King Solomon's Curse

  ‘Techies, sir?’ asked Waterford. ‘Always a pain in the arse, aren’t they?’ Staite smiled.

  ‘Keep your minds on the job,’ Brice told them irritably. Based on Evans’ report, it seemed unlikely that the incriminating video had been copied – certainly none of the other devices retrieved from Chase and Wilde had contained it – but he needed to be absolutely sure. Once he had confirmation, the threat the couple posed both to himself and SIS as a whole would be drastically reduced. Until that time, though, it had to be considered very great indeed.

  ‘Subject’s going down the stairs,’ reported the watcher following Alderley.

  ‘Ground units, have someone ready at the bottom,’ ordered Brice.

  ‘Already in position,’ replied another officer, a woman. Seconds passed, then: ‘I see him. He’s alone.’

  ‘Nobody passed him on the stairs,’ said the man.

  ‘Okay, wait for your partner. Ground units, he’s coming your way.’ Brice looked back at the screens. One of the CCTV cameras covered the car park exit closest to Battle Bridge Place. A brief wait, then Alderley emerged. ‘There he is – track him,’ he told Waterford.

  Different cameras followed Alderley into the square. He slowed as he neared its centre, looking around. Several watchers announced that they had him in sight. ‘No sign of the main targets,’ said one.

  ‘Be patient. Let them come to him.’ He kept watching the screens. Alderley wandered back and forth, looking hopefully at the stations’ exits, but it didn’t take long before his body language revealed impatience. He sat on a bench, checking his watch. Even on the CCTV image, his frown was clear.

  Twenty minutes ticked by, and still no trace of the people he was supposed to meet. Alderley became increasingly irritated. ‘Maybe the woodentops caught them,’ suggested Waterford.

  Staite shook her head. ‘They would have notified us. Sir, this whole thing might be a decoy.’

  ‘I’d already thought of that,’ said Brice. The nagging feeling that he had missed something still would not go away. ‘But a decoy from what?’

  Another ten minutes passed. ‘He’s moving,’ said one of the ground team. Brice looked up from a styrofoam cup of tea. Alderley had finally thrown in the towel, visibly huffing before stalking off towards the car park.

  ‘Looks like he’s had enough,’ Brice told everyone. ‘Stay with him. Mobile units, get back to your vehicles. Wherever he goes, I want him followed.’

  ‘He’s making a call,’ said Staite, seeing Alderley take out a phone.

  ‘Get it,’ ordered Brice. An intercept had already been set up on the section head’s mobile by GCHQ; the call came through in real time.

  But it was nothing of value. ‘Hi, sweetie, it’s me,’ Alderley said to his wife, who asked how he was. ‘A bit pissed off, actually. The people I was supposed to meet never turned up. I’m coming home.’ The rest of the call was similarly innocuous.

  ‘Keep some people in the square, just in case they show up,’ Brice told Staite, but he was sure now that Chase and Wilde weren’t coming.

  He glared at the screens. Where were they – and what were they doing?

  Alderley returned to his car. The 1971 Ford Capri 3000 GT was his pride and joy, the classic vehicle lovingly hand-restored over two decades as time and finances permitted. It was rare that he actually took the metallic orange coupe out on the road, not wanting to risk damage or – more likely – a breakdown, but the fact that Eddie Chase had been very insistent he bring it rather than his everyday vehicle had caught his curiosity.

  So had the rest of the phone call. While he was quite fond of Nina, she was hardly a close friend, and Chase himself was aggravating at best. They would not have contacted him simply to catch up over a coffee. There was something they wanted – needed – to tell him. But knowing that all calls to SIS headquarters were monitored, they had been forced to be circumspect.

  Except . . . they hadn’t turned up. That was both annoying and surprising – as a former military man, Chase was a stickler for punctuality. Had something happened to them?

  That thought had already triggered the innate paranoia of all intelligence officers. He couldn’t be sure, but while waiting in the square it did seem that the same faces kept circulating on its periphery . . .

