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After ten minutes the priest lit a cigarette – the last in the packet – then leaned across and took the ashtray from the table at which Conlan had been sitting. There had been no ashtray on his table – apparently by chance – and the cigarette he now smoked was the same type as the packet in the ashtray. As he drank he played with the packet; when he stood to leave the packet in the ashtray was his, and Conlan’s – with its instructions to the priest and the coded message to Sleeper, to be placed in the personal column of the Irish Times — was in his pocket.

Two mornings later Liam Conlan packed the fishing rods and gear into the estate car, taking his time in case he was under surveillance, waved goodbye to his family, and drove the four and a half hours to the cabin set fifty yards back from the shore of Lough Corrib, in the west of Ireland. He had been a fisherman since boyhood, and the trips to Kilmore were as established a part of his routine as the strolls along O’Connell Street and the drinks round Custom House or the Quays. By one o’clock he was sitting, seemingly contented, the rod in his hand, the peak of his cap pulled down and the collar of his windcheater turned up, so that his face could barely be seen. At seven he returned to the cabin; thirty minutes later the smell of cooking and the sound of singing drifted from its door and across the lough. At ten, the dusk gone and the half-moon shining, the priest who had taken his place walked to the lough, the peak of Conlan’s cap pulled down over his face, the collar of Conlan’s windcheater turned up, and his hands stuffed into the pockets of Conlan’s trousers. By the time he returned to the cabin Conlan was half-way to the location eighty miles away, the priest’s car running smoothly and his own still parked by the side of the cabin at Kilmore. In the old days, he supposed, it would have been a fishing boat, snuggled against a quay, the lights dimmed and the men hurrying in the dark. Tomorrow morning it would be a private airstrip and a Cessna 208A, Pratt and Whitney single turboprop engine and 1100-mile range.

Gerard Gray woke at five, ran his circuit of Docklands, showered, had a light breakfast, and was at work by seven as usual. The first newspaper he read was the FT and the fourth was the Irish Times. At 9.30 he rang the internal extension used by the Price Waterhouse team and asked for Philipa Walker.

‘I’m sorry. Something’s come up and I can’t make the weekend party we talked about.’

‘It’s all right, I couldn’t have come anyway.’

‘Another time, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps.’

The following morning – Saturday – Gray slept late, rising at seven, and running two Docklands circuits. By nine he was back at the flat. The day was hot and the sky a brilliant blue. He showered, skimmed the newspapers, including the personal columns, and left the flat.

Roddy Fairfax left Onslow Square at nine, taking the M4 west towards Bristol, the route already busy with holiday traffic. At junction 17 he left the motorway at the Cirencester exit, bypassed Malmesbury, then swung on to the Tetbury road. At 11.30 precisely he stopped the 944 at the gates which marked the beginning of the driveway to Highgrove. A police Land-Rover and two men, neither apparently armed though he assumed both were, were at the gates.

‘Yes, sir.’ The policeman bent over the car, the second standing back.

‘Fairfax, I’m expected.’ He showed his army ID card and knew they had already checked the registration number of the Porsche.

‘Thank you, sir.’ The policeman stood back and waved him through.

The driveway was short, curving right to the house, a number of other cars already parked. He just had time to pull the bag from the boot when his host appeared, the two boys beside him.

Initially at least, the Prince had always considered Fairfax one of his wife’s circle, and her friends were not necessarily those he would choose for himself, just as his friends were not those she would choose. Fairfax was different, however. He was good company, talked not just about the London scene, or whatever the word was nowadays, but about other matters, politics and pollution. In the long and difficult months before the couple had separated Fairfax had refused to take sides, arguing forcefully and honestly with both of them. Even now, perhaps especially now, he remained friendly and loyal to both. And Fairfax was a soldier. Three tours in Northern Ireland, two of them at times when things weren’t too pretty.

‘Good to see you, Roddy.’ Charles came down the steps and shook his hand. ‘Glad you could make it for the weekend.’

An hour earlier, Gerard Gray had stopped outside the flats in Maida Vale. It was correct that there were single beds at the river party at Hamble, but there were also double ones, plus king size, and a water bed if you organized yourself properly. And if Philipa Walker was not sure about it, then he was better with someone who was.

