Part   Eighteen   "Operation Saracen"

 
Friday 28th April 2017 (Cont)
 

"Perhaps it's best I leave?"

"No Tammy, that won't fix anything."

"But, Marcus?"

"Right now you should be calling me Captain Wade, Lieutenant Smart."

"Lieutenant?"

"Lieutenant, Sir!"

"Lieutenant, Sir?"

"Yes, well, perhaps you should have looked at your ID card?"

"Err?"

"What the hell is going on with you Tammy? Where is that sharp mind of yours? That analytical brain? What has happened to the young lady we wanted to recruit?"

"I've been distracted, do we really have to use this rank business?"

"Given that you wouldn't know who to salute, or how to behave, perhaps not."

"So why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do I have a rank?"

"Come ON!", Marcus banged the table and almost shouted, "work it out for yourself!"

Tammy looked stunned, she wasn't used to the Captain being aggressive. "Erm, so I can get past checkpoints, into bases, that sort of thing?"

"Yes, but it's more than that. Now pay attention; you now exist in the NATO staff database."

"In my real name?"

"Yes, but we'll cover that. Kerri?"

"Right. Tammy, you need to fill us in as to what's going on? Right now; opinion is that you're not fit to join up. Are there aspects we can help with?" Kerri asked, then seemed to give a subtle signal.

Tammy shook her head. "I don't know, I don't......"

"Let's start with your office." Kerri remarked, but she wasn't looking at the camera. It seemed she was paying more attention to something else.

"My office? What about it?" Tammy asked.

Kerri replied, now it was obvious that she was reading a file off screen. "Looks like you lost your Suzie."

"Yes, she wasn't pulling her weight." Tammy said quickly.

"Yeah? Is that all?" Kerri was keeping a poker face.

Tammy frowned. "She nicked my boyfriend."

Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Was he a liability?"

"A distraction, perhaps? I don't think he was a security risk?" Tammy shrugged.

Kerri looked directly at her. "Really? He checked out? Did you submit a clearance request?"

"No." Tammy sighed.

Kerri gave Tammy a very hard look. "So how can you say he isn't a security risk; or won't be in the future?"

"I guess I can't." Tammy replied.

"Correct and don't make assumptions! The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions; A, When they're ready. B, When you're not." Kerri stated flatly.

Tammy nodded. "And do the research?"

"Yes. Now, why did you change the terms of the job?" Kerri asked, looking at something else again.

Tammy was shocked. "How the hell did you know that?"

"How do you think?" Kerri asked.

Tammy was stumped. "One of the short-listed applicants must have said something? I didn't tell anyone else."

"Come on; think!" Kerri demanded.

"Karen Smith had a go at me. Her CV did look like it was written to match the job. Hmmm, was that you?" Tammy guessed.

Kerri nodded. "Of course it was. If you'd have checked the headers of the email I sent you yesterday, you'd have seen that I wasn't even in the Highlands, let alone Scotland."

Tammy swore. "Damn. Do you have my place bugged, Kerri?"

"No, don't need to. You put a job advert out on your website, it was pretty clear that Suzie was out, or on the way out." Kerri aswered.

"And from that piece of information you now have a ton of information from me?" Tammy asked.

Kerri nodded."Correct, Tammy. And you gave freely. All because I wanted it."

"Bugger." Tammy groaned.

Kerri sighed. "Hold up, it's not as bad as it may look. You're not FUBAR yet."

Tammy processed the acronym whilst Marcus nodded, "It's useful to have a verifiable back story, but this information has to be properly managed. Right now; there's no harm done, but you should still carry out some checks?"

"I was able to check all the interviewees had local addresses, including Karen Smith." Tammy tried to redeem herself.

Marcus reminded. "But was it really Karen Smith? You now know that was Kerri, but what about the others? Did you carry out any more checks?"

"Yes, voter lists and credit agencies, but that doesn't explain how Karen passed those checks." Tammy said.

