A Retreat of Truths, Part 3

[Ceridwyn2]

Saturday, 11 December 2006, 0830hrs
Malmaison Oxford, Meeting Room

Representatives of MI-5, MI-6, Special Branch, and the JIC had gathered in the assigned executive meeting room. In the center of the room was a large round table, around which was set twelve chairs and thirteen settings, allowing for Juliet's motorized chair. Glasses of water were set around as well as legal notepads, and pens and a couple dossiers. Ruth and Harry shared a glance and smirked.

"Knights of the Round Table. Someone has an interesting sense of humour," Zaf commented, with snickers emerging from most of the attendees. They'd all gone to their assigned seating and awaited the instructions for the morning's exercise.

"If you'll all open your folders," Juliet started the session off. "This morning's exercise will involve analyzing intelligence data reports, photographs, linkage reports, immigration status reports. The purpose of all of this is to combine our knowledge, instinct as intelligence officers, and skills to determine likely suspects for a terrorist attack. Now, we've only got the materials in front of us to use as our resources."

They got cracking on the work ahead of them. Discussion on the reports, surveillance pictures taking them well through the morning. Whereas most of the intelligence officers present were field officers, Each officer had some specific area of expertise in which to lend the exercise.

From within MI-5, there were diverse backgrounds. Harry looked round at his officers scattered around the table. Both Zafar Younis and Ros Myers had been recruited from their sister organization, MI-6. Zaf had many aspects to his career having spent the past three years as an MI-6 officer in North Africa. And as he and quite pointedly put it to Harry, not many young Asian men sought out employment in Her Majesty's Intelligence Service, thus he was able to fit into some communities where others may not. No one would suspect that he was an intelligence operative. Ros was still a bit of an unknown quantity. While she had not been privy to the details of her father's treasonous activities alongside Michael Collingwood (the previous head of MI-6), it did somewhat paint a bit of a dark cloud over her own history. While Harry himself was willing to overlook that part of her past, in lieu of her current work with MI-5, he was not blind to it either. His own history in the military and his work as an MI-5 officer gave him a fair insight into operations and playing politics, something which he loathed but was oft required to participate in whilst keeping atop his counterparts.

Harry smiled when he thought of Ruth. Ruth's lateral thinking and data analysis were key to pointing out several components, and in cross-referencing points. In addition, her love of mysteries and puzzles, along with an innate abilities to pull some otherwise inconsequential detail out of a myriad was uncanny. Her experiences at GCHQ helped narrow down some specific detail elements. Suddenly Ruth got up and came over to Harry. She held a few documents and photographs in front of him and pointed to something in particular. Something had twigged her memory.

"Harry, are we sure this is just an exercise?" Ruth asked him quietly.

"Ruth?"

"It's just...this man here. His face is familiar. I'm sure it came up in some Interpol report I was looking at earlier this week. The name here is wrong though, but I can't put my finger on it."

"Are you sure?" he asked, casting a sidewards glance at her.

"Yes. I need to check a couple things, but I remember the face."

"Something wrong, Harry?" Juliet called over to him.

"Hopefully nothing." Harry looked down at his watch. "As it is getting towards noon, I suggest we take a break for lunch, if that's all right by every body else." After brief consultation, all agreed that it would be a good time to break and reconvene at 1300hrs. A quick nod of Harry's head and all four representatives from MI-5 met at the internal atrium in the middle of A-Wing.

"Upstairs, now," was all Harry had to say. Ruth went into her room to retrieve the laptop she brought with her. Once they'd all arrived at Harry and Zaf's room, he let the rest of the team in on Ruth's information. She opened up her laptop and accessed via secure connection the MI-5.

Pulling up recent Interpol reports she scanned them for the photograph they'd been given as part of the morning's exercise.

