Spooks / MI 5 series 2
Episode Synopsis
Government sources say a Serbian terrorist ring has been smashed, averting the risk of major terror attacks across the country.
Agent Tom Quinn is stuck outside his security sealed house. Girlfriend Ellie and her daughter Maisie are inside, with his booby-trapped laptop. The timer on the detonator reaches zero, and a huge explosion rips through a London street. Another London street. Tom, Ellie and Maisie are all OK. The detonator failed, but the same group who doctored Tom’s computer have used it as distraction for a car bomb attack on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland . The Minister is dead. Ellie decides to end her relationship with Tom
Shortly afterwards there’s another explosion at a top secret military base. Although the attacks initially appear connected, it’s soon clear the second is the work of known terrorist, the Serbian Miroslav Gradic. Gradic is getting his information from a sympathiser planted in the Serbian Embassy, Rado. He’s their route to Gradic.
A film buff, Rado regularly rents videos. Zoe is set up in a video shop business, ably assisted by new recruit, Sam. She soon wins Rado over with her feminine whiles and excellent range of European cinema. He’s sending coded messages to Gradic via classified ads in the Evening Standard. The team needs to know what those messages are, so Zoe goes into the breach with a pair of bugged cufflinks and a control document.
The plan works beautifully. The team realise with horror that Gradic has found out when and where a secret COBRA meeting is taking place. These meetings gather together all the major military leaders of the country. The session is moved at the last minute, and only Tom waits to apprehend Gradic.
He was due to be sent to the Hague for a war crimes trial, which looked like a cushy number for a man who had caused such misery and destruction. Harry manipulated his papers, and sent him to Egypt , with records showing him as a paedophile. Gradic would get a fitting punishment.
Police have uncovered a large scale fraud at a mosque in Birmingham. Mohammed Rachid, one of the leaders of the mosque, was believed to be redirecting charitable funds into bank accounts for his own use, and is due to be deported later this month.
Ruth Evershed began a secondment from GCHQ, and quickly made her mark by discovering a crack Algerian agent had turned up at Scotland Yard. Harry takes a risk, and decided to trust Ibhn Khaldun and offer a passport in return for his help. He was set up with all the gadgets he might need, but he threw them away and failed to turn up to the arranged meetings. Tom began to fear they’d been tricked.
Inside the mosque Khaldun told Rachid that he’d come to help the cause. He told them he’d infiltrated MI5 and gave them money. Tom’s suspicions looked like they were right. Then as Tom slept he had a surprise visit from Khaldun. He was under constant watch at the mosque, and this was the only time he could pass on information. He warned Tom that the first suicide bomb attack was planned for the following day. Tom wanted to rush in with special branch, but Khaldun wanted time to persuade the boy that he was making a mistake.
The following day, after Khaldun and the suicide bomber had set off, Tom burst into the mosque and arrested Rachid on suspicion of fraud. The suicide bomber had positioned himself in a school playground, but the area was clear, and Khaldun seemed to be successfully persuading the boy not to ignite the bomb. But he misjudged and the boy ignited the bomb. Seeing what was happening, Khaldun threw himself at the boy to try and stop him, but sacrificed himself in the process.
Leaked documents report how MI5 narrowly averted disaster when their computers fell foul of an organised hacking campaign, leaving agents stranded in danger zones across the world.
Danny burst into an IT fair in North London. He quickly located a machine which was hacking into the MI5 systems and disconnected it. The team knew the hacker would strike again, and had to be stopped. Prime suspect was Gordon Blakeney, a school-teacher. He was at the fair, had a history of left-wing activism, and was connected to a socialist group, the SFM, who were known to want to bring the government down.
Zoe went undercover to work alongside Blakeney at his school while Danny posed as a journalist, and tried to forge links with Red Cry, a paper with links to the SFM. A fake set of roadworks were set up outside the school as a cover for the high-tech surveillance equipment being run by Malcolm.
Zoe forged a bond with Blakeney. Watching an unusual isolated child, Peter, she started to feel she really ought to try and make a difference to the children's lives. Blakeney is cynical, but touched by her kindness, and as she found out more about him, Zoe felt he was not the man they wanted. Nevertheless when he sneaked off in working ours to an old storage area, she followed. Her suspicions are allayed when she discovered him trying to support Peter, who was hiding from bullies.
