26

Freddy Towers glanced up from the hand-written statement. ‘You instructed him to return to work as normal on Monday and await further instructions?’

‘I did.’

‘What sort of shape was he in?’

‘No visible trauma. He’ll live.’

Towers nodded and continued to scour the two sheets of paper for anything he had missed.

Black had released his surviving captive in a street close to his home only forty-five minutes before, yet already the day’s events had taken on a surreal quality like something he had dreamed rather than acted out. They were sitting in the living room that doubled as a study in Towers’ Lancaster Gate flat. The decor was contemporary and the furniture comfortable, but the plain magnolia walls were absent of pictures. The only clue as to the personality of the apartment’s inhabitant were the titles of the books in the small bookcase – political memoirs, military biographies and a few light novels. It reminded Black of a government safe house and suggested to him that Towers had another home elsewhere.

Towers looked up thoughtfully. ‘Drink?’

‘No, thank you.’ He planned to drive back to Oxford and knew that one drink would lead to two, then more.

‘Pity about Quinn. Now he’s gone, they’ll suspect we’re on to them.’

‘Why not use Clayton to feed in a cover story? He can tell Drecker he’s been posted abroad. Covert ops.’

‘We’ll come up with something,’ Towers grunted, his mind already moving on. ‘I can’t believe Clayton was prepared to sell intelligence knowing so little about the buyer. If we’re to believe his story, she could have been anyone.’

‘Put yourself in his shoes. Sick wife, two young children, on his uppers. Meets an attractive woman at a conference, caves in to lust then faces the choice between selling secrets and destroying his marriage at the worst possible moment.’

‘All brains and no judgement.’

‘Like so many we’ve known.’

Towers raised his eyebrows in weary acknowledgement.

The banality of Clayton’s account was what made it so credible. Almost exactly a year before, he had been attending a weekend gathering of international cyber security experts at Edinburgh University. An attractive woman in her late thirties, who gave her name as Susan Drecker, seduced him at a party, assuring him that she was married to a colonel in the US Army and was interested only in a one-night stand. She told him she was a vice president of a major security contractor but didn’t specify which one. Clayton had half suspected that, like him, she was a government agent sent to listen to impenetrable presentations and had gravitated towards a kindred spirit. Five weeks later he had been holidaying with his family and American relations in Cape Cod. He was stepping out of South Wellfleet General Store having taken his children to buy ice cream, when Drecker climbed out of an SUV and handed him an envelope containing a flash drive. Along with video footage of their antics in a hotel room it contained photographs of his wife and children going about their daily lives. There was a phone number for him to ring. He called later that day and Drecker issued her first demand for information. Over the following eleven months he had met with her five times, handing over a total of forty files. On each occasion he had been paid $20,000 by bank transfer. Among the files had been details of two of the four missing scientists. Clayton had been unable to say where they had gone or who had taken them, insisting that Drecker had told him nothing. He had been so easily duped that Black believed him.

‘Maybe he is as stupid as all that,’ Towers said. ‘It’s easy to forget how bloody feeble some of these young agents are. Promoted to sensitive positions with virtually no field experience whatever.’ He sighed and sipped diluted single malt from a cheap tumbler. ‘Doesn’t bode well for the rest of ’5. Doesn’t bode well at all. They’re a shambles.’

He lapsed into gloomy meditation.

Black was tired. He was eager for the meeting to be over and for Towers’ assurance that his obligations were at an end. He wanted to wipe today from his memory and lose himself in writing his paper.

‘What do you make of this woman, Drecker?’ Towers asked.

‘I’d have said CIA but for the way they murdered Finn. It was a bit messy for them.’

‘It may have been a feint.’

Black shook his head.

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘We’re still friends, Freddy. Despite everything. The politicians might fall out and insult each other but as far as I can see we continue to cooperate from top to bottom.’

