Free Liz Carlyle - 05 - Present Danger by Stella Rimington Page B

by recounting stories that, though told many times before, had managed not to go stale – without ever losing focus on the parking lot and building across the street.
    Suddenly Jerry started speaking into the microphone of his headset. ‘We have another car pulling into the car park.’ He read out the registration numbers for a blue Astra. An older man got out and walked into the building. He wore a parka and faded khaki trousers, and again Maureen raised her paperback.
    A minute later Arthur, watching through his binoculars, saw the man wave at the receptionist and walk past her into the offices. Arthur reported that as soon as the man had passed her, the girl at the desk picked up the phone and spoke urgently into it.
    On a hunch he kept the binoculars trained on the reception area, and sure enough, just a few moments later the older man reappeared. A heavy-set man was with him, whom Arthur recognised as the driver of the black Audi. He had a hand on the shoulder of the older man – it wasn’t clear if he was consoling him, or strong-arming him out of the office, and then they disappeared in the direction of the lift.
    Arthur swung the glasses down to the side entrance of the building. When the older man emerged he was talking to himself, looking agitated and angry. He got into his car and started the ignition right away, then accelerated with a squeal of tyres out of the car park.
    ‘Something’s got his back up,’ said Arthur to Jerry.
    They heard in their headphones Maureen’s announcement from her car down in the street that the subject had left. Then to Arthur’s surprise, only half a minute later she broke in again:
    ‘Subject’s pulled over down the street. He’s parked and he’s sitting in the car. He’s got a bird’s-eye view of the exit to the car park. Shall I recce?’ she asked. This would involve her walking past the parked Astra, and surreptitiously photographing its occupant to get a close-up shot.
    ‘Negative,’ said Reggie Purvis back in the Ops room. ‘Sit tight.’
    Five minutes later another car arrived and parked. Its driver emerged, a stocky, square-shouldered man with a round bullet head and dark hair cut short. He was nattily dressed in a blazer, cream silk roll-necked shirt and wool trousers, and this slight flamboyance and the black leather purse he carried in one hand made Arthur wonder if he was gay. Though there was also a faint echo of the military in his upright bearing.
    Jerry called out the numbers of his registration, and sixty seconds later Arthur confirmed that the man had stopped at Fraternal Holdings reception, then been sent through.
    ‘What do you make of him then?’ asked Jerry Rayman.
    ‘Fancy dresser. Got to be gay,’ said Arthur.
    ‘I think he’s foreign.’
    ‘Yeah. That’s it, probably a Frog.’
    ‘Do you think the old boy in the Astra was waiting for him?’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘Whatever he was doing inside,’ Jerry declared, ‘he didn’t look happy when he came out.’
    Forty minutes later the ‘old boy’ was still there when the foreign-looking visitor came out of the building. He drove away, heading west, and Maureen reported the blue Astra starting up and following him.
    ‘Ah,’ said Arthur triumphantly, when he heard Maureen’s report. ‘So he was waiting for him.’

14
     
    Dave was walking carefully to his desk in the agent-runners’ room, balancing a sheaf of surveillance photographs on top of a mug of coffee, when the phone on his desk began to ring. The flashing red light indicated that the call was coming in on one of his agent lines. In his haste to get to it before it stopped ringing, he banged into the corner of his desk and lurched forward, dropping the photographs all over the floor and spilling hot coffee on his hand. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed the handset and said, ‘7827.’
     
    ‘I’ve got something for you,’ said a hoarse, Ulster voice that he didn’t recognise. It sounded middle aged, certainly not