The trip to London wasn’t difficult—the Harry Potterish change of trains in Staincross Minster was the only tricky part—but then Max had made the journey many times before. In his briefcase he carried a sermon that was in the middle of a good polish; he felt it was going rather well. The weather eased his journey by ignoring that morning’s forecast of rain.
Max hailed a taxi at the London station and was quickly deposited at a hotel near Thames House. From the anonymous hotel he walked to MI5 headquarters, by force of habit keeping a lookout for anyone who might be tailing him. It was a slight risk in his case, but the first rule was always to assume you were being followed and to act accordingly. Old habits from MI5 never died.
A quick pass through security before he arrived at the familiar, rather anonymous office to which he had been summoned.
“Good to see you again, Max,” said George Greenhouse, shaking Max’s hand before pointing him to a worn, comfortable seat in front of his desk. It was a dark leather chair Max recognized from years before, a chair in which he’d received his marching orders on many occasions. It was also the chair from which he’d tendered his resignation from MI5, on a black day so long ago when he’d felt he could take no more, and could only think of turning swords into plowshares. He’d recently come full circle when, in trying to escape the violence of his past, he’d inadvertently put his beloved Awena’s life at risk. It was at that moment he’d realized there was, for him, no escape.
“And I’m sure you’re wondering why I got in touch,” George continued.
“I did, rather,” said Max. “I got the message from your man Melville arranging the appointment, but he didn’t give any indication what it might be about. He said you wanted to meet for lunch, but for that you would have rung me yourself. The word ‘lunch’ coming from anyone connected with your office often meant, in my day, ‘death-defying exploit involving guns and knives.’ Am I right?”
“Quite right, Max. Although hopefully, there’s nothing that risky involved this time, and the stakes aren’t quite as high as what you’re used to: a smuggling operation, we think, but we can’t get to the bottom of who or exactly what—although almost certainly drugs are involved. Stuff turning up everywhere in London and beyond but MI6 can’t figure out the source nor the courier. Where we want to send you in is only our best guess, you understand. But in a situation where subtlety and an ability to mingle with all sorts is required, I can’t help but think of you.”
Like John le Carré, Max had been recruited while still an undergraduate at Oxford, dreaming amidst the spires, the pealing bells, the golden buildings of Cotswold stone. He’d been chosen not only for his obvious intelligence and self-possession but for a certain quality of awareness—a cognizance hard to define, but once seen, not forgotten: a quality essential for a spy. Today they would call it mindfulness and despite the word’s New Agey associations, it came closest to describing Max, thought George. Max let nothing slip past him for long.
This, thought Max, was laying it on rather thick, and immediately all his defenses against flattery went up. Max was used to being courted and sought after, and being told that he and only he could do such and such. In his duties as the Anglican priest for his tiny parish, the things that only he could do were endless, and ranged from quelling insurrections of the Nether Monkslip Book Club to convincing Miss Pitchford that Suzanna Winship had not meant to give offense at the last meeting of the Women’s Institute, although Suzanna almost certainly had intended to do so. In the case of MI5, George was surrounded by men and women every bit as capable, Max felt, as himself. This was in fact not true, and George knew precisely what he was about, for Max had been a uniquely intelligent, brave, and stalwart operative—their undercover superstar.
Max’s saving grace was his humility.
“Certainly it’s not a matter I could go into on the phone,” George continued. “I think we all have learned to our sorrow that phone calls and text messages and probably even carrier pigeons can be intercepted too easily these days. Much better to have a trusted human intermediary, wherever possible, and a face-to-face chat.”
In an office routinely swept for bugs, thought Max—an unmarked office nearly as illusory as the rooms of 221B Baker Street. If one didn’t know better, the outer door to George’s inner sanctum might lead to a broom closet. Max waited, remaining quite still, the expression on his handsome face open, attentive, and alert to nuance. George launched into one of his little preambles. Max was used to this, and knew that George was simply gauging the mood of his audience before he got round to the point. As for Max, he had been expecting this day when he would be called back into the field, although perhaps not quite so soon as it had come.
“You’ve seen the papers?” George said at last, winding down after a foray into the weather and who might win the FA Cup. He’d asked Max about life in the village and laughed appreciatively at Max’s description of the fallout from the water balloon–firing catapult on the village green for the last Harvest Fayre, which had demolished the Women’s Institute’s edible flowers demonstration. George further was to gather that the struggles for supremacy over the Bring-and-Buy table were becoming the stuff of legend.
But George’s animated, bushy eyebrows settled down as the topic took a serious turn, finally lowering over the piercing black eyes that had earned him a raft of nicknames over the years. Max’s own favorite was “The Demon Fielder,” although he still had only the vaguest idea what that meant. Perhaps some holdover from George’s days on the cricket fields. “I’m referring to the news concerning a drowning in your neck of the woods—to mix my metaphors.”
“You don’t mean the actress who drowned off a yacht anchored near Monkslip-super-Mare? Margot Browne? Why, yes. Yes, I did see the news of that.”
“I do mean Margot Browne—one and the same. As far as the outside world is concerned at the moment, she simply fell off a yacht and drowned. Got a bit tipsy, the winds were a bit stronger than normal for the time of year. By some of the more dramatic accounts she might almost have been blown overboard, caught by a rogue wave. It’s a common enough ending in those waters, however. Of course the nearer you get to Cornwall the more these incidents seem to occur.”
