partners. Any prolonged procedure would damage trust and imperil the smooth workings of the department.
Henning had already fixed his attention on a single member of the unit, having been alerted by the man’s behavior. He closed in on the individual in his own surreptitious way, quietly and with an almost indifferent attitude.
The man’s name was Lewis Winch. A smart and confident agent, he held a high ranking in the unit. His brief was to act not only as a U.K. operative, but also to liaise with European and American agencies. Winch had made this his prime role and had built a reputation as a brilliant negotiator when it came to handling awkward international conflicts. There were still territorial stumbling blocks to deal with when it came to diplomacy directives, and Winch seemed to have the techniques for smoothing things over. Within the department he was almost a law unto himself. He came and went, making frequent visits to the Continent and even the U.S.A. He was often out of the department on consultations, as he put it.
Henning wasn’t sure how or when he began to have an unsettling feeling where Winch was concerned. His suspicions might have been aroused by the man’s increasing attitude of what Henning could only call twitchy. Winch seemed to be looking over his shoulder metaphorically, reacting awkwardly whenever someone approached him, almost with paranoia. Henning told himself he was looking too hard, seeing things that meant very little, but he found he was studying Winch whenever the man was around.
A definite sign appeared the day the reports started coming in about the killing and bombing in Peshawar. Henning saw Winch’s reaction as the large wall-mounted plasma TV began to show the images. The whole of the main office was watching, so Winch’s response was noticed only by Henning. He saw Winch turn away and hurry to his own office, where he took out a cell phone. Seated at in his own desk, Henning witnessed Winch’s actions through the open blinds. He couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but from his expression it was plain he was agitated. The call went on for a couple of minutes before he cut the conversation and dropped the cell phone back into the desk drawer, then snatched his coat off its hook and exited.
Henning went to his office window, which overlooked the street. As he had somehow expected, Winch stepped into view from the building and hailed a taxi. Henning’s office was only one floor up so he was able to read the number on the cab’s license plate. He turned and jotted it on his desk pad.
Nothing unusual in someone taking a taxi.
Except that this was Lewis Winch.
And Winch hated any kind of public transport. He never, ever used taxis. Always drove his own car, which would be parked, even now, in the basement garage under the building. The whole scenario jarred. Henning sat down, staring at the number he had written on his desk pad.
Winch had reacted sharply at the TV report. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before. But this time Winch had been clearly taken by surprise.
Why?
And who had he called so urgently?
Henning sat back, understanding he had to follow this through. It might not lead him anywhere. Winch’s behavior could have been an innocent reaction to the events unfolding on the screen. But it felt like something entirely different to Greg Henning.
He wanted to be proved wrong.
Genuinely proved wrong.
The recent problems the department had been experiencing, the operations having to be called off due to compromising situations and the fact that prior warning had been leaked to parties under observation—all these needed to be answered.
And this unusual behavior warranted investigation, no matter what the outcome.
That afternoon, Winch didn’t return for a couple hours. On arrival, he went directly to his office and closed the door, then sat at his desk for a while before he turned on his laptop and began to work.
Henning watched him covertly from his own office. His hopes of not being seen were marred when he saw Winch watching him. This happened a couple times.
Winch finished early, pulling on his coat and walking out of his office. He flicked off the light and closed the door.
It seemed he was about to head over to Henning’s office, but he stared for a moment, then turned and left the department.
Back at his office window, Henning waited, finally seeing his colleague’s car nose out from the basement garage and merge with the busy London traffic. He stayed at the window until the vehicle was out of sight.
Winch’s behavior left Henning with a feeling of disquiet, an unsettling sensation that wouldn’t leave him.
He was ready to take those suspicions a step forward. That was when his telephone rang and Henning was assigned a call to duty. He had to put the Winch matter on the back burner until he had cleared his assignment, because he refused to expose his feelings until he could prove his case.
The day he returned to the department, and before he could even check his computer, the phone rang and the man he knew as Jack Coyle was asking him to meet for a drink and a chat.
ON HIS RETURN TO his office following his meeting with Jack Coyle, Henning went over their conversation. The subjects they had covered had rekindled his earlier suspicions about Lewis Winch—the man’s reaction to the bombing scenes in Pakistan, his sudden departure from the office and his extremely odd behavior with the taxi.
If Henning was wrong about him, no harm would have been done. If his suspicions proved sound, that was another matter. He admitted he was acting purely on instinct, but he trusted his senses. They had proved reliable on other occasions.
Henning located the license number of the taxi he had written down. The antiterrorism squad had an extensive and top-of-the-line cyber unit. Their ability to seek and find was unrivaled in London. Henning logged on using his password. He tapped in the vehicle number and ran a check on its details. The search provided him with the cab company, and from that Henning was able to access the logs of each vehicle. He inputted the taxi’s license number and the date he was interested in. In less than a minute he had a list of all the fares the cab had picked up that day. Henning scrolled down it until he located the one that had originated outside their building. The time tallied with when he had seen Winch climb into the taxi.
Henning studied the address where his colleagues had completed his journey.
The London office of Samman Prem.
Henning sat and stared at the monitor, trying to come up with any legitimate reason for Lewis Winch to visit the office of a man like Prem. He failed. Then he pondered whether, just because Winch had been dropped off outside Prem’s building, it was fair to assume the man had gone inside. Henning decided it was too much of a stretch to believe Winch had been dropped off at Prem’s place of business and not gone inside.
Samman Prem was one of the men on the watch list. A man who had been followed from time to time and considered a person of interest. If the unit had unlimited funds, it might have placed Prem under full-time observation, but true to the way things happened, the counterterrorist squad had to spread its allocations of men and money thinly over a large area. So Prem was no longer under watch.
Henning tried another route, via the extensive network of TV cameras that were installed all over London. He used the system to locate the address he wanted, and discovered there were two cameras on the East End street where Samman Prem’s office building stood. Henning tapped in date and time and