  He cautiously surveyed the car park before entering the Capri. A man was just starting his own vehicle nearby. Alderley eyed him. Was it the same car that had followed him in? The silver Vauxhall was exactly the kind of unassuming vehicle that a team of watchers would use.

  He waited for the man to depart before starting his own car, the three-litre engine’s rumble echoing through the low-ceilinged concrete space. Another look around. Nobody there. Wondering if he was being a bit too paranoid, he set off.

  Nevertheless, he paid more attention to the view in his mirror on the way home. No one seemed to be following him – though whether that was because nobody actually was, or they were good enough not to be noticed, he couldn’t tell . . .

  Alderley shook his head as he stopped at traffic lights, smiling to himself. ‘There’s nobody behind you,’ he said—

  ‘Ay up,’ said a muffled voice from behind him. ‘If you drive over any more bumps, I might have to kill you.’

  32

  Alderley froze. ‘Chase?’

  ‘No, your car’s talking to you like KITT from Knight Rider. Of course it bloody is!’

  ‘You – you broke into my Capri?’

  ‘The locks are from the Seventies, I could’ve got in with a pipe cleaner. Why do you think I asked you to bring it? That and being able to find it in the car park. Don’t let on that we’re here, though. You’re being followed.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Hi, Peter,’ Nina added.

  ‘Are you in my boot?’ the SIS officer asked. ‘And also: why?’

  ‘Long story,’ said Eddie. ‘But we need your help, and we couldn’t talk about it on the phone. The people following you are from MI6.’

  ‘What? Why on earth would my own agency be following me?’ The lights changed; he set off again.

  Eddie almost had to shout to be heard over the engine and road noise. ‘Remember John Brice?’

  ‘Of course I do. He quit two years ago. Why?’

  ‘He didn’t quit, he went into deep cover. He was up to some nasty shit in DR Congo for MI6. We caught him at it – and now he wants us dead to cover it up.’

  ‘I’m the head of SIS’s Africa desk. If we had an operation in the Congo, I’d know about it.’

  ‘This was the kind of operation that would need total deniability,’ said Nina. ‘From what Brice told us, only the people at the very top were in the loop.’

  ‘Brice told you? That sounds uncharacteristically sloppy.’

  ‘He didn’t think we’d stay alive long enough to tell anyone else,’ Eddie explained. ‘Unlucky for him, we did – and we got it on video.’

  Alderley raised his eyebrows. ‘I’d . . . very much like to see that video.’

  ‘So would we,’ said Nina. ‘The problem is, it’s on a laptop – and Brice put a bullet through it. So we don’t know if we can recover it.’

  ‘We need to get somewhere we can talk properly,’ Eddie said. ‘By which I mean, not through the back of your fucking car boot. Do you keep this thing in a garage? We need to get out without anyone seeing us.’

  ‘I do,’ Alderley told him, only to realise what he meant. ‘Hold on. You’re telling me that John Brice is still secretly working for MI6 and has assigned watchers to follow me in the hope I’ll lead them to you . . . and you want to come to my house?’

  ‘Bang on. I can see why they promoted you now.’

  ‘Cheeky sod,’ he replied. ‘This is a very bad idea, you know. I’m thinking specifically for me, but it won’t go well for you either if they realise where you are.’

  ?
??We’re not asking to rent your spare bedroom,’ said Nina. ‘We just need you to help us recover the video from the laptop.’

  Alderley snorted. ‘Or I could just drop you off at the nearest Apple Store.’

  ‘There’s more to it than just the video, though,’ she went on. ‘We were in DR Congo on an archaeological expedition, and we found something in a lost city – something incredibly dangerous. And Brice has it.’

  That caught his attention, sarcasm replaced by cautious concern born of his previous dealings with the couple. ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘It’d be much better if we could tell you face to face. Also, it’s kinda cramped in here . . . and it’s really starting to smell of gas.’

