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Girlboss. Mano sėkmės istorija Sophia Amoruso Rok: 2016 Język: lithuanian Plik: PDF, 8.97 MB Twoje tagi: 0 / 0

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Becoming a Rare Find: How Jagged Resumes Lead to Great Jobs--A Companion Guide to the Rare Find (A Pen Guin Special From Portfolio) Penguin George Anders [Anders, George] Rok: 2012 Język: english Plik: EPUB, 428 KB Twoje tagi: 0 / 0

Contents

Also by Geoffrey Archer

Title Page

Epigraph

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Copyright





ALSO BY GEOFFREY ARCHER


Sky Dancer

Shadow Hunter

Eagle Trap

Scorpion Trail

Java Spider

The Lucifer Network

The Burma Legacy

Dark Angel





Fire Hawk


Geoffrey Archer





Terrorism is perpetrated by individuals with a strong commitment to the causes in which they believe.

The widespread changes occurring within the last two decades have allowed international organised crime groups to become increasingly active worldwide.

Louis J. Freeh

Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation

28 January 1998





For Eva, Ali and James





Prologue


THE ENGLISHMAN WAS naked. His hands were tied and his eyes were blinded by a rancid hood. His terror was unspeakable. They’d hurt him dreadfully and would hurt him again, searching for the moment when he could take no more.

The unseen interrogator stood close, smelling of tobacco and cheap after-shave. There were salivary noises from his mouth. The Englishman sensed his eyes on his bruised body, choosing which part to work on first.

Sam Packer struggled to close his mind to what was about to happen. Tried instead to picture something far away from this hell he was in. His mind focused on a face – the face of the woman he’d entrusted with his life.

Then they clubbed him behind the knees and brought him down.





Three days earlier.

Baghdad, Iraq.


They’d been friends for a long time – the middle aged Iraqi and the man he was about to double-cross. His dec; ision to betray the secret they shared had been blocked by fear until now. The others would kill him when they learned what he’d done. But if the loss of his own life saved the thousands that the Colonel planned to murder, it would not have been lost in vain.

He sat hunched in the rear of the new-smelling military saloon, heart thumping, sweat dripping inside his shirt. The car had left behind the dust and poverty of the souks, crossing the Tigris towards the administrative sector of Baghdad. His breathing hurt – from fear and from the bad chest that had forced his retirement from the army a year after the Kuwait war, where he had served under the same Colonel who would soon be ordering his death.

He would do it just as they’d told him to, handing over the letter with its cryptic warning. But he would do something else, something they couldn’t suspect, whispering in the Englishman’s ear a secret so shocking he would move mountains to get it to his masters.

The road widened to a broad avenue. Looming on the right was the Rashid Hotel where the foreigners stayed.

Haji Abbas clutched his knees. All along, they’d kept him on the fringes of the conspiracy. Little more than an extra pair of hands. A doubter, but one bound to the Colonel by a loyalty that had now been tested too far. His knowledge of the plan and his complicity in it had become a shame he could no longer bear. The men in the front of the car were also tense. Their loyalty to the Colonel was unswerving yet their lives too were on the line. The Major, black-haired and moustached like their president, and the broad-shouldered Lieutenant behind the wheel whom he hardly knew.

The hotel gate guard lifted the pole and the driver swung in to the right and parked. Stepping inside the hotel’s grand entrance, the three men trod solemnly on the face of George Bush painted where visitors would walk on it. Beyond it and to one side, long-faced men from Iraq’s impoverished middle-classes sat at tables selling heirlooms to the few foreigners who ventured here.

They knew the Englishman was in the hotel. The Colonel had checked a short while ago. Abbas made for the elevators. Room 217, he’d been told. A room booked in the spy’s cover name Terry Malone. As Abbas approached the lifts the Major touched his arm.

‘No,’ he hissed. ‘Over there.’

Abbas looked across the lobby. The Englishman was sitting on a settee with a newspaper in his hands. Grey trousers, white shirt and dark tie. The British spy had a strong, square face with a determined chin, thick, dark hair and steady eyes that registered all they saw. The gritty face of a military man. Ex-military, though still in his thirties. Navy.

Abbas crossed the polished floor, tugging the envelope from his jacket. The Englishman looked up. Fear flashed in his eyes like an animal sensing a trap. The Arab’s hand shot forward with the letter, the back of his neck prickling from the gaze of the men who’d driven him here.

‘For you, Mister Packer.’

Shock in the eyes then quick recovery. ‘That’s not my name. I’m Terry Malone.’

But Packer was his name. His real one.

‘You read please.’ Abbas spoke hoarsely, his throat dry. With the letter passed, his duty to his friends had been fulfilled.

‘Wrong man, old boy,’ Packer insisted. ‘Malone’s the name.’

Heart in his mouth, Abbas leaned forward for the unscripted act that would betray his Colonel. Trembling lips close to the Englishman’s ear, he unburdened his conscience of its dreadful secret. Words that might yet save thousands from a dreadful fate, but which he knew would seal his own.





1


Wednesday, 25 September 1996

Odessa, Ukraine


IT WAS A little after seven in the morning when the two black Mercedes SL500 limousines sped through the elegant, tree-lined boulevards of Odessa. The sleek machines swept past the grey-green edifice in vulitsya Evreyska that used to house the KGB headquarters, the cars’ heavy-set occupants giving it barely a glance. They’d feared the place in the old days. Feared the authority it represented. But today in this much-changed land it was they who held the power.

Gliding past two rattling Volgas and a packed bus belching soot, the limousines turned left by the Shevchenko Park. Then, tyres drumming on the cobbles, they pounded down the long, straight avenue to the Memorial to the Great Patriotic War, its obelisk set between a V of trees like the needle on a gun sight.

In the first car, two bodyguards rode up front, silently respectful of the man behind them dressed in a dark grey Armani suit and an expensively tasteful silk tie. Vladimir Filipovich Grimov sat on the central squab, keeping his distance from the armoured side windows. His close-cropped hair had the stiffness of a brush and his dark eyes were out of line with each other because one was made of glass.

The cobbled avenue ended in a paved circle. Parking was forbidden here, but these men had nothing to fear from the Militsia. The two Mercs pulled up a couple of metres apart in front of a red marble tablet engraved with the dates 1941–1945. Beyond lay a small flower bed bursting with red geraniums, and beyond that a narrow, well-trimmed lawn flanked by flagstones stretched two hundred metres down the slope to the monument itself.

The doors of the second car were the first to open. Four men in black got out and spread through the trees, looking for shadows that moved. But at this early hour there was no one else here, as Grimov had expected. He strode down the slope to the terrace where the obelisk stood, ignoring the eternal flame flickering at its foot. He wasn’t a man who paid homage. The terrace was edged by a waist-high wall. Like a preacher in a pulpit, he gripped its rim and looked down. Below and to his left lay the ugly sprawl of the docks. Beyond the cranes, most of them idle, a breakwater reached into the Black Sea, a small, white lighthouse at its tip.

The morning was clear and bright. He searched for the pier where the vessel had been due to dock. He held out a hand and an aide pressed binoculars into it. He raised them to his eyes, adjusting focus for the good one until he could read the names of the vessels below. He smiled. The container ship had arrived. As an ex-military man, it pleased him when things ran to plan. He lowered the glasses and watched the containers being swung from the deck to the quay, taking pleasure in knowing that those huge, powerful cranes were in part working for him. There was just one rust-red container on that ship that concerned him. It was his box, although his name and that of his organisation could never be linked with it.

The vessel had come from Piraeus, picking up cargoes there that had been gathered from ports all over the eastern Mediterranean. His container had been shipped from Haifa, packed with cartons of Israeli fruit and vegetable juices that were well past their sell-by dates and had been bought for next to nothing. The great plan he’d evolved for his foreign clients was going to make him very rich indeed. Their motives concerned him not one jot. Responsibility for the gruesome deaths would be his clients’, not his. The one thing that did concern him was the complexity of the plan. Too much scope for things to go wrong.

He began to run through in his mind what lay immediately ahead.

In a few hours, if all went to schedule, the container would be delivered to a warehouse. A customs officer would turn up, to be greeted by the warehouse manager, who knew him well. The two men would drink tea together in the site office and talk about football, the customs man quoting from the match report in the morning paper which he would leave folded on the table when they went back outside. In the yard they would break the Israeli customs seals on the forty-foot steel box and open the doors.

Both men would recoil from the stench erupting from inside. Naturally. Both would click their tongues at the sight of the bursting cartons. The warehouse manager would curse the Israelis for sending them such rubbish, giving vent to his deep-rooted anti-Semitism. The load would have to go back. No question. But first the customs official would want it fully unloaded, to check for hidden drugs. Once that was done, and the box was found to contain nothing but rotting juice, the two men would retire to the site office again for a shot of pepper vodka. The customs official would agree to return in a few days’ time to reseal the container, once a ship had been found for its return to Israel. There’d be no need to inspect the foul-smelling contents again, he would say. Of course not. No need at all. Then, after another shot of Pertsovka, the customs officer would pocket his folded newspaper – heavier now there was an envelope inside it – and be on his way.

Usually it was stolen icons that slipped out of the country this way. What it was to be this time the customs man would neither know nor care.

Vladimir Filipovich Grimov brushed imagined dust from the sleeves of his Armani suit and cast a last glance down at the harbour. He sniffed the crisp morning air. He had a good feeling about this one. A confidence that, despite its complexity, the plan would work.

He turned away from the view, handed the binoculars to his aide and strode back up the slope towards the cars.

It had begun.





2


Saturday, 28 September

Baghdad


THE DUSTY YARD behind the old, three-storey imports warehouse in eastern Baghdad had been little used since 1991 when the UN cut Iraq off from the outside world. Just large enough for a small truck to enter through its dilapidated wooden gates, it was shielded from prying eyes by a high breeze-block wall.

A small pickup in the dark green of the Iraqi army stopped in the alley at the back, a canvas awning covering its load area. Its uniformed driver undid the heavy, new-looking padlock on the gates and swung them open. Then he reversed in until the closed tailboard of the pickup was just a metre from a small doorway into the building. He quickly shut the gates again, glancing furtively at the empty neighbouring blocks for signs that his arrival might have been observed.

Then he went inside.

A few minutes later a different man emerged from the warehouse, also dressed in the dark green of Iraq’s armed forces. Dark-haired and with a moustache that was a copy of his much-feared president’s, he had the bearing of a middle-ranking officer. He stood beside the truck and listened.

It was early morning still. In the maze of mean streets behind the warehouse lived some of Baghdad’s poorest. For them another miserable day was beginning. The officer heard a baby cry, children shouting and mothers jabbering in efforts to shut them up. Smoke with an acid bite drifted into the yard. Many families, he knew, had been reduced to cooking on fires fuelled by refuse.

He checked the windows of neighbouring buildings, then, as satisfied as he could be that he was not being watched, he unfastened the tarpaulin at the rear of the truck and lowered the tailboard.

A minute later the pickup’s driver reappeared, his left hand gripping the pinioned arm of a prisoner hooded by a black bag with a small breathing hole cut in it. The captive, who wore a white shirt, grey trousers and no shoes, stumbled as if his feet had been cut by broken glass.