Towers appeared reluctantly to concede. Several decades of butting heads with American allies had left him with a level of mistrust which Black had always considered close to irrational. He suspected that the truth was that Towers had always been jealous of the US’s superior resources and the swagger that naturally accompanied them. On joint operations British officers were invariably forced to play second fiddle.

‘There was a woman’s blood on Finn’s body. What do you make of that?’

‘There’s no reason to suppose it’s Drecker’s,’ Black answered.

‘Suppose that it was and she’s not CIA. The pool of suspects narrows rather, doesn’t it? We’re talking ex-military or ex-CIA now working for an outfit with plenty of money and reach, not to mention ambition. And if you are such an outfit, who are you going to hire – only the best and most ruthless, surely? Now the pool is even smaller – a tiny group of highly mercenary, battled-hardened female operatives of American origin. In Britain we would struggle to produce even one candidate to fit that profile. I’m sure even the Americans wouldn’t have more than half a dozen.’

Black felt the stirring of a memory. An exchange of fire in an Iraqi street during the chaotic free-for-all of 2005. Saddam was gone and every neighbourhood had seemed to spawn its own militia.

Towers’ antennae twitched. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘Try me –’

‘April ’05. Baghdad. We had a tip-off that members of the Mahdi Army were going to rob a bank in downtown Baghdad. I led a detachment and threw up a roadblock to catch them. Finn was there.’

Towers nodded, trying to isolate the engagement from a thousand others over which he had presided that year.

‘They came, but it wasn’t the Mahdis. It was a group of Western irregulars with more weapons than Delta Force. Eight of them, in two armoured pick-ups with heavy machine guns and RPGs.’

‘Rings a bell. Rogue security contractors, weren’t they? Moonlighting meatheads from Bush’s friends in Blackwater.’

‘Probably, though we could never confirm it. They got away and the Americans claimed the bodies of the two we shot. One of the fighters in the lead truck was a woman in her twenties. She was in the passenger seat with a Hechler and Koch. The only time I’ve faced a fully armed female combatant.’

‘You didn’t shoot her?’

‘Didn’t get a chance. We were outgunned and scattered.’

Towers considered this for a moment, got to his feet and stepped out on to the balcony that overlooked a small garden at the rear of the block. Black remained in his armchair, uncomfortably aware that Towers was out there thinking.

‘I ought to be going, Freddy,’ Black said after several minutes had passed. ‘I’m sure you and your people will track her down.’ He stood up and shook the stiffness from his limbs. ‘I don’t like to press the point, but when can I expect payment?’

He was met with silence. A brood. Always an ominous sign.

‘And what would you like me to tell Kathleen Finn? I’ll have to speak to her soon. She wants answers.’

Still no reply. Black sighed impatiently and glanced through the doors to see Towers staring intently into space, the wisps of grey hair on his balding crown waving gently in the breeze.

‘Freddy?’

‘Hmm?’ His head shifted slightly but he didn’t look round. ‘Oh, yes. Tuesday. You can expect it Tuesday.’

Black waited for some acknowledgement or word of thanks for his work. None came.

‘Goodbye, then.’ Black headed for the door.

‘I don’t have people, Leo. That’s what I’m for. People can’t be trusted. I cleaned up Quinn’s flat myself.’ Towers’ disembodied voice travelled through from the balcony. ‘The girl was fine, by the way. Poor thing was terrified.’

Black exited the sitting room into the hall.

‘I’d appreciate your help, Leo. We need to find Drecker. The Committee will want it done quickly.’

Black reached the front door and hesitated, fighting the urge to turn around. Then, in a flash of realization, he pictured himself as a dog that had learned to sit, stay and attack on his master’s command.

‘They’re mocking us. We’ve become weak. The timber’s so worm-eaten it’s about to crumble away. How many times did I say this day would come?’

‘There must be others, Freddy. I’ve had my fill of killing.’ He let himself out.

Towers heard the sound of the door closing and felt the cool breeze playing over his face. He would have preferred a compliant Black, but there were still ways to achieve it. He would give him a little time to recover, then confront him with the inevitable.