  ‘It’s leaking again? I thought I’d fixed that . . .’ Alderley sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘You can get into the house from the garage, so you won’t be seen. I’ll talk to you once we get there. Having two people climb out of my boot will be quite a surprise to my wife, mind.’ Foreboding entered his voice. ‘I’ll have to warn you, though. If it turns out that Brice really is carrying out an authorised SIS operation, then not only can I not help you, but I’ll be obligated to report my contact with you.’

  Eddie’s own tone became distinctly menacing. ‘You’ll turn us in?’

  ‘Not on the spot – I trust you that much. But you would need to leave pretty sharpish, because I’d have to make the call within . . . five minutes, let’s say. First things first, though. I’ll hear you out, and see if we can get anything off this laptop.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Nina, relieved. ‘Thank you, Peter.’

  ‘I’d say “no problem”, but I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, do I?’ Alderley laughed. ‘By the way, Chase?’

  ‘Yeah?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘If my car really did start talking to me, and it had your voice . . . I’d have to get rid of it.’

  The Yorkshireman’s rude retort was drowned out by the rumbling exhaust note.

  ‘Subject has reached his house,’ said one of Alderley’s watchers. ‘He’s backing his car into the garage . . . closing the door.’

  Brice frowned. There had been no sign of Chase and Wilde on Alderley’s journey home. That they hadn’t tried to contact him suggested the couple had been somewhere else entirely – so why summon him at all?

  ‘House team,’ he said, ‘there was definitely no activity at the subject’s home, correct? Nobody came or went?’

  ‘No, sir,’ came the reply from a unit parked down the street. ‘His wife’s home, but she hasn’t left, and nobody else came to the house.’

  ‘No phone calls to the house or the wife?’ he asked Staite, who shook her head. ‘All right, then. Mobile units, return to base. House team, stay on site. They might try to reach him during the night. Do you have visibility on the surrounding houses in case they try to come through their gardens?’

  ‘We can see both neighbouring properties,’ the watcher told him. ‘Access from the rear is blocked by a railway cutting with a high vertical wall.’

  ‘Climbable?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  Another frown. Chase and Wilde’s actions made no apparent sense – and an unpredictable opponent was dangerous. ‘Double-check that there’s no access from the railway,’ he ordered as his phone rang. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Brice.’

  He knew the voice, and immediately became deferential. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘Nothing yet, sir.’

  ‘Hmm.’ For such a small sound, it was laden with meaning: disapproval, and disappointment. Brice felt a flash of humiliation. ‘Tell your team to continue, then. The meeting you requested will be in one hour, my office.’

  He checked his watch. ‘I’ll be ready, sir.’

  ‘Some good news would be a helpful ice-breaker, Brice.’ The older man ended the call.

  Brice lowered his phone, trying to conceal his tension from his subordinates. He had envisioned a world-changing use for the Shamir almost immediately after seeing it in action, developing the plan on his flight from the Congo. When he had proposed it to the man with whom he had just spoken, there had been considerable scepticism – understandable, without a demonstration of the strange stone’s destructive powers. But Brice had convinced him enough to take the plan higher . . . and now it would get a hearing.

  The future of the entire country hinged upon the decision made an hour from now. He had to push his case as strongly as possible. Ensuring there was no way anyone could prove a connection between the Shamir and SIS would help enormously.

  To do that, he had to find – and eliminate – Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase. ‘I just spoke to C,’ he told his operatives both in the room and in the field with resurgent anger. ‘He wants results. These targets are a threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Find them!’

  Peter Alderley leaned back in a chair, shaking his head wearily. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, interrupting Nina and Eddie’s explanation of recent events. ‘Let me try to get my head around this. You found the lost palace of King Solomon in the jungle, and inside was the actual Horn of Jericho from the Bible – a stone that when it’s brought into the light causes some kind of sonic vibration that can literally level cities. Correct?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Nina. Alderley’s wife Poppy had indeed been surprised that he had brought home guests, but was more annoyed that he had asked her to leave the room so they could hold a private discussion. A compromise had been reached, in that he had left the room to talk with his visitors in his small home office-cum-den while she watched television in the lounge. ‘I don’t think it’s so much light as some kind of radiation that activates it, though. Cosmic rays, or neutrinos.’

