A Conflict of Interests (26 page)

"And of course you're monitoring all incoming calls to the Soviet Embassy?"

"I expect DI5 is," she said evasively. "I'd certainly be surprised if they weren't."

"So how come the Libyans are immune?"

"They aren't, but you can't bug every phone booth in London and we're pretty sure this is how Patterson has kept in touch with Jalud until now. That's why we're aiming to turn Jalud around before he decides to get in touch with him again."

"Is he pliable, this diplomat of yours?"

He was nibbling at the bait just as Vaudrey had prophesied. A few more jerks on the line and Coghill would be hooked.

"He's the original India-rubber man; twist his arm and he'll jump through a hoop."

"Something tells me I'm the man who's been elected to make him do it."

Caroline nodded. "Well, you're the obvious choice," she said. "After all, your picture has been in all the newspapers, which means Jalud will make the connection the moment he sees you."

"That should unnerve him," Coghill said drily.

"He'll be even more nervous when you get around to his sex life."

"You're taking an awful lot for granted, Miss Wentworth. Before you go overboard, I'd like to know whether or not this is a joint operation. To be even more specific, just who is going to have jurisdiction over Patterson — the Security Services or the Met?"

"We're only interested in recovering the video cassettes."

"You're ducking the question and very smoothly too." Coghill smiled. "Ever thought of going into politics, Miss Wentworth?"

"Patterson will stand trial for murder," she said firmly. "You have my word on it."

It was a spontaneous decision, the culmination of a nagging presentiment that what they were doing in the interests of the state was morally indefensible. It was also a fact that she no longer had any faith in Vaudrey's judgment. A born intriguer, he had first led her to believe that their aim was to destroy Noraid's ability to keep the IRA supplied with arms and ammunition. Then yesterday evening, in a last-ditch attempt to stifle her mounting objections, he'd told her the real objective was to gain access to the CIA computer at Langley. Whatever the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, Caroline believed the price they were paying was already far too high and the time had come to call a halt.

Coghill said, "I assume this is a covert op? I mean, Jalud would claim diplomatic immunity if we tried to interview him officially, so everything has to be off the record. Right?"

"Yes." There wasn't much else she could say.

"Maybe you're off the record too, Miss Wentworth? Maybe when this is over, you'll cease to exist?"

"I promise you it won't be like that."

"Doesn't matter anyway." Coghill jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "The Complaints Investigation Bureau has put a wiretap on my phone. That's why I repeated your name and description."

"Oh God, that's bloody marvelous," she spluttered, then shook with laughter.

"You mind sharing the joke?"

"Nicholas Vaudrey, my boss…" Caroline took a deep breath and almost choked, trying to contain her laughter. "The man who got you suspended," she gasped. "It looks as though he has dug a pit for himself."

A broad smile slowly appeared on Coghill's face. "Yes, well, I could have told him the CIB were apt to let their enthusiasm run riot, Miss Wentworth."

"Brooke," she said. "My real name is Caroline Brooke."

"It has a nice ring to it."

"So has the truth."

"What's this, a new beginning?"

"I'd like to think so."

"Good," said Coghill. "Now suppose you tell me when, where and how we're going to screw Jalud."

There was a time when he could hack thirty miles a day over rough country with a sixty-pound pack on his back, an M16 slung over one shoulder and 200 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition in bandoliers across his shoulders, but not any more. The passing years had exacted their toll so that now, a mere four hours after leaving The Red Lion hotel, Patterson felt bushed and about ready to quit. There were blisters on both soles, the back of one heel was chafed and his legs were lumps of iron. The sore feet could be attributed to a new pair of shoes which hadn't been broken in yet, but the other aches and pains were symptomatic of a man who was over the hill.

Patterson hooked both thumbs under the web straps of the rucksack to ease the weight on his back. Thirteen cassettes including the trailer he'd made for Denise Rousell, a couple of shirts, a clean change of underwear, shaving tackle, a pair of pajamas, and the rucksack felt as though it weighed a ton. Head bowed, shoulders slumped, he trudged on around a bend in the narrow lane.