Philipa Walker had woken on the first ring of the alarm at five. By 7.30 she was at Dover’s Western Docks. She bought a return ticket to Ostend, paying cash, and caught the 0810 jetfoil, arriving at 1050 local time, taking the 1101 train to Antwerp, changing at Ghent. For the next hour she surveyed the restaurant tucked inconspicuously in the corner of the Handschoenmarkt, below the western façade of the cathedral. Only when she was satisfied that no surveillance was in place did she go in.

The restaurant was still full and the waiters busy. As she entered Liam Conlan rose to greet her.

The first and last cover, he thought, the single item he had driven deep into his subconscious as the foundation for the rest of his subterfuge. The one discipline above all others which he had fought to impose upon himself: in his discussions with Doherty, in his briefings with the Army Council, even in his sleep.

That he should always refer to Sleeper as him.

3 (#ulink_9d4e908d-9920-5c7e-9cfd-a91d4bbd4761)

The target codenamed PinMan, Conlan had said, a member of the British royal family. The operation within the next twelve months. She should aim to wrap up her preliminary research as soon as possible, and communicate her decisions through the system of codes and dead letter drops already in use. The Army Council knew of the operation, but had not yet given its final approval. He had been forced to inform the Council of the existence of Sleeper, Conlan had also told her, but had given no details.

Walker’s flat, on the third floor of a Victorian terrace close to Primrose Hill in north London, was that of a successful and independent professional woman. It consisted of two bedrooms, a large split-level lounge with a marble fireplace and bay windows opening on to a balcony, a smaller room off it which she used as an office, plus a kitchen and bathroom. She had bought it when the property market was still rising and redesigned it herself. Except for the study the flat bordered on the luxurious without being ostentatious: the furniture, decorations and lighting were modern; yet the hard edges were softened by the small personal touches she had added – a wall-hanging from Turkey, an icon from Russia, an Impressionist-style painting she had commissioned from an art student after seeing his work on the boarded-up window of a shop unit standing empty in a new shopping precinct. The study, by contrast, was cold and clinical – a world of computers and computer logic, shelves of manuals and software, the black ash desk facing the window but the sunlight from outside cut off by a blind, and the lighting efficient and functional.

In many ways Philipa Walker’s two lives were similarly organized. Just as there was no indication of the austerity of the study in the rest of the flat, so there was no indication in her everyday life of the second into which she occasionally disappeared. Her day-to-day existence was also divided and equally organized: she had professional colleagues and personal friends, the two rarely coinciding. Her affairs were seldom casual ones, almost always lasting more than six months; the most recent had ended two months before. It was a life-style Conlan had encouraged. Build a cover, he had told her the day she had committed herself, establish yourself so that no one will ever suspect. Continue the life to which her own background automatically pointed and she would be so immune she would be untouchable. Establish a career that allowed her to take time off, so that no one would even notice when she slipped from what had become her cover into the sub-world to which he had introduced her.

In the strictest definition, Walker was not a sleeper. A sleeper is an agent recruited from or infiltrated into an organization and required to remain inoperative until activated. Walker’s role was neither of these, yet in a less traditional sense her background provided everything a sleeper could require: layer upon layer of cover built up over the years – in her case a background provided by the very establishment she now opposed.

She locked the flat and walked to the top of Primrose Hill. In the distance, glistening white, were the modern tower blocks of the City; in the middle ground Oxford Street; just below the hill, less than three hundred yards away, was London Zoo. Sometimes she would lie awake and pick up the faintest smells, reminders of those places her official passport said she had not visited. Sometimes – even at two or three in the morning – she would leave the flat and sit on the top of the hill, draw in the night air for a taste of those places. Occasionally, just occasionally, they would waft across the hill and drift through the window of the flat when she was making love. Then the images would come back to her: then she would slip into an almost subconscious memory of the places where she had executed the profession to which Conlan had led her. Not those where she had been trained. Rather, those where she put her craft into practice.

She returned to the flat, percolated coffee, poured herself a cup, and took it back into the study. It was 3.30 in the afternoon, the first children passing below the flat on their way home from school. The windows of the lounge were open and she could hear them laughing. It had been this time in the afternoon – the thought was not quite subconscious. Autumn going into winter, though, the smells of a new season and the first hint of cold ...