‘Where am I going?’ An English voice. Weak. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘No speaking!’

‘I want to know, damn you!’ Stronger now.

Silently the officer with the moustache stepped forward and punched him in the stomach. The Englishman buckled. As they bundled him into the rear of the pickup, his damaged shins scraped the tailboard and he yelped with pain. Crouching beside the prisoner on the ribbed metal floor the guard sat the Englishman upright, then unlocked the cuffs that held his hands behind his back.

‘Tch, tch,’ he clucked. ‘I told you, no questions. It is better for you.’

He saw blood seeping through the prisoner’s trousers. It had been several days since the beatings, but shins took a long time to heal. On the floor of the pickup was a stretcher. He told the Englishman to lie on it.

‘Look, what the hell is this? Where am I being taken?’

‘You soon see,’ the guard whispered, tying the man’s arms to the poles. ‘If you lucky this finish quick for you.’

The Englishman felt as if his heart had stopped. The bastards were going to kill him.

The green pickup wove though the narrow alleys of the market district, squeezing past dusty tinsmithies where shutters were being rolled up for the day’s business. The driver braked frequently to avoid crushing boys balancing trays of tea. Pungent smells wafted in through the open window. The moustached officer sat silently beside the driver, glaring out of the window, revelling in the intimidating effect his green uniform had on those who saw it.

The vehicle’s jolting on the rutted back alleys of Shaikh Omar turned the stretcher Sam Packer was lying on into a bed of nails. He was a strong, fit man, just under six feet tall, but a couple of weeks of being battered by what he’d assumed to be the Mukhabarat – the Iraqi secret police – had reduced his strength to a girl’s. Above all else he wanted to see again. Since the day they’d grabbed him they’d removed the foul-smelling hood from his head just once, and then only for a desperate purpose. None of the training he’d been given upon joining the Intelligence Service six years earlier had prepared him for what they’d put him through. But he’d told them nothing of what they wanted to hear. To confess to being a spy meant the gallows, and death had no appeal for him. A terrible dread, however, told him that death was now to be his fate, confession or not.

It had been the middle of September when he’d arrived in Baghdad, but how many days had passed since then he had little idea. His visa application had given his employer as Entryline Exhibitions of Egham, Surrey. The job was genuine enough. So was the purpose of his visit: to survey arrangements for a trade fair the following year. But his second job was the one that mattered: listening out for hints of which European and Asian businessmen had plans to satisfy Iraq’s appetite for arms once UN sanctions were lifted.

The moment of his entrapment was a scene he’d relived countless times as he lay on the stone floor of the latrine-like cell waiting to be beaten again. It had happened out of the blue. No inkling. Sitting in the lobby of the Rashid Hotel on his fourth evening in Iraq, he’d been glancing at a week-old Herald Tribune a German had passed on to him when a middle-aged Iraqi had approached. Small and scruffy, with pale, strangely dead eyes, the man was a creature he’d never seen before.

‘For you, Mister Packer.’

It had been terrifying to hear his real name used, terrifying to hear it spoken by this stranger. The Iraqi had ignored his denials, leaning forward until his mouth was just inches from his ear. Then he’d begun to whisper, a warning that had taken Sam’s breath away: ‘Anthrax warheads – they have been taken outside Iraq and will soon be used.’

Anthrax. Biological warfare. BW – the UN’s living nightmare, the primary target now of its five-year-long inspection regime inside Iraq. Will soon be used . . . Where? And when? Before he could ask the man was gone.

His mind had cartwheeled. Was the warning true, or a trick? The man had known his name. Not Terry Malone, the name on his passport and the hotel register, but Packer. Sam Packer. And if they knew his real name, they knew he was a spy, and they must be Iraqi counter-intelligence. He’d felt caught in a spotlight. He’d scanned the lobby for watching eyes. The hotel was riddled with hidden cameras and microphones. Someone would have recorded the contact made with him. Slowly he’d stood up, slipping the envelope into the pocket of his jacket and making for the lifts.

Up in his bedroom, unmasked and a very long way from home, he’d felt the first shiver of panic. He’d locked himself in the bathroom and hidden behind the shower curtain to avoid covert lenses. Inside the envelope he’d found a single sheet of lined note-paper. On it, two sentences of four words each.

Beware of Salah Khalil. He is Saddam’s man.

The name had meant nothing to him. Two messages passed to him; one written, one verbal, one about a man, one about a plague. No obvious connection between the two.

He’d memorised the words on the note, then burned it, flushing the ash down the drain. Common sense had told him this was a trap – the Mukhabarat feeding him phoney intelligence in the hope of catching him passing it to London. Yet his guts had told him something else, that the messenger had been risking his neck to speak to him. That the man was in fear of his life. With no time in which to think, he’d concluded the warnings could be genuine, and since the danger from anthrax weapons was so great, the tip-off, however vague, had to be passed on fast. Direct communication with London was impossible. No phone was safe. But he’d remembered the German businessman who’d given him the newspaper, remembered he was heading home via Amman that evening.

He’d set to work fast, squatting on the loo seat and searching the newspaper for the crossword. Filling in blanks in its matrix, he’d scrawled K-H-A-L-I-L S-U-S-P-E-C-T and B-W A-T-T-A-C-K A-L-E-R-T – there’d been no time for code. Then he’d buried a phone number on the small ads page. Not the direct line for his controller at SIS – too risky if the German were to be stopped by the Mukhabarat – but a personal number, someone whose reaction to the message would be as instinctive as his.

Chrissie Kessler, his lover until three months ago.

Downstairs, the German had had the taxi door open when Sam found him.

‘Your paper. You wanted it back,’ he’d declared, willing the man to understand. In a whisper he’d added, ‘Look inside. Later, not now. Ring the number on page six. It’s London. Ask for Chrissie. Read her the crossword. Please.’

Not wavering for a moment, the German had climbed into the taxi and driven off.

Three minutes later, back in the hotel lobby, Packer had been arrested. The Mukhabarat had seen everything. A trap after all. Two men had hustled him to a car, one of them with shiny black hair and a Saddam moustache. And now, God knew how many days later, here he was, strapped to a stretcher in the back of some truck that smelled of piss, heading for whatever fate they’d decided on. He was helpless. On his own. They could do what they liked with him – and they would.

The bumping of the wheels that had been causing him such discomfort ended suddenly. The truck’s tyres began humming on smooth tarmac. There was no more stopping for lights or crossroads. They were on some highway now. He forced himself to concentrate, to make an intelligent guess at what was happening. He knew what the pattern was. Foreigners arrested in the past had been interrogated in police cells, then moved after a farce of a trial to the main prison at Abu Ghraib, west of the city. Abu Ghraib. A place of misery and executions. His heart turned over again. Did they give prisoners fair warning when they were about to kill them, or did they just string them up?

In the days that had followed his arrest, the worst part for him had been the isolation. Not knowing what was happening or why. No comfort call from the Red Cross. No diplomatic visit from the Russians who looked after British interests in Baghdad. It was as if the outside world had forgotten he even existed. He knew that once caught, a spy must expect to be disowned by his own people, but the reality of it had been hard to stomach.

At first they’d questioned him without physical violence. His interrogator who’d spoken in a plummy English accent acquired, he guessed, at a British staff college several years back, had demanded he confess to spying and name his contacts. But he’d denied everything, maintaining he truly was Terry Malone, an exhibition contractor. Then after a couple of days the atmosphere had changed. They’d begun to rough him up. Instead of the catch-all about spying, the interrogator, whom he’d nicknamed ‘Sandhurst’, had posed a different question: what was it the middle-aged informant had whispered to him in the Rashid Hotel lobby?

The switch of question had thrown him. Why were they asking it if the informant had simply been acting on Mukhabarat orders – and he must have been, he’d reasoned, because he knew his real name. Only a counter-intelligence service could have broken his cover, and he had no clue how. He’d begun to wonder if the tip-off man had gone further than his Mukhabarat masters had intended and revealed a secret in that fear-laden whisper. He’d bluffed it out with his questioner, pretending the informant had simply exhorted him to read the letter then destroy it. The interrogator’s response had been brutal. Concentrating first on the small of his back, the blows had knocked the air from his lungs. But he’d told them nothing. In later sessions they’d used sticks on his shins and glowing cigarettes on his chest. But he’d still said not a word about anthrax.

Between beatings they’d returned him to his cell and deprived him of sleep and nourishment. How often the cycle had been repeated he didn’t know. He’d lost sense of time and place, floating on a cushion of pain, kept alive by his certainty that to admit anything at all would mean certain death. As his strength had faded, two questions had circled unanswered in his head. How the hell had the Iraqis broken his cover? And had they received his message in London – had Chrissie ever been given it and had she passed it on?

Confirmation that the thin-faced informant must have exceeded his instructions had arrived soon after. They’d been interrogating Packer again, punctuating their questions with blows to his feet. Then suddenly they’d stopped, dragging him to another room and whipping the hood off. Dangling in front of him was a corpse, naked like himself. The anthrax messenger had been suspended from a rope by hands bound behind his back. His arms were half wrenched from their sockets, his eyes were cataract white, his belly black from the beating that had ruptured his innards.

‘This will happen to you, Packer,’ Sandhurst had hissed from behind his head. ‘Unless you tell me what he told you.’

Back in the interrogation room his captors had forgotten to replace the hood at first. For the first time since his arrest he could see his surroundings. The room was some sort of store, large and bare, its windows blacked-out with cardboard. And for the first time too he had seen the faces of his tormentors.

Sandhurst, he’d finally realised, was the creature with the Saddam moustache who’d arrested him at the Rashid, dressed now in a dark green uniform which bore no insignia. The guard who’d carried out the beatings on Sandhurst’s orders had been the second man at the arrest.

And there’d been a third person in the room, a man whose presence he’d been unaware of until then. A commanding figure sitting a few feet away from the others, motionless and silent, eyeing him with a brooding intensity, his dog-like face leathery and lined, his hair and mournful moustache a distinguished sandy-grey. This was the man in charge. The man who controlled his fate. For several seconds he’d felt the intensity of his gaze, the commanding presence. This sand-blasted figure was a veritable Saladin of a man. And it was him, this one, he’d decided, who was so desperate to discover what the messenger had whispered to him.

Suddenly the Labrador eyes had turned angry, the man’s chisel chin jerking forward involuntarily. He’d shouted at his subordinates. He’d been seen by the prisoner and didn’t want to be. The hood had been jammed back on.

Then, two days ago, Packer had had the feeling they were giving up, that he’d defeated them. Yesterday there’d been no interrogation session at all and they’d let him sleep out his exhaustion. At the end of the day they’d disconnected his arm from the heating pipe to which he’d been shackled, moved him from the stinking toilet of a cell whose vile, shit-caked confines he’d defined through touch on day one of his incarceration, then never again, and hosed him down with icy water. After that they’d let him eat something that tasted like food instead of sewage, and given him a room with a bed instead of a stone floor. He’d felt absurdly relieved. Almost euphoric.

This morning, however, when his guard told him he was being moved, his fear had returned. Something new was in store and they wouldn’t say what. A show trial perhaps? Some travesty of a court process? A spy hearing for which there was only ever one sentence in Iraq?

