Peggy Kinsolving liked to wake early – one of the best things in life was having a job she was eager to get to. In her earlier incarnation as a librarian, there had been mornings when she could barely get out of bed, especially in the dark winter months, but ever since she’d joined MI5 there had never been any problem about getting up.
This morning, however, she was fast asleep when her alarm rang at 6.30. After Liz’s phone call telling her the dreadful news from Paris she had just sat in a chair for half an hour, everything spinning in her head. She hadn’t been able to make up her mind whether she should ring DG straightaway or wait until morning. Should she ring Geoffrey Fane? She seemed to be immobilised, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of her.
Then suddenly she had pulled herself together. What would Liz do in my shoes? she’d thought. Well, she wouldn’t be sitting here like this. Peggy had long ago observed that the worse the situation, the more calmly Liz behaved, and she had drawn strength from Liz’s cool efficiency. Well now, she said to herself, I must do the same. So she’d grabbed the phone, dialled DG’s PA and passed on the news. ‘He’ll want to know now,’ was the advice, so Peggy had rung him. DG had asked for an update on the operation and had told her that she must be the main liaison with Manchester Police until Liz was able to take over again. She’d then rung the Duty Officer at Vauxhall Cross and given him the barest account of what had happened to pass on to Geoffrey Fane. She had decided to leave informing Andy Bokus until morning. Having done all that, she began to feel better about herself and got into bed. But it was past two o’clock and her mind was racing. She was thinking what she must do in the morning; how awful Liz must be feeling; whatever could have happened in Paris – and so it went on until she fell asleep at about five o’clock, only to be woken an hour and a half later.
When she got to Thames House, Peggy found that word had already spread about Martin Seurat’s death. A few colleagues asked her what had happened, but she didn’t know any more than they did. As more people arrived for work, they were also greeted with the news. Soon an almost palpable gloom settled over the open-plan office where Peggy had her desk. Liz was a very popular colleague, much admired by the younger officers. It was widely known that her partner was a DGSE officer whom she’d met when she was posted to Northern Ireland, and that an operation there had ended violently in the South of France. Some people knew that Martin Seurat had saved the life of Dave Armstrong, one of their colleagues, who had been kidnapped. So Seurat was something of a hero in the Counter-Terrorist branch, even though not many people had met him.
When everyone had arrived for work Peggy told them all that Martin had been killed in Paris in the course of the operation they were working on; that Liz had gone to Paris and would be getting a full briefing but at present she could not tell them exactly what had happened. DG had asked her, she explained, to stand in for Liz until she was back. She was going to move into Liz’s office for the time being and she’d asked for her calls to be put through to Liz’s extension. If anything relevant came through to any of them they were to come in and tell her immediately. She might well be going up to Manchester very soon. Then she went into Liz’s office, closed the door and set about trying to get to grips with what was going on.
An hour later she felt like a salesman who’d made the rounds but come back with an empty order book. She had begun by calling Charlie Simmons at GCHQ. He’d had the news of Seurat’s death by now, and sounded very subdued. There had been no further email traffic to or from Zara since the email had come in announcing that the meeting in Paris had been cancelled. He explained again that the reason why it had taken so long to unzip that message was that it seemed to have been sent by someone who was not familiar with the code. ‘This may mean that those who usually send the messages are not there,’ he said.
‘That makes sense,’ said Peggy. ‘Presumably the messages are usually sent by the people who are on their way here. But they must be communicating somehow or how are they going to meet up with Zara?’
‘However they are doing it, we’re not onto it. Perhaps they made all the arrangements in advance and don’t need to communicate.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Peggy, but she was sceptical. The silence seemed ominous.
Next she checked in with A4 and was told that Zara was acting like a model student, attending lectures, working in the library. ‘Completely normal,’ said the Duty Controller. Too normal, thought Peggy, sceptical again.
Finally she checked with her contact at the Border Agency. He was in constant contact with their counterparts on the Continent and no vehicle of the description she had given him had been reported crossing the Channel or the North Sea. Peggy asked, ‘What if the vehicle were coming in a roundabout way?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Say from much further away than the usual Channel ports. Like Scandinavia – ferries from Norway come here, don’t they?’
‘Sure, though that wouldn’t help them escape detection. There isn’t a port within five hundred miles east of here that hasn’t been given the details of the vehicle we’re looking for. And just to be safe, we circulated them to Ireland too. In fact, unless this lorry’s coming from Brazil you don’t have anything to worry about. If it sails, we’ll know.’
‘All right,’ said Peggy, tempted to ask him to cover Brazil as well, but even she could see that was absurd. ‘Thank you,’ she added, realising that perhaps she had been a bit rude. She was getting very tense. It wasn’t just the aftermath of Seurat’s death and the absence of sleep, it was the absence of developments. No news was usually good news, but right now Peggy wanted something to happen.