Read Online Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide by Stella Rimington - Free Book Online Page B

questioning look in his eye that suggested the topic wasn’t going to stay buried for long. Paris . . . how tempting it seemed on this gloomy London morning.
    But then she thought of the young man in the Santé prison. Why was he there? What had pulled him away from a respectable Birmingham family to a pirate boat in the Indian Ocean? She turned with a sigh as Peggy Kinsolving came into her office, looking eager, a file clutched in her hand and her spectacles firmly in place. Peggy smiled and said, ‘Don’t tell me – it was sunny in Paris.’
    ‘Naturally.’ Liz waved her to a chair. ‘Did this DI Fontana have anything more to say?’
    ‘No. I told him not to go near the Khan family until you were back.’
    ‘Good. I’ll ring him. I want to talk to the Khans myself, but if he knows them, it might be best if he came with me.’
    Peggy nodded then said, ‘There’s one more thing. One of our agent runners has a source in the part of Birmingham where the Khans live. It’s a young Asian who’s a member of one of the radical mosques there. I thought he could be useful.’
    ‘He might . . . we need all the information we can get. The Khan family won’t necessarily tell us everything they know about their son – that’s if they know anything themselves. Who’s the agent runner? I’d like to have a word.’
    ‘It’s Kanaan Shah. He’s in the office today; I saw him earlier. Let me see if I can find him.’
    Peggy bustled out and returned a few minutes later escorting a tall, dark, good-looking young man, wearing chinos and a blue open-necked shirt.
    ‘Have a seat, Kanaan,’ Liz began.
    ‘You’ve pronounced it correctly,’ he said with a smile. ‘Most people don’t. That’s why I’m called “K” around here.’
    ‘How long have you been in the Service?’
    ‘Three years. But I’ve only been running agents for a few months. I was in protective security before. “Agent”, I should say,’ he added with a grin. ‘I’ve only got the one.’
    ‘That’ll change once you get the hang of it. You’ll soon find you’ve got a whole stable of them.’ She remembered her own first days as an agent runner – and one particular agent, the boy in the Muslim bookshop, codenamed Marzipan. He had helped to prevent a serious terrorist incident, but had later been killed – his identity blown to the extremists by a mole in the Service. That had been the worst period of Liz’s career. She’d almost resigned over it, even though none of it had been her fault. Now here was young Kanaan, starting out on his career as an agent runner. He’d be asking people to put their lives in his hands in the national interest; making the compact with them that he would look after them in return for their information. It was a compact made in good faith but one, as Liz knew only too well, that was never without risk.
    She asked Kanaan about his background; there were still comparatively few Asians at the operational end of the Service. He told her he was from a Ugandan Asian family. His grandparents had been forced to leave when Idi Amin drove out the Asian community. London-born, Kanaan had grown up in Herne Hill and gone to Alleyn’s School for Boys, then he’d read Politics and Economics at LSE. Personable, obviously intelligent, he could have had any number of jobs; Liz asked him what had attracted him to the Security Service.
    ‘Adventure,’ he said with a boyish grin that was infectious – she found herself smiling back. ‘And,’ he added, the grin disappearing, ‘I wanted to give something back. My grandparents came to Britain with nothing but a single suitcase, but my family has done very well here. My father became a GP, then he changed direction and now he’s a partner at Morgan Stanley. And he’s made sure I’ve had every opportunity to do what I want to do.’
    Liz nodded. She was charmed by Kanaan’s willingness to express sentiments that many would find old-fashioned. Her own father had had a very