  ‘Neutrinos,’ Alderley echoed dubiously. ‘At the same time, John Brice, who had faked his resignation from SIS to work undercover, was secretly supplying secessionist rebels in eastern DRC with arms and funding so British companies like Monardril could get first dibs on mining concessions in the newly independent state. Yes?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘You were listening, then.’

  ‘I was, yes. It’s the believing I’m struggling with.’

  ‘It’s all true,’ Nina insisted. She held up the broken laptop. ‘The proof is on this – if we can retrieve it.’

  ‘That’s quite a big if. Bullets and computers generally don’t mix. But what you said about Brice freeing Philippe Mukobo from US custody while in-flight over the Atlantic, in the process destroying an American airliner? That’s the most unbelievable part, never mind magic stones.’ Alderley leaned forward, speaking more insistently. ‘If he really was acting in the capacity of an SIS officer, it wouldn’t just cause a diplomatic incident. It would quite literally be an act of war – against our closest ally!’

  ‘That’s what he told us,’ said Eddie. ‘If we can get the video off that laptop, then you can hear him say it for yourself.’

  ‘It’s why he resigned, at least officially,’ Nina went on. ‘To give the British government total deniability. Hell, maybe nobody in the government even knew about it,’ she said as a new possibility came to her. ‘It might just have been Brice and somebody higher in MI6 acting on their own.’

  Alderley shook his head. ‘Contrary to popular belief, SIS doesn’t start major operations off its own bat. Our job is to implement policy, not create it.’ He sensed a certain scepticism. ‘What? It’s true! I’m in charge of British intelligence activities over an entire continent, and I certainly couldn’t unilaterally say “the President of Togo’s been a bit rude about us lately, I think we should overthrow him. Get to it, chaps!” Something like that would have to be approved at a higher level – a political level.’

  ‘Somebody did approve it,’ Eddie told him. ‘Brice said he had total immunity under the James Bond clause. Someone had to sign off on that.’

  ‘T
he person who authorises Section 7 immunity for SIS officers is the Foreign Secretary,’ Alderley replied – then he froze, eyes widening.

  ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

  ‘The Foreign Secretary . . . Brice resigned, or supposedly resigned, two years ago.’ There was a rising undercurrent of alarm to his words. ‘Which means his operation in DR Congo was approved at least that long ago, right?’

  ‘Yes?’ she said uncertainly. ‘And that’s sounding seriously bad because . . . ?’

  ‘Because the man who was Foreign Secretary two years ago has got a new job since then.’

  ‘Going to guess it’s not selling fish and chips at a Harry Ramsden’s,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Oh, I wish,’ Alderley continued. ‘The Foreign Secretary two years ago was Quentin Hove.’ He saw that they both recognised the name, but pressed on regardless. ‘Who is now the bloody Prime Minister!’

  Brice regarded the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland with an expression of neutral deference. Behind it, though, he held the politician in a certain amount of contempt. Quentin Hove had usurped his predecessor in a leadership challenge eighteen months earlier; even though she had put the process of Brexit into motion, it had not been fast or hard enough to satisfy the Europhobic wing of her own party. The smooth-skinned, chinless Hove had been the surprise last man standing after his rivals knifed each other in the back, by all accounts a mediocre intellect despite an expensive education and whose chief achievement as he rose through the ministerial ranks was being less fractionally loathed by the public than his colleagues, using them as lightning rods.

  But he was now in charge; other than the monarch, whose role was now almost entirely ceremonial, the highest power in the land. The man Brice had to convince of the importance – and necessity – of his plan.

  He had begun with the stick rather than the carrot.

  ‘You’re telling me that . . . that the mission failed?’ Hove had slightly bulging, watery eyes, and his dismay as he realised the implications made him appear on the verge of tears. ‘And not only that, but our involvement might come out?’