Read Online Thunder in the Blood by Graham Hurley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Graham Hurley
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I was doing, I told him I was ‘housecleaning’. ‘Housecleaning’ was what you did when you got in a muddle on your computer. It happened a great deal in MI5.
Alloway, as it turned out, did have a file of his own. Some of the intelligence was a straight donation from MI6, crumbs from their table, and there were additional source reports from one of our own guys who’d since resigned after a row about his pension rights. Scrolling quickly through the entries, I got a picture of a small, overworked entrepreneur, building what bridges he could between the Iraqis and a group of firms in the West Midlands. The stuff he was selling included machine tools and various peripherals like software programs for the computer-controlled jigs, and there was a brief analysis of the dozen or so contracts he’d so far secured. Detailed information about what the Iraqis were doing with all this equipment was listed in a separate annexe. Beth Alloway’s visit to Priddy was carefully noted (the sameWolverhampton hotel!) and there was an accompanying recommendation that she be handled with extreme care.
At this point my supervisor returned, and I greeted him with a triumphant smile, backing out of the Registry files, wiping the screen clean and switching the machine off with a flourish.
‘Done it,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Nice and tidy again.’
The supervisor looked at me for a moment, amused. ‘Until the next time,’ he said at last, ‘eh?’
By now it was obvious I’d have to look elsewhere and I began to think about the problems of tunnelling into some of the precious daughter-files. At Curzon House this is known as ‘B & E’ (breaking and entering), and one way of doing it is simple, old-fashioned corruption: finding someone with a key and bending their arm until they lend it to you. The question was therefore simple: who might have the codes I’d need? And how would I persuade them to share?
I gave this problem a great deal of thought, but I soon realized that the only real option was Lawrence Priddy. I still hadn’t made much sense of Stollmann’s line about ‘chemistry’, but the MP had phoned twice and both times he’d left messages asking me to get in touch. It wasn’t a call I looked forward to making, but the man plainly had good connections at the DTI and it was possible that these might extend to the kind of access I was after. I found him, at the first time of calling, in the office he shared at the House of Commons. He sounded surprised to hear me and slightly wary. I suggested we might meet.
‘Sorpressa,’ he said, naming an Italian restaurant in Belgravia, ‘half past one.’
I arrived at the restaurant at ten to two. The place was a swirl of pink tablecloths and loud conversation: sleek, well-heeled MPs bent over dainty forkfuls of designer pasta. Priddy was at a table near the back, reading a copy of the
Spectator.
He barely bothered to look up.
‘Is it fashionable to be late?’ he enquired. ‘Only I was about to go.’
We sparred for nearly an hour. By now, I’d been a civil servant long enough to know that every conversation in Whitehall has a sub-text. What you say isn’t necessarily what you mean. It’s the gaps and the silences and the occasional ironic asides that oftenlight the real path home. MI5, as it happens, are expert at this kind of dialogue and while I’m not especially comfortable playing games like these, it certainly helps to know the rules. Priddy, of course, had mastered them years ago, a fact I ought to have taken into account much, much earlier.
We were in a cab, heading for Dolphin Square, before he hinted that he might –
might
– be able to accommodate me.
‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Make me believe it.’
I nodded, the wide-eyed young ingenue from Curzon House. ‘Clive Alloway lives in your constituency,’ I said, ‘and he’s selling into Iraq. That’s two reasons why you should be interested.’
Priddy was sitting back in the corner of the cab,
Alloway, as it turned out, did have a file of his own. Some of the intelligence was a straight donation from MI6, crumbs from their table, and there were additional source reports from one of our own guys who’d since resigned after a row about his pension rights. Scrolling quickly through the entries, I got a picture of a small, overworked entrepreneur, building what bridges he could between the Iraqis and a group of firms in the West Midlands. The stuff he was selling included machine tools and various peripherals like software programs for the computer-controlled jigs, and there was a brief analysis of the dozen or so contracts he’d so far secured. Detailed information about what the Iraqis were doing with all this equipment was listed in a separate annexe. Beth Alloway’s visit to Priddy was carefully noted (the sameWolverhampton hotel!) and there was an accompanying recommendation that she be handled with extreme care.
At this point my supervisor returned, and I greeted him with a triumphant smile, backing out of the Registry files, wiping the screen clean and switching the machine off with a flourish.
‘Done it,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Nice and tidy again.’
The supervisor looked at me for a moment, amused. ‘Until the next time,’ he said at last, ‘eh?’
By now it was obvious I’d have to look elsewhere and I began to think about the problems of tunnelling into some of the precious daughter-files. At Curzon House this is known as ‘B & E’ (breaking and entering), and one way of doing it is simple, old-fashioned corruption: finding someone with a key and bending their arm until they lend it to you. The question was therefore simple: who might have the codes I’d need? And how would I persuade them to share?
I gave this problem a great deal of thought, but I soon realized that the only real option was Lawrence Priddy. I still hadn’t made much sense of Stollmann’s line about ‘chemistry’, but the MP had phoned twice and both times he’d left messages asking me to get in touch. It wasn’t a call I looked forward to making, but the man plainly had good connections at the DTI and it was possible that these might extend to the kind of access I was after. I found him, at the first time of calling, in the office he shared at the House of Commons. He sounded surprised to hear me and slightly wary. I suggested we might meet.
‘Sorpressa,’ he said, naming an Italian restaurant in Belgravia, ‘half past one.’
I arrived at the restaurant at ten to two. The place was a swirl of pink tablecloths and loud conversation: sleek, well-heeled MPs bent over dainty forkfuls of designer pasta. Priddy was at a table near the back, reading a copy of the
Spectator.
He barely bothered to look up.
‘Is it fashionable to be late?’ he enquired. ‘Only I was about to go.’
We sparred for nearly an hour. By now, I’d been a civil servant long enough to know that every conversation in Whitehall has a sub-text. What you say isn’t necessarily what you mean. It’s the gaps and the silences and the occasional ironic asides that oftenlight the real path home. MI5, as it happens, are expert at this kind of dialogue and while I’m not especially comfortable playing games like these, it certainly helps to know the rules. Priddy, of course, had mastered them years ago, a fact I ought to have taken into account much, much earlier.
We were in a cab, heading for Dolphin Square, before he hinted that he might –
might
– be able to accommodate me.
‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Make me believe it.’
I nodded, the wide-eyed young ingenue from Curzon House. ‘Clive Alloway lives in your constituency,’ I said, ‘and he’s selling into Iraq. That’s two reasons why you should be interested.’
Priddy was sitting back in the corner of the cab,
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