... she was fourteen, tall and thin yet becoming attractive, even in school uniform. She had forgotten a hockey boot – had thought she had packed both – and run home to pick it up. The day before she had brought home her school report, the evening before she had sat in the warmth of the sitting-room, the fire blazing in the grate, while her father read carefully through it in the manner she called his solicitor’s style, her mother opposite her dwelling on every nod of his head. Grade 1 in every subject, it was no more than she had expected, had worked hard for. An outstanding student, the head teacher had written; we confidently expect superb examination results and university entrance.

The house was quiet, the grandfather clock ticking in the hall. Her mother and her aunt were having tea together as they did every Wednesday. Quintessentially English, Walker would think in the years to come, when the hate was fired and burning in her. Quintessentially bloody bourgeoisie. She wouldn’t disturb them, she thought, if she did she would have to explain, then she might be late for the practice. She ran quietly up the stairs, found the boot, and began to come down again.

The sitting-room door was slightly open. Her mother was showing her aunt her school report – she could tell by the conversation.

‘She’s done very well.’

‘Very well indeed.’ There was something in her mother’s voice which took her by surprise. ‘Considering.’

She stopped unseen on the stairs and wondered what her mother meant.

Even though she thought the house was empty her mother crossed the room and closed the door.

Considering what, the girl thought that night. She had everything, her parents were well-off though perhaps slightly old-fashioned, neither she nor her brother had ever wanted for anything. They lived in a large house in the Home Counties, had been educated privately from the age of four, and always been encouraged to study. Considering what? she was still thinking when she woke the following morning . . .

. . . the coffee was cold and the study was quiet around her.

Each of the jobs she had done for Conlan, or for others through Conlan, had begun differently. Some – the longterm jobs – had started this way: the months of detailed and often fruitless research. Others had been more immediate: a dead letter drop where the weapon was waiting for her, the target details, a back-up supplying the way in and out. Always, however, Conlan had insisted on two fundamentals: that no one ever knew her identity, and that everyone assumed she was a man. As if he always had the spectacular in mind, she could not help thinking again, as if he always had her in mind for it. That was why he had not used her for two years, had allowed her to disappear into the shadows.

The afternoon drifted into evening. She left the flat and took the underground to the West End. It was eleven in the evening, the night still warm. The lights of Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus were flashing behind her, the taxis filled with theatre-leavers and the streets busy. She left Trafalgar Square and walked through Admiralty Arch and into the Mall. The night was suddenly darker and colder and the pavements empty, only an occasional cab passing her. Six hundred yards in front of her she saw the lights of Buckingham Palace.

She would need access to the royal schedule, and one way to that was through the Wednesday List – the diary of engagements for each member of the royal family circulated by Buckingham Palace to the Newspaper Publishers Association and through the NPA to interested publications. The list, containing the skeleton of engagements for up to a year ahead and updated on a monthly and weekly basis, was sent out every Wednesday, hence its name. The PinMan operation, however, would require not just the official timetable of formal appointments where the target would be high profile and carrying massive protection, but – and more importantly – the details of the more informal and therefore probably more personal events, even though PinMan would still be accompanied by a bodyguard.

Buckingham Palace or the NPA? She was walking quickly, thinking quickly, weighing the options. If she accessed the computer system in the press office at the Palace she might also get inside the personal offices, get information not on the Wednesday List; if she made do with the NPA she might get less material but the risks were fewer. The computer security at the Palace would be more difficult to penetrate, yet in a way that did not concern her. What did, however, was the probability that at the Palace the system would, or should, pick it up immediately. And that might warn the security services.

A police car slid past her – the dark maroon of the Diplomatic Protection Group. She reached the Victoria Monument and stood looking up at the Palace, the standard fluttering from the flag pole. Queen’s in – she remembered the day she had stood here with her mother, the way her mother had pointed out the flag to her, she in her best school uniform and her brother in his school blazer.

The NPA, she decided, keep the Palace as a last resort.

She turned down Buckingham Gate and into Petty France, the Passport Office on the right and the Home Office on the left; then she cut through to the Houses of Parliament and took the underground back to Chalk Farm.

