At Risk (7 page)

“So, Liz, how are you?”

“I’m . . . fine,” she answered. “Thank you very much.”

“Good.”

She looked sideways at him. He was wearing a pale blue shirt, open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled halfway up so as to provide a generous expanse of tanned and muscled forearm. The watch, which looked as if it weighed at least half a kilo, was a Breitling Navitimer. And he sported a faded tattoo. A sea horse.

“So!” she said. “To what do I owe the honour . . .”

He shrugged. “We’re opposite numbers, you and I. I thought we might have a bite of lunch and a glass or two of wine and compare notes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t drink at lunchtime,” Liz rejoined, and immediately regretted her tone. She sounded shrewish and defensive, and there was no reason to suppose that Mackay was trying to be more than friendly.

“I’m sorry about the short notice,” said Mackay, glancing at her.

“No problem. I’m not exactly a lady who lunches, unless you count a Thames House sandwich and a batch of surveillance reports at my desk.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Mackay, glancing at her again, “but you do actually look quite like someone who lunches.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. In fact, I’m dressed like this because I’ve got a meeting this afternoon.”

“Ah. You’re running an agent in Harvey Nichols?”

She smiled and looked away. The vast and intolerant bulk of the MI6 building rose above them, and then Mackay swung left-handed into the convolutions of Vauxhall’s one-way system. Two minutes later they were turning into a narrow cul-de-sac off South Lambeth Road. Pulling into the forecourt of a small tyre and exhaust centre, Mackay parked the BMW, jumped out, and opened Liz’s door for her.

“You can’t just leave it here,” protested Liz.

“I’ve got a little arrangement with them,” said Mackay breezily, waving a greeting to a man in oil-streaked overalls. “Strictly cash, so I can’t claim it as a business expense, but they do keep an eye on the car. Are you hungry?”

“I think I am,” said Liz.

“Excellent.” Taking an indigo tie and a dark blue jacket from the back seat, he rolled down his sleeves and put them on. Had he taken them off just for the drive? Liz wondered. Just so she didn’t think him too much of a stiff?

He locked the car with a quick squawk of the remote. “Do you think those shoes will carry you a couple of hundred yards?” he asked.

“With a bit of luck.”

They turned back towards the river, and after negotiating an underpass came out at the foot of a new luxury development on the south side of Vauxhall Bridge. Greeting the security staff, Mackay led Liz through the atrium into a busy and attractive restaurant. The tablecloths were white linen, the silver and glassware shone, and the dark panorama of the Thames was framed by a curtained sweep of plate glass. Most of the tables were occupied. The muted buzz of conversation dipped for a moment as they entered. Leaving her coat at the desk, Liz followed Mackay to a table overlooking the river.

“This is all very nice and unexpected,” she said sincerely. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Thank you for accepting.”

“I’m assuming a fair few of these people are your lot?”

“One or two of them are, and when you walked across the room just then, you enhanced my standing by several hundred per cent. You will note that we’re being discreetly observed.”

She smiled. “I do note it. You should send your colleagues downriver for one of our surveillance courses.”

They examined the menus. Leaning forward confidentially, Mackay told Liz that he could predict what she was going to order. Taking a pen from his pocket he handed it to her and told her to tick what she had chosen.

Taking care not to let him see, holding the menu beneath the table, Liz marked a salad of smoked duck breast. It was a starter, but she wrote the words “as main course” next to it.

“OK,” continued Mackay. “Now fold the menu up. Put it in your pocket.”

She did so. She was certain that he hadn’t seen what she’d written.

When the waiter came Mackay ordered a venison steak and a glass of Italian Barolo. “And for my colleague,” he added with a faint smile, nodding at Liz, “the duck breast salad. As a main course.”

“Very clever,” said Liz, frowning. “How did you do that?”

“Classified. Have some wine.”

She would have liked some, but felt that she had to stick with her not-at-lunchtime statement. “I won’t, thanks.”

“Just a glass. Keep me company.”

“OK, just one then. Tell me how you . . .”

“You don’t have the security clearance.”

Liz looked around her. No one could possibly have seen what she’d written. Nor were there any reflective surfaces in sight.

“Funny guy. Tell me.”

“Like I said . . .”

“Just tell me,” she said, overcome by irritation.

“OK, I will. We’ve developed contact lenses that enable us to see through documents. I’m wearing a pair now.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Despite her determination to remain objective, and to view the lunch as a kind of reconnaissance, she was beginning to feel distinctly angry.

“And you know something,” he continued in a low murmur, “they work on fabric too.”

Before Liz could respond, a shadow fell across the white tablecloth, and she looked up to see Geoffrey Fane standing over her.

“Elizabeth. What a pleasure to see you on our side of the river. I hope Bruno’s looking after you properly?”

“Indeed,” she said, and fell silent. There was something chilling about Fane’s efforts to be friendly.

He gave a slight bow. “Please give my regards to Charles Wetherby. As you know, or should know, we hold your department in the highest esteem.”

“Thank you,” said Liz. “I will.”

At that moment the food arrived. As Fane moved away Liz glanced at Mackay, and was in time to see a look of complicity—or the shadow of such a look—pass between the two men. What was that all about? Surely not just the fact that one of them was entertaining a female of the species to lunch. Was there an element of the put-up job about the occasion? Fane hadn’t seemed very surprised to see her.

“Tell me,” she said. “How is it, being back here?”

Mackay ran a hand through his sun-faded hair. “It’s good,” he said. “Islamabad was fascinating, but hard-core. I was undeclared there rather than part of the accredited diplomatic team, and while that meant I could get a lot more done in agent-running terms, it was also a lot more stressful.”

“You lived off-base?”