It was hot in the back of the truck now. The tyres had hummed for what seemed like hours. If it was Abu Ghraib they were heading for, they should surely have arrived already. But if not Abu Ghraib, where else? The road they were on sounded smooth and felt straight. The only route from the capital that he knew personally was the motorway to Jordan. With no flights, all commercial visitors to Iraq had to take the ten-hour drive from Amman. But there were other main roads from Baghdad – north, south and east. They could be taking him anywhere.

If you lucky this finish quick for you. At that moment the guard’s words had only one meaning for him. Death. The noose over the head, the tightening at the throat, the floor dropping away. He ordered himself not to think about it.

From time to time during the past days he’d felt intense, bitter anger at his masters at SIS for failing to get him out of there. What were they doing in London? There’d been nothing from the world he knew. Not a word. And Chrissie – surely to God she would have moved heaven and earth for him.

From time to time, too, he’d ruminated on what madness it was that had made him want to be a spy in the first place. A thirst for excitement had been one motive, and as he lay there in his own filth in the bare cell it had seemed a damned stupid one. But there’d been more to it than that – a fundamental belief that the dissemblers of this world needed sorting out and that he should be one of those to do it. For now, however, the dissemblers had won. He was their prisoner.

Suddenly the truck slowed down, bumping onto the rough verge and coming to a juddering halt. The sun had turned the rear of the vehicle into an oven. Sam’s throat felt parched. He heard the flap being unlaced and someone climbing into the back.

‘What’s going on?’ He felt panicky again. ‘What’s happening?’

He imagined a pistol being put to his head. His arms were untied and he was jerked up into a sitting position.

‘We have stopped to urinate, Packer. That is all.’ Sandhurst’s mellow tones. It surprised him the interrogator was still with him. ‘We don’t want you making a mess of our vehicle.’

Why was Sandhurst here? Interrogators weren’t normally involved in transporting prisoners around the country.

‘Then take this damn hood off so I can see what I’m doing.’

‘You’re not allowed to see. You’re a spy, Packer.’

Gingerly, Sam felt for the edge of the platform and swung his legs over. When his feet hit the ground he yelped with pain. Hands gripped him and he was marched a few paces.

‘This will do.’ Sandhurst’s voice again. ‘You can do it here. What is it you call it in the Navy? Pumping ship?’

‘Something like that.’

The Navy . . . How did this man know so much about him?

Packer fumbled with the unfamiliar buttons of the trousers given to him to wear that morning. Unable to see what he was doing, the flow didn’t come easily. Behind him on the road he heard the swish of heavy vehicles passing, confirming they were on a main highway. And from the strength of the sun above he guessed it was midday or later. Must have dozed a little in the truck.

After he had buttoned up, the hands were back on his elbows, spinning him round and steering him to the truck.

‘Look,’ he protested gently, ‘for the love of God, can’t you tell me where we’re going?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Sandhurst snapped, shoving him against the tailboard so he could feel the ledge. ‘Get in. There’s some water in a bottle if you want it.’

‘What about food? I’ve had nothing.’

‘Oh, really? Haven’t you heard?’ Sandhurst mocked. ‘There’s a food shortage in Iraq. UN sanctions, you know.’

Sam eased his backside onto the tailboard and swung his legs up. His shins burned horribly. He edged backwards until he found the stretcher again. A plastic water bottle was pressed into his hands. He unscrewed the top and raised the rim to his lips. The water was warm and unpleasant, but he drank gratefully. He heard breathing. His hearing, made more sensitive by his inability to see, told him it was the guard beside him rather than Sandhurst.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he whispered. ‘You can tell me.’ Between the beatings this man had shown a degree of kindness to him in the past few days.

‘Tch!’

Sam held out the bottle.

‘No. You must drink more. You get dehydrate.’

He felt he’d had enough, but took several more swigs.

‘Where are we going, friend? Tell me.’

‘Tch, tch,’ the Iraqi repeated, taking the bottle and pushing Sam down onto the stretcher. He retied his arms. ‘You are spy. Soon finish for you.’

God! That word ‘finish’ was like a bell tolling.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘This night. All finish for you,’ the guard whispered, then scurried away.

Tonight. Within hours. The ambiguity of the words tortured him. He tensed his arms, testing the strength of the ties. No chance of escape. He heard the canvas flaps being fastened, then the cab doors banging shut. The engine coughed back into life and they began to move again.

As the tyres picked up speed on the highway, his mind filled with the image of a face. The face of the woman whom he’d entrusted with his life. A face framed by silky chestnut hair and dominated by cool grey eyes.

Chrissie.

It had been a whim to put her phone number in the German’s newspaper. An instinctive act, stemming from a belief that she still cared for him. She’d been Christine White when they first met, although she’d used a different surname as her cover. Christine Kessler now, the wife of a department head at MI6. Ironically it had been here in Iraq their affair had begun, six years ago. With Iraq’s army massing on the border with Kuwait, Western intelligence had been short of agents in place. Newly transferred to the Intelligence Service from the Royal Navy, he’d been despatched to Baghdad as an extra on a trade mission. A few days later the Iraqi army had invaded Kuwait, and when the West threatened retaliation most foreigners in Iraq, including himself, had been rounded up as hostages.

He’d been told before his mission that there was another MI6 agent in Baghdad, but not her name. A woman whose cover job was with a British company running a construction contract. He knew that she’d been told about him too. At the hotel where most of the Britons were being held by the Iraqi security services, they’d identified one another through a process of elimination.

She’d attracted him instantly. Physically at least. From the crown of her red-brown hair to the immaculately pedicured toes peeping from a pair of slingback sandals, she’d oozed style and sensuality. Her character had grated at first – she’d tried to pull rank because she’d worked for the Intelligence Service longer than him. But the antipathy hadn’t lasted. Thrown together by confinement to the hotel, their relationship had become close and equal.

But not intimate at first, not until the Iraqi announcement that the foreigners were to be used as human shields against American bombers. Then a change had come about in her. The fear spreading through the hostages that they would all be killed had gripped her with an irrational intensity. She’d kept her cool in public, but alone with him in the privacy of his room she’d gone to pieces. She’d shared his bed that night and he’d done what he’d wanted to do since first clapping eyes on her. The next day, when the hostages had been shipped off to be held at strategic targets, Sam had been separated from her. Only at Christmas when they were repatriated to Britain had they met again. Only then had she told him that she was engaged to be married. To Martin Kessler, a senior official at SIS.

He’d expected that to be the end of the matter – a sexual interlude in a moment of crisis – but the bond forged in Baghdad was not to be broken so easily. A few months after her wedding she’d contacted him again, inviting herself to his apartment one Sunday afternoon. Within minutes of walking through the door she’d told him her marriage had been a terrible mistake. That her husband lacked bedroom skills and seemed disinclined to acquire any.

She’d made no secret of the purpose of her visit. Her directness had disarmed him. He wasn’t used to women declaring so openly that they wanted sex, particularly women who attracted him as much as Chrissie. Despite qualms about what he was getting into, he’d obliged her, because when she’d unbuttoned her shirt in his living room that Sunday afternoon, the reasons for doing so had seemed infinitely more appealing than those against. Their affair had lasted for over five years on and off, until three months ago, when she’d announced her ‘final and irreversible’ decision to commit herself to her husband. No good reason given. At least, none that had made sense to him.

The truck hit a pothole suddenly, shooting pain through his bruised back.

How stupid. How incredibly ill-judged, he realised now, to have sent his message to a woman who’d rejected him. Phoned through to the home she shared with the man he’d cuckolded, a man who could by definition be no friend of his, a man high up in MI6 who had the power to decide that a spy whose cover was blown in Iraq should be left to rot there.

‘Stupid,’ he mouthed to himself. ‘Fucking stupid.’

Despair engulfed him. He was utterly alone – and he felt it.

It was hot in the back of the truck and getting hotter. He would have given anything for some more of that water, despite its unpleasant taste, but if the bottle was there, his pinioned arms were preventing him getting to it. An irresistible drowsiness began to creep over him.

When he came to, his head throbbed and he had no idea how much more time had passed. The truck had stopped. A cool draught of air blowing over him told him that the canvas flap had been lifted and it was night. How could he have slept so long? He tried to snap awake, but his mind was a fog. Suddenly it occurred to him that the water he’d drunk could have been drugged.

Minutes passed. He listened but heard nothing that would tell him where he was. Then through the rough fabric of the hood he saw a light being shone on him. Thick rubber soles thumped up onto the truck’s steel floor. He had company. Someone who reeked of sweat. The sleeve of his shirt was pulled up, fingers tapping on his veins.

‘What the fuck . . .?’

Terror hit him. Sheer, blind terror.

‘What’re you doing?’

He strained at the ties binding him to the stretcher. A needle jabbed in and a flush of coolness spread up his arm.

‘Oh no. No!’

Not like that. Not so soon. Not when he wasn’t ready.





3


Amman, Jordan


THE AIRBUS TURBOFANS whimpered into silence and the dozen business-class passengers began to unclip their belts. Cabin staff delved into hanging spaces for jackets, their eyes betraying an eagerness to be rid of their passengers. It had been a long flight.

Towards the back of the cabin an English woman in her mid-thirties, whose red-brown hair fell in wisps across her forehead, had given the appearance of being asleep through most of the flight. Now she sat up straight and made a bleary-eyed check that nothing had fallen from her handbag. Then she stood up to extricate her small suitcase from the overhead locker.

‘Let me.’

A steward reached up for her and lowered the bag to the floor.

‘Thanks.’

She flashed him her warmest of looks and noted the interest in his eyes. At least one of them wasn’t gay.

‘Hope we’ll see you again soon, Mrs Taylor.’

‘Thank you. I hope so too.’

A stewardess held out a cream linen jacket for her.

‘Thanks. I’m glad half of me won’t look creased,’ she said, brushing her lap in an attempt to smooth the wrinkles of the matching skirt. ‘I’d have done better wearing jeans.’ She slipped the jacket on. ‘What did they say the temperature was outside?’

‘Not sure, madam. Twenty-four Celsius, I think. But it’ll drop at this time of year. Nights in Amman should be pleasantly cool at the end of September.’

The woman made liberal use of a perfume spray while the dark-suited, dapper little Arab, who’d been seated three rows in front of her smoking like a chimney during the flight, brushed past, heading for the exit. His face, she noticed, was still puckered with anger and disappointment at being expelled from Britain. She stepped quickly into the aisle to be right behind him, flinching at the acid whiff of his perspiration. The aircraft’s main door was open but the stairs had yet to be wheeled into place. Beyond the galley in the crowded tourist section of the plane she saw passengers queuing impatiently to get off.

When the steps finally arrived, she stuck right behind the man she’d been shadowing as he descended to the tarmac. There was a fifty-metre walk to the terminal. She glanced up at its roof. Half-lit faces watching for relatives. She knew that among them would be professionals, Iraqis checking that the man whose return they’d demanded – the man in front of her – had truly arrived. But it was dark on the tarmac. Passengers hurrying from both ends of the plane were all around them now. Would the watchers spot him in the gloom? It was vital they did. Timing was critical.

As they neared the building they entered a small pool of brightness cast by a floodlight. She darted forward, touching the Arab on the arm. Then she stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop in the glare of the light.

