Charlie Waits held court to an audience of one.
“The good news,” he began, “is that GCHQ’s managed to get a trace on Chung’s line of communication to Beijing. A routine fishing expedition picked it up this morning. She’s still in Italy for now, but funnily enough she’s just requested a private jet to … guess where?”
Parr hated being toyed with like this. “Where?”
“London!” cried Waits. “If Chung is anything like you or me, and I fancy that she is, she’ll keep the inscriptions close by. We know from experience that their lot are no match for our Frank. And it’ll only be a matter of time until we pick up Wolsey and Frobisher, what with de Clerk on the case.”
“He is good,” admitted Parr.
“No man I’d rather have on side,” said Waits. “There’s nowhere to hide from a computer genius in this day and age. So you see, my dear, we’ll get out of this yet.”
“I never doubted you, Charlie. And good idea to rename the file too.”
The tranquillity cleaved from Waits’s face.
“That was your idea,” he said.
“No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.”
Waits’s lips formed a pink circle. “Oh glory,” he said.
The spymaster switched on his mobile. This time the Nace remained silent. His chair was sent skittering across the floor as he dashed for the device. He saw it at once: the panel above the LED display was not flush with the casing. Waits tore the section away to reveal a bundle of foreign electronics soldered inside. A power source, a listening device, the beeper de Clerk had installed to impersonate the disabled machine. A wire led from a battery to the flashing LEDs. With growing horror Waits saw how it had been done. Whoever had pulled off this outrage knew his ritual of turning on his mobile to test the Nace. At the start-up tone the beeper had been activated remotely.
“No.” Waits spoke calmly, as if someone had handed him the wrong change in a shop. “Oh dear me, oh dear me no.”
Parr looked on; there was nothing to be said. Their most precious secret had been whisked from right under their noses.
*
De Clerk stepped out of the lift at ground level. Beyond the X-ray machines and the olive-green glass he could see sunshine; he was almost out. Five security guards manned the exit, machine pistols slung under arms, and another wave of sweat broke over the traitor’s chest. His brow glistened, his skin was pale. A muscle in his cheek wouldn’t stop twitching and he felt a weight pressing down on his lung, as if an invisible stone was crushing the air out of it.
Oh Jesus. Not this again. Not now.
At the age of twenty-one de Clerk had been talked into a lad’s holiday in Magaluf. After a week of drinking and attempts to chat up girls – neither an activity he excelled at – he had suffered a panic attack and been rushed to hospital. And the attacks had continued throughout his entire twenties. He hadn’t suffered one for years, but now the old feeling came back stronger than ever. The racing heart, the shrinking lungs, the constriction of his windpipe by a malevolent inner hand.
A guard scrutinized him. “You all right there, sir?”
“Fine,” de Clerk croaked.
The room was spinning.
“Are you sure, sir?” The guard was a liver-spotted gent in his sixties with whom de Clerk usually had a good rapport. He oozed suspicion.
“Feeling a bit fluey,” the spy managed, fighting to control his breathing.
Keep calm, Edwin, keep calm.
Two armed officers appeared, footsteps echoing in the space. A drop of sweat detached itself from de Clerk’s nose, splashing on the floor.
“You do look at bit peaky,” said the guard. “There’s a lot of it about this time of year. You go and have a good lie down.”
The sentries clicked off in the opposite direction.
The guard nodded. “Mind how you go, sir.”
As de Clerk staggered into the fresh air the alarms went off, a multitudinous shriek that erupted from the building in a wall of sound. He stumbled into a black cab, slamming the door as the first guards rushed from the building.
“Just drive,” he uttered. “Get me out of here.”
As the taxi shot over Vauxhall Bridge, de Clerk surrendered to the panic attack – bent double on the back seat, eyes rolling in his head like those of a drowning man. The towers of Battersea Power Station were an upturned table juddering across the Thames and a pillar of cloud rose above the chimneys, as though the generators had kicked into life. The thunderhead climbed hundreds of feet, billowing with wrath until it connected with the stratosphere: like a wormhole linking central London to outer space.