Still, it was progress. It would have felt more like progress if it hadn’t involved someone else, but it was progress. And she, Taverner, was Second Desk, even if the new dispensation involved there being several Second Desks; and her team had spring-sunshine lighting and ergonomic chairs, and that was fine too. Because they also had young men with rucksack-bombs on tube trains. Anything that helped them do their jobs was fine by Taverner.
This morning, they also had an execution in progress.
The link had appeared on a BBC blog around 4 a.m., its accompanying message brief but effective:
And now, like all successful media events, it was playing on every screen in sight. Would be playing on every screen in the country, in fact: in homes and offices; above treadmills in gyms; on palm-pilots and iPhones; on the back seats of black cabs. And all round the globe, people would be catching up with it at the different times of their day, and their first reaction would be the same as that of the team on the hub: that
And it wasn’t going to happen, Taverner told herself. This was not going to happen. Stopping it was going to be the highlight of her career, and would call time on a lousy era for the Service, years of dodgy dossiers, suspicious deaths. It was going to get them out of the doghouse: herself, her superiors, and all the boys and girls on the hub; the hardworking, underpaid guardians of the State who were first in line when duty called, and last to be celebrated when things went right … It wasn’t twelve months since her team had rolled up a terrorist cell that had mapped out a full-scale assault on the capital, and the arrests, the captured weaponry, had made for a two-day wonder. But at the trial, the main question was: how come the cell had thrived for so long? How come it had so nearly achieved its objective?
The anniversaries of failure were marked on the streets, with crowds emerging from offices to observe a silence for the innocent dead. Successes were lost in the wash; swept from the front pages by celebrity scandal and economic gloom.
Taverner checked her watch. There was a lot of paper heading her way: the first sit-rep was due on her desk any minute; there’d be a Crash Room meeting thirty seconds later; a briefing for the Minister before the hour was out; then Limitations. The press would want a statement of intent. Ingrid Tearney being in DC, Diana Taverner would deliver that too. Tearney would be relieved, actually. She’d want Taverner’s fingerprints on this in case it went tits up, and a citizen had his head cut off on live TV.
And before any of that happened there was someone at the door: Nick Duffy, Head Dog.
It didn’t matter which rung of the ladder you were on: when the Dogs appeared uninvited, your first reaction was guilt.
‘What is it?’
‘Something I thought you should know.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Don’t doubt it for a minute, boss.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘I had a drink with an ex last night. Moody. Jed Moody.’
She said, ‘He got the boot after the Miro Weiss business. Isn’t he at Slough House?’
‘Yes. And not liking it.’
The door opened. A kid called Tom put a manila folder on Taverner’s desk. The first sit-rep. It looked implausibly thin.
Taverner nodded, and Tom left without speaking.
She said to Duffy, ‘I’m somewhere else in thirty seconds.’
‘Moody was talking about an op.’
‘He’s covered by the Act.’ She scooped up the folder. ‘If he’s running off about his glory days, bring him in and slap him round. Or get a tame policeman to do it. Am I really telling you how to do your job?’
‘He wasn’t talking about the past. He says Jackson Lamb’s running an op.’
She paused. Then said, ‘They don’t run ops from Slough House.’
‘Which is why I thought you should know.’