The hamlet was on him before he knew it; a few houses grouped around a stagnant duck pond in the middle of the village green, a general store, a Saxon church and a pub called The Grape and Vine. The bright red telephone kiosk near the Y-junction at the far end of the green looked decidedly out of place, as did the stark bus shelter opposite the signpost. Mildenhall to the left, Chippenhurst to the right; he pulled the map out of his hip pocket, opened it out and studied it carefully. Little Fordham, he decided, then glanced across the green and saw he needn't have bothered. The village name was there in faded letters on a weather-beaten signboard above the entrance to the general store and post office.

He had covered just over nine miles since leaving Southwold Priory and was now due north of Newmarket. Nine miles in four hours. It was just as well that nobody at The Red Lion had recognized him from the Photofit; had they done so, the police would have grabbed him long ago, but as it was, he hadn't seen a single prowl car. He glanced at the pub across the village green from him, saw that it was open and made toward it. Leaving the rucksack by a table near the entrance, he went inside, ordered a beer and two ham sandwiches, then returned to the rustic bench on the forecourt.

The beer was cool, the ham lean and fresh, but he was too busy thinking to notice it. Patterson remembered one of his former colleagues in the CIA who'd served with the Eighth Air Force during World War II once telling him that the whole of East Anglia had been one gigantic airfield, and he could well believe it. An hour or so back, he'd passed a disused base, the runway choked with weeds, cattle grazing by the derelict control tower. He'd also seen a dozen other possible sites where a light aircraft could land and take off again without any difficulty. The pilot would have to fly in and out at treetop level to avoid being detected on the radar and he would need some kind of homing beacon, but that wasn't an insuperable problem. On the other hand, he couldn't afford to divulge the location of the pickup point until the last possible moment, and that meant he would have to acquire a two-way radio. And when you were dealing with a man like Jalud, it was also advisable to have an ace up your sleeve. The Libyans or the Russians? The old doubts returned, raising questions he couldn't answer.

Patterson finished his beer and sandwiches, hoisted the rucksack onto his back and limped across the village green toward the bright red telephone kiosk. On the flip of a coin he decided to try his luck with Denise Rousell and dialed her number. A voice he didn't recognize answered the call and said, "Cherry Tree Kennels. Can I help you?"

"My name's Henry Kingfisher," Patterson told her. "I'd like to have a word with Mrs. Beaumont?"

"One moment please."

He heard the girl put the receiver down and listened to her footsteps fading into the distance. A minute later, the silence was broken by a rapid bleeping and he fed another coin into the box. By the time she returned, it had cost him a further twenty pence to keep the line open.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Beaumont isn't available." The girl paused, then said, "Would you care to leave a message?"

"No, it's not important."

Patterson hung up and backed out of the kiosk. No two ways about it, the word had gone out that he was
persona non grata
and, like it or not, he was stuck with Jalud. Hooking his thumbs under the webbing straps, he walked up to the Y-junction and turned right for Chippenhurst.

19.

The temperature was in the high nineties, with a humidity rate to match. The lawn in front of the main building was a checkerboard of brown and green patches with deep fissures that the sprinklers had been unable to contain in the long summer drought. In the far distance, the shimmering heat waves made the thick belt of trees that screened the CIA complex from State Highway 193 seem like a desert mirage.

"It stinks, Walter. Like bad fish."

Zellick dragged his eyes away from the window and faced the assistant director. It was the third or fourth time Ensor had made the same observation and, even with the newly added simile, he was becoming a mite repetitive.

"I think we should tell this limey creep what he can do with his memorandum."

"Is that what you're going to advise the director, Frank?" Zellick drawled.

"Maybe." Ensor picked up the typewritten agreement and skimmed through it again. "If Patterson is wanted on four counts of murder one, I don't see how the hell Vaudrey can deliver him to us."

