Chapter Forty-One
Forty-One
Carol and Margaret left Westminster tube station and took a stroll past Big Ben.
Carol was tired after spending half the night on her computer, tying leads together, getting in touch with some old friends, doing a little online snooping.
Today’s sleuthing came in the form of a field trip and—if everything went to plan—this would be the last day of the investigation.
Before departing, Carol had taken a walk in the Sheldon Oaks gardens on her own. First, she had some measuring to do. The results were as she suspected.
How lucky she was to live there. She’d tried to remember the names of the flowers Margaret had told her. Lupines, monkshood, pink dahlias. Looking at the flower bed closely, she noticed that a clump of flowers was missing. Not everything was perfect.
Margaret met her by the building’s entrance, and they’d taken the short walk to Hampstead tube station, Carol’s first trip on the underground this century.
On the tube she remembered, people’s faces were hidden behind giant newspapers.
Now they all stared at their phones. The upholstery hadn’t changed, exactly the same patterns.
She asked Margaret, who told her that, yes, the Bakerloo line did still smell a bit eggy.
Aboveground, everywhere they looked were Pret A Mangers and cyclists.
This wasn’t their London anymore. Red phone boxes with prostitutes’ cards in them, IRA bomb warnings, every room filled with a fog of cigarette smoke, clothes that always smelled of tobacco—that was their era.
Things had moved on. Whether that was for the better was not for them to say.
They made their way past College Green. There was a small collection of media tents, TV lighting rigs, young people in suits looking at their phones, some politician being interviewed on camera.
“Do you miss it?”
“That?” said Margaret. “Not in the slightest. This is much more fun.”
Margaret hadn’t been in the neighborhood for a few months.
The last time, she’d popped into the House of Lords to show her face, listened to a debate, and had lunch in one of Parliament’s dining rooms. Everyone had seemed so old.
The lords, all nearing death, decades past their last cogent thought as they sat in the chamber, blankets on their laps, bellies full of state-subsidized sponge and custard, having a little nap before casting their votes on important legislation.
That place was the real retirement home. Sheldon Oaks was where the action was.
It’s a ten-minute walk from Westminster station to Thames House, but it took them twenty-five. Their minds were still quick but their bodies weren’t. Carol had butterflies in her tummy. She was about to enter the home of MI5.
“Is there a level above yours?” she asked Margaret.
“If there is, I don’t know of it.”
“Top secret?”
“The very tippity top. I was home secretary. That counts for something.”
“But that was so long ago.”
“Clearance is clearance. They don’t take it back. Not unless you do something very naughty and, unlike you, Carol, I’ve always been a bit of a goody-goody.”
“Do you still read the reports?”
Margaret laughed. “No.”
“But there must be so many secrets. Don’t you want to know everything?”
“Most of the secrets are very, very boring, and the ones that aren’t boring, well, I prefer not to know. I like my sleep.”
Carol raised her eyebrows, pondering that there must be a world out there even darker than the one in which she used to operate.
And then something occurred to her…“Didn’t you used to read up on all your colleagues?
You said something about the foreign secretary and leather.
Aren’t there lots of juicy sex scandals and perverts to read about? ”
Margaret shook her head wistfully. “Not these days. I’m afraid the politicians of today are an incredibly boring bunch.”
—
If the facade of Thames House was neoclassical, the lobby was very much not. All glass and security barriers, TVs showing BBC News, police holding semiautomatic weapons, their fingers resting close to the triggers.
“Can I help?”
“Yes, we’re looking for some…What are they called? Video games? I’m buying my grandson a present.”
The lady behind the desk gave them both a sickly smile. “I think you might be lost.”
“This isn’t HMV?”
“No, this is…I think where you need—”
“Just a little joke, dear,” said Margaret. “It’s Margaret. I’m here to see Sir Jeremy. He’s expecting me.”
And with that, Sir Jeremy Yallop, the slickly suited head of MI5, appeared behind them. “Ladies. Follow me.” He swept them through the security barriers.
Carol turned to the girl at the desk and stuck out her tongue for the fun of it.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but she found the building disappointing.
Just normal corridors and normal rooms with normal-looking people in them.
Wasn’t this the nerve center of British intelligence?
A fortress of state control? There were vending machines with packets of Skips in them. That didn’t seem right to her.
Sir Jeremy stopped at a door and opened it. “All right. Devices.”
“Hand him your phone,” said Margaret, taking hers from her handbag and giving it to Sir Jeremy. Carol did the same.
“I don’t usually do plus-ones,” said Sir Jeremy, “but this lady”—he nodded at Margaret—“saved the country…What’s your estimate, Margaret? Twenty times?”
Margaret blushed. “Oh, don’t be silly. No more than five.”
Carol looked at Margaret in admiration. So many stories, yet she knew she’d never tell.
The room was small. A functional table, like you might find in any other government building, like something from the office of a school headmaster, with two functional chairs. On the table was a file.
“That’s everything we have on Sir Desmond Crisp,” said Sir Jeremy. “Is there anything else we can get you?”
Carol looked over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. “Do you have anything on aliens?”
“That’ll be all for now, Jeremy,” said Margaret, smiling like a parent covering for her toddler. “Thank you.”
“Enjoy!”
And with that Sir Jeremy shut the door and left them alone.
Carol looked at Margaret and opened her mouth wide in silent excitement.
They sat down, eyeing the file as if it was a sacred relic, neither daring to be the first to touch it.
Margaret took a bag of sweets from her handbag and offered it to Carol. “Percy Pig?”
—
The two ladies quietly worked their way through the file, Carol carefully reading every page and passing it on to Margaret.
Every now and then one of the pair would make a noise to indicate that they’d found something interesting.
Carol had never been much of a swot, but it gave her fond memories of the focus she’d had when writing her diaries, all those years ago.
When they had finished, they sat back and looked at each other. Margaret exhaled in shock.
“Well, well, well,” said Carol.
Just then, Sir Jeremy Yallop popped his head around the door with a friendly smile.
“Ah, looks like you’re done. I hope you got everything you needed? I can escort you out now if you’d like.”
“Yes, I think that’s—” Margaret was gathering her things but Carol interrupted her.
“I’m always reading in the newspapers how you can spy on all of us online.”
Yallop tilted his head to the side, bemused by the tenacious pensioner before him. “Oh, yes?”
“Well?” said Carol. “Can you?”
“To a degree.”
“To how much of a degree?”
“Quite a big one.”
“So, if we were to give you a name or two, would you be able to help us look at their communications?”
Sir Jeremy adopted a firmer tone, attempting to draw a line. “That’s really not…This is all very…There is the matter of ethics.”
Margaret spoke up. “You know they’re always inviting me to join the Lords Intelligence and Security Committee.
I usually say I’m done with all that sort of thing, but being in Westminster today makes me wonder if I should get more involved.
They have quite a lot of sway when it comes to things like funding, I’m told. ”
Yallop yielded. “I’ll get one of our technical people to help you.”
“Thank you.” Margaret gave him a beaming smile like he was a kindly young gentleman who’d offered to help her cross the road.
Just as he was leaving, Carol chipped in: “Actually,” she said, “come to think of it, there’s one more person’s file we’d like a look at. If that’s okay?”
Sir Jeremy rolled his eyes, accepting his fate as a man destined to do whatever these two ladies asked of him.