Kerri answered that. "Karen Smith exists, she's a real person. If you were writing to her address then you might have discovered something was off, but that's not how job applications work these days. That meant all I had to do was create a CV for her and a spurious email account. The phone number redirects to voicemail for all calls, so you wouldn't have been able to speak to her."

"It all sounds like that was a fishing exercise, only that is was against me?" Tammy groused.

"Yeah, one with very little risk. Now, why do you think you have been a lousy analyst?" Kerri asked.

Tammy sighed. "I was dumped by the security service, I guess I lost my confidence."

Kerri seemed to mull that over. "In a way, that's understandable. But all that happened five months ago. Were you offered counselling?"

"No, I just wanted to get out of there and back to normal life." Tammy replied.

Both Marcus and Kerri laughed as she asked. "Normal life, Tammy? Who's kidding who? You actually think that'll ever happen?"

Marcus continued. "Seriously Tammy, you've been targeted by persons unknown, unless you know any more?"

"You must mean the faxes?" Tammy asked.

Marcus nodded. "Yes, didn't you dig further?"

Tammy explained. "It was done through an online fax bureau, so I couldn't get the source."

Kerri visibly rolled her eyes. "Come on, they all have logs that record the IP address of the sender. That can give you a physical address."

"But, I've officially been a civilian since last autumn; remember? I wasn't allowed to use any privileged information." Tammy reminded.

Marcus pointed out. "That doesn't mean that we couldn't."

Tammy thought about that then asked. "And if I had to explain how I obtained the address?"

"Fair point, maybe, but there's always a way around these issues. The point is that if you don't ask, you don't get. If you don't research, you'll fail." Marcus said.

"And, when we identify who was responsible, what then Marcus? A tactical nuclear strike?" Tammy asked.

"We do have that option, Tammy." Kerri deadpanned then smirked when Tammy's jaw dropped. "Just kidding."

Tammy groaned. "Please do not say things like that. I have no idea when you are telling the truth. Alright. I'll sign on, but what am I getting myself into?"

"Okay Tammy. All jokes aside, pay attention. You want to know what you'll be doing, in truth; whatever comes up. You could be working espionage one day, Assault Operations the following week. A courier, a money-manager, sniper; you're going to have to be flexible. Learn new things. Some things you'll be doing all on your own, others you'll have support." Kerri listed.

Tammy was gawking. "All THAT? Seriously?"

Kerri nodded. "You might be needed to move gold from Dubai to Zurich. Maybe pose as a flight attendant to be a point of contact, or chaperone. You could get orders to go to Kuala Lumpur to run a financial audit, vacation for a week in Cartagena, Colombia just to take a picture of a guy on the beach. You could even go to Moscow for a ballet just to give or receive a flash-drive. Plant a bug in a hotel room in Delhi, India. Take out a surveillance team in Glasgow; bite one guy, set the other on fire. You know, miscellaneous tasking."

"So long as I bite the right one? Pyrotechnics aren't my thing, nor is cannibalism!" Marcus was actually laughing at the statement

Tammy started laughing too. "Couldn't you just see the official report? "Witnesses reported a strange smell."

"If it works." Kerri smirked.

"So, I'll be working with you from now on?" Tammy asked.

Kerri shook her head. "Not exactly. We trade favors from time to time. I'm not in the unit, or even a branch of it. Think of it like this, if there was a family, we'd be cousins on the same line. My uncle and your uncle."

"Oh, okay." Tammy now remembered the explanation of back-channelling.

Kerri looked off screen and nodded.

"Things to do, Captain Wade." Kerri's screen went black.

"So what do we do next?" Asked Tammy.

Marcus reached under the table and pulled out a folder and a writing pad.

"This is a mission briefing. You need to take in everything that's there, work out what's missing then see how you can fill in the gaps."

