"You think Johnson's bent?" Morgan shifted in his seat.
"Johnson is considered competent enough, but," the General continued, "as you have so eloquently put it, he is a renowned sycophant. The opportunity to discredit SIS is serious motivation for him. But it doesn't end there. My suspicions are shared by someone I rate very highly."
"Commissioner Hutton?" Morgan knew of the respect the two men had for each other. Davenport nodded.
"For years, Sinclair Hutton and I speculated about the existence of a group of players within Whitehall entrenched in the illicit arms trade. There have been cases where the evidence screamed a British influence, one requiring the seniority, autonomy and experience to operate beyond the reach of ministerial interference."
"What's made you head for Johnson?" Morgan asked. If the General was correct, just how entrenched were these players within the pillars of British government departments? And who among them had set up Collins? Morgan kneaded his hands, stretching and flexing as he listened intently to his Chief.
"To start with, it was purely gut instinct. Recently a number of more compelling issues have drawn us toward him." Davenport smiled.
He took Morgan through his numerous discussions with Ashcroft-James, breaking down the complex sequence of events that had led to the interest in Gregory Cornell, Lundt and now Johnson. Davenport described Scotland Yard's surveillance of Cornell, which had identified quite unexpectedly that SIS agents were also following him. With great discomfiture, Ashcroft-]ames had conceded, and her deposition had confirmed that Lundt was operating outside the wire.
Morgan's frustration at the imbecility of the Government machine was building. How often were departments at war with each other at the expense of their responsibilities?
"None of this would have come to light ifI hadn't been invited to assist SIS in Malfajiri." Davenport leant across and topped up his coffee.
"Jesus," Morgan exclaimed. He dragged an agitated hand through his hair. "Meanwhile, whoever's behind Lundt must have been frothing at the mouth in anticipation of Baptiste seizing power. His first job as their puppet President would no doubt have been to award them exclusivity to Malfajiri's rutile and diamond mines."
"Cornell remains our prime suspect as Lundt's contact here in London.
We follow him to get to Lundt, and the money behind him."
"And you think it's Johnson?" Morgan's mind was racing, processing the reams of information that were now filling in the gaps. He shifted heavily in his seat opposite Davenport.
"Ibelieve Johnson is a key player, yes. Although, he's no mastermind. More of a General Manager, I suspect, answering to a Board of Directors. Confirming that will be for another day. Today our priority is to confirm unequivocally that a link exists between Cornell and Lundt, and then, hopefully, between Cornell, Lundt and Johnson. At this point, we have only a very tenuous link with Cornell as the common thread. Yesterday, Cornell was recorded making a telephone call direct to a number that Hutton's people have managed to link to Johnson. The message was strange; a plea for help, of sorts, but not the sort of conversation one would expect between two people who are familiar with each other. So, Johnson would easily walk away from any allegation of an illicit involvement with Cornell, if all we had was the recording."
"What about that memory stick I took from Turner? Did the IT squids turn up anything?"
"On the surface it all appeared to be legitimate business-related correspondence between Alga Creek Mining Corporation and its various partners. However, I asked the Chief of Staff to have the analysts trawl through every scrap of information it contained, including cross referencing the membership of the various boards and senior shareholders of Alga Creek's partners. Buried deep within thousands of pieces of general correspondence they found encrypted files containing letters relating to a shadow company called The Renegade Group, of which the wife of a certain Abraham Johnson is a major shareholder."
Davenport saw a thin light of hope flash across Morgan's eyes. But Turner was only a middle man, and he'd disappeared, too. Using him to get to Johnson was out.
"Can't we just pressure Cornell to get to Johnson? He seems to be the patsy in all this, but there must be something we've got on him that we can use as leverage?"
"Cornell is way out of his league. I suspect he was cultivated for some time and was flattered by the notion that his position was of greater value outside the Foreign Office. Of course, he would have been given some incentive: sex, money, drugs. He would only have to have accepted it once, and then they had him."
"Blackmail."