Trouble in Tarragona Part I: A Spy Story from the World of Agency

By Julian Darius and William Thomas

The phone buzzed once, sharp, insistent, then twice more in steady intervals, the sound brittle against the stale hum of the comms room’s fluorescent lights. All at once, the room stilled. Even the air seemed to pause, as if aware of the protocol that now demanded their silence.

It was the red line.

A direct channel, hardwired through a tangle of cables and secure encryptions that hadn’t been updated in years because no one dared touch it. Not unless the situation warranted an audience with one of His Majesty’s most shadowed instruments.

The junior officer nearest the phone, slight, pale, barely out of Sandhurst, waited for the third ring before lifting the receiver. His fingers twitched on the worn Bakelite handle.

“May I speak with Carlos Vallejos, please?”

The voice was male. Catalan, the central dialect, precise but unhurried. There was confidence in the cadence, but not comfort. It was the voice of someone who had rehearsed a call he didn’t want to make.

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” the officer replied, reading the line like a liturgy.

“No, I’m quite sure. I’ll try again in thirty minutes. Gracias.”
Click.

That was all. No name, no code, no countersign. Just the weight of the silence that followed.

The officer, already writing, noted the time, the tone, the dialect, the phrasing. He folded the paper crisply and exited the room without a word.

Down a narrow corridor in the bowels of Thames House, the sound of fast-approaching heels echoed like a metronome of urgency. Matilda Thompson glanced up before the knock came. She’d been expecting something; one could always feel when the rhythm of the world changed. She prided herself on that.

The comms officer entered without preamble and placed the memo on her desk. She read it twice, her expression unreadable. Then, with the calm of someone practiced in the art of sudden chaos, she picked up a secure line.

“Get me Chamberlain.”

Neville Chamberlain IV, no relation to the appeaser, and quick to say so, was already halfway through his morning ration of caffeine and grievances. He disliked surprises and distrusted everyone under forty. But the name “Carlos Vallejos” cut through the fog like a sharpened file across glass.

He hadn’t heard it in twelve years.
Not since Tarragona.
Not since the operation they had all agreed never happened.

He put down his coffee.

“Patch it through,” he said. “And Matilda? Bring your coat. We’re not sleeping tonight.”