friendship, as
long as you’re not profligate. We’re one big family here. That’s
why I visit.”
“I’ll be in
touch.”
With that David
dashed away. Maisie cast a glance around and caught another known
and friendly eye. She wandered over and shared a light, warm
embrace with a severe looking woman of about forty. They fell to
talking animatedly.
The morning
wore on in the Euston building, information streaming in at
thousands of gigabytes a second and every last byte being scanned,
stored and sifted.
When David got
to the Duty Team Office Jack Fulton and a muscular looking Afro-
Caribbean man with grey hair, rimless spectacles and a grey
moustache were engrossed by the images on a large LCD computer
screen.
“Are you
looking for the four illegal entrants from Scotland?”
“David! Jack
Beaumont, David McKie.”
“Wow a big man
and a Scot too.”
David shook
hands. Beaumont had serious heavy lidded eyes. Looking at his
physique David could tell that he kept fit. If it hadn’t been for
the grey hair no-one one would have thought he was just forty,
which he was.
“Jack was a
security expert for private firms, I’m sure he’ll tell you all
about that later.”
On the screen
in front of Beaumont a section of CCTV was running whilst at the
top of the screen there were Dewey’s four images; a sketch of
Charlie Cobb, two fuzzy satellite images of Mason and Spencer,
taken with high intensity satellite imaging, and finally the Nikon
close up of Wheeler. There was also an image of Spencer from the
airport
“These four
were picked up by Michael Dewey at Port An-eorna, just on the
Atlantic coast. Some blip appeared on the radar, just appeared, had
to be a sub. This was just before dawn this morning. Now Michael
saw one face by match flare and sketched it.” Jack Fulton pointed
to the sketch. “He didn’t show up on satellite even though Dewey
guessed one would head for a boat and scanned the harbour at
Plockton. The harbour man, according to Dewey, said an American was
taking a boat out, pre-arranged.”
“Well he’d be
heading down the west coast in that. “ Beaumont interjected.
“We’ve got
harbour and Marina bookings being checked down the west coast.”
“He might not
put in. Anchor and swim in.”
Fulton
nodded.
“That’s true
enough. Now this one,” he pointed to Mason, “he had to have his
ticket pre-arranged as Duirnish is a request stop and it was an
early train. This one,” he pointed to Spencer, “was picked up by
chopper. “ He waved a hand at Beaumont about to interject. “CCTV
for Inverness, Perth and Aberdeen are being monitored and past
hours checked so we should get something soon. That chopper had to
be arranged too. The last one,” he pointed to Wheeler, “his
motorbike was sitting waiting. We’ve put the license plate and
picture out to police. There’s an approach with caution note
attached.”
He walked to
the door and turned.
“We’ll find out
whose submarine it was. Decryption department are working the armed
forces sites as we speak. For now,” he wagged a finger severely,
“we assume they’re up to no good, positively dangerous and someone
in the UK brought them in. The question is who or what are they?
What are they going to do? I’m having the leads and vital
information fed directly into the duty team offices and that means
you two here. Remember brains David, not brawn. Work this one out
and fast.”
David sat in a
padded swivel chair his knees were half way up his chest. He
struggled to reach the lever. Beaumont stepped over and worked the
lever.
“Thanks
Jack.”
“Call me
Beaumont. Anyway, we’re a team for two weeks, partners. So let’s
take a walk, get a sandwich and when we come back decryption will
have cracked MOD and the rest. Plus the watchers will have found at
least one face and we’ll have a lead. Come on.”
David
hesitated.
“Trust me. I’ve
been doing this job five years. Active duty rota isn’t usually this
exciting.