Tammy took the folder and was about to start when there was a buzz. She rapidly turned it over as Marcus rose to open the door. He took a tray off the uniform stood there, but Tammy couldn't say what the rank was.

"Some liquids and fruit. You have a couple of hours, I have work to do."

"Where's the loo?"

"That's another observational failure."

"I didn't see it."

"Clearly, or rather clearly not. It's just outside, there's a guard on the door."

"Is that to keep me here or to keep others out?"

"Both."

With that Marcus left.

Tammy's first surprise, after she returned from the loo, what that the mission brief was one of the cases she'd been involved in. In fact it was the case being built to incriminate herself, from the previous autumn.

This was the mission proposal for "Operation Saracen", to identify a rogue agent and secure evidence of interfering with an investigation or contact with persons of interest. Tammy's name wasn't on the document but she was used to seeing redacted documents in the Security Service and at the National Crime Agency; however there was still enough there to give Tammy no doubt.

"Bloody hell."

She started to read the preface and the original justification for the operation was there, in front of her.

"The subject has shown poor regard for procedure and insists on bypassing established communication channels. They are known to have been in contact with identified suspects and with overseas agencies without official sanction. The subject has also discharged a weapon several times, resulting in the death of at least two persons, all of whom should have been interviewed and dealt with judicially. No disciplinary action has been taken and it is possible this has been avoided by ex-officio means.

"Authority is sought to investigate the subject whilst restricting their activities to minimise further harm."

"Damn!"

Tammy reached for the water jug and poured a glass, she needed thinking space.

She picked up a banana and started to read the details, noting that Suzie was mentioned only once, in that the subject had a family member in the Service who was not under suspicion.

It took another thirty minutes to read the six pages of text, as Tammy kept stopping to recall the events being described. It was clear that whoever had compiled the mission proposal didn't like her, and wanted her out of the way. She went back to the front page and looked at the information there, to identify the originator but there was no name, no department. Her eye caught the file number and EXT/76124/0/16 was not an internal Security Service reference, it was a reference allocated to external verified reports.

"It has to be Alex Fullerton or maybe even Sheila Fitzgerald?" Tammy spoke her hunch to the room, even though she believed she was on her own.

Her instruction was to work out what was missing then see how she could fill in the gaps, but Tammy's first instinct was to simply rubbish the proposal, to defend her reputation. This was old news, however, and she knew that none of this would ever be made public. Tammy took another sip of her water, picked up a pen and started to write her proposals. The only way to do this was to treat herself as a third person, objectively not subjectively.

Tammy felt she'd put enough effort into her deliberations and put her pen down for now, picking up a piece of cake that was on the tray.

"I wonder what the time is?"

"Probably close to three over there."

"Kerri?" Tammy tried to speak whilst she had fruitcake in her mouth, ladylike it wasn't. The screen lit up to show Kerri holding a pot of ice-cream.

"Yep, how's it going?"

Tammy picked up a napkin. "Getting there, hey I would kill for that!"

"That's a bit extreme, Tammy. Lethal force should only be used when authorized or necessary. I don't think that ice cream comes under that heading. However, this is Magnum. The GOOD stuff." Kerri licked the spoon

"It's an expression!"

"Come on girl, where's your sense of humor?"

"I think I left it at Wick airport this morning! Wait. If it's three for me isn't it just around breakfast time for you?" Tammy asked.

Kerri nodded as she dug into the ice cream. "It would be if I wasn't going on twenty-eight hours now. Not what you really want to know though."

"Right, why did I have to be given an investigation into myself?"

"To see how you'd deal, isn't it clear?"

"Yeah, but it's not fair."

Kerri set the container down and glared at her through the camera. "You need to hang up that line Tammy. Nothing in the intelligence game is fair, and it isn't really a game at all, it's war. We don't get to choose what we're given. There probably will be times when you have a conflict of interest and you'll still have to work around it. We get what we get, deal with it."