It was time to strike, so the team raided the offices of Red Cry and arrested Blakeney. Suddenly the system was attacked again. This time, a code suggests there was radioactive material at the school so the area was quickly evacuated. It was Peter who took advantage of the evacuation to sneak into the roadworks and get top secret codes from the computers.
Ruth made the connection. Peter was really Noah Gleeson, computer genius and son of an agent killed in a disastrous operation. Mentally damaged, Noah believed his father was alive, with him and encouraging him to bring MI5 down. He thought this would save other people enduring the horrors he suffered. He was taken away and put into a secure pyschiatric hospital, but he still saw his father, and his father still wanted him to destroy the Spooks …
A mole in the treasury suggests that the £13 billion that the government recently earmarked for improvements in the health service, has actually arrived in government coffers thanks to the Russian mafia.
Tom and Harry were immediately suspicious when the government asked them to investigate the theft of $1 billion from and old family bank. The bank knew who'd done it, but they didn't know where he was. They reluctantly agreed but sent Danny in undercover to investigate the real story. Before long, the thief turned up, crucified on Hampstead Heath. Danny discovered the stolen dollars had been destined for a bank account in Switzerland. The bank's only London premises were a hotel suite, which was duly put on 24 hour surveillance. Unfortunately that was the suite in which Zoe decided to consummate her affair with Marco.
A furious government official took Harry to task over Danny being in the bank. But how could the government find out? It was clear there was a leak in Section C. It turned out to be Ruth, who had been forced to spy for GCHQ in return for her placement in MI5. Lucky for her, Tom gave her a second chance. She was too good at her job to lose.
The team discovered Danny's colleage, Maxi, is the daughter of a Russian mafia boss. Then they found out what was really going on. The mafia were trying to launder $20 billion through the bank. The $1 billion was a trial run. The government were encouraging it, because they planned to steal the money for themselves. Time was pressing and it was time for the $19 billion to transfer through. This time Danny was the one who would steal the money.
The theft went perfectly, but Maxi spotted Danny doing it. Then she found out that he was working under a false name. She lured him to a grubby flat where her father began to torture Danny. Just in time, he was tracked and the team burst in with stun grenades. Danny went home safely, and the government budgeted an extra $19 billion in for health service improvements.
MI5 report that they are happy with levels of preparation for a code A emergency. A recent EERIE exercise pin-pointed areas that needed improvement, but all its staff performed excellently.
It was just another Friday morning for Tom Quinn. He had coffee with his girlfriend Vicky and arranged a lunch date with her. Arriving at work, he was introduced to Harry's guests Bridget and Mark. But Danny was late, and just as he arrived outside the pods a huge alarm went off and the team were thrown into an EERIE exercise.
The exercise had to be treated as reality, and as EmEx officer, Tom was now in charge. It was against regulations, but Tom decided to let Danny in. The team quickly set about gathering facts. A dirty bomb had gone off in Parliament Square, and the senior government officials had been evacuated. As they tried to establish communication lines they discovered that the officer in the Duty Room had been affected oddly by the crisis and shut down most of the essential systems.
Despite this Malcolm managed to make contact with an emergency response van who tell them that the bomb contained VX. Radio 4 goes off air, and as the team gain access to cctv footage from across the capital, they start to realise that this is not just an exercise. Ruth connects the attack to a known security risk and deduces that there are plans to attack 10 cities in this way.
As it became clear that Harry was suffering from VX poisoning, Bridget and Mark got increasingly mutinous. The final straw was when the heard the governmental helicopters had come down, and Tom was forced to declare a state of emergency. Mark and Bridget were determined to make a break for it, believing they could escape to a safe-house in Ashford.
Tom knew that leaving the Grid would not only mean certain death for them, but also for the rest of the team, when infected air was able to enter the room. He had no option but to hold them at gunpoint. They were trying to break the seal on the pods, so Tom pulled the trigger.
As the shot rang out, the electricity suddenly came back. Harry emerged from his office and congratulated everyone on a job well done. They were stunned to discover it was all an exercise after all. Harry invited them all down to the pub for a liquid lunch. As the last of the workers left, a category A alert flashed out from Ruth's screen, across the empty office.
