“Coffee?” Joe asked.
“Please,” Kaden and Alistair said at the same time.
“The newspaper has asked Blake and he said yes. He wants to do it quickly because he’s off to Japan at the end of next week. So the day after tomorrow at nine in the morning. At his home in Holland Park. The paper will send you his address. Keeps lines clean. By the way, I’ve found you a place to rent. You should move there today to avoid any link to here.”
“Back a step,” Kaden said.
Alistair narrowed his eyes. “How far back?”
“I want some assurances before we do this.”
Alistair waited.
“It occurred to me last night that I’ve assumed too much,” Kaden said. “How do I know Blake isn’t the good guy and you’re the bad?”
He heard Joe’s quiet gasp. Alistair chuckled. Now Kaden did the waiting.
“It’s a fair point,” Alistair said. “What would convince you?”
Kaden wasn’t sure anything could but… “Who’s your boss?”
“Ultimately, the head of MI5. The DG, Director General.”
Kaden knew that was the only person in the organisation whose identity was public.
“Can I speak to him?”
“How are you going to be sure it’s him you speak to?” Alistair looked genuinely curious, though there was a hint of amusement in his eyes, which annoyed Kaden.
“I can look up the number. Ask to speak to him.”
“Ah, well you won’t get put through. You’ll be asked to leave a voicemail. Say the issue is urgent, concerns national security and they’ll call you back. Use the word Snowdrop and you’ll get a swift response.”
Kaden looked up the number for MI5 and made the call as Alistair listened. He left a voicemail and used the word Snowdrop.
Joe slid coffee in front of Kaden and Alistair.
“Thank you, Joe,” Alistair said.
“We’ve already found a place to live,” Kaden said. “One of my friends has a colleague who needs someone to flat-sit for three months. But thank you.”
Alistair smiled. “That’s great.
Even if they couldn’t afford Malik’s place, there was no way Kaden wanted to stay somewhere Alistair had picked out. Hefelt increasingly uncomfortable about the guy. Now he’d allowed doubt to take hold, it was working its way deeper and deeper. When this was done, he’d take Joe away for a while. It was a long time since he’d had a holiday. Cornwall might be nice. Or Scotland.
Joe sat reading about the camera as he ate his toast, though Kaden didn’t intend that Joe use it. Kaden was doing this on his own, but he’d keep that quiet. Except Joe was reading too fast and Alistair was going to notice.
“Slow down,” Kaden said. “You won’t take it all in.”
“I was just flicking past all the different languages.”
Quick thinking by Joe. Though from where Kaden was sitting, he could see that wasn’t true.
He clicked onto a talk by the DG and listened to the patterns of his voice. Would he be able to recognise it?
When his phone rang, he jumped.
“Put it on speaker,” Alistair said.
