The council of war was held in a chain coffee shop at Victoria Station.
On the agenda: ascertaining whether one of the most top secret documents possessed by Her Majesty’s Government could be liberated.
To be in attendance: Jake Wolsey, Jenny Frobisher, Niall Heston, Edwin de Clerk.
Jake had dissuaded Heston from inviting Marvin Whyte. Heston trusted his security correspondent, but every newspaper on Fleet Street had staff run by MI6 officers and it was easy to imagine him being fed scoops from Vauxhall Cross in return for information. The smaller the circle, the safer they would be. And Jake had an ulterior motive. If this story stood up he would become one of the highest profile journalists in the country. He would be damned if Whyte was to share in la gloire.
It was patently unsafe to meet at the newspaper, which was bound to be under surveillance. Their homes and cars would be compromised too. But a coffee shop in one of Britain’s busiest stations provided both anonymity and intimacy.
Heston had not arrived yet.
“Passports,” Jenny said.
“What do you mean, passports?” Jake replied. “I haven’t bought mine with me, you never said I’d need it.”
“No, not your passport. That won’t get you very far if this thing goes wrong and we need to get out of the country. We’ll need new identities, three each. That goes for you too, Edwin.”
“I know, I know,” said de Clerk, shaking his head. He turned to Jake. “Travel Service can run the documents off pretty quickly for us. They have to do it all the time – it doesn’t even need to be sanctioned at a high level. Once they’ve fixed them up I can alter our database. They’ll be real passports with real microchips – but MI6 will have forgotten how they were made. You’ll need to create your legends of course.”
“Legends?”
“Your new identities,” he replied simply. “Names, dates of birth, how many dependants, stamps in each passport – the backstory generally.”
“We’ll have to take new photographs,” said Jenny. “Dress up a bit.” She grinned. “You can have a bit of fun with this stuff.”
Heston arrived at the table, the collar of his leather jacket turned up. Jake thought he looked flushed.
“Sorry I’m late,” began Heston. “Got delayed by a security alert at the Tower of London. This might amuse you actually. There were rumours of a bomb at first. But it transpires one of the turrets got struck by lightning.”
Jenny laughed. “There is no escape!”
Jake made no comment.
“Tell me then,” said Heston. “This file you’re after. Can it be done?”
The MI6 agents exchanged looks.
“Edwin knows more about the official secrets side of things,” said Jenny.
Heston’s gull eyes studied de Clerk. Then he opened his palm and gave a half-wave, as if to say: speak.
“Seeing as we’ve been talking about the Tower of London,” de Clerk began, “let me put it like this. I think it would be considerably easier to steal the Crown Jewels.”
Jake winced, sipped his coffee and winced again. He’d ordered an Americano with an extra double shot – it tasted of crude oil. “Perhaps you could explain the hurdles we’d need to cross?” he said. “Hypothetically speaking.”
“That would be a start,” said Heston.
“The first difficulty is that this document will almost certainly only be stored on paper,” said de Clerk. “To give you an example, the FSB – that’s the modern-day KGB – are a paper-only organization. It makes Russia a hundred times harder to spy on. You can’t hack your way in. You have to physically get what you want in your hand. In the UK paper is also used for the most highly-guarded documents. The ones classified at a level above top secret.”
“There is such a thing?” said Heston.
“You bet. Second problem. There’s a chance this document is kept at Gosport – it’s an old fort on the south coast. MI6 mainly use it for training, but there’s a sizeable archive there too.”
“Surely it can’t be more protected than Vauxhall Cross?” asked Heston.
De Clerk took a sip of his own coffee, something weird involving cinnamon and soya milk. “Just as impenetrable,” he said. “The public can’t get within two miles. Actually, for our purposes it’s worse. I’d need an excuse to visit and an official request from my manager. You can’t just wander into these places without good reason, even at DV level.”
“What’s DV?”
“Developed vetting,” said Jenny. “That’s the level Edwin and I are at. Sorry, the level I was at.”
“They ask if you’ve ever taken drugs,” said de Clerk. “If you watch porn, whether you masturbate and if so how often. The idea is that you tell them the lot – then there’s nothing left to be blackmailed with.”
And this was the organization they were attempting to penetrate.
“Edwin would need an excuse to even leave the office,” said Jenny. “Since the Gareth Williams case they’ve been pretty hot on that.”
Williams had done the same job as de Clerk until he was found naked and dead, zipped up in a hold-all; the disclosure that he’d been missing a week before MI6 raised the alarm had led to some uncomfortable questions.
“I don’t think it would be in Gosport,” said Jenny. “Not knowing Charlie. He’d want to keep it close.”
“The third problem is discovering the name of the file,” de Clerk. “Actually, that’s the biggest hurdle of all. The Dicks Report won’t be mentioned in the file name, and these archives aren’t the sort of place you can go rummaging around in – you’re admitted to inspect a single file, and you need the exact title. Without that it would be like finding a needle in several hundred haystacks.”
“What’s the naming convention?” asked Jake.
“There’s a nine digit reference number and then a date,” said de Clerk. “The date we know – 20th September 1941. Next comes the level of secrecy. I’d guess this report is ‘belt3’, which means for your eyes only, paper only. Unless there are even higher levels of secrecy I haven’t heard of, which I can’t rule out.”
There were groans around the table. Jake watched Heston tap his lips with his index fingers, looking from face to face as the task became more daunting.
He’s not going to go for it.
They could always go it alone, of course – but having a national newspaper behind them offered a frisson of extra security. If they got caught, other journalists who knew where they were could be something to bargain with. And if Heston was involved throughout he would be more likely to publish whatever they found.
“Finally there’s a codeword,” said de Clerk. “That’s the real kicker. The rest I can work around, but if we can’t get the codeword we can’t find the file, it’s that simple.”
“What sort of codeword?” asked Jake.
“They choose a word at random. It could be anything – armchair, ratatouille, shuttlecock, whatever. But it’ll be totally unconnected to the subject matter.”
“Then how do we find it?” asked Heston.
“We don’t,” said de Clerk. “That’s the point. In this case only two people will know it, Charlie and Evelyn. Hence why the system is impervious.”
“Saints wept,” he replied.
“And if we could obtain the file name?” asked Jake.
“We’d still need authorization from Charlie to access the file.”
“And what then?” said the editor.
“If Charlie’s permission could be faked, someone – me I guess – would have to physically go and get the file. In theory once you’ve got all the authorizations that part’s easy.”
“You could do it, Ed.”
Jenny squeezed his hand; Jake sickened at the contact.
“If only we could get that far,” she finished.
“That’s a big if,” sighed de Clerk. “It’s impossible, isn’t it? Surely.”
The contradiction came from an unexpected quarter.