‘You were supposed to be in lockdown. But unless they’ve got a pair of identical twins, we’ve CCTV coverage of them lurking around where it happened.’
‘Do you suppose they found any clues?’
‘I’m sure the Met’ll let us know. We’re handing the coverage to them. I imagine your pair’ll be invited in for questioning, ooh, twenty seconds later.’
Lamb took the cigarette from his mouth and studied it, his face a blank. ‘You’d hand over two joes to the Met?’
‘They’re not joes, Lamb. Slough House doesn’t do joes. You’ve been allowed to run this place on sufferance, because of what you did for the Service—’
‘Yeah, I remember it well.’
‘—but there are lines and there are limits, and you’re way over both.’
‘Nobody gave me a game plan. I was handed the keys. I still have them.’
‘Yes, well, you’ll be asked for them back before long. This has got too messy. Your rejects are supposed to be shackled to their desks, not hotdogging it all over the map. And we haven’t even started on Roderick Ho. A traitor? Here? You haven’t the budget to replace the coat hooks, but you’re glamorous enough to have your own fully fledged traitor?’
Lamb slotted his cigarette back into place, and his lip curled as he inhaled. Unless he was smiling. It was hard to tell.
Di Taverner said, ‘So you won’t be getting him back, either. No, it looks like happy hour’s over, Jackson.’
‘Unless,’ said Lamb.
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless I can make all your dreams come true.’
She made to speak, then stopped.
There was a clock ticking somewhere, but she couldn’t see it.
She said, ‘Is this going to turn into another one-liner about your staff?’
‘You might get lucky. But first off, it’s about our so-called traitor. Thing is, that classified document that’s caused all this trouble? The one you really don’t want to become public knowledge?’ He breathed out smoke. ‘It wasn’t classified.’
Taverner laughed. ‘This again? It was on the database. Everything on there’s classified.’
‘But not this.’ Lamb opened his drawer, pulled out a sheet of paper, handed it across. ‘That one’s a copy. But check the coding.’
She did, with narrowing eyes. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘Oh, now you want me to bring on the funny? No, it’s not a joke.’ From the still open drawer he produced a bottle and two glasses. He put them on the desk, paused, and put one of the glasses away again. Into the other, he poured an absurd measure of Scotch. ‘Want to hear a story?’
‘I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell one.’
‘Yeah, but sit down.’ She didn’t move. ‘I’m serious. You’re gonna hear this. But you’ll sit down for it.’
‘Your gaff, your rules, eh?’ But she sat on the chair at last, still holding the sheet of paper.
Lamb nodded in its direction. ‘Nineteen years ago, that was declassified, just like the coding shows. Signed off on by Charles Partner, because he was First Desk then. And nobody can declassify except First Desk.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘But it wasn’t his idea. It was part of an operation called Shopping List. Because there was a traitor in the Service at the time. Oh, not a great big one like Partner himself – we already know about him. But a low level one whose name doesn’t matter, a man who had heavy debts, and thought one way of settling them would be to sell some secrets.’
He raised his glass to his lips, swallowed.
‘Unfortunately for Mr Nobody, he’d barely got as far as hanging his shingle out before he was rumbled. No payday for him. But some bright spark decided this might be just the hook to hang his brolly on. And so was born Operation Shopping List. You see, Mr Nobody had already dipped his toe in murky waters, and there were a few interested parties who knew he was for sale. And what they wanted to know was, what were his goodies like?’
‘So we provided him with some,’ Lady Di said.
‘Oh, yes. He was given a load of worn-out secrets, all jazzed up to look shiny and new. Nothing like feeding the opposition a bowl of dog shit dressed up as caviar. But before said dog shit could be offered as bait, it had to be declassified, else Operation Shopping List itself would have been an act of treason. You can’t go offering classified material for sale, even as part of a sting. Even when that material’s of no strategic value.’
‘Like the Watering Hole paper,’ she said.
‘Yep. A worthless little strategy dreamed up by some ex-colonial, back when topis were the rage. Sounded good in summary, though. How to destabilise a nation state. Leave out the bit about it being fifty years behind the times, and you’d have a lot of Dr Evils salivating over that one.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Mr Nobody topped himself, that’s what happened. Overcome by shame or, I dunno, tied the knot too tight for his Friday night jerk-off. So Operation Shopping List never got past the initial stage. Which was to distribute the list of goodies around the interested parties.’
‘Which is how come the SSD knew of its existence.’
