Chapter Two

The new head of the Home Office fitted the job description better than few before him. His file back at Five was a testament to mediocrity. David Anthony Staines had scraped his second at Oxford. He'd not been popular, although he had met his future wife there. She'd been a party activist, and he'd gone along to the meetings and fallen in with the in-crowd. He'd been secretary of the college party (there hadn't been a rival for the position). Then it was usual path: he stood as a candidate in unwinnable seats for a couple of years while he did his legal training and grew up a bit. He got his own practice the year before his safe seat, Eastchester West. At Westminster, Staines had quickly fallen in with Lord Greyhaven, and for some reason the old fool liked him. So he'd progressed up the party ranks. He'd managed not to acquire any Swiss bank accounts or mistresses, at least none that Halliwell could find, and so he'd got a reputation for "honesty". Now he held a senior cabinet post.

Staines held open the report at the last page, and pointed out each phrase as he came to it. 'Subversive groups operating in London. Security leaks in the press. Terrorism. An increase in gun-related crime. The riots last week.'

'Sir, there is nothing to suggest that these events are linked. There have been terrorist and subversive cells operating in London for over thirty years.'

'That's hardly a reassurance, is it Ms Halliwell? What are MI5 doing?'

'We've kept a lid on it,' she said firmly. 'We know who they are, we know where they are. The moment they do anything illegal we pick them up.'

'Last year there was that book published that blew the gaffe on UNIT, I Killed Kennedy. Why didn't you stop that, then?'

'Policy has always been to let people write what they want about aliens and UFOs. There are so many cranks out there, so many children's stories, that no-one believes any of it anymore. We leant on the publishers and they changed the cover, altered some of the dates and promised not to print anything like it again.' Who Killed Kennedy had got close to compromising UNIT, but as one of the co-authors claimed he'd killed Kennedy himself by travelling back in time it would have been counter-productive for the government to try to ban it. The last Home Secretary had understood that without Halliwell having to explain it to him in words of one syllable. MI5 had made sure the book had been marked 'science fiction' and flagged it on their list of subversive literature. The name of everyone who had taken it out of a library or ordered it from a bookshop with a computerised ordering system had been filed away for future reference. Five had also kept track of the authors: James Stevens had gone to ground, but David Bishop was still in London.