‘Excuse me. I’m so sorry, but I think I must have left my cigarette lighter on the plane.’ She held a Silk Cut between her fingers. ‘Could you possibly . . .’

Startled, the Arab began fumbling in his pocket. Then he stopped abruptly.

‘But it’s not permitted here.’

‘Oh? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’ His voice was irritable. ‘They said on the aircraft. Not until the terminal.’

‘Ah yes, of course. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

The Arab hurried on again. But it had been long enough. If the Iraqis hadn’t seen him by now then they couldn’t have been looking.

In the over-chilled concourse of the Queen Alia International Airport she kept a few metres behind Salah Khalil as he followed the signs to passport control. What sort of reception would he be expecting, she wondered? None at all, probably, hoping it had merely been some whim of the British Home Office that had got his asylum application rejected. Yet she knew Khalil would be quaking in his boots, knowing as he did the obsessive, unforgiving nature of the people he’d run away from in Baghdad. The Jordanian capital Amman would be far too close to home for him. Far too easy a place for his enemies to find him in.

The information that the Secret Intelligence Service had gleaned on Khalil had been sparse. When he’d turned up in Britain six weeks ago hoping to buy asylum with titbits of information about the regime in Baghdad, his name had elicited few responses from the databases at Vauxhall Cross, or from those in Washington or Jerusalem. He’d claimed to be on the fringes of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, a cousin of someone related to the Iraqi leader by marriage. He’d maintained that the Mukhabarat had falsely accused him of embezzlement and his life was in danger. Enquiries with Iraqi exiles used by MI6 and the CIA as sounding boards had produced the suggestion that Khalil had in fact been the banker in a drug-smuggling operation run by one of Saddam’s sons. There was a suspicion he’d run off with the takings.

The woman in the linen suit sensed heads turning as she walked into the crowded immigration hall. It had been happening that way for as much of her life as she could remember. As an only child she hadn’t liked it at first, not wanting her neat prettiness to make her stand out from the crowd. But as a teenager, when her father’s long absences from home had left her deprived of male attention, turning heads was a skill she’d learned to perfect. She was tall for a woman, about five nine, with a generous bust and a neat, almost boyish behind. Her lightly tanned skin, thin but sensuous lips and long, elegant nose gave her a natural attraction that she’d learned to exploit.

The man she was following headed for the middle line at passport control. She quickened her pace and overtook him just as they joined the queue. She turned to him and smiled, holding up the cigarette again. Still irritated, he dug in his pocket and produced a gold Dunhill lighter.

She pictured the scene beyond the arrivals doors. There would be many watchers there, some obvious, some not. First to make their move would be the Iraqis, making it clear to Khalil he had no option but to go with them. Watching to ensure it happened peacefully would be the Jordanian secret police, alerted by SIS to Khalil’s presence on the flight from London. And finally there would be someone from the British Embassy, poised to call up the SIS officials out in the desert the moment Khalil was back in Iraqi hands.

There was a lot at stake in the coming hours. Plenty that could go wrong.

Part one of her mission – ensuring that Khalil made no trouble on the flight out and was spotted the moment he landed – was over.

Part two of her mission would not be so simple.





20.30 hrs

The Iraqi–Jordanian Border


There was a chill in the air. The bleak, boulder-strewn border between Jordan and Iraq was at an altitude of close on a thousand metres and at this time of year the desert soon lost the heat it had absorbed during the day. The sky was a black and moonless shroud, pricked by the glimmer of a billion stars.

Quentin Mowbray checked his watch again and stared down at the briefcase-sized satellite phone terminal with its flat antenna which he’d set up on the sand behind the long-wheelbase Land Rover. He willed it to ring. Behind him on the straight, bumpy road from the Jordanian capital, trucks stuffed with sacks of rice and wheat queued to have their papers processed so they could thunder on to a hungry Baghdad. The desert night air that should have smelled fresh was laced with the fumes of exhausts.

‘This could be the one,’ a soft voice murmured behind him.

Mowbray swung round. His number two, Simon Twiss, was leaning on the bonnet of the Land Rover peering down the road to Iraq through image-intensifying binoculars.

‘May I?’ Mowbray asked, reaching out.

He took the glasses and refocused them. On the far side of the sodium-lit no man’s land between the border posts stood the blockhouses of the Iraqi police and customs. Parked beside them was a pickup of a type he knew to be used by the Iraqi army and police. A man in uniform stood in front of it, binoculars pressed to his own eyes. Watching them watching him. Then a grain lorry drove through, blocking Mowbray’s field of vision for a moment.

The satphone trilled suddenly. Mowbray thrust the glasses back at Twiss and crouched to pick up the receiver.

‘Yes?’

‘He’s here. Just going through immigration.’ The voice of an excited second secretary from the embassy, on stakeout at Amman airport. ‘His friends saw him on the tarmac. They’re moving to the next phase. Any signs?’

‘We think so. We’re about to check. Ring again when he’s through customs.’

‘Will do.’

Mowbray replaced the receiver. ‘This is where we get stuffed,’ he murmured. He’d been against this deal. Too easy for the other side to cheat and leave egg all over some very important British faces.

‘That chap in uniform is on the phone,’ whispered Twiss excitedly, the binoculars jammed into his eye sockets. ‘Bugger’s even got the same kit as us!’

Mowbray snorted. The satphone was American-made. Supplying the Iraqi intelligence organisations with it was in breach of UN sanctions.

‘Better go for it.’

Twiss swung up into the driving seat of the Land Rover and held up the walkie-talkie to show he had it. Mowbray turned to a Jordanian border guard.

‘We’re ready. If you please.’

The policeman stepped into the road to delay the next truck. No man’s land would be kept empty for the next few minutes. It was in nobody’s interests that there should be casual witnesses to this skulduggery.

The Land Rover’s engine rattled into life and the vehicle pulled away. The Jordanian policeman chatted to the delayed truck driver to divert his attention, determinedly not looking at what was happening behind him. On this border across which countless illegal items had been smuggled into Iraq, turning a blind eye was second nature. The Land Rover drove fifty metres into no man’s land and stopped. Through the glasses Mowbray watched the Iraqi pickup crawl forward to meet it. It also stopped and two men jumped down from the back. Mowbray’s anxiety racked up a notch. Neither of the men resembled the description he’d been given of Packer. Then he saw something else.

‘Fuck!’

A stretcher was being lifted from the back of the pickup.

‘Fucking Ada!’

No one had said anything about a stretcher. Nothing about Packer being ill or injured. Or dead.

‘Bastards!’

There was always some catch with the Iraqis, but Packer being a casualty was one he hadn’t planned for. A total no-show – yes, he’d almost expected it. But not this. He had no doctor with him. Nearest usable medic five hours’ drive away. And the embassy Land Rover was full of seats. Nowhere to lie a sick man down. Or to lay out a corpse.

Mowbray saw Twiss standing there in the gloom, hands on hips, puzzling over what to do as the uniformed Iraqis dumped the stretcher on the ground.

‘Jesus Christ!’

He snatched up the short-range VHF handset lying next to the satphone.

‘Is it him?’ he hissed into it.

Mowbray saw Twiss crouch down and lean over the body.

‘Affirmative.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘He’s breathing.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘They won’t say.’

The satphone trilled again. Mowbray’s man at the airport.

‘The Iraqis have just picked him up. Two of them. He looked pretty horrified to see them, I must say. Tried to turn back into the baggage hall, but some rather luscious woman blocked his way. Anyway, they’ve taken him off in a limo now. One of the heavies was busy on a mobile phone, so if they stick to the agreement you should see some action pretty soon.’

Mowbray shuddered at the way the airport watcher was talking so openly. He’d had to rope in a young third secretary from the consular department to help him complete the circle of watchers and signallers needed to ensure the swap happened.

‘We have him,’ he answered curtly. ‘You’d better get back to the office.’

‘Great.’

Cursing silently, Mowbray waited for three anxious minutes. The Iraqis seemed to be awaiting the final order to complete the hand-over. Then, suddenly, there was movement. Packer’s body was lifted from the stretcher and humped into the back of the Rover like a sack of sand. Twiss got back behind the wheel and the Rover made a cautious turn.

‘Good man,’ Mowbray growled as Twiss drew alongside him. His junior’s face was pinched with tension. ‘Any injuries that you can see?’

‘Legs look a bit messy. There’s blood on his trousers.’

Mowbray looked into the back and saw the dark stains in the region of Packer’s shins.

‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ he breathed.

He recognised Sam from the photo London had faxed him, but only just. A couple of weeks in the hands of Iraqi security had given a grey pallor to his pleasantly pugnacious face and put bags under his eyes, but the stubborn chin was unmistakable. The thick, dark hair looked greasy and uncombed. Mowbray prodded him gingerly but Packer lay motionless. The clothes he had on were twisted and ill-fitting, as if they’d belonged to someone else. His feet were bare. A suitcase had been slung into the luggage space at the back.

‘Might be drugged, rather than ill,’ murmured Twiss.

A Jordanian officer bustled from the guardhouse.

‘Finished?’ he asked, not looking in the vehicle.

‘Yes. Yes, thanks.’ Mowbray shook his hand and the policeman waved at his subordinate to re-open the road.

‘He’s certainly breathing easily enough,’ Twiss continued, leaning over the body sprawled in the back. ‘Sleeping like a bloody baby. No injury that I can see, apart from the legs. No fever. He’s not hot or anything.’

‘Okay. Strap him in somehow and let’s get the hell out of here before some curious truckie begins to figure out what’s going on.’





4


Sunday, 29 September, early a.m.

Amman


SAM WAS AWARE of being awake and of not wanting to be. His leaden limbs and thick head demanded more sleep. He had no idea where he was. A memory of the piss-smelling truck and a needle in the arm, then a vague recollection of a different vehicle. Of an endless journey in acute discomfort on an extremely bumpy road. Of retching on an empty stomach.

But now he felt soft bed-springs beneath his back and heard voices. He half-opened his eyes and saw two faces he didn’t recognise. At least two. Could have been more. Might just have been one, multiplied by the kaleidoscope someone seemed to have lodged in his eyeballs. He blinked and twisted his head to get a clearer focus. It was two faces and he still didn’t recognise them. But something in his head told him they were going to kill him. The needle in the arm was a mere preamble. A trial run. Maybe he was dead already.

He tried to swallow but his throat felt as dry as the Iraqi desert he remembered pissing on some time back. Then logic kicked in. He couldn’t be dead, because surely when you’re dead things like being thirsty don’t happen any more.

One of the faces pressed closer. An Arab face, scrutinising him like he was a laboratory rat. The injection . . . the Iraqis were using him as a guinea pig for their weapons trials . . . the fluid shot into his veins some vile chemical concoction . . . and now he was in some secret lab the bastards had kept hidden from the UN inspectors.

A hand reached towards him and a finger pushed his eyelids fully open one by one. From somewhere close he heard a gentle English voice ask, ‘What was it d’you think?’

‘Can’t tell. Some barbiturate probably.’ It was the Arab who’d answered.

‘Sam . . .’ Again, the English voice. But truly English this time. None of your phoney Sandhurst. ‘Sam, you’re okay. You’re in Jordan. Can you hear me?’

