Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(17)

“Unelected.”

“—advisers to HMG. It’s hardly surprising her disappearance has caused alarm bells to ring.”

“She might simply have gone on holiday.”

“She doesn’t appear to have left the country.”

“So? She’s a Swiss citizen. Being here’s a holiday. Has her visa expired?”

“No.”

“Well, then. As far as I’m aware, and that’s quite some distance, here in the UK we’re not currently required to inform the authorities of our whereabouts on a daily basis. Since she’s not subject to a self-isolation order, Dr. de Greer could be tramping round the Lake District, halfway up Snowdonia or being eaten alive by Highland midges. It’s not actually any of our business.”

“No, not until I was asked by Oliver Nash to investigate her whereabouts. At which point, it became our business.”

“Not to pull rank, Claude, but there’s a gap between ‘your’ and ‘our.’ You haven’t been behind a desk in this building for some while.”

“And yet Nash has the authority to, what was your word? Reactivate me.”

“Don’t get carried away. That’s a visitor’s badge, not a sheriff’s star. Look, whatever’s going on, it’ll turn out to be dirty politics. That’s how these people operate. De Greer’s a troublemaker. I don’t know what it says on her website, but that’s what she specialises in. Making trouble.”

“Superforecaster is the technical term.”

“Does that sound like a job title to you? Last time we had one of those in Number Ten, they turned out to be even weirder than the advert asked for. Some Nazi-leaning incel pipsqueak. You’d think their vetting procedures would have tightened up.”

Whelan could see this conversation getting away from him, and decided to reel it in. He said, “The word waterproof has been mentioned.”

“. . . Waterproof?”

“I’m sure you recall the protocol.”

Diana affected to pretend to remember. So many protocols, so long behind the wheel. “That’s ancient history.”

“A lot of things are fairly old, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still in use. Clocks? Kettles?”

“Retirement has made you skittish. Who on earth raised that rabbit? You’re not telling me it was Oliver?”

Whelan gave her his best poker face.

“No, you’re not telling me it was anyone. But we both know Oliver has loose lips, whether he’s stuffing things past them or blurting things out. So it all comes down to whoever he’s been talking to recently, doesn’t it?”

He thought: He could just sit here without saying another word. There was every chance the conversation would continue without him.

The first time he’d heard of the protocol had been in this room, several years ago. Diana had been his guide to the underworld in those days, his first as First Desk. His ascent to the role had taken an unconventional route, and he was almost as much a stranger to the Park as any of those gentle souls who took the visitors’ trip round the upstairs regions, where they were shown the acceptable side of the Service: its hallways and hatracks; the discreet busts in their nooks; the display cases of Cold War knick-knackery—radio transmitters in bootheels and the like. Oohs and Aahs were the appropriate response. A thin-lipped nod was the best Claude could muster as Diana had revealed the darker aspects to the role he’d been assigned; if not actually handing him the chalice—that had been a decision taken over her head—at least pointing out how battered and stained it was; how he should take care drinking from it if he didn’t want a cut lip. His induction into the dangerous edge of things. His teacher among the dangers awaiting him, though he hadn’t known that then.

Waterproof, he learned, had been briefly in use years earlier, in the wake of various events whose anniversaries were still marked by minutes of public silence. During that period, the Service had acquired a broad remit for dealing with those suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks. Public trials—“You won’t need me to tell you,” she’d told him—were preferred for those likely to be found guilty, while the more circumstantially involved received more circumspect treatment. Waterproof, in a word. A form of anonymised rendition. This wasn’t about returning bad actors to the wings; it was about removing them from the cast list altogether. Records were sealed. Names erased. And the subjects never saw daylight again. Even today they’d be alive somewhere, some of them, living out what was left of their span in unwindowed cells in black prisons in eastern Europe. Cells the size of phone booths.

“A gateway drug to capitalism,” Diana had told him. “All those former Soviet states leasing out their gulags to the west. A handy dumping ground for our undesirables.”

And this wasn’t still in use—not something he’d be expected to implement? Or defend, god help him?

No, the protocol had been consigned to the NH file. Never Happened. The most Whelan had to do was launch an inquiry that would ensure that no current Upper Desk need fear this particular chicken coming to roost in any of their drawers.

This much at least Whelan had recognised. London Rules. Cover your arse.

All of which was long in the past, but he had no doubt Diana’s recollection was as sharp as his own, an intuition she now confirmed. “Well, whoever he’s been talking to, he’s barking at the wrong dog. There was a commission, remember? Your doing. ‘No evidence that such protocol was ever utilised.’ Not a finding likely to be overturned, not while the report itself is still in heavy wrappers.”