‘You are expecting an attack, Sir Adrian?’ asked the soldier.
‘Not expecting. Just preferring to be on the safe side.’
‘We rarely carry out CP work inside this country.’
Both men knew that, though the Metropolitan Police has highly capable armed units, occasionally, those surrounding the queen are from the Special Forces. It remained unsaid.
‘I suppose we could treat it as a training mission,’ mused the brigadier. ‘How many men would you need?’
‘A dozen, perhaps. Plenty of sleeping room in the old staff quarters. Regular scoff from the kitchen staff. TV room for the off-duty.’
The brigadier grinned. ‘Sounds like a holiday. I’ll see what I can do.’
They arrived at Chandler’s Court two days later and they were twelve – three sergeants and nine troopers – commanded by a thirty-nine-year-old captain, Harry Williams. He would be allotted a room on the first floor and would eat with the family and the GCHQ team.
Sir Adrian made a point of being there to meet them, and that also provided an opportunity to assess them. He liked what he saw. No one needed to tell him that the men of the Special Forces are called ‘special’ for a reason. Broadly speaking, they have a very high IQ level and multiple skill sets. Extreme physical fitness and mastery of a wide range of weaponry go without saying. Within the four-man units that form the basic components of the Regiment there is usually a linguist or two, a paramedic-level first-aider, an engineer/mechanic and an armourer.
Before motoring to Chandler’s Court Sir Adrian had scanned the notes from the Director of Special Forces about the team leader. Harry Williams, like Adrian Weston years before, had been assessed as ‘good family, good school, good exams and POM’ (potential officer material) when he had volunteered for the army as a teenager, and he had worn the uniform for twenty years.
He had also gone through Sandhurst and had secured a commission in the Coldstream Guards, but at twenty-five, lusting for more combat, he had undergone selection for the Special Air Service. That selection, much of it in the Brecon Beacons of South Wales, is so gruelling that the percentage of candidates chosen is a small one. Harry Williams was one of them.
In the Regiment the permanent staff are the ORs, the Other Ranks, or non-coms and troopers. Officers, or ‘Ruperts’, come and go, and always on invitation. Captain Williams was on his third tour. He had been on – and survived with one minor bullet wound in the left thigh – two covert missions behind the lines in Afghanistan and Syria, where, according to eyewitnesses, he had ‘slotted’ (killed) half a dozen terrorists.
Sir Adrian recalled the remark of the brigadier: ‘Sounds like a holiday.’ For this blooded warrior, Chandler’s Court certainly would be. Before he left, the mastermind of Operation Troy made sure the commander of the protection squad had met his charges, the Jennings family. They took tea together in the family sitting room.
The boys reacted differently to Captain Williams. Luke was, as ever, shy and withdrawn, but Marcus was agog for details of past combat. Captain Williams just smiled and murmured ‘Later … maybe.’
Sir Adrian was a practised observer. He noted with approval the gentleness of the soldier towards the older boy and he could not fail to notice the reaction of the very handsome Sue Jennings. His own beloved Fiona would have smiled her quiet smile and whispered, ‘Bed bait.’ This was certainly the unspoken reaction of the recently widowed Mrs Jennings. Sir Adrian could sense it across the tea cups. From his notes, he knew the soldier was a widower and suspected this would emerge later, after he had left.
Accustomed to deserts, moorland, jungles, the Arctic and swamps, the men were soon at home in the old staff rooms under the roof. Because they would be constantly seen by staff who lived off base and word spreads fast, they were not in camouflage kit but T-shirts, fleeces and trainers.
Two days were spent converting the immediate surrounds of the manor to the way Captain Williams wanted it. Bushes and shrubs were uprooted to create unbroken lawn around the walls of the building on all sides. This gave a fifty-yard-deep field of fire, should it be needed. In a thin strip of woodland nearest to the open grassland, body-heat sensors were hung in the trees. They switched off in daylight but at night, lights would glow on the console in the command room under the eaves. The brightness of the lights indicates the size of the heat source. The men watched, listened and waited, taking shifts through the days and nights. Of what went on in the computer centre, they had no idea. It was the principle of ‘need to know’.
The Russians slipped into the country the next day. There were six and they were from the Night Wolves. They were all big and brawny, former soldiers from combat units, and all had seen action against the Afghans or rebel Chechens. They were fully briefed for the task ahead, acting under the remote supervision of Yevgeni Krilov.
Their passports were false, professionally forged, and indicated that they came from Slavic countries of Eastern Europe. All spoke English from halting and accented to fluent, in the case of the two former Spetsnaz. They came on different flights from different capitals, all within the European Union.
Upon landing at Heathrow they convened at the designated café in the concourse – a harmless-looking half-dozen tourists – and waited to be collected, which they were. They were driven to a large rented flat in an outer suburb, whence their escort departed, never to be seen again.
The weapons they had asked for were in suitcases in the second bedroom, supplied for a flat fee by an Albanian gang operating in London. The food cupboards and the fridge were stocked. On the second day a Ford people-carrier appeared in the car park with the ignition key under the rubber floor mat on the driver’s side, as planned.
At the British end, everything had been provided and paid for by a Russian billionaire very much in t
he service of the Kremlin. Once settled in, the six, under the leadership of Anton, began to plan their assault.
They made one reconnaissance trip to the village next to Chandler’s Court, then cruised around the estate. On a lonely stretch of narrow lane they stopped and two of them went over the wall. The scouts moved through the forest until they could see the walls and windows of the manor that housed their target. Anton made his plan; then the pair withdrew to the wall, went over it and they all drove away. It was the middle of the night. The research scientists were asleep.
Inside the house they had visited a red light had glowed on a console. In London an elderly man dined alone an easy stroll from Admiralty Arch.
In his breast pocket a smartphone throbbed softly. Sir Adrian glanced at the screen and said:
‘Yes, Captain?’
‘We have had visitors. Two. In the forest. Just watching. They have gone.’
‘They will return. There will be more. I fear they will be fully armed. And they will break cover. They will almost certainly come at night.’
‘My orders?’