He turned his head to focus on the face that was speaking his name. It was thin, lean and tanned, with straight fair hair, a beak of a nose and grey eyes that were observing him with a cool concern.

‘Hello,’ Packer croaked, his voice sounding as if it wasn’t his.

‘I’m Quentin Mowbray. Station officer in Amman. You’re free, old man. We got you out.’

‘Out?’ Sam’s mind wasn’t registering.

‘Out of Iraq. You’re in Jordan.’

No. A trick. He couldn’t risk believing this. But Mowbray. The name was right. Quentin Mowbray, station head in Amman.

‘You’re free, old man. Not a prisoner any more.’ Mowbray spoke loudly, as if addressing a geriatric.

‘It’s true?’ Sam croaked.

A wet wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm him, but he held it back. Don’t let go. Names proved nothing. If the Iraqi Mukhabarat had known who he was, they’d surely know about Mowbray too. This room could well be in Iraq, his tormentors playing cruel games with him, wanting him to think he was among friends so he would open up and tell them at last what that dead messenger had whispered to him.

‘How did I get here?’ he asked, testing them. The haze was beginning to clear.

‘They drugged you with something,’ Mowbray hedged. He indicated the Arab and added, ‘This man’s a Jordanian doctor.’ Then his eyes narrowed so Sam would understand to be careful about what he said in his presence. ‘He wants to examine you.’

‘Yes, my friend. If you don’t mind.’ The doctor’s voice was flat and dispassionate. ‘Do you have any pains?’

Who wouldn’t have pains, after what you lot have done to me? Sam wanted to say, but he held his tongue, badly wanting to believe that he truly was free.

‘Back’s sore,’ he answered carefully, ‘and my shins feel as if they’ve been worked on with a potato peeler.’

‘Of course. You’ve been seriously maltreated. But inside? Any internal pain?’ The doctor prodded Sam’s chest and stomach with the tips of his fingers. ‘Does this hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Good. All right. Try to sit up, Mister Packer. I want you to drink some water.’

You and me both, thought Sam. Glancing from face to face, still searching for some definitive confirmation that what was happening was real, he let them lever him upright and reposition the pillows behind him. Then he reached out a hand for the glass being offered, but it slipped through his jelly-like fingers.

‘Let me,’ said the doctor, holding it against his lips.

Sam took a huge slug and choked, the water sticking to the sides of his throat.

‘Slowly. Just a little,’ the doctor urged.

Sam sipped more cautiously. This time the liquid descended, his body absorbing it like blotting paper.

He looked down at himself. Someone had undressed him, apart from white underpants that he didn’t recognise as belonging to him. His bare chest was a rainbow of bruises and burns.

‘Let me feel your back.’ The doctor pushed gently in the region of his kidneys.

‘Ouch!’

‘Yes. Very tender, I think.’

‘Fucking painful, actually.’

‘Yes. It will be so for several days. There is serious bruising here.’

Sam looked beyond the two men, noticing rabbits on the wallpaper, furry toys heaped in a corner. A computer on a small desk. This was a child’s bedroom.

‘Where is this?’ he asked.

‘My place,’ Mowbray explained. ‘My home in Amman. Jenny, my daughter – it’s her room, but she’s away at school. In Somerset.’

‘Where in Somerset?’

‘Frome.’

The way Mowbray had answered straight away, the way everything in this room apart from the medic was so utterly English, Sam suddenly knew it was right. Knew that at last he could drop his guard.

‘Chri–ist!’ His mouth twitched. His eyes began to fill. ‘Christ.’ He gulped. ‘Sorry . . .’

‘Don’t worry.’ Mowbray took his hand and held it like he would a child’s. ‘Let it out, old man. You must’ve been through hell.’

Sam pulled his hand back. He disliked being touched in any personal way by men. He pressed both hands to his face to try to get its muscles under control.

‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’ His face split into a smile. ‘I thought I was dead, you know that? Thought you’d all given up on me. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

‘It’s all right, old man,’ Mowbray reassured him, new-mannishly. ‘You can do both if you like.’

Suddenly Sam himself grabbed Mowbray’s hand and shook it. Then he shook the doctor’s too. ‘Thank you. Thank you both,’ he mouthed, lost for any other words.

Mowbray chuckled matily.

Sam looked around him again, blinking back tears and relishing the cosy normality of the room. Daylight glowed through a little curtained window and was brightening by the minute. No iron bars across it, no blindfolds or chains. And two faces with smiles on them. From somewhere outside he heard the wail of a muezzin. Dawn.

‘Thank Christ!’ he wheezed. ‘I mean Allah,’ he joked lamely.

Mowbray laughed with unnatural vigour. ‘The first words of the hostage after his release!’

Sam frowned at the word ‘hostage’. Was that what he’d been? He drank some more water, his brain building up revs.

‘I can’t begin to tell you how this feels.’ He tried a grin. ‘How did this . . . this miracle come about?’

Mowbray didn’t answer, but turned to the doctor and asked, ‘Will he be okay now?’

‘Nothing obviously wrong with him, but he should have a proper examination. X-rays. He should rest for twenty-four hours. And in a day or two get someone to change those dressings I put on his legs.’

‘Of course. He’ll get a thorough check when he’s back in London.’

Mowbray shook the doctor’s hand and the Arab leaned towards Sam. ‘You are most welcome in Jordan,’ he breathed formally. Then he left. They heard his feet on the stairs and the front door closing.

They were alone now, and Sam saw the bonhomie drain from Mowbray’s eyes as he became a single-minded Six man again.

‘Okay. Now we can talk,’ Mowbray began. ‘Just needed the quack to confirm you were still alive. And I have to tell you we weren’t at all sure when we first clapped eyes on you.’

Sam leaned back against the propped up pillow and rested his head. He felt absurdly weak.

‘You’re not the only one,’ he whispered. ‘When that bloody needle went into my arm I thought I was on my way to Saint Peter.’

‘Ah. So they did give you an injection.’ Mowbray pulled up a pink-painted nursery chair, swung it round next to the bed and straddled it, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on the back. ‘Presumably did it so you wouldn’t make trouble at the border if the thing went for a ball of chalk.’

‘What thing? What happened? You’re saying there was a deal?’

‘A swap happened. You for that man Salah Khalil you sent the signal about.’

‘What?’ He’d thought Khalil a fiction. ‘But swaps are Cold War stuff. Six doesn’t work like that these days.’

‘The chap had fled Baghdad,’ Mowbray explained. ‘With a load of Saddam’s money, by the sound of it. Turned up in London offering his services and asking for asylum. We didn’t like the look of him much anyway and when your warning came through that he was suspect, it sort of clinched it.’

‘But London negotiated? With the Mukhabarat?’ Sam was aghast.

‘Wouldn’t normally. But SIS wanted you out of there very badly. Just as badly as the Iraqis wanted Khalil back. Presumably now they’ve got him they’ll blow his brains out.’

Sam stared at Mowbray. Was that what his arrest and torture had been about? All that horror just because the Iraqis needed a British hostage to swap for a thief? Not that simple. It couldn’t be.

‘Now look, there’s not much time.’ Mowbray spoke briskly. ‘They’re waiting in London. Waiting for the report of my debrief. I’ll have to trot across to the embassy in a minute to send it. They desperately want to know what the other part of your message meant. “BW attack alert”. Biological warfare, yes?’

‘Yes. Anthrax. I’d been given a tip-off that anthrax warheads had been slipped out of Iraq. To be used in an attack.’

‘Christ! Used where? And when?’

‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know.’ He saw Mowbray’s face fall. ‘A man came up to me in the hotel in Baghdad. An Iraqi. Scared witless. The bugger addressed me by my real name. They knew who I was, Quentin.’

‘Yes. So we gathered.’ Mowbray sucked in his cheeks. ‘We’d better come back to that.’

‘Not down to me, that one,’ Sam insisted. ‘Everything I did was watertight.’

‘Of course,’ Mowbray replied neutrally. ‘Anyway, tell me about this man at the hotel.’

‘He shoved a letter in my hand. When I opened it a few minutes later it contained the warning about Khalil, nothing else.’

‘Nothing about anthrax?’

‘Not in the note. The man whispered that warning.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Anthrax warheads taken out of Iraq and soon to be used. Just that. Nothing more. Then he ran off.’

Sam felt giddy all of a sudden. He put his hands to his head.

‘Drink some more water,’ suggested Mowbray, holding up the glass for him. ‘When did you last eat anything?’

‘Don’t remember. But I could certainly do with something.’

‘Yes of course. Look, my wife’s away in England, the maid doesn’t come on a Sunday and I’m not much use in the culinary department,’ he explained uncomfortably. ‘But I could open a tin of fruit. Give you a bowl of cornflakes with it. Boil an egg if you like. Sorry, it’s not exactly—’

‘It’s perfect,’ Sam assured him.

Mowbray made to stand up, but Sam stopped him.

‘But in a minute. Let me finish. That man in the hotel – he must have been a Mukhabarat stooge if the whole point of the game was to arrange a swap. The note he gave me, the warning to beware of Salah Khalil – it’s obvious now that they wanted me to pass it up the line. To make London think Khalil was an agent of Saddam, not a defector, so we’d be keen to get rid of him.’

‘That’s pretty clear.’

‘But the warning about the anthrax warheads – I’m sure that wasn’t part of the Mukhabarat plan. For some reason – don’t ask me why – the guy was operating on his own on that one.’

‘You think? Makes little sense,’ Mowbray countered. ‘Why should a police stooge know anything about the Iraqi biological warfare programme?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m sure I’m right about this.’

‘Why? Why so adamant?’

‘Because the Mukhabarat tortured him too, Quentin. They were so bloody desperate to get him to reveal what he’d whispered to me that they beat him to death.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘I saw the body.’

‘Ah.’ Mowbray frowned with concentration. ‘But how do you know that’s what they were trying to get out of him?’

‘Because it’s why they did this.’ Sam pointed down to his bandaged shins. ‘Trying to get me to reveal what the man said.’

‘I see.’ Mowbray became thoughtful. ‘But they didn’t succeed.’

‘I think not. Not with me certainly. I tried to convince them that what the guy had whispered was of no consequence whatsoever.’ He frowned. ‘And I must have convinced them. If they’d thought I knew where and when the anthrax was to be used, then presumably they wouldn’t have let me out.’

‘You’re assuming the security men who held you also knew about the plans for an anthrax attack?’

‘Well . . . yes.’

Mowbray’s elbows were still on the back of the nursery chair. He tapped his fingers together.

‘Interesting. I’ll think about that while I sort you something to eat.’

He got up. As he was leaving the room, Sam told him not to bother with the egg.

The more Packer thought about what had happened the more he realised how little he understood. But his mind was beginning to work again. The drug’s after-effects were lifting fast.

Mowbray returned with a wooden tray. ‘Best I can do in the circs,’ he apologised.

‘You’ve done me proud.’ Seeing the bowl of tinned fruit salad reminded him of wardroom meals in the Navy. Not top of his food favourites, but this morning it tasted good.

‘Going back to your theory,’ Mowbray pressed him. ‘What motive would the man have for telling you about the anthrax?’

