Читать книгу The Jerusalem Puzzle - Laurence O’Bryan - Страница 10

Henry Mowlam, a senior desk-based Security Services operative, threw the bottle of water towards the blue plastic recycling bin next to the back wall of MI5’s underground control room in Whitehall, central London.

It missed the bin and burst open. A shower of water sprayed over the pale industrial-yellow wall.

‘Bugger,’ said Henry, loudly.

Sergeant Finch was at the end of the row of monitoring desks. She looked up, then walked towards him.

‘You all right today, Henry? Working weekends not suit you?’

Her starched white shirt was the brightest thing in the room.

‘They do, ma’am.’ He saluted her abruptly.

She went over, pushed the plastic bottle towards the bin with her foot. It looked as if she was checking what the bottle was at the same time. Then she came back to him. The simulated outdoor lighting hummed above her head.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He was staring at his screen.

She walked away.

The report on the screen, which was the latest summary of the electronic monitoring of Lord Bidoner, a former member of the House of Lords only because of a title his father had inherited, had given him nothing new to go on. Lord Bidoner was one of those lords who didn’t apply himself to his responsibilities, and whose shady connections and wheeler-dealing made sure he’d never get an invitation to Buckingham Palace for a garden party.

But they still had nothing definite on Lord Bidoner. Taking a phone call from someone two steps removed from a plot to spread a plague virus in London was enough to put you on a watch list and get you investigated, but it was not enough to get you arrested.

‘We have new threats, Henry. We checked him out. You know there’s been a flood of suspects coming in from Pakistan and Egypt. We have to put Lord Bidoner on the back burner,’ was what Seageant Finch had said to him a week before.

But Henry wasn’t convinced.

He’d mentioned it again at their Monday morning meeting. The head of the unit had brought up Bidoner’s file on the large screen and had reeled off the details of the vetting he’d been subject to over the past six months.

‘He’s passed every check. His father was well respected, a pillar of the house. I know his mother was Austrian, but we don’t hold that against people anymore, Henry.’ There had been titters around the room. Henry hadn’t replied.

It wasn’t having an Austrian mother that made Henry suspicious. It was Bidoner’s use of encrypted telephone and email systems, his endless profits on the stock market from defence industry shares he picked with an uncanny prescience, and his political speeches at fringe meetings about population changes in Europe and the rise of Islam. Taken one by one they were all legitimate, but together they made Henry’s nose twitch.

He stared at his screen. He had other work to do. His hand hovered over the Bidoner report. He should delete it. And he should request that the Electronic Surveillance Unit discontinue the project.

He clicked another part of the screen. He would ask for the surveillance reports to be cancelled later. He had to review an incident in Amsterdam.

The victims of a bizarre double burning had been identified. They were a brother and a cousin of the men who had been arrested in London as part of the virus plot the previous August. The men arrested had known nothing about what they were doing that day. They had been dupes. But they were still in prison on remand.

It looked very much like whoever was behind that plot had just disposed of some people who could betray them.

There was another fact about this incident that concerned Henry. All these dupes were exiled Palestinians, from a village south of Jerusalem. A village where some sickening incidents had taken place.