A whistle stop visit by the President of the United States has passed off without incident, government sources report today.
An unexpected visit by the American president took everyone in the Grid by surprise, especially when Harry got a tip off from the French that there was more to the visit than met the eye. Ruth’s information seemed to back up the idea that plans were afoot to hold a secret meeting with the Libyans.
Christine Dale swept in with her CIA team and announced, despite protocol, that they were in charge of security for the visit. They wanted unprecedented access to MI5 documents and when they said jump Tom and the team were to jump. Tom agreed to let Christine have her way as a personal favour.
Tom started receiving strange phone calls, and he became seriously concerned when he started being approached by strange men in the street who seemed to know him. It turned out Vicky had decided to get even by posting postcards, advertising his ‘services’ all around London. When Christine found out this spat was putting her operation in danger, she took matters into her own hands, and, along with her CIA team, gave Vicky the heavy treatment.
The president’s visit took a mysterious turn when he veered away from schedule. Christine made up an unconvincing cover story, but it was clear the secret meeting with the Libyans was happening. Luckily the team were on top of things, and had struck their own deal with the Libyans first. Despite a close call with a misguided microlight, the visit passed off smoothly, and Tom and Christine were able to get together for a late-night ‘debriefing’.
A leading French scientist has been found dead after what police believe was a bungled burglary. The scientist was known to be working on developing new types of weapons, and the thieves may have been trying to get hold of his research.
MI6 were tracking a French scientist, Victoir Durand. While working for the French military he had developed an astonishing new kind of weapons technology. He’d then walked out, taking his project, which he called ‘Firestorm’ with him. He knew he could make a fortune selling it, and everyone wanted to get their hands on Firestorm. Not least the British and MI5 were tasked to steal it. The trouble was, they needed a ‘clean skin’ with a cool head and remarkable memory to perform the task.
The theft relied on a whole set of codes which were vital to piece Firestorm together. Unfortunately Harry had broken all the rules and taken the codes home, the very day burglars got into his house, and stole his briefcase. It quickly became apparent that the burglars must have had some remarkable skills to break through Harry’s security systems.
The thieves also got their hands on a prototype weapon, a gun concealed in a mobile phone. Luckily one of them JJ left his DNA at the scene and Harry quickly traced him. He was a genius with a photographic memory, he’d also accidentally shot his friend, Kyle, with the adapted phone. Tom and Harry knew they needed JJ and they had they had the knowledge to blackmail him!
JJ was sent into Durand’s offices. He had five minutes to beat the security systems and enter the codes. The chances of him getting out were minimal. However, he decided to take the risk in return for assurances that Kyle would be taken care of. Despite the obstacles JJ made it to the laptop in time, but just as he was about to enter the codes Durand came in, followed by a gunman, who demanded the laptop, and shot Durand. JJ managed to hide and hide the laptop with him.
The team realised that the French had had Durand assassinated. The theft had failed, but they had prevented anyone else getting their hands on Firestorm. However, they were convinced there was no way JJ could make it out, so Tom was astonished to see him turn up at Thames House, with the laptop in hand. Impressed Tom tried to convince JJ that he had a future with MI5, but JJ wasn’t interested.
There are rumours that the true circumstances of the death of a celebrated soldier in a car accident are being deliberately concealed from the public. Did Major Curtis know too much?
There were rumblings of a new 'Winter of Discontent' as Britain was hit by a wave of strikes. MI5 had even received evidence that a disgruntled army officer was planning to lead the armed services in a mutiny. Tom was sent undercover to investigate. However he was finding the mission increasingly frustrating as he witnessed the difficulties the army were facing.
Meanwhile a rail strike meant that a consignment of nuclear waste was going to have to travel by road, and Zoe was put in charge of ensuring its safe transit. Tom got a breakthrough when Major Curtis invited him to sign a petition. Convinced he was wasting his time, and furious he was having to spy on his own side, he demanded to be taken off the job.