‘Because he wanted us to prevent the attack happening. Knew what was planned and didn’t want the deaths on his conscience. That’s a guess. I don’t know.’

‘A philanthropic act? Assuming rather a lot, aren’t you?’

‘Gut instinct, that’s all.’

‘I’m not sure they’ll go for that in London,’ Mowbray warned him. ‘If the man was just a stooge for the security people, how on earth could he have access to top-secret info on the BW programme?’

‘I don’t know.’

There’d be long faces in London when he got home. Severe disappointment at the paucity of the intelligence he’d garnered.

‘No,’ Mowbray insisted. ‘That informant must have been under orders to tell you about the anthrax as well as give you the letter. Extra bait to make us want to go for the deal.’

‘Then why beat the shit out of him? And me.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What are you saying, Quentin? We’re going to ignore the warning because we don’t think it’s true?’

‘Not ignore, no. Don’t worry. The prospect of anthrax being released in the London Underground or the New York subway is so horrific, any hint of an imminent threat’s going to be taken extremely seriously. It’s already been passed on to the Americans and the Israelis, for what it’s worth.’

Sam rested against the pillows for a moment. He was thinking about Chrissie now. She hadn’t let him down. But the logistics of his release still puzzled him.

‘Who made the first move about getting me out?’ he asked. ‘Us or the Mukhabarat?’

‘They did. But actually Sam, it wasn’t the Mukh.’ Mowbray’s eyebrows bunched. ‘Seems to have been some other security organisation that we haven’t been able to identify yet. Saddam has plenty of them, as you know. To tell the truth we’re not exactly sure who we’ve been dealing with.’

Sam stared in astonishment. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, the first I knew about any of this was a phone call, out of the blue, from a man describing himself as Colonel Omar of Iraqi counter-intelligence – a cover name, I presumed. I mean, that alone was a shock. I never have direct contact with Saddam’s security people. He said they’d arrested a British spy in Baghdad called Packer and that he would be tried and executed. Then he came straight out with the offer to swap you for Khalil. A quick deal with no publicity, he said. Told me he would ring again in a couple of days for a response. Now, I knew of your presence in Baghdad because London had briefed me, so I rang the Rashid Hotel and they confirmed that “Terry Malone” hadn’t used his room for two nights.’

‘But London agreed to the deal? Just like that?’

‘No. They were highly suspicious. Didn’t want to touch it. You see, it wasn’t for another couple of days that your German friend remembered to phone your message through. Only after they got your cryptic warning about a BW attack did the Firm start taking things seriously.’

‘I see.’ What if the German had never remembered? Would he still be in Baghdad?

‘Colonel Omar rang me every other day. Always on a satellite phone, judging by the echo. Wouldn’t give me a number to call him back on. Odd man.’ Mowbray’s thin lips curved in a faint smile. ‘Had the sort of plummy voice you’d expect in an officers’ mess in Wiltshire.’

‘Good God!’ Sam sat up with a jolt. ‘But that must’ve been Sandhurst. He was my interrogator.’

‘Really?’ Mowbray’s eyes popped.

‘And the same bloke was in charge of transporting me to the border.’

‘Extraordinary. Sounds almost like a one-man operation,’ Mowbray murmured, deeply perplexed. ‘There were others I take it?’

‘Three of them altogether that I was aware of, plus the messenger. Sandhurst and one other less senior man arrested me and worked me over in the interrogation room. The same two took me to the border. I was blindfolded, so there could have been others involved, but I don’t think so.’

‘And the third man?’

‘Saw him for just a couple of minutes when they forgot to cover my eyes after they’d shown me what they’d done to the messenger. An older man. Greying hair and moustache. I got the clear impression he was in charge.’

‘I see.’ Mowbray stood up from the chair and crossed to the window, half-opening the curtains. A hazy dawn light had turned the flat-roofed Amman skyline into a mass of pink cubes. ‘You say they knew from the start that you worked for SIS?’ he checked, without turning his head. ‘Could that just have been a good guess?’

‘They knew my real name, Quentin. They’d need to be world champions at guessing to have worked that one out.’

Mowbray sat down again. He seemed to be puzzling over what to tell London.

‘How did they break your cover, d’you think?’ he asked with a casualness that wasn’t entirely natural.

‘I have no idea.’ Sam fixed Mowbray in the eyes. ‘But I’m determined to find out.’

‘So is London,’ Mowbray warned. ‘There’ve been mutterings already that you might have let something slip over a drink or three.’

‘They can mutter till their teeth fall out, it wasn’t me,’ Sam snapped.

‘Yes, but in their minds the alternative’s pretty frightening, you see. If the Iraqis knew about you because of some higher level security breach, then what other areas of SIS business might Saddam also have an inside track on?’

‘Well, they’d better start looking,’ Sam growled, sickened to be under suspicion from his own side after what he’d been through. He ran his fingers through his thick hair. He felt greasy and sweaty. Defiled.

Mowbray shifted uncomfortably. ‘Look, will you be okay on your own for a couple of hours? I’ve got to go to the embassy to talk with London. If you want more to eat and drink, raid the fridge.’

‘I’ll be fine. By the way, what’s the date? I’ve lost track of time.’

‘Twenty-ninth of September. It’s a Sunday. They had you for about ten days.’

And they were still beating the life out of him three days ago, while making final plans for the swap. He was right about the anthrax warning, he was sure of it. The messenger hadn’t been ordered to tell him.

Suddenly Mowbray sat up dead straight and cocked his head like a heron listening for fish. He’d heard a car pull up outside. He stood up and peered through the window.

‘Damn.’ He made for the door. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

Sam eased himself into a sitting position, realising he was still hungry. A plate of bacon and eggs and a mug of tea would do wonders. He began to look around for his clothes but couldn’t see any.

He heard voices downstairs – Mowbray saying ‘bad idea’ and ‘asked you not to come’. The second voice was little more than a murmur, but it sounded like a woman’s.

A Mickey Mouse alarm clock beside the bed gave the time as 06.35. He heard feet on the stairs.

The door pushed open. He looked up.

‘Hello, Sam.’

He gaped. The shock was electric.

‘Christ!’

It was Chrissie, mannequin-cool in a cream linen suit.





5


SEEING HER THERE in the doorway brought a lump to his throat and a stab of the old longing in his guts. But why was she here, this woman who’d walked into his life six years back, then walked out again three months ago? Surely SIS wouldn’t have sent her?

‘She’s not staying long,’ Mowbray insisted from behind her. ‘I’ve told her you’re in no state for social calls.’

I’ll be the judge of that, thought Sam, wishing he had a shirt on to cover up the marks on his chest. The last thing he wanted was her feeling sorry for him.

Chrissie turned and waved Mowbray away.

‘I’ll be back from the embassy as soon as I can,’ he announced, heading for the stairs.

‘Officious prat,’ Chrissie mouthed as they heard him descend them.

She pushed back the strands of hair that fell across her forehead, exposing the frown on her otherwise smooth brow. Her grey eyes registered shock as they took in the marks on Sam’s chest. Being told he’d been maltreated was one thing, seeing the results quite another.

‘God . . .’ She covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Oh you poor man. What have they done to you?’

Sam’s mind was doing somersaults trying to work out why she was here. There’d be no simple reason. There never was with Chrissie.

‘But this is outrageous,’ she murmured, moving into the room. Her eyes were angry now. She turned the pink-painted child’s chair round and put it hard against the edge of the bed. She sat, gently taking hold of his hands. As she gaped at his scars, Sam’s eyes lingered on her mouth – a mouth that had tasted every inch of him. ‘They burned you.’

‘You sound so surprised,’ he mocked. ‘They do that in Iraq.’

‘Yes . . .’ Her voice tailed away.

‘Anyway, it looks worse than it is,’ he assured her, uncomfortable at the fuss she was making. He tried to see beyond those cool eyes of hers for some small sign that she might have changed her mind again, that she’d come here to tell him she wanted him back. ‘Good to see you,’ he mouthed.

‘You too.’ She squeezed his hands, blinking back tears.

‘How come you’re here?’ She didn’t seem about to volunteer the information.

‘They sent me on the plane with Salah Khalil. To make sure the hand-over went okay.’

Official visit then. Not personal.

‘They gave me strict orders not to contact you of course,’ she confided, ‘but sod that. I had to check you were all right.’ Her gaze kept returning to his scars. ‘But you’re not, are you? You’re not all right.’

‘I’m fine. A few scratches, that’s all. I’ll put on a shirt.’

‘Oh, Sam. Don’t be so damned English. They tortured you for God’s sake.’ She detached her hands from his and clasped them on her lap as if not entirely trusting them. ‘Will you tell me about it?’

‘No. I don’t think that’d be much fun for either of us.’

She bit her lip. ‘But are you okay – you know – inside?’

‘Getting better every second.’ He reached out and rested his hand on her knee.

She was a tactile woman with a body she’d always liked him to touch. Her legs were bare now. Always were in summer. Only in the winter had there been tights to remove. But touching something he couldn’t have any more was a fool’s game. He returned his hand to his lap.

‘I really was about to get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Quentin said there’s food in the fridge.’

‘You must be starved.’

It felt odd being alone with Chrissie in a bedroom, now that the rules had changed. For five years a great deal of their time together had been spent lying down, and despite his present debilitated state and the impractical narrowness of the child’s divan, it was hard to shut his mind to the idea that they could make love here. And she? What was she thinking? He couldn’t tell. The old signals were muted.

‘Clothes . . .’ Chrissie jerked her eyes away from him. ‘There’s a suitcase in the corner. Is it yours?’

‘Good heavens!’ He hadn’t noticed it before. ‘Last time I saw that was in the Rashid Hotel.’

He pulled his knees up ready to swing his feet off the bed and Chrissie backed the chair away to give him room. As his soles took his weight on the floor, pain shot through his bandaged shins.

‘Shit,’ he winced, dropping back onto the edge of the bed.

‘I saw that, you idiot!’ She screwed up her face as if the pain were hers. ‘You’re far from all right. What did they do to you, Sam? What happened to your legs? Tell me.’

‘Oh I don’t know, they kept banging into things,’ he answered facetiously. ‘I’m told they’ll heal.’

‘The bastards.’ Her frown was back. ‘I simply don’t understand. Why mess you about like that if all they wanted was a hostage to swap with Salah Khalil?’

‘Perhaps they thought that I knew something. Something sensitive which I wasn’t telling them.’

She sat beside him on the bed and slipped her arm round his waist as if to give him support.

‘And did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that what your message was about? Your message to me. The BW attack?’

Sam nodded.

‘So, what was it exactly?’ She rested her head against his shoulder and asked it in an offhand way as if her interest in the matter were only peripheral. ‘What had you found out?’

About to reply, Sam checked himself. In their years together they’d sometimes blurred the service’s rules on case confidentiality, but their relationship was different now. Different because she’d made it so.

‘We can’t talk about this, Chrissie, you know that.’

She detached herself from him. She’d understood the point he was making.

‘No. You’re right. I was just being curious. I mean, it was me you addressed the message to. And I am involved in the case. I mean, I’m here aren’t I?’

‘Yes.’

But why was she here? What did she want from him?