"Here," Ruth pointed at the screen. "Jamal Hassan, arrived in the UK on 3rd November by way of Syria. Interpol sent out a green notice earlier this week as he was wanted in connection with charges of bombing a civilian hospital in Northern Iraq. He left Iraq under disguise but was picked up again by Syrian intelligence the week before. Whilst waiting extradition back to Iraq he slipped past the Syrian officers holding him. Gone underground, until he arrived in the UK under the name of Mihyar al-Basri."

"What's he doing here?" Ros asked. "And how did it come under our radar for this exercise?"

"I don't know, but I'm betting Juliet might," Harry said before ducking into the bathroom to make a quick call on his mobile phone. A few times Harry's raised voice could be heard before silence and Harry walking out of the bathroom. "Ruth, keep working on this. See if Adam, Jo and Malcolm can pull up some additional information. We need to keep on top of this. I'm going to go have a little chat with Juliet and Charles McIrney."

McIrney had taken over the directorship of MI-6 after Michael Collingwood's 'unfortunate' demise earlier in the year, and as far as Harry was concerned McIrney was treading in his predecessor's footsteps. Harry had hoped this director's ambitions wouldn't lead him to such an illustrious end as said predecessor, but quite frankly Harry wasn't hedging his bets.

After Harry departed, Ruth went to work, running through the reports she'd compiled. After tinkering around a bit in a few databases, she got some more information she needed. A few phone more calls back and forth to Thames House. Twenty minutes passed and Ruth was avidly pacing the room as she worked her way through analyzing all the information in her head.

"Bloody hell. Tell Harry to meet us down in the meeting room in five minutes!" Ruth quickly packed up her laptop and headed down to the room.

"What is it?" Zaf asked her, as he and Ros followed quickly behind Ruth.

"I'll be able to tell you more when I get the papers in front of me. But I think I've just uncovered something about a planned terrorist attack. For real. Not some bloody exercise!"

Malmaison Oxford Internal Atrium

"Juliet, what the hell are you playing at?" Harry stormed towards the woman, his fury vibrating off his very being.

"Harry, what are you talking about?"

"Jamal Hassan, also known as Mihyar al-Basri." Harry handed her the photograph from the exercise. "Do you want to tell me how he got included in this morning's exercise? And don't tell me you didn't know anything about it."

"I'm sorry, I still don't know what you're talking about."

Harry relayed the information that Ruth had uncovered. Juliet went white as a ghost. The last time Harry had seen her like this was immediately following her accident.

"Shit."

Harry frowned. "Juliet, when were you given the folders for this retreat?"

"They arrived by courier from London this morning." Juliet sighed, frustratingly. "I was given strict instruction that the folders were not to be opened until this morning's session."

"Who were the instructions from?" Harry asked impatiently.

"Special Branch. Jesus."

"I really don't think he can help us at the moment." At that moment, both his and Juliet's pagers went off. Harry looked at his. Ruth's mobile number came up. He opened up his mobile and rang her. He didn't get a chance to say anything. Ruth simply and quickly gave him instruction.

"Harry, meeting room, now. Red Flash."

Harry relayed the information and he and Juliet were headed to the room promptly. Once all the MI-5 officers and Juliet had arrived at the room, Ruth opened up her laptop.

"Ruth?"

"Not good. We've got two definite terrorist plots aimed at London within the next forty-eight hours. Given the information we've managed to gather, Adam's uncovered Hassan's location. He's sent Malcolm and a couple of techs over to set up surveillance in and around the community center where Hassan's set up, as well as his flat. We don't know the how and when yet where the attacks will occur. Vague details just yet." A look from Harry. "I'm working on it, Harry. Information is still coming in."

"Juliet, get the Special Branch Anti-Terrorist representative in here now. I need to know when they got this information and why weren't we informed of this before now. And why we were played as stooges to find out information that they couldn't be arsed to compile on their own. This is their cock-up. We get this figured out and soonish." Harry started to pace back and forth the room.

