment, so he could indulge the rage that was now roaring inside him. But the Deputy Chief was almost running, trying to catch him before the doors closed, and at the last moment Crocker thrust out his hand, so that she could enter and ride the lift down with him.
“I’m sorry. You must know I tried everything to talk him out of it,” Gordon-Palmer told him after the doors had closed. “He’s had it in for you from the start, Paul. This thing in KL was the opportunity he’d been waiting for.”
Crocker grunted in agreement. His history with Barclay stretched back to his days in the field, to when he’d been a young Minder Two during the twilight days of the Cold War. He’d gone to Prague to lift a KGB defector named Valeriy Karpin, and it had gone wrong, and Crocker had barely escaped with his life. Karpin hadn’t been as lucky, shot to death as he hung in the barbed wire on the border with Austria. Barclay had been Head of Station– Prague at the time, and it was Crocker’s belief, even now, that Karpin’s death was Barclay’s fault. Like Fincher, he’d lost his nerve when it had been needed most, and like Fincher, Frances Barclay had done an expert job of passing the blame for the failed operation onto another’s shoulders.
Barclay, like so many other civil servants in countless bureaucracies around the world, had gone on to survive and even to thrive. When Sir Wilson Stanton-Davies, the previous C, had been forced into premature retirement as the result of a stroke, Barclay had assumed the position as head of SIS with a sense of entitlement that had made Crocker’s stomach turn. Barclay had also made it abundantly clear that he would do everything in his power to convince Crocker to step down.
But before he had been D-Ops, Crocker had been a Minder, and more of that remained in his blood than Barclay had anticipated. Crocker had entrenched himself. While Barclay headed the Firm, Crocker knew his opportunities for advancement were limited, if not nonexistent. His intent had been to wait Barclay out. Eventually, he was certain, the current C would retire, and the sun would once more shine down upon the Ops Directorate. All he’d needed to do was outlast him.
“Paul?”
Crocker brought himself back to the moment, looking at the Deputy Chief.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m thinking of firing Fincher, to begin with.”
“He’ll file a grievance, say it’s politically motivated.”
“He’s been a disaster since he started. He’s all but crippled the Section. If the job hadn’t been in KL, I would never have sent him.”
“All the same, you fire him, you’ll lose. Which means that you’ll depart, but Fincher will still be here. Bad for the Service, certainly.”
“Maybe I can find a job in Iraq that needs doing,” Crocker said. “Somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, perhaps.”
Alison Gordon-Palmer allowed a soft laugh to escape her before shaking her head, amused. She was in her early fifties, slender, with shoulder-length brown hair that had about as much life to it as the bristles found on the average broom. She favored suits of brown or, rarely, a deep burgundy, and she avoided the use of makeup unless forced to walk the corridors of Whitehall on SIS business. As far as Crocker was concerned, she was the second smartest person in the building—the first being Simon Rayburn, the Director of Intelligence—and, unlike the man she had replaced as Deputy Chief, Donald Weldon, appropriately aggressive for the job. Weldon had been, by his nature, cautious, and disinclined to the risks inherent in intelligence work. Alison Gordon-Palmer, on the other hand, understood that risk came with the territory.
Crocker wondered again, not for the first time, how it was that Frances Barclay had settled upon her as Deputy Chief. He’d been certain the job would go to Rayburn, and had been surprised when she’d been named as DC instead.
It was one of the very few decisions Barclay had made that Paul Crocker could find no fault with.
The lift came to a halt, the doors opened, and Crocker and Gordon-Palmer stepped out, walking through a cluster of junior officers who parted hastily to let them pass. Their offices shared the same floor, and they walked through the maze of white corridors in silence. When Crocker made the turn toward his office, she stuck with him.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked him suddenly.
The question was unexpected, and Crocker responded before thinking. “Of course I bloody want to stay.”
Gordon-Palmer nodded slightly, her lips tightening in thought. She waited until he had his hand on the doorknob to his outer office, then said softly, “Seccombe is going to call you.”
Crocker stopped, looked at her curiously, waiting for further explanation. She shook her head.
“I recommend you see what you can do for him when he calls, Paul,” the Deputy Chief said, and then turned away, heading to her own office.
Leaving Paul Crocker to wonder what it was the PUS at the FCO could possibly want with him, and why the Deputy Chief seemed so certain he would be able to deliver.
CHAPTER 6
London—Whitehall. Office of Sir Walter
Seccombe, Permanent Undersecretary and
Head of the Diplomatic Service (FCO)
13 February, 1559 Hours GMT
Sir Walter Seccombe’s smile was wide and genuine, and he shook Crocker’s hand firmly, pumping it twice before releasing his grip.
“Paul, good of you to come,” Seccombe said. “I’m afraid we’ll need to make this fast—I have to join my Minister for a Cabinet meeting at half past.”
“I could hardly refuse the invitation,” Crocker said. “Certainly not after the Deputy Chief let me know it was coming.”