She thrust her chin forward. ‘There is one thing you can tell me,’ she said, more abrasively.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Why did you have to give my number to your courier? Why not one of the unlisted lines at Vauxhall Cross?’

He looked towards the window. The truth was he didn’t fully know why. ‘I only had a couple of minutes to think. It was in case the German got stopped. I thought it best not to give one of the official numbers. Yours just came into my head.’

Chrissie’s look was sceptical. ‘Just came into your head,’ she repeated doubtfully. Then, lowering her voice, she continued. ‘Martin took the call, you know. Not me. I was out.’

‘Ah. How awkward for you.’ There’d always been the risk of that.

She stood up from the bed and crossed to the window. She opened it and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside.

‘I was at the gym,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘It was in the evening.’ She sucked in a lungful of nicotine then expelled it into the cool morning air. ‘Martin went ballistic when I got home. Thought the whole thing was a stunt. Some little billet-doux from you to me, in code.’

‘Ah, yes.’ He shivered at the thought that Kessler might have binned the message.

Chrissie had her back to him still. There was something he didn’t want to ask but knew he had to.

‘How are things with Martin?’

She turned slowly, then leaned against the window sill.

‘I made my choice back in midsummer, Sam,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry, but it was the right choice.’

There it was. Quite unequivocal.

‘Ah. Well bully for you, then.’

He cast his mind back to the day in June when she’d asked him to meet her in the middle of Barnes Common. A meeting in the open for once, at which she’d said her husband had found out about their affair and had told her she had to choose. A brief and bitter encounter, witnessed from afar by curious dog-walkers and, Sam had discovered a few minutes later, by Martin Kessler himself, watching from a car.

He hadn’t seen Chrissie since that day. Not until this morning.

Sam stood up again, trying to ignore the protests from his shins. He looked down at his suitcase. ‘I shall now get dressed,’ he announced determinedly.

Chrissie took a last puff on the cigarette then threw it out of the window. Pulling her mouth into a tight smile, she came towards him and slipped her arms round his waist. She touched her soft, tanned cheek to his, taking care not to press her body against his burns. She smelled of smoke and perfume. To him it was a sexual smell that was uniquely hers.

‘Shall I tell you the truth, lover?’ she whispered by his ear. ‘It’s been hell. Absolute bloody hell. I’ve missed you dreadfully. But—’

‘You took the right decision,’ he interjected. One that had never made sense to him after all her talk of divorcing Martin.

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘As I told you, I need Martin, Sam. I don’t want to but I do. And he needs me. And I’ve promised to be good. A promise I mean to keep.’

‘Fine.’ Couldn’t be clearer.

He took her by the shoulders and edged her out of his way. He stared at the closed suitcase on the floor, wondering whether he was capable of bending down to open it without falling over. Chrissie saw his dilemma, crouched and unzipped the lid for him.

‘They’ve folded everything so neatly,’ she murmured. ‘Such thoughtful jailers. D’you have any preference for a shirt?’

The concept of wearing his own clothes again gave him unexpected pleasure. Chrissie’s fresh-washed smell, however, was a sharp reminder of his own pressing need for a clean-up.

‘I think I’ll take a shower first,’ he told her.

‘You can’t.’ She pointed at his shins. ‘You’ll get those dressings all wet. You could sit on the edge of a bath with your legs outside and do a sponge wash. I’ll help you. D’you know where the bathroom is?’

‘No. And I can manage thanks.’ He didn’t want her fiddling around with him when he was naked.

He opened the bedroom door. Mowbray’s was a small, modern house with a narrow landing. He moved along it, touching the wall for support until he found the bathroom. Tiled in pink and white it had a small tub and a hand shower. He knew Chrissie was right behind him and he half-closed the door to keep her out. Some odd sense of propriety told him that if they weren’t having sex any more she wasn’t entitled to see his genitals. He slipped the white cotton pants down over the bandages on his shins, then tried to lift one leg while balancing on the other, but the pain became excruciating.

‘Fuck!’ He fell against the wall.

He heard the door swing open behind him. ‘You halfwit,’ Chrissie clucked. ‘Let me help you.’

He perched on the edge of the bath as she’d suggested and allowed her to untangle the shorts from his ankles. He saw her shoot a searching glance at the hairy tangle of his groin, as if checking for damage.

‘They didn’t . . .?’

‘No.’

She remained crouched in front of him, looking up into his eyes.

‘Good,’ she mouthed, grinning in that silly way she’d often grinned when they were about to have sex.

But they weren’t.

She stood up again. ‘You’re a lot thinner,’ she told him.

‘It’s the diet I was on. Might write it up as a paperback and make my fortune.’

His weak joke made her smile. But then, she’d always laughed at his jokes, however feeble. ‘You’re looking good,’ he added, even though he seemed to think her stomach wasn’t quite as flat as it used to be. All those dinners out with her husband, no doubt. ‘Nice suit.’

‘It’s Prada,’ she answered, smoothing it down.

The label meant nothing to him, but he knew it would mean a lot to her. She’d always had expensive tastes in clothes.

He turned round and ran the bath water until it was warm.

‘I wish you’d let me help,’ she pleaded.

Twisting to reach the taps had caused a twinge in his kidneys. Every movement he made seemed to hurt.

‘Well, all right.’ Time he stopped being childish. ‘Thanks.’

She took off her jacket and hung it on the hook on the door. Then she searched the cupboard over the basin and amongst bottles of baby oil and skin lotion found some shampoo. Wrapping a towel round her waist to protect her skirt from splashes, she wet his thick, dark hair with the hand shower and massaged the shampoo into it, her long fingers lovingly re-exploring the shape of his head as if recovering a half-lost memory. She worked the shampoo down to his neck and shoulders.

‘You’re so tense,’ she breathed. ‘Your neck muscles are like a statue’s.’

‘I can think of a nice way to loosen them,’ he murmured, reaching up to hold her hand against his neck.

‘Sam . . .’

With a snort of a laugh she took her hands away. Picking up the shower, she rinsed his head. Then she laid it in the bath and stood back.

‘If you’re going to be like that, I think I’d better leave it to you to wash the rest.’

She folded her arms and watched as he soaped the more intimate parts of his body. When he’d almost done, she took the sponge from him and dabbed at his back, biting her lip at the extent of the bruising she saw there. By the time the washing was complete, there was water all over the floor.

‘I’ll mop it up in a minute,’ she told him.

She took a towel from the rail and draped it over his shoulders. Her hands hovered for a few moments. If he’d been facing her he would have seen the indecision in her eyes. Making up her mind, she pressed her body against his, hugging him from behind as tightly as she dared. Her mouth reached the level of his shoulders.

‘I haven’t half missed you,’ she whispered, sighing.

Sam knew that nothing had really changed in her, mind and body still pulling in opposite directions. And the body had usually won. A woman who wanted it all, whatever the consequences. He knew then that he could persuade her if he tried. He knew it for a certainty. And why not? Why shouldn’t they make love, even if it were for old time’s sake.

‘They’d written you off, lover.’

Her words sliced through his thoughts.

‘Who had?’

‘The Firm.’

He swallowed hard. He’d expected it – denying spies when they got into trouble was the name of the game – but to hear it confirmed that SIS had been ready to let him die was still shocking.

‘They’d got the denials all prepared,’ she continued softly, still clinging to him, ‘for when the Iraqis paraded you in front of the press. You were dead meat, Sam.’

He didn’t need to know this. So why was she telling him?

‘And? What changed it?’ he croaked. ‘What swung it my way?’

She clung to him harder than ever, her chin hooked onto his collar bone.

‘I changed it. I told Martin I’d divorce him if you died.’

Slowly he twisted round. He stared at her in astonishment. There was, he supposed, some daft female logic in what she’d just said.

‘You’d divorce him if I was dead? But you weren’t prepared to do it when I was living and breathing and wanting you to?’

She shrugged and looked down at the floor. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but then what she felt seldom did.

‘Well anyway,’ he breathed, nonplussed. ‘Thanks. Thanks for saving my life.’ He began to dry himself.

She folded her arms as if feeling the need to get in control again.

‘Well,’ she added, deciding to make light of it, ‘I suppose I did owe it to you, since you saved my life.’

He watched her fingering the long strands of hair that curved down to beneath her jaw line. They were dark and damp from being pressed against his wet shoulder.

‘You kept me sane when Martin was driving me mad,’ she explained. ‘And you took the flak on the Kiev cockup.’

She was referring to a drugs investigation they’d both been involved in a year ago which had gone sour.

‘And you took it pretty well when . . . when I had to give you up,’ she concluded pointedly.

Well? She had no idea how unwell he’d taken it.

‘Ah, yes.’

Was that it? Was this the other reason she’d come here, he wondered cynically? To make sure he knew that it was she who’d saved his life? That she’d repaid all debts to him?

‘But above all, Sam,’ she added, noting the incredulity on his face, ‘I couldn’t let them kill you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I mean, could I? You knew that. That’s the real reason you gave my phone number to your pigeon.’

She was right of course. Their eyes locked. They had the measure of one another.

‘There is one other thing I want to say,’ she declared softly, looking down. ‘Just for the record.’

‘What?’

‘All those things I said to you when we broke up – I meant them. All of them.’

Meant that despite deciding that from now on she had to be faithful to her husband, it was still Sam she really loved and always would.

He stopped himself from asking her again. She’d explained why she’d chosen Martin instead of him, even if it defied logic.

‘Thanks a million, love.’ He pulled open the bathroom door and stumbled back to the little bedroom with its rabbit wallpaper.

Chrissie followed a few minutes later, wiping up his wet footprints on the woodblock floor with the towel she’d used to mop up in the bathroom.

‘I expect you’ll need to be on your way,’ Sam mouthed when he heard her come in behind him. He was halfway through dressing.

‘That’s all right. You said you were hungry. I’ll cook you something.’

‘No need,’ he told her, still with his back towards her. ‘I’m sure you’ve got other things to do.’

‘Sam . . .’ Her voice cracked as if he’d hurt her. ‘I’ve got time. I don’t need to be at the airport until midday. I’d rather be here with you.’

He completed the zipping of his trousers and turned round to find her standing very close to him. Her lips were slightly apart, her eyes half-closed. He disengaged his brain and let his arms take the decision, pulling her towards him. He touched his lips to hers and felt her breath tremble. Then he kissed her greedily like he used to, feeling her body mould to his as if it were a second skin. Her hips responded to his. He knew his wants were matched by hers. Pure chemistry, like always. Then, to his surprise she pushed him back.

‘God I’ve missed your kisses,’ she whispered, closing her eyes. ‘Missed them terribly. But . . .’ She shook her head as if wondering how she was going to win the fight going on inside her. ‘But I really have promised to be good.’ She turned away from him and moved towards the door. ‘And now I’m going to make you some breakfast.’ She glanced back with a mischievous smile. ‘At least then I’ll have satisfied one of your appetites.’

The kitchen was little larger than a galley, fitted out with neat lime-washed cupboards and a shiny marble worktop. He sat at the small plastic-covered table while she checked out the options.

‘There’s eggs and tomatoes,’ she told him, her head in the fridge. ‘Would an omelette suit?’

‘Fine.’