The following day she began the process of building up a computerized file on PinMan. In doing so she was governed by one simple fact of life: that despite the system of passwords and other security measures which an individual or a company might build into a system, there was no such thing as computer security.

If the police or security services ever suspected her, the first thing they would do would be to search the flat. And the first thing they would do when they saw the computer would be to call in a specialist. By using a tape streamer, DOS operating system boot disk and a programmer’s toolkit, an expert would first of all bypass the security and password system normally assigned to the C drive, access the hard disk and X-copy all information stored on it, even remnants of items which she had ordered to be deleted but which might not have been completely overwritten by the computer.

If she replaced the standard BIOS chips with chips carrying security passwords, they could replace those she had installed or circumvent them totally by taking the top off the computer, removing the hard disk, copying it, then replacing it. And if she had encrypted the material on the hard disk they would know she was hiding something and send it to the codebreakers at GCHQ.

For these reasons she would place no PinMan information on the hard disk. She would destroy all irrelevant material immediately, encrypt the material she wanted, using a standard software package, and place it on a floppy disk which she would in turn place in a bank deposit box hired under a false name.

The office was cool. She switched on the PC and checked the list of dial-up numbers she had acquired during her years in the City. Most were of banking, financial or related institutions, though four were of newspapers and the twenty-seventh was that of the Newspaper Publishers Association. She plugged the modem connection to the telephone socket, called up the communication software and keyed in the NPA number. The computer system at the NPA answered and she logged in. Eight minutes later she accessed the computer file based on the Wednesday List. On the pale amber of the screen were the outline schedules of every member of the royal family for the next twelve months, with the first six months of that period already highly detailed. She transferred the material from the NPA machine to her own and copied it on to a disk. Then she exited the NPA system, made herself a coffee, printed out the material and studied it.

The material was as she had suspected – useful but only as a starting point. Nowhere in it were the seemingly minor details, the unofficial functions or personal timetables, which she would need for the PinMan operation.

She burned the print-out and placed the floppy in the wall safe. The next morning she deposited it in a security box at a bank in the City, then returned to the flat, wrote out a list of publishers, and made the first telephone call. Two days later she entered the details of all books written about the royal family over the previous five years on the PinMan file, again placing the floppy in the bank deposit box.

Three of the books were out of print, two could be purchased over the counter, and five could be ordered, though the waiting time was up to five weeks. The following morning she went to the British Library, on the ground floor of the British Museum in Great Russell Street, and obtained a reader’s pass in the name of Sampson, her application authenticated by a letter on University College headed notepaper which she herself had printed and on which she had written details of a fictitious PhD thesis. For the next ten days, in the vast domed reading room of the British Library, she worked her way through the books she had listed from the publishers’ catalogues.

The following week she spent five days at the Press Association in Fleet Street, tucked into a corner in the newspaper cuttings library, again using the name Sampson and paying cash. On the first morning she asked for files on environmental pollution, with special reference to interest in the subject shown by the Prince of Wales; at the end of the morning she moved on to royal cuttings in general, taking the relevant folders from the filing cabinets herself and returning them once she had finished, so that there was no record of herself or which files she had consulted. The following week she spent four days in the British Newspaper Library at Colindale in north London.

The photograph was in the diary column of the Daily Mail.

Perhaps it was because she was concentrating on the content of the various reports, perhaps because the report in question was about a lunch party and therefore of little consequence, perhaps because the cutting at the Press Association library was slightly torn or the microfiche machine at Colindale was slightly out of focus, that she did not register it. It was only three evenings later that the feeling began to seep into her that sometime, somewhere, over the past days and weeks, she had missed something. Not something important, not something she could have used. And that was what annoyed her. Because not only could she not remember what she had seen or where she had seen it, but she did not even know why she should have noticed it or why it was surfacing from somewhere in her subconscious.

For the two weeks after that she concentrated on European and American magazines and newspapers specializing in scandal stories about the royal family. In each case the stories were more sensational, and less likely to be corroborated, than in the British newspapers, and the photographs were more intimate, or at least more intrusive.

September had slipped into October, and soon October would give way to November. Somewhere in the mass of information she had gathered together was the key to PinMan, she was aware; somewhere among what seemed like an industry in itself was the one person who could give her that key. Except that already she was running out of time.

