Whelan was gathering his papers into a pile, slipping them inside a cardboard folder. “Serious?”
“Not Westacres. A former agent—David Cartwright?”
“Of course. I never met him, but I know who you mean.”
“Yes, well, there’s been an incident at his home. It looks like the old boy shot an intruder and disappeared.”
“Good lord!”
“It gets worse. The ‘intruder’ was his grandson, who’s a current member of the Service. Bit of a mess all round. But Emma Flyte’s on the scene. She’ll lock it down.”
“The grandson. Is he—dead?”
“Very. Do you want to run through the rest of your debrief?”
Her switchblade turn took him aback. “. . . Not sure we have time. Any feedback so far?”
Taverner said, “You’re going to have to speed it up, especially at the beginning. Everybody knows it was a damn tragedy, and the PM gets his rhetoric from his scriptwriters. All he wants from you is fresh info he can dripfeed the media, plus something he can withhold for later dissemination when it all dries up. Which it will. This is going to be long, hard and cold. You want to get that across too, though nobody will listen. They’ll still expect answers tomorrow.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“They’ll want to know why nobody at Westacres was prepared for the flash-mob. It wasn’t the world’s best-kept secret.”
“No, but Westacres’ security staff aren’t GCHQ. They look for shoplifters, they’re not scanning the internet for potential threat. As for our own surveillance, if it crossed our radar, or Cheltenham’s, it wouldn’t have held their attention more than a minute. Why would it? It’s a student prank, not an IS plot.”
“Fine, but put that upfront. Make it part of the narrative, not an excuse we’ve come up with afterwards. And don’t worry about Cheltenham, either. If GCHQ fuck up, that’s their problem.”
“This is our united front?”
“This is zero-sum politics. If GCHQ gain influence, we lose it. That simple. You’ve got the fact-sheet on Robert Winters?”
Robert Winters was the 3:04 man. The man who’d turned up at the Westacres flash-mob and blown the children to Kingdom Come.
“Everything we know about him, yes.”
“Don’t stray beyond that for now. Speculation isn’t going to help.”
Whelan tucked the folder under his arm and said, “Thank you, Diana. I appreciate your input.”
“Your first week. Not what you’d call a gentle introduction.”
“No, well. I wasn’t expecting an easy ride.” He hesitated. “I know you had, ah, ambitions of your own.”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished. “Wasn’t going to happen, Claude. I was too closely associated with Dame Ingrid and, well, once it turned out she was toxic . . . ”
“The penalties of loyalty.”
“That’s a kind way of putting it.”
Five minutes’ prep would have taught him that she and Ingrid Tearney had been sworn enemies, and whatever else you might say about the weasels, they always did their prep.
As casually as he could manage, he said, “Anything else, Diana, before I go see the headmaster? Anything you’re not sharing?”
“Anything I find out, you’ll know one minute later.”
“A minute’s a long time in intelligence work.”
“Figure of speech, Claude. I won’t hold anything back.”
“Good. Because like you said, it’s a zero-sum game. Anyone not for me is against me. I hope we’re clear on that.”
“As glass, Claude,” she said. “Oh, one thing. Your autograph.” She’d left papers, neatly stapled, on the table, and she collected them now. “Times three, I’m afraid. Everything in triplicate.”
“Some things never change. Do I need to read all this?”
“I ought to insist. You’ll discover more about where we source our office supplies than you ever dreamed possible.”
“One of the things I love about this job. Its refreshingly traditional attitude towards red tape.” He skimmed the top set, signed all three on their final page, then left the room at a trot.
Lady Di watched him go, hugging the papers to her chest, then reached for her mobile and redialed Emma Flyte.
“Change of plan,” she said. “I need to see you.”
The COBRA meeting was well underway when Slough House came to life, if the heavy scraping of its back door counted as life: Roderick Ho, his red puffa jacket shiny new, its cuffs and pocket edgings trimmed with hi-viz silver. His earbuds were mainlining chainsaw guitars to his brain when his phone vibrated with an incoming text. That’ll be the ball and chain, he thought fondly. Checking I’ve not copped off with a City-bound babe on the Central line—women who worked in banking looked like they shopped at Victoria’s Secret. No wonder the girlfriends of alpha-types like Roddy Ho got nervous around rush hour. His head still pounding to a jackhammer beat he clicked to his messages, expecting to read “Kim,” but it was from Lamb. He read the text halfway up the first flight of stairs and said, “Jesus.” And then he said “Jesus,” again, and then he stomped the rest of the way up to his office.