As she opened and closed cupboards looking for a frying pan, Sam tried to recall the last time she’d cooked him a meal. She found a glass bowl, broke three eggs into it and beat them with a fork. Then she cut up some tomatoes while the rings heated up on the cooker. The smell of the cooking fired up his appetite. She put on a pan of water and found coffee and a filter.

It felt odd sitting here with her like this. Like being a proper couple, but not.

‘Never seen you this domesticated before,’ he remarked.

‘That’s because you were always so determined to use the limited time we spent together in other ways, my darling,’ she riposted.

‘I seem to remember that determination was mutual.’

‘Well, I can hardly deny that. But there was another reason. I always had the distinct impression you didn’t like me in your kitchen. Afraid I’d scratch the non-stick off your pans or something.’

‘Nonsense.’

She served the omelette on a plate painted with flowers which looked Italian and hand-made.

‘Got nice taste, Mrs Mowbray has,’ Chrissie remarked. She turned her head as if listening. ‘Where is she, by the way?’

‘In England. Their daughter’s at school there.’

She sat down opposite him and watched him eat.

‘This is good,’ he told her.

He felt she was observing him. Like a doctor studying a patient – or an inquisitor working out what approach to take.

‘How bad was Baghdad?’

He glanced up. Her face had an odd, bruised look, as if in some way she felt responsible for what had happened to him.

‘It wasn’t nice,’ he answered.

‘No. I’ve gathered that much. They interrogated you for a long time?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did they ask?’

He hesitated. She was approaching forbidden ground again. But he could tell her some of it.

‘Well, a man approached me in the hotel. He whispered something to me. The interrogator wanted to know what it was.’

‘And that “something” was to do with biological weapons?’

‘Yes. The man mentioned anthrax.’ No harm in telling her that.

‘Anthrax!’ Her alarm surprised him. ‘But what exactly? He gave you details about an attack being planned?’

‘Not details.’

‘Well, what did he say then?’

‘Chrissie . . . I can’t go into this.’

She looked uncomfortable and began twisting the diamond and ruby ring on her wedding finger. ‘No. No, of course you can’t.’

Sam finished eating. He could see there was more she wanted to know.

‘When they arrested you, I get the impression they knew who you were – is that right?’

‘They knew precisely. They had my real name.’

She put a hand to her mouth. ‘But how? Any ideas?’

‘None whatsoever.’

She took in a deep breath. ‘That must have been one hell of a shock.’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ll go mad in London.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

She was breathing faster than before, as if nervous for him. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts and noticed a couple of buttons had come undone on her blouse.

‘And later,’ she asked after a while, ‘did it ever get so bad that you thought you might not—’

‘Yes. I got pretty low,’ he interrupted euphemistically. He wasn’t going to tell her just how low he’d got in that stinking, shit-caked cell. Despair like that was shaming to look back on. Best not talked about. Best not even remembered.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Wasn’t your doing, sweetheart,’ he replied dismissively. He didn’t want her pity.

‘No. I know it wasn’t. But I’m still sorry.’

They drank the coffee she’d made.

‘I can’t tell you how good that was,’ Sam murmured, pushing away the plate. ‘I feel almost human again.’ He stroked his chin. ‘Could do with a shave though.’ Two days since a razor crossed his skin – or was it three?

She reached over and touched his hand. ‘Won’t you tell me about it? It might help to talk.’

‘No.’

She took her hand back as if his refusal hurt. She looked down at her long, slim fingers with their neat clear-lacquered nails. Her hair fell forward covering much of her face. She tossed it back but kept her eyes down. The set of her mouth conveyed a sadness which he’d seen before from time to time and never fully understood.

‘Trespassers keep out,’ she murmured.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Sometimes you draw a circle round yourself, Sam. A circle nobody’s allowed to cross.’

She stood up and moved his plate to the sink. He watched her as she rinsed it. She was right of course. He did treasure his personal space. He was far from sure he could ever share his life fully with a woman. But whatever the qualities such a woman would need to have, Chrissie had come closer than any other – because of how they’d been in bed, and because of how it felt just to be with her.

Watching her leaning forward at the sink, he couldn’t stop himself thinking about what was underneath the neat skirt and blouse. He pictured her firm, round arse and slender thighs; the long, downy back. He looked at her hair and knew that beneath its chestnut layers there were cirrus-cloud wisps of a paler colour at the nape.

She finished at the sink and turned round. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘What I always think when I look at you,’ he answered, smiling.

‘Sam . . .’ She came round behind his chair and put her arms round his neck. ‘What am I going to do about you?’

‘I could make a suggestion or two.’

For a short while she remained still, holding her breath. Then she let out a long sigh and stood up straight again, her hands moving to his shoulders.

‘You’re so tense,’ she whispered. ‘I can still feel those knots.’ Her thumbs kneaded gently at the base of his neck. ‘I suppose I could . . .’

‘What?’

‘. . . give you a little massage. Purely therapeutic, you understand.’ But the tremor in her voice told him it might be otherwise.

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve got great, hard lumps that need seeing to. Don’t have to be a professional masseuse to feel them.’

Too right, thought Sam.

‘You’d have to try to empty your mind, you know . . .’

‘Meaning?’

It was a few seconds before she answered. ‘Meaning you’d have to forget it’s me.’

He swallowed. What was she on about?

‘And how do I do that?’

‘I don’t know. That’s for you to work out.’

He heard a rising excitement in her voice, as if caught up by some idea.

‘Think of me as some professional therapist.’ Her fingers worked away as she spoke. ‘Hands touching you, but not my hands. Not my body . . .’

He closed his eyes and tried to put his brain in neutral. If she wanted it to be a game then a game it would be – just so long as she understood where it was heading.

Suddenly she stopped the movement of her hands. She slipped her arms round him again and kissed his neck. ‘The masseuse says you’ll have to get those clothes off, mister.’

‘What are we doing, Chrissie?’ he murmured.

‘Chrissie? I’m not Chrissie, remember? Chrissie’s the one who’s made a promise to her husband.’ She gave a little laugh. But a laugh with pain in it. ‘How long do we have?’

‘Quentin said a couple of hours . . .’

‘. . . about an hour ago.’

‘Yes.’

She kissed him on the top of his head.

‘Then I don’t think we should waste any of it.’

Back up in the child’s bedroom, her mouth opened to him and he kissed her. He felt the press of her stomach against his and smoothed his hands down her back and over the curve of her behind. Then, after a few seconds, she pushed him gently away.

‘No. Not like that. It’s got to be my way.’ She put a finger to his lips.

‘Chrissie, for God’s sake. Stop farting about.’

She made a clicking noise with her tongue and walked out along the landing to the bathroom, returning with a dry towel and a bottle of baby oil.

‘For the massage,’ she explained.

He narrowed his eyes.

‘Trust me.’

She spread the towel on the bed and helped him to remove his polo shirt and trousers.

‘God, those bruises,’ she hissed, turning him round. ‘I can’t believe they did this to you.’

He lay on his front and she manoeuvred his arms until they were stretched out by his head. Then, using the oil as a lubricant, her hands kneaded at his knotted muscles with a skill that surprised him. As she worked her way down the sinews of his back, carefully avoiding the parts that had been beaten, he felt his body begin to relax for the first time in a long time.

‘You’re supposed to use aromatic oils for stress,’ she murmured, trickling more oil onto his shoulder blades. ‘Lavender, hyssop, that sort of thing.’

She smoothed the unction round the curving spars of his ribcage and along the sides of his muscular back as if moulding a pot on a wheel. A tenderness was taking over in her touch. Less therapeutic and more sensual. Her breathing became shorter and uneven. Then, abruptly, the massaging stopped altogether, her hands holding on to the sides of his body as if drawing on its energy.

‘Sam . . .’ Her voice had become husky. ‘It mustn’t be me. You understand? Oh God,’ she sighed, ‘don’t make me explain. Just tell me that you won’t think of it as me here.’

‘Chrissie . . .’ he growled.

‘Not me, Sam. Not Chrissie. Just say yes, lover.’

‘Yes.’

Her hands left him and he heard her fingers fiddling with the buttons of her blouse. Then the snick of her bra strap disconnecting and the purr of the zip on her skirt. He began to turn over to look at her but suddenly her arms were alongside his, her breath warm against the back of his neck. He wanted to face her, to lock their mouths together and press his erection against her belly, but her weight held him where he was. He felt her bare nipples brush lightly against his shoulder blades, moving in loving circles against his oiled skin. In his mind he let himself drift back, pretending the break in their relationship had been a dream, a nightmare.

‘Feeling your body like this . . .’ she whispered, close to his ear.

He could feel her heart thudding against his ribs. He pulled one of her hands to his mouth and kissed it with the strength of a bite.

‘Sam . . .’

Her voice sounded like a plea. But for what? To sate the hunger he knew would be as strong as his own by now, or a plea for him to take her back? He needed to know. To see the answer in her eyes. He tried to turn over, but the pain in his kidneys and her weight on him stopped him.

‘Not yet, lover,’ she insisted, breathlessly. ‘You have to promise me something.’

‘What?’ he croaked. What now?

‘That you won’t look at me.’ There was an edge of dread to her voice.

‘This is getting stupid.’

‘No. It has to be that way. It can’t be me, Sam. I’ve told you that. Please. I need you to think of this as just some woman with you. Any woman. No identity. No past. No future . . .’

He understood at last. For all the time he’d known her she’d pretended things weren’t what they were. And she was pretending still. If what they were about to do had no more meaning for him than if he were doing it with a whore, then it would be okay. Her promise to her husband would somehow remain intact.

No more meaning than with a whore. But no less either. And that would be enough for now.

‘Okay,’ he breathed. ‘I’ll keep my eyes closed.’

‘No. Eyes closed is not enough.’ Her voice had a tightness about it that he knew well. She wanted him inside her now. Wanted the rush of orgasmic blood that would blind her to all reality. ‘I have to cover your eyes,’ she told him.

A blindfold. Could she have suggested that if she’d known he’d spent the past ten days with a hood over his head? What game was this? What extraordinary game of self-delusion was she involved in?

‘Whatever you say,’ he mouthed.

She bent down to the floor and picked up the hand-towel she’d used to dry the splashes he’d made after his wash. Then she slipped it under his head and tied it behind his neck.

‘Now, turn over,’ she whispered.

As he rolled onto his back, he reached out for her shoulders but felt his hands pinned down onto the bed.

‘Please,’ she breathed. ‘There’s a massage underway here. I have to do your pectorals.’

Giving in reluctantly, he felt a trickle of oil on his sternum, then her hands spreading the liquid over his chest, avoiding with delicate care the blisters from the cigarette burns. Her fingers brushed against his nipples and circled them.

Deciding the time had come for him to take control, he reached a hand up to the back of her neck, forked his fingers through her hair and pulled her mouth down to his. As his tongue sought out hers, she breathed in sharply and squirmed against him. After a while she pulled back. He felt for her breasts, locating the bud-hard nipples, then raised his head and took one in his mouth. It had the sweet taste of the oil she’d used on his body.

‘Oh shit,’ she gasped, clasping his head to her. ‘Oh God how I’ve missed you!’

Then she broke away again. He heard her get off the bed and remove her pants. He had an urge to rip off the blindfold and let his eyes gorge themselves on this body that he knew