"Sure, but this file was making me barbecue ready, all I needed was the apple in my mouth!"

"I think you mean ready for a hog roast? I prefer apple sauce on the side personally."

"So how long have you been listening, Kerri?"

"Whole time, I just turned off the camera and my mic. I could still see and hear you while I was working."

"So I was being babysat?"

"I'm not your babysitter or keeper. Why?"

"I was wondering if you were getting any weird enjoyment from it?"

"Not in the slightest, it's standard practice to observer if you leave someone in a room seemingly by themselves, but normally the observer doesn't reveal themselves."

"Well, I'm grateful for the break."

"You wanted to know who wrote the proposal?"

"I was trying to work out the motivation."

"That's a reasonable approach, work out if there's an agenda. Usually is."

"Yeah, so the first name that came to me was Alex, but I don't believe he would have put himself forward, although I don't doubt he had an input."

"Correct."

"So my money's on Sheila Fitzgerald; she was a horrible interviewer, in fact I can now see that she had an agenda."

"Correct again, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. So what do you have so far?"

"I wasn't interviewed, simply chucked out."

"Interview isn't always viable. Tends to tip off the subject, too."

"Okay, but Suzie wasn't going to be interviewed, nor any of the others involved in the operations that were being questioned. How did MI6 know about all those operations, anyway?"

"That's something I can't answer, Tammy."

"So this proposal basically says I will incriminate myself if I'm cut loose?"

"Well what you have to remember is that you fought back and therefore justified their action."

"And what a mess that turned out to be, I had my own sister lying to me and even conferences were shut down to spite me."

"They were running scared, Tammy, scared they'd be found out."

The door opened and Tammy spun her head around to see Marcus coming in.

"Hi Tammy, Kerri."

"Marcus, when is Alex Fullerton's trial?"

"That's in June."

"Okay, what happened to Sheila Fitzgerald?"

"She's turned crown witness, Tammy."

"So she'll get away with it?"

"No, she's already been found guilty of misconduct in public office and sentenced to two years, suspended for five years."

"So she's free?"

"If you accept that she now has a big X on her back."

"Hey, so do I!"

"Talking of which, you have an appointment on the range."

Kerri nodded. "Yeah. You need that girl."

"Don't you go through a pile of ammo weekly? We can't all be so trigger happy as you all, Kerri." Marcus remarked.

Marcus collected Tammy's scribbles and they bade farewell to Kerri. It was a fifteen minute walk, all subterranean, to the smallbore range. Tammy was given a set of range instructions to read then signed the log.

"I understand you have a weapon with you?"

She handed over her Glock 19, the range officer wasn't impressed.

"That's not standard issue!"

"Maybe not, but I'm qualified on it."

"When?"

"Last December?"

"With who?"

"I think the range was operated by the Met Police."

The officer went to a laptop and typed a new enquiry. "Found you, I just need to check the serial number of your weapon."

"Feel free."

Marcus was glaring at her but Tammy decided she wasn't going to play the rank and privilege game when a little female charm could work.

"That's the same weapon. Right, you have twenty rounds to warm up and then you need to post a qualifying score."

"I haven't used it for months."

"That's not my problem, you should stay proficient or lose the right to carry a weapon."

"Yes, Sir." The female charm had run out.

"I don't like having civilians down here, so I suggest you get started before I change my mind. Lane 1 is available."

"Thank you, Sir." It wasn't worth arguing the point and, in any case, she would have lost.

Tammy picked up her ammunition and put on a set of ear defenders before settled into the lane, very aware that someone was using an automatic weapon near her; this was a world away from the range at Abigail Adams House and she wasn't getting any special treatment.

The target was ready, Tammy fired the first ten rounds, managing to hit the target each time, but her score would have been pitiful. The next ten rounds were better but she wasn't comfortable.

"Please, Sir, can I have another twenty rounds?"

"No."

She was up against the clock and had no time to wallow in self-pity.