“Yes. Quite. The waters can be terribly hazardous, even in summer.”
Max was assembling in his mind everything he could remember of the news story. He’d not paid that much attention at the time: It had been one more tragedy in a newspaper that more and more seemed to compete for space over which terrible story to highlight that day. As he recalled, the actress had last been seen at a dinner party on board the yacht of famed film director Romero Farnier. Romero, it was noted, liked playing the host; he collected people, surrounding himself with all sorts who interested him, generally show-business types plus, for added sparkle, whatever minor nobs he could manage to scrape together. According to later reports, Margot’s complete absence from the ship wasn’t noticed until the next morning—noticed by her “traveling companion” Jake Larsson, identified further only as “an actor.” Margot had in fact been swept nearly out to sea at some point during the night, only to be washed up with the seaweed on the incoming tide in the harbor of Monkslip-super-Mare.
Max relayed this summary, adding: “But she didn’t fall?”
“Not according to the preliminaries, and not according to our agent, who was traveling aboard the yacht—traveling undercover as a guest of the director, moving under the name Belinda Bower. Her real name is Patrice Logan. I think you may know Patrice?” George’s deliberately bland expression revealed what he knew full well: Max had once known Patrice, and very well indeed.
Oh, God. Max had not seen this coming. A long-ago memory surfaced of full soft breasts pressed against his back as he slept in his old London flat. Sometimes he would wake in the morning with his arm numb where her weight had rested on it all night; he’d not wanted to wake her by attempting to disentangle himself. Then there was that shampoo she always used that smelled of green apples, a scent that could still catch him unawares if he smelled it on another woman. Next to Awena, she had the most beautiful long hair he’d ever seen.
There had been those nights when the two of them staggered in, already barely existing on just a few hours of sleep, but still with more than enough energy to make love. The closer their jobs had brought them to danger on any given day, it seemed, the more fuel was added to their desire for each other. The greatest aphrodisiac was the certain knowledge that every day might be the last. But now—he had not in fact thought of Patrice in some years, certainly not since he’d met Awena, but immediately his memories of Patrice and her remarkable beauty flooded in. It was just like watching an old black-and-white film, something with a suitable backdrop of one of the world wars, grainy footage of longing good-byes, of star-crossed lovers clinging together at deserted train stations.
“Yes,” said Max. “Yes, I knew Patrice from when I was in Five. Actively in Five, I mean.”
George cleared his throat. He didn’t like putting Max on the spot, but it was necessary to clarify the relationship right away so as not to compromise the mission. If Max’s current personal situation might be affected, confounding the investigation, he, George, might have to think again. This was Max, after all, a good man and true, but Max was only human. And his wife Awena, presumably, was only human as well. Empath, clairvoyant, New Agey healer, or no.
Max meanwhile was deciding how far discretion might be confused with deliberate muddying of the waters, when George saved him the trouble, saying, “You were an item once?”
Max nodded. “A bit more than that, sir.” The “sir” was a holdover from former days but calling the head of MI5 “George” was something he couldn’t often bring himself to do. “We were in fact quite close; we lived together for a time.” The truth was they two had collided like meteors glancing off each other before spinning off onto different paths in space. The impact of Patrice on his life had been immense, intense—perhaps too much so. Definitely, too much so. “Too hot, not to cool down,” as the Cole Porter song went.
But Max thought he would spare George these little amorous details. Instead he said, “You know how it is: You forge a very strong bond with a person who understands what it is you do for a living, because they are in the same business you are, taking all the same risks. And there is no one else for miles round who could possibly understand. Certainly there is no one to confide in on the outside, living in that bubble as we did.” This was as nice a way as he could find to say, “There is less lying involved that way,” because George was married to a civilian, and presumably could never share exactly how he spent his time. The people in his life who meant the most to him—his wife and family—were necessarily in the dark about much of what he did all day. Max doubted he could entirely hide his doings from Awena, even to protect her from the evil he well knew was out there. She had that preternatural ability to see through lies and subterfuge, which was unusual in a woman of such integrity. Generally, in Max’s experience, it took one to know one.
The need to lie was the downside to working in Five. The struggle to cling to honor in the face of an existence grounded in subterfuge. Many had failed to adapt to such dual existences, and many a marriage had come unstuck because of it.
“So, yes,” Max continued. “Once we were close. But there’s a lot of water under that bridge.”
George nodded sagely. “I thought so, but I wanted to be sure. She asked for you specifically to be brought in.”
Max had in fact been the subject of intense discussion between the two of them. Patrice was especially caught up by the fact that Max had joined the priesthood, in a reaction to the death of his friend and colleague Paul. He had decided on the priesthood long years after he and Patrice had split up, so she knew it was nothing to do with her. But she, who knew Max so well, or thought she had, found the whole thing rather unbelievable.
“Why didn’t he just join the circus?” had been her scoffing comment. “Or the foreign legion?” Making George think how little she had understood the many layers that went into the makeup of Max Tudor.
“How very flattering,” Max murmured now, astonished by the news of Patrice’s request. “I don’t see how I can help, but of course I’m willing to try. She was a top-notch agent, and if the case puzzles her—well, I must admit I’m intrigued. I mean, if she’s not bothered by the old association.”
“I think you’ll find that won’t be a problem,” said George.