As the Roatán-Miami flight became airborne, Olivia could not quite believe either what had happened, or that she had got away. She felt as if she had been under attack from a wild animal, burglar or violent storm, which suddenly, for no apparent reason, had gone away. It was not reassuring. She tried to tell herself that it was all her doing, that it was her brilliant psychological manipulation of Feramo which had won her her freedom. But she knew it wasn’t. It was just luck, and luck could change.
There was one thing of which she was certain: she had been given a warning and a reprieve. She had moved too close to the flame and, fortunately, had escaped only slightly singed. Now it was time to go home and play safe.
Her confidence improved in direct proportion to her distance from Honduras. Falcon, my arse, she told herself as she boarded the Miami-to-London flight with thirty seconds to spare. As the plane started its descent over Sussex, she was overcome with tearful relief. She looked down over rolling green hills, damp earth and chestnut trees, cows, lichen-covered churches, half-timbered houses, wiped a tear from her cheek and told herself she was safe.
But as she came through passport control and saw soldiers with guns, she remembered that you were never safe. People clustered around the television screens on the way through to the baggage hall. There had been another terror alert a few hours previously. The London Underground was closed. As she entered Customs, the doors to the Arrivals area opened and she saw the excited faces of waiting people and found herself irrationally hoping that someone would be waiting for her, someone’s face breaking into a smile, hurrying up to get her case and take her home; or at the very least that there would be someone with a card saying OLIVIAJEWELS and the name of a minicab company. Pull yourself together, she said to herself. You don’t want to be taken home to cook supper in Worksop, do you? But, actually, someone was waiting for her. She was pulled over at Customs, strip-searched, handcuffed and taken to the interrogation center in Terminal Four.
Two hours later she was still there, her spy equipment spread out on the table before her: spyglass, spy ring, miniature camera, bug detector, pepper-spray pen. Her laptop had been taken away for examination. She felt as though she had gone over the story three hundred times. “I’m a freelance journalist. I work for Elan magazine and the Sunday Times, sometimes. I went to Honduras to cover the cheap diving.”
The officials’ questions about Feramo made her nervous. How did they know? Had the Embassy tipped them off? HM Customs were barking up completely the wrong tree anyway. They thought he was trafficking drugs and that she was his accomplice.
“Did he give you his number?”
“Yes.”
“Can we take it?”
“Won’t that put me under threat?”
“We’ll make sure it won’t. Did you give him your number?”
“Nearly. I changed a couple of digits.”
“We’ll need that number as well. The one you gave him. You’re ex-directory, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Why did you continue to follow him? Are you in love with him?”
She started to tell them about her terrorism theories, but she sensed she was dealing with the wrong people. They weren’t taking her seriously. They were HM Customs and Excise. They were looking for drugs.
“I want to speak to someone from MI6,” she said. “I need a terrorism person. I need a lawyer.”
Finally, the door opened and a tall figure swept in in a flurry of perfume, hair and covetable clothes. The woman sat at the desk, bent her head, took hold of her hair and threw it back so it cascaded over her shoulders in a glossy black curtain.
“So, Olivia, we meet again. Or should I call you Rachel?”
It took Olivia a second to realize that she recognized the woman and another second to realize where from.
“Hmm,” said Olivia. “I wonder what I should call you?”