Brill waited, holding his breath.
One of the three remaining lights began blinking, followed by the electronic alarm. Then another, this one of a pair slightly separate from the first two. No sooner had it gone out than the fourth light in the cluster went the same way.
The last alarm seemed to go on for ever, echoing with haunting finality in the room. One of the operators swore softly and turned down the volume.
Brill began to dial the number, his hand shaking, and wondered about the men on the ground.
‘Why the fuck didn’t someone tell us?’ he said harshly, staring at the screen. But nobody answered.
THIRTY-TWO
Marcella Rudmann received the news and stared at the telephone before replacing it softly on its cradle. The call from Northwood had been routed through the MOD to all desks, and had already been confirmed by GCHQ and the National Security Agency watchers in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The Delta Force team had gone offline.
Across the desk from her, Lieutenant-Colonel Spake, the Deputy Director Special Forces, looked grim.
‘Four undercover personnel disposed of in quick succession,’ she said. ‘How could that happen?’
Spake raised an eyebrow at the casual terminology, and she blushed, wishing she could retract it, but it was too late. ‘Sorry.’
‘It might have been a bomb-burst,’ he said carefully. ‘Although that’s unlikely. Anything too powerful would show up on the monitors. It might have been a small piece of ordnance — an anti-personnel mine.’
‘What do you think happened?’ Rudmann asked. She knew nothing of battlefield tactics, but if anyone had a workable theory free of over-exaggeration, this man would.
‘If they stumbled into a minefield, it’s likely one or more would have survived, even if wounded — certainly long enough to keep the tracking devices going and call it in. That didn’t happen. A larger explosion would have been captured on the watching satellites. Nobody has reported one. If they all went down in quick succession, with no time to call it in, there is only one explanation.’
Rudmann made a guess. ‘They were taken out by ground forces.’
‘Yes.’
‘What about our own team?’
‘There’s no news.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘It depends how you read it.’ He stood up and moved to the door. ‘They carried the same markers, but standing orders were to call in regularly. We use a different system to the Americans. Harder to track.’ He opened the door and looked back at her with the steely look which Rudmann recognized as the traditional soldier’s face for politicians when importing bad news. ‘They failed to make the last two scheduled calls.’
Five hours later, an emergency meeting was convened in the Cabinet Office at No. 10. Present were the Deputy PM, the Secretary of State for Defence, Lieutenant-Colonel Spake and Lieutenant Commander David Brill, rushed in by car from Northwood.
‘All of them?’ The Deputy PM looked stunned by the news Brill had delivered, and the confirmation email from the National Security Agency’s liaison officer in London which was in his hand. He looked to Spake for a response which might counter the information, and wondered how to tell the PM.
‘Yes, sir.’ Spake’s confirmation was enough for the Deputy PM. The Special Forces man wasn’t much liked in the corridors of Whitehall; his aura of quiet danger sat uncomfortably alongside the well-fed civil servants and politicians. But his credentials were beyond criticism. ‘Both teams.’
‘How?’ the Deputy PM asked weakly. ‘They were our top men, weren’t they?’
‘My guess is, they were tracked from the moment they went in.’ Spake’s voice was neutral. ‘It was a risky operation anyway, but if they were all spotted so quickly, it could have only been because the Russians already had a detection shield in place. They would have been tracked from the moment they went in. Once they were down, they had nowhere to go.’
The Deputy blinked and glanced quickly at the Secretary of State. He wondered whose signature was the most likely to show up on the paperwork responsible for sending in the Special Reconnaissance team. He was relieved it wasn’t his. That, thank God, had been something he had not been entrusted with.
‘The Prime Minister will be devastated,’ he murmured finally. ‘Devastated.’
‘I’m sure he will. Is that all, sir?’ There was just sufficient bite in his voice to make his feelings clear, before he spun on his heel and made for the door.
The Secretary of State stopped him.
‘Is there anything we can do? For the team, I mean?’
‘What would you suggest?’ Spake kept his back turned, his voice as bleak as Siberian snow. ‘Send in another team to look for them?’
He strode from the room, leaving the two politicians and an embarrassed Lieutenant Commander Brill staring at each other in bewilderment.
THIRTY-THREE
‘ Rudmann’s becoming a nuisance. She’s asking too many questions.’
George Paulton eased his collar around his neck as he spoke. Either he was putting on weight or his shirts were shrinking. He crossed his ankles under the desk and tried to remain calm. Sang froid in the face of adversity was the way to play it, otherwise the hyenas would move in for the kill.
Hyenas like Marcella Rudmann.
‘Ignore her.’ The man standing near the window looked urbane and confident, at ease in a dazzling white shirt and light grey suit. Sir Anthony Bellingham — he rarely used the title — bore another, far more interesting designation: that of Deputy Director (Operations) of MI6 — Paulton’s opposite number in the Secret Intelligence Service. He eyed Paulton with the intensity of an eagle looking at a morsel of food. ‘You worry too much.’
‘So you keep saying. But I don’t have the same… resources that you enjoy.’ It was Paulton’s way of saying power and influence, without actually using those words. For two men on seemingly equal levels, the fact that Bellingham had more of both was a growing source of irritation, a reminder also reflected in the budgetary allocations poured into SIS.
‘Be glad of it, George, be glad of it. It’s working so far, isn’t it, our little experiment? Keeps the dodgy ones out of the way until we know what to do with them. And all in the name of Her Majesty’s security services.’ He grinned comfortably. ‘Reminds me, have you heard anything about your man Tate?’
‘Nothing untoward. Why, have you?’
‘Only that he arrived safely, and has been doing the rounds, getting the grand tour. No indication that he’s planning to do a bunk, at least. Be a bad move if he tried it.’ He scowled. ‘You said he’d do as he was told, didn’t you?’
‘I said he would, as long as he believed it was a genuine posting. If he starts to think otherwise…’ He left the rest unsaid, unwilling to provide guarantees he knew he couldn’t keep. Men like Harry Tate were wild cards in the intelligence community, quiet and diligent most of the time, but apt to go off like a firecracker if something got under their skin.
‘He’d better be a good boy.’ The temperature in Bellingham’s voice dropped several degrees. ‘There’s only one ending, otherwise.’
Paulton clamped his teeth together. He was beginning to wish he’d never agreed to this whole Red Station experiment. What had initially seemed a useful shared Five/Six exercise in budget allocation and a way of keeping potentially awkward intelligence officers under wraps until they were no longer a threat to themselves or anyone else, all under the guise of a live training facility, was beginning to look less and less attractive.
