3

      Marcus Fielding was surprised to see the lean figure of Ian Denton already in position at the long coffin-shaped table, talking quietly with the Foreign Secretary. Less surprising was the sight of Harriet Armstrong, his opposite number at MI5, chatting with the Prime Minister at the far end of the airless conference room. She had always been good at the politics. As he watched them, silhouetted against a flickering mosaic of flat TV screens, the thought crossed Fielding’s mind that this might be his last COBRA meeting.

      A part of him flinched at the idea. He wasn’t ready to step back from the fray. There was still so much to do, battles to be won, not just in the war on terror but in Whitehall. He knew he should be more like Armstrong and Denton, sweet-talking the politicians, but he had always preferred dealing with field agents rather than Foreign Secretaries. He was a Chief who liked to stay south of the river.

      If this was to be his final COBRA, he wouldn’t miss the dimly lit Cabinet Office room with its low ceiling and brown curtains along one wall. It was past 1 a.m., but time was meaningless here. Night didn’t follow day. Instead, the room was trapped in a penumbral stasis. The air conditioning was too warm, the coffee cold. As for the meetings, they had become increasingly ineffective, a forum for political posturing rather than swift operational responses. That was why he liked to meet privately beforehand with the heads of MI5, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and the Defence Intelligence Staff, away from ambitious ministers with their own agendas. Only this time, they had quietly demurred.

      Fielding took his seat, nodding at the Director of GCHQ. It wasn’t reciprocated. Dhar’s bomb might not have been dirty, but it had still knocked some sugar off ‘the doughnut’, as GCHQ’s Cheltenham premises were known. Fielding felt a knot begin to tighten in his lower lumbar. Tonight wasn’t the moment for lying supine on the floor, as he was prone to do when his back played up. He was prepared for the meeting to be tense. For many of those gathered around the table, MI6 was in the dock. He also knew that he could never reveal the one piece of intelligence that might save his career.

      ‘Welcome, everyone,’ the Prime Minister began, looking down the room. His jacket was off, his tone businesslike. No small talk. ‘Marcus, I think it’s best if we start with you?’ In other words, Fielding thought, you got us into this Christawful mess, you can get us out of it.

      ‘The UK threat level remains at critical,’ Fielding began, glancing at Armstrong, who cast her eyes down at the printed agenda. ‘And in our opinion it should remain so. As we know, yesterday’s attacks on the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford, where an F-22 Raptor was destroyed, and on GCHQ at Cheltenham, were carried out by Salim Dhar in a Russian SU-25 fighter jet. Although we think it was partly an act of proxy terrorism on behalf of the Russians, Dhar was essentially operating on his own.’

      A dissenting shuffle of papers. ‘And with more than a little help from one of your officers,’ the director of GCHQ said. ‘Daniel Marchant was in the cockpit with Dhar?’

      The gloves were coming off quicker than Fielding had expected.

      ‘As I outlined to the Americans in our earlier JIC meeting,’ he replied, trying to ignore the knots tightening like serpents, ‘Daniel Marchant succeeded in talking Dhar out of a far worse attack. Two points I’d like noted, please.’ A glance at the COBRA secretary. God help him, he thought: he was starting to sound like a politician, covering his arse at every opportunity. ‘First, the Russians wanted Dhar to wipe out a delegation of Georgian generals who were at the air show to sign a deal with the US. Dhar pulled out of the attack at the last moment – thanks to Marchant. It should also be noted that the attack would have killed the US Defense Secretary, a point that seems to have been overlooked in Washington.

      ‘Secondly, Dhar’s plane was armed with a thousand-pound radioactive dirty bomb. Caesium-137 – nasty stuff, particularly in a conurbation the size of Cheltenham. It was always his intention to fly on to GCHQ, twenty miles to the north-west, and drop this bomb on the building. In the event, he pulled out of that plan too, again thanks to the bravery of my officer, Daniel Marchant. Instead, Dhar opted for a conventional explosive that I gather caused only minor structural damage.’

      ‘And killed one of my colleagues,’ the Director of GCHQ added.

      A pause. Fielding thought about offering his condolences, but it seemed trite in the circumstances.

      ‘Thank you, Marcus,’ the Prime Minister said, after waiting in vain for Fielding to commiserate. ‘I think it would be fair to say that while those gathered here understand the role of MI6 in all this’ – a dry cough from the sidelines. Was it really Denton, Fielding wondered – ‘the Americans don’t. I’ve just come off the phone to the President, who is demanding to know why an MI6 agent was in a plane that destroyed $155 million-worth of USAF aircraft.’

      ‘It’s no exaggeration to say that our relationship with Washington is in tatters,’ the Foreign Secretary said. ‘Trade meetings cancelled, diplomatic initiatives dropped.’

      ‘I’ve just been informed that the proposed new Joint National Security Board has been put on ice,’ added the government’s National Security Adviser, glancing up at Fielding.

      ‘And the NSA’s Echelon cooperation thresholds on SIGINT have significantly risen across the grid in the past few hours,’ the director of GCHQ said. ‘It’s as if the UKUSA Agreement didn’t exist.’

      ‘I also understand France has now been asked to head up NATO’s joint sea exercise off Cape Wrath next week,’ said the Joint Chief of Staff. ‘It’s normally our shout.’

      Things must be serious if the Americans were cosying up to the French. For the first time, Fielding wondered if he would be forced to reveal his ace in the hole, but he knew he couldn’t. It was a secret that only he and Marchant were privy to.

      ‘It’s with all this in mind,’ the Prime Minister continued, ‘that I’ve asked the Foreign Secretary to head up a Cabinet working group that will focus solely on rebuilding all aspects of our relationship with America. Ian Denton will oversee intelligence sharing, which of course lies at the heart of the partnership.’

      Credit where credit was due, thought Fielding. Denton had played a blinder, distancing himself from a discredited Chief of MI6, and climbing into bed with the Foreign Secretary. Another knot tightened.

      ‘At the heart of our strategy is doing all we can to help the US find Salim Dhar,’ the Foreign Secretary said. ‘It’s the only thing that will pacify Washington, and it’s the least we can do, given Dhar’s unfortunate connection with Britain.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘As of thirty minutes