Her current need for nicotine lay in the fact that she wasn’t long out of the day’s third meeting: this one with Limitations, formerly Steering & Oversight. It wasn’t clear whether a sense of humour lay beneath the rebranding. Limitations was a cross between an Oxbridge MCR and a railway platform: a collection of chinless wonders, with a sprinkling of field-hardened veterans. You had more chance of reaching a consensus with a vox pop on Marmite. The suits hated operations because operations cost money; the field guys loved them, because the best produced pure gold. To outward appearances Taverner was a suit, but her heart belonged with the field guys, the handlers. Besides, if you removed operations from the curriculum, security didn’t amount to more than putting on a peaked cap and a shiny badge. As far as the war on terror went, you might as well start digging trenches, and handing out tin hats.
The folders she’d brought to this particular meeting were all the same buff-colour; had all been time-stamped fifteen minutes previously; were all logo-ed Mozart, this year’s Grade-A classification. They’d made their way round the table even faster than the pastries.
For a few moments there was near-silence.
At length, a suit piped up. ‘You’re quite sure about this?’
‘Of course.’
‘Humint?’
A snort. The vets loved it when the footlights crowd slipped in a tradecraft term.
‘Human intelligence,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
‘And this Albion crew—’
Somebody else said, ‘Could we do this by the numbers, please?’
General clearing of throats, shuffling of papers.
Tradition decreed that Limitations gatherings were minuted, regardless of whether the session was designated open, and thus recorded, or closed, and thus officially not recorded. So by the numbers it was: date, time, those attending. In the chair, Leonard Bradley of Westminster Parish. In the hot seat, Lady Di. Not that anyone called her that.
‘For those who don’t know, Ms Tearney, Ingrid, is in Washington this week, or would of course be here. We’re grateful to Diana for stepping into her shoes, but then we all know how capable a Second she is. Diana.’
‘Thank you, Leonard. Good morning, everyone.’ Replies were murmured. She tapped her folder. ‘The first anyone knew of this, it popped up on a BBC blog at 4.22 a.m.’
‘I hate to interrupt,’ a suit said.
The almost audible rolling of multiple pairs of eyes suggested that this wasn’t entirely true.
‘Can’t such entries be traced via, ah, I believe they’re called—’
Diana Taverner said: ‘If we had a trace, we wouldn’t need this meeting. We’d have wrapped the whole thing up before
Bradley made a hand gesture that would have looked more complete if he’d been brandishing a pipe. ‘Perhaps we could let Diana finish. Or even start.’
She said: ‘Hassan Ahmed. Born Birmingham, 1990. His grandparents arrived from Islamabad in the early seventies. His grandfather ran a soft furnishings business which his father took over when the old man retired. Hassan is the youngest of four, in his second year at Leeds University. Business Studies. Shares a flat with three other students, but by all accounts, he’s a shy kid. No girlfriend known, or boyfriend either. His tutor couldn’t pick him out from a crowd. He belongs to a student society calls itself the Last Laugh, for budding stand-up comedians, but nobody there has much to say about him. He’s clearly not lighting fires.’
She paused to take a sip of water.
‘He’s Muslim, but only nominally. Before university, he was a regular attender at his local mosque, which is not—and never has been—on a watch list. But his homelife is secular, and his father in particular seems to regard the mosque as a networking opportunity. They don’t use Urdu at home, and it’s not clear Hassan speaks it. There’s no record of his having contact with extreme influences, nor has he been clocked on demos or marches. His name popped up on a petition objecting to the 21/7 convictions, but it’s possible it was hijacked. And even if it wasn’t, it might just mean he happened to be there when the petition went round.’
When she replaced the glass on its coaster, she took care to position it dead centre.
‘It’s a brief profile, and we all know that moderate backgrounds can produce blazing extremists, but there’s absolutely nothing on Hassan to suggest that he’s anything other than what he seems to be. A British Asian studying for a degree. Either way, we do know he was taken late last night on his way home from the comedy club. He was snatched in a back lane not far from his flat, taking a shortcut from where he’d parked his car. The snatchers—’
‘He drives a car?’ somebody asked.
‘It was a present from his father,’ Taverner said.
She waited, but that seemed to satisfy him.
‘The snatchers call themselves the Voice of Albion.’
Now Leonard Bradley leant forward, his face creasing into that mask of perplexity he liked to wear when about to pick holes in somebody’s case. ‘You’ll forgive me—’
She waved him ahead, like a driver might a friendly bus.