Something she had seen in one of the photographs at the Press Association or at Colindale – perhaps she had been aware of the unease before, perhaps she had pushed it aside. Now it crept up on her again, only caught her because something deep in her psychology allowed it to. Not something about PinMan. Something about herself.

It was nine o’clock. She went into the lounge and switched on the television.

The Sun received the tip-off shortly before seven. Something important had happened in the life of the Princess of Wales, the source said; the previous evening she had toasted the news with close friends at one of her favourite restaurants.

‘What news?’ the deputy editor asked.

‘The source wasn’t sure.’

‘How reliable’s the source?’

On the fringe but reliable in the past, the reporter who had taken the call informed him. Offering the story on an exclusive basis but needing an answer fast. Or she would take it to another newspaper, the implication was clear.

‘You’ve talked to the Palace?’

‘They’re making no comment.’

They wouldn’t, unless you asked something specific, the deputy editor understood, and even then they normally didn’t comment anyway. The story was weak – in a way it wasn’t a story. Except that it might be, and someone else might have it. The editor was in Australia and the paper’s royal-watcher was on holiday somewhere in the Far East. Buy the woman up and close the source, he thought, except that if she knew, then someone else probably did as well. And if another paper knew, they’d be running it that night.

‘How much is she asking?’

‘Five hundred.’

Go with it and she was right, and all he’d get was a pat on the back. Not go with it and somebody else had it, and his feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

‘Offer her one, the rest on results.’

‘She’ll take two-fifty.’

‘Done. Guaranteed exclusive. How’re you writing it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Write it as a question. Expectations of major changes, speculation amongst close friends, etc. Pull in an astrologer, get him to confirm it in her stars. Last night’s celebration in the third paragraph.’

That way he and the paper were covered. If there was a story. A bomb up every other paper’s backside if there wasn’t. And the classic spoiler if there was and someone else had it. And royal stories still moved copies, he could imagine the panic when the second edition came out, the rumours that would start in the other newsrooms even before that.

He rolled up his sleeves and telephoned the lawyer and picture editor in that order.

The story – or the first hint of it – broke at twenty minutes to nine. An hour earlier Patrick Saunders had returned to the flat which he used during the week. Saunders was 44 years old, fit for his age and occupation, married with two teenage girls, a country house in Wiltshire and a town flat in Barnsbury. He had joined the Daily Mirror seventeen years before, and was now what the newspaper liked to call the king of the royal-watchers.

The Cellnet, he noted as the telephone rang; the office getting hold of him in a hurry, not knowing where he was or having the time to find out.

‘Yes.’

‘Pat.’ Only the news editor was allowed to call him Pat, and then only when he was in a hurry and the pressure was on. ‘Big one breaking. A cab will collect you in two minutes.’

‘What is it?’

‘The Sun’s> carrying an exclusive on Di. We’ve just had the tip.’

Saunders’s first reaction was shock and his second was a combination of disbelief and anger. So what was it, why didn’t he know? Why hadn’t his source given him the story first? His third, which over-ruled the others, was of self-preservation.

‘You’re sure?’

‘We haven’t seen it yet, but they’re putting on extra copies.’

‘You don’t know what it is?’

‘No.’

‘On my way.’

He left the flat and ran down the stairs. The minicab was waiting. For Christ’s sake be there, he thought. He sat in the back seat, balanced his notebook on his lap and dialled the number on the Cellnet. The contact answered immediately.

‘Patrick here. Bit of a panic on.’ There was no time for pleasantries. ‘The Sun’s carrying a big story on Di.’

The contact began to laugh. ‘Red faces all round, eh?’

Bastard, thought Saunders.

‘Wrong Di, old man. One of the Princess’s buddies, sort of lady-in-waiting, if you like. Just announced she’s pregnant for the first time.’

‘What about the Princess of Wales?’

‘She’s agreed to be godmother.’

You’re sure? Saunders almost blurted. Head on the block time, he knew. Of course I’m sure, he knew the contact would reply. ‘Phone number?’

‘She’s ex-D.’

All of them were ex-directory, Saunders thought.

‘Doesn’t matter, though. She’s not there.’

Stop pissing me about, Saunders glanced up as the minicab passed the Angel.