Danny arrived at the barracks with the papers to secure Tom's 'transfer' just as Tom's cover was blown by their unreliable informer. They were both bundled into a military vehicle with the rest of the platoon. Suddenly the plan was afoot as the platoon intercepted the nuclear convoy and redirected the vehicle to an oil storage facility close to London.
Major Curtis attached explosive to the nuclear waste, making the biggest dirty bomb ever seen. He would explode it if his demands weren't met. Tom tried to talk Curtis out of his plan, and seemed to be succeeding. However Harry resolved the situation his own way and got a sniper to kill Curtis, and the death was blamed on a car accident.
When he returned to the office Tom seemed to be a changed man. He felt that Curtis had had genuine complaints that should have been addressed. When Harry then banned him from dating Christine, Tom reacted furiously. He knew he was a pawn in a game that had nothing to do with national security.
Episode 9 The Seventh Division
It is reported that Customs and Excise have managed to foil a plot by Columbian terrorists to bring a huge cache of weapons into Britain.
MI5 were on the trail of a gang of Columbians known as the Chala Cartel. They were already funding themselves with drugs, but the team had got wind of a plan to bring a haul of ground to air missiles into the country. Since customs and excise were already watching the gang Tom piggybacked onto their op. Things went sour very quickly when the gang killed 8 members of customs in just one night.
Tom was disturbed by what had happened and was determined to get results on the case. The leader of the Chala Cartel was called Rafa, and the team decided his girlfriend, Mariella was the weakest link. They followed her and quickly discovered she was passing information between Rafa and the head of a major oil company, Vaughan. It was clear that the Chala Cartel had a lot of very high connections.
Tom and Zoe discovered Rafa had killed Mariella's entire family and set himself up as her saviour. This explained her loyalty to him, and also exposed her Achilles heel. They went to work undercover and soon had Mariella eating out of their hands.
It all seemed to be going well, but the operation was compromised by Tessa's dirty dealings. She had tricked Sam into believing she was Harry's boss, and was getting Sam to pass on everything to do with the job. When Harry discovered what was happening it became a personal grudge match, and he set wheels in motion to scupper her plans.
Unfortunately as Harry set out for revenge, Tessa informed the targets that MI5 were on to them with tragic consequences. Rafa killed Mariella. MI5 then had Rafa killed, and Harry deemed the operation a success, after all, he'd beaten Tessa again. Tom didn't see things quite so simply. Harry's game playing had caused the death of an innocent girl and he really began to doubt the wisdom of Harry's leadership.
Shockwaves are running through the heart of government today as a renegade MI5 officer goes on the run today after assassinating the head of the armed forces.
Tom received a tip-off from Christine Dale. She'd accidentally got hold of information that a known American assassin had been sent to Britain by the Iraqis. Apparently the CIA were determined not to let MI5 know, but she felt if there was a risk of the assassination of a major British figure then Tom ought to know. But he mustn't tell anyone else.
He secretly talked Zoe and Danny into helping him. Zoe was immediately uncomfortable with keeping secrets from Harry, and suspicious about the whole thing, none of it seemed to add up, and Tom was behaving very strangely. So Danny followed Tom, and stumbled upon evidence that Tom was preparing a legend secretly. Zoe and Danny began to suspect that Tom had gone bad.
Tom managed to win a last bit of trust out of Zoe and Danny and they followed a trail of evidence to a deserted farm in Suffolk. There they were ambushed and chained up. Danny confronted Tom about the legend, but Tom denied knowing anything about it, claiming he was being set up.
Danny and Zoe were drugged, and when they woke Tom was gone. The rushed back to the office and told Harry everything. Meanwhile Tom was tricked into putting his fingerprints on a gun, and the mysterious CIA man admitted he had a personal grudge against Tom and was out for revenge.
When Tom came to he rushed to the nearest house, and phoned the office, warning them there was a planned assassination and his fingerprints would be on the gun. It was too late. The assassination had already taken place, and the team were convinced Tom was to blame. He was desperate to prove he'd been set-up and persuaded Harry, Danny and Zoe to come and meet him.
The set-up had been too good. There was no way he could persuade any of the team of his innocence. Tom was cornered and as Harry threatened to call in back-up, Tom took the only way out. He shot Harry and ran. When he reached the beach he just kept going, and swam out to sea and an uncertain future.
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