“Yes, in one of the suburbs. Nominally I was employed by one of the banks, so I turned up every day in a suit and then did the social circuit in the evening. After that I’d usually be up all night either debriefing agents or encrypting and flashing reports back to London. So while it was fascinating being at the sharp end of the game, it was pretty knackering too.”

“What drew you into the business in the first place?”

A smile touched the sculpted curve of his mouth. “Probably the same as you. The chance to practise the deceit that has always come naturally.”

“Has it? Always come naturally, I mean?”

“I’m told that I lied very early. And I never went into exams at school without a crib. I’d write it all up the night before with a mapping pen on airmail paper, and then roll it up inside a biro tube.”

“Is that how you got into Six?”

“No, sadly, it wasn’t. I think they just took one look at me, decided I was a suitably devious piece of work, and dragged me in.”

“What was the reason you gave for wanting to join?”

“Patriotism. It seemed the right line to take at the time.”

“And is that the true reason?”

“Well, you know what they say. Last refuge of the scoundrel, and so on. Really, of course, it was the women. All those glamorous Foreign Office secretaries. I’ve always had a Moneypenny complex.”

“I don’t see many Moneypennys in here.”

The grey eyes flickered amusedly around the room. “It does rather look as if I got it wrong, doesn’t it? Still, easy come, easy go. How about you?”

“I never had a secret agent complex, I’m afraid. I was one of the first intake that answered that ‘Waiting for Godot?’ advert.”

“Like the chatty Mr. Shayler.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you reckon you’ll go the distance? Stay in till you’re fifty-five or sixty or whatever the cut-off is for your lot? Or will you leave and join Lynx or Kroll or one of those private security consultancies? Or go off and have babies with a merchant banker?”

“Are those the alternatives? It’s a grim list.”

The waiter approached, and before Liz could protest Mackay had pointed at their glasses to indicate a refill. Liz took advantage of the brief hiatus to take stock of the situation. Bruno Mackay was an outrageous flirt but he was undeniably good company. She was having a much better day than she would have had if he hadn’t rung her.

“I don’t think I’d find it easy to leave the Service,” she said carefully. “It’s been my world for ten years now.” And it had. She had answered the advertisement during her last term at university and had joined the next spring’s intake. Her first three years, interrupted at intervals by training courses, had been spent on the Northern Ireland desk as a trainee. The work—sifting intelligence, making enquiries, preparing assessments—had been at times repetitive and at times stressful. Then she’d moved to counter-espionage and after three years—or had it been four?—there had been an unexpected secondment to Liverpool, to the Merseyside Police Force, followed by a transfer to the organised crime desk at Thames House. The work had been unremitting and her section leader, a dour ex–police officer named Donaldson, had made it abundantly clear that he disliked working with women. When the section finally had a breakthrough—a breakthrough for which Liz was largely responsible—things had started to look brighter. She was transferred to counter-terrorism, and discovered that Wetherby had been watching her progress for some time. “I’d quite understand if you’d had enough of it all,” he had told her with a melancholy smile. “If you’d looked at the world outside, seen the rewards available to someone of your abilities and the freedom and sociability of it all . . .” But by then she was certain that she didn’t want to do anything else. “I’m in for the duration,” she told Mackay. “I couldn’t go back.”

His hand moved across the table and covered hers. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think we’re all exiles from our own pasts.”

Liz looked down at his hand, and the big Breitling watch on his wrist, and after a moment he released her. The gesture, like everything about him, was untroubled, and left no after-trace of awkwardness or doubt. Did his words actually mean anything? They had a well-worn ring about them. To how many other women had he said precisely the same thing, and in precisely the same tone?

“So what about you, then?” she asked. “Where are you in exile from?”

“Nowhere terribly special,” he said. “My parents divorced when I was quite young, and I grew up shunting backwards and forwards between my father’s house in the Test Valley and my mother’s place in the South of France.”

“Are they both still alive?”

“I’m afraid so. In rude good health.”

“And did you join the Service straight out of university?”

“No. I read Arabic at Cambridge and went into the City as a Middle East analyst for one of the investment banks. Did a bit of territorial soldiering at the same time with the HAC.”

“The what?”

“The Honourable Artillery Company. Running round letting off explosives on Salisbury Plain. Good fun. But banking lost its shine after a bit, so I sat the Foreign Office exam. Do you want some pud?”

“No, I don’t want any pud, thanks, and I didn’t really want that second glass of wine either. I should be thinking about getting back across the river.”

“I’m sure our respective bosses won’t object to a little . . . inter-Service liaison work,” protested Mackay. “At least have some coffee.”

She agreed, and he signalled to the waiter.

“So tell me,” she said, when the coffee had been brought. “How
did
you see what I’d written on the menu?”

He laughed. “I didn’t. But every woman I’ve eaten with here has ordered the same thing.”

Liz stared at him. “We’re that predictable, are we?”

“Actually, I’ve only been here once before, and that was with half a dozen people. Three of them were women and they all ordered what you ordered. End of story.”

She looked at him levelly. Breathed deeply. “How old were you, again, when you started lying?”

“I can’t win, can I?”

“Probably not,” said Liz. She drank her thimbleful of espresso in a single swallow. “But then who you have lunch with is no business whatsoever of mine.”

He looked at her with a knowing half-smile. “It could be.”

“I have to go,” she said.

“Have a brandy. Or a Calvados or something. It’s cold outside.”

“No thanks, I’m off.”

He raised his hands in surrender and summoned the waiter.

Outside the sky was sheet steel. The wind dragged at their hair and clothes. “It’s been fun,” he said, taking her hands.

“Yes,” she agreed, carefully retrieving them. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

He nodded, the half-smile still in place. To Liz’s relief, someone was getting out of a taxi.