Waterman re-entered the Arena, deep in thought.
He had left Caleb in the screening room, poring over the footage, stopping, starting and rewinding the film with the remote control.
As Waterman walked back to his desk, Bob Swift rushed over to him.
‘I think I figured out how the attacker got hold of weapons-grade radioactive material,’ said Swift, holding up an iPad.
‘Let’s hear it,’ said Waterman. Piecing the clues together was the only way to trace back to the source. However, Bob Swift didn’t work for him. He worked for Hunter, and Waterman wouldn’t put it past Hunter to lead him down a false trail, even when the stakes were as high as they were.
‘Look at this,’ said Swift. He flicked his finger across the surface of the iPad. A series of photos swiped by, commercial cargo vessels run aground on jagged rock outcrops.
‘Three ships went down a month ago, in different areas off the coast of Scotland. Each wreck was a week apart.’
‘Evidence of foul play?’ asked Waterman.
‘None,’ said Swift. ‘They just ran aground.’
Waterman was beginning to get restless. Over Swift’s shoulder he could see a pile of reports sitting on his desk for review. In case his working theory about the attack on Ultra was wrong, he needed to piece through the whereabouts of every foreign agent working in the UK.
‘I presumed the carriers would be insured through Lloyd’s of London,’ continued Swift, oblivious to Waterman’s mounting distraction, ‘so I brought up the claims.’
Swift scrolled down on his iPad. A new set of images appeared on screen: shots of the vessels beached onshore, a close-up of a jagged hole sliced into the bow of a ship, and then a different perspective on another ship with an equally gaping slice in its hull. Underneath the photos was a photocopy of a document with densely printed text.
‘The findings were that the ships ran aground,’ said Waterman, peering closely at the extract of the Lloyd’s claim form. His patience was reaching an end. ‘I haven’t got time for this.’ He pulled away and began to head for his desk.
‘The accident reports … they all have the same conclusion,’ Swift called out after him. ‘The lighthouses were dark at the time. There were no beams to guide the ships.’
Waterman was only half-listening now. He lifted up the top report and scanned it.
‘So I thought, what are the odds of three lighthouses in three different parts of the coast all failing in two weeks?’ Swift continued, oblivious, following Waterman to his desk. ‘There weren’t any power outages at the time.’
Waterman shook his head. Muttering, ‘No, lighthouses work on independent generators …’
He never completed the sentence. An expression washed over his face that was so surprising that Swift stopped what he was saying.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked Waterman.
‘Those lighthouses were built in the 1970s,’ said Waterman. ‘The power sources at the time were all nuclear …’
‘Strontium-90,’ continued Swift. ‘Same as the material in the dirty bomb.’
‘He raided the lighthouses,’ said Waterman, ‘and without any power, the ships ran aground.’
Waterman grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him.
‘Good work, Bob!’
Waterman looked around. Hunter was in the far corner of the Arena, leaning over the workstations of two analysts. Had he known, he would have taken the information straight to Salt, bypassing the Agency chain of command.
Waterman put a hand around Swift’s shoulder and directed him towards the front cinema screen.
‘Pull up the locations of the three wrecks.’
Swift’s iPad was linked by Bluetooth to the central control network in the room. He tapped the surface, and a second later a map of Scotland appeared, blown up to fit the size of the screen. Three red spots appeared on the coastline, with dates superimposed above them.
‘It looks like he hit the lighthouses one after the other, moving west to east,’ said Waterman.
‘There’s one more lighthouse left on that part of the coast,’ said Swift.
Waterman tugged on his beard meditatively.
‘We should do a recon,’ he said at last. ‘Send F Squad. What’s left of them.’