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been targeted by armed attackers and have had to use lethal force. I have three suspects down, one certainly dead.” Croft gave the woman a description of the three people and knelt down by the first man. Knee shot, groin shot and a hell of a lot of blood. The bullet had probably ripped open the femoral artery. He patted the man down, noticed the chest Kevlar. Again there was no ID. Amateurs with body armour? That made even less sense.
    “Please hold.”
    One dead, one dying, one unconscious. This one would likely bleed out before the emergency services got here, and Croft decided not to do anything to alter that fact. He was not a forgiving sort at the best of times. Taking out his phone, he switched it to the camera feature and held the man’s head as he took two close ups. Running a final check for weapons, he stood up and retrieved the discarded gun and walked over to the woman. Checking her pulse to confirm her death, he looked into her lifeless eyes.
    “Who the hell are you?” It was a question that needed answering, and he took two more photos. The voice came into his ear again
    “Three suspects matching your descriptions were seen exiting a car in the cemetery car park 40 minutes ago. There were four people in the car. I have GCHQ running their biometrics through Mother.” Mother, the core of the UK intelligence infrastructure. A vast central database, a super computer that could track virtually every human being through every transport hub, along every street, anywhere it was connected to the CCTV network. All those facial images stored, all that biometric data collected and collated. And virtually nobody knew the damned thing existed.
    “I’m sending you pictures, should help speed up Mother’s recognition. Get the local police out here to seal off the area. I’ve got a live one here, so I’ll need MI5 on scene.” The police would arrive, their superintendent having been phoned directly. They would seal off the area, and then the questions would probably start. Croft would be patient, would explain that this was now an MI5 matter, that he would only discuss the matter with their superior officers. He would show them his official ID. Major David Croft, Military Police of her Majesty’s armed forces. If the officer was clued up, the questions would stop there. If not, if the person speaking to him persisted, it would not be great for that individual’s career prospects.
    “Do we have eyes on the fourth assailant?”
    “Yes. GCHQ report he has left the scene. Two SCO19 units have been sent to intercept. We have a helicopter unit en-route.” SCO19 designation, the firearms units of the Metropolitan police. If these had been trained killers, he would have advised against that. But his analysis at the scene suggested these weren’t experts.
    “Control, you better let Whitehall know I’m probably going to be late for that meeting.”
     
    10AM, 17 th February, 2008, Whitehall, London
     
    He had been waiting for thirty minutes, which was about right. This was generally how it always was. How many times had he sat outside offices like this, either government or his senior commanders? When you sat with nothing to preoccupy your time, you tended to notice things. Decorated probably a hundred years ago, the room’s ornate nature a façade of greatness long since faded. He looked around, noticed the signs of decay, the signs of an empire that now existed only in the history books. A bit of peeling wallpaper here, a chipped skirting board there. Threadbare, stained carpets and windows that could really do with some double glazing and a lick of paint. The whole of Parliament was like this. Old, unrepaired, and in need of a damned good clean. Rumour had it that there was an electrician on site to deal with all the electrical fires that kept breaking out from the ageing wiring that the taxpayers didn’t seem to have the money to replace. And yet, despite letting their own home rot under their very feet, the