"Harry?" Ruth gently stopped him after several turns and placed a hand on his arm. A questioning glance regarding the next part of the plan and answering nod.

"We need to get back to London. Now." Harry was determined. He turned to Ros, as he didn't want to distract Ruth from her coordinating information coming in. "Ros, can you make arrangements for us to return to London asap?"

"Done," Ros clipped in return and quickly left the room, with her mobile in hand.

As he left, Paul Thomson, the Special Branch representative entered the room. If looks could kill, Thomson would be at the bottom of the Thames with concrete boots. He bore the full brunt of Harry's rapid fire questions regarding Hassan, when and where Special Branch knew of his entry into the UK, why Hassan was included on the exercise, and the current threat of terrorist attacks.

"Harry, you know as well as I do, that there are at least a dozen terrorist claims that come across our desks on a weekly basis. Some of them are more well developed than others. Hassan's information came across our desks on Monday morning. We pulled his photo and data imagery from Airport Security. As you know from the exercise this morning, Hassan was only one of several that we had our eye on."

"So Special Branch decided to use this farce of a weekend to do their dirty work for them."

"Hardly, we need all the services to work together to combine our knowledge to combat terrorism. MI5, MI6, Special Branch, and GCHQ."

"That's a load of political bullshit, Paul. If we'd been informed of what was going on from the beginning we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now."

The meeting room door opened and Ros entered, headed straight for Harry. She quickly whispered in his ear the travel arrangements that had been sorted. Harry quirked his eyebrow when she'd mentioned a helicopter, but appreciated her initiative.

"The helicopter will be here in forty-five minutes. There's room for four people on the flight. You and Ruth take two of the seats. You can work out who else goes. Zaf and I will take the motor pool car back."

"Ruth, any more news from the Grid."

"Malcolm's got the surveillance all set up. Hassan's arrived back at the Community Center but so far it's been quiet."

"Okay, time to move." Despite his initial misgivings, Harry agreed to have Thomson aboard as well as the senior representative from MI6. The rest, including Juliet, would return in the same manner they'd arrived. Harry left Juliet with the task of canceling the hotel reservations for that night. It would be expensive as they'd booked a block of rooms and canceling on short notice. But frankly Harry could care less about the bureaucratic aspect of conference dealings. He had more important things to focus on.
With great efficiency, the MI-5 officers had returned to their respective rooms, packed up their hold-alls and met down at the reception desk. They'd returned their key cards and called for a taxi which would take Ruth and Harry to the helicopter landing pad at the hospital. Harry gave Ros the keys for the motor pool car and gave her instructions for the location of the car at the nearby car park. When the taxi pulled up, Ruth and Harry quickly departed, along with the other two representatives.

Ruth leaned into Harry and quietly remarked, "I kind of wished I'd taken my camera. Now that I've seen how this place as it's changed, it's quite beautiful in its austerity."

"There'll be plenty of time for that later, Ruth." The smile on his face belied the tone. So much work to be done in the next forty-eight hours depended on the security services capturing Hassan and his cohorts and stopping them from blowing up as yet unknown areas of London. He wanted to be able to guarantee her some measure of comfort, but couldn't afford to do much at the moment. For the rest of the duration to the hospital, he made do with discretely holding her hand.

When the time came, they loaded their hold-alls into the secured baggage compartment of the helicopter and climbed in. The engine was loud and they could barely hear themselves think. Once they were on board, buckled in and headphones put on, they set upon running through part of the next part of the plan. Once a decision had been made, Ruth quickly texted Ros's mobile with the details before they took off. The day was clear and looking out the window, Ruth could see the city that she'd become reacquainted with (albeit briefly).

Harry nudged her to get her attention. She smiled at him in return. He mouthed, "We'll return here soon." He nodded his head towards the others. "Without the entourage." Ruth grinned at him broadly. And for just a few brief moments, allowed herself to dream of the possibilities that lay beyond terrorists and bombs, national emergencies, conspiracies and the like.