Neither did Zellick. When he'd arrived at Heathrow earlier that morning and picked up a copy of the
Guardian
from the newsstand, the banner headlines above the Photofit had nearly persuaded him to cancel his reservation on the Concorde flight to Washington. The fact that Patterson's real name had not been disclosed by the press was the main reason he'd finally boarded the plane. The other consideration was the possibility that Vaudrey might persuade the director of public prosecutions to do a deal with Patterson. Although he'd already drawn Ensor's attention to this option, he thought it advisable to mention it again.

"There's always the Broadmoor angle, Frank. A few years in a mental hospital is a whole lot better than a life sentence, and I think Patterson could buy it."

"Vaudrey's just guessing," Ensor growled. "Our man doesn't have anything to trade. Patterson knew a lot of people in the Mideast, here and in 'Nam. We drew up a list of nineteen possible suspects who are still with the Company and checked them out. Every man came through smelling like a rose. We found absolutely no evidence to indicate that a single one of them was living above his income."

"So you think there are no rotten apples in the barrel?"

"I wouldn't take any bets on that," Ensor said.

Zellick didn't blame him. No screening system was a hundred percent foolproof and the wheeler-dealers who'd made a fortune out of narcotics were professionals, people who were used to covering their tracks. All the same, Ensor was going around in circles, avoiding the real issue, and time was running out.

"I'm supposed to check in at the airport in a little over two hours from now," Zellick said tentatively. "Maybe your secretary should book me on a later flight?"

"Don't push me into making a snap decision, Walter. This whole business needs thinking about very carefully." Ensor waved the memorandum at him. "Right now, I don't see how the director can sign this document and live with it afterwards. Okay, we can pull the plug the moment we get Patterson out of England, but Vaudrey will still have a copy of the agreement and I'd like to know what he'll do with it."

The inference was very clear to Zellick. He knew Vaudrey better than anyone else in the Company and was expected to provide the answer.

"Well, I guess he might be tempted to lean on the director, threaten to blow the whistle on him if he didn't restore the computer facility, but Vaudrey must know that would never work."

"So?" Ensor said impatiently.

"So I think he's trying to lull us into a sense of false security. According to paragraph 6 of the agreement, we're not required to disclose the recognition code until Patterson arrives at a mutually agreed RV near the departure airfield. Of course, he won't be formally handed over to us until Vaudrey hears from his people in Washington that their computer is locked into our data bank and the system is functioning properly. But that's fair enough, isn't it? I mean, it's not unreasonable for the British to want some kind of safeguard."

"Right."

"And the price seems negligible from our point of view since we'll be airborne half an hour later and the facility can be terminated the moment we're clear of their air space."

"That thought had occurred to me."

"But what if we're held on the ground for a couple of hours? Vaudrey can milk an awful lot of information in that time and the beauty of it is, he knows we won't be able to do a damn thing about it."

"Yeah." Ensor nodded sagely. "If we cut the link, Vaudrey informs the police he has reason to believe we're trying to smuggle a fugitive out of the country and the end result is a major diplomatic row and the director gets fired in the process."

"And you," Zellick said.

"There'd be a whole lot of other casualties, too. You could wind up looking for another job, Walter."

In Roman times, the messenger arriving with bad news had invariably been one of the first victims of the subsequent purge. Some traditions refused to die and it seemed this custom was about to be revived.

"Maybe we should fire those nineteen suspects?" Zellick suggested drily. "Then Vaudrey wouldn't have a trump card up his sleeve and we'd be off the hook."

Although it was meant as a joke, Ensor took it seriously and considered the possibility, his lips pursed, his dark eyes glinting in the few seconds he needed to assess the pertinent factors and reach a decision.

"Unfortunately, it's not a fail-safe solution to the problem, Walter. The trouble with relying on the list is that we can never be sure we haven't overlooked somebody." Ensor smiled fleetingly. "What we need is a large slice of luck, like Patterson succumbing to a fatal heart attack."

"Before Vaudrey has a chance to interrogate him," Zellick added.

"You catch on fast, Walter."

"I do?"

"Don't go coy on me. You know very well the director will only agree to sign this memorandum if he's satisfied it will never come into effect."