Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide (22 page)

‘Can we offer you some tea? Or something stronger perhaps, as the sun is almost over the yardarm?’

‘No, thanks,’ she said. Turning to Daisy, she added, ‘I’d just like a glass of water, please.’

With a flicker of a smile and a nod he dismissed Daisy, and watched her blonde curls bouncing as she retreated from the room.

‘Sit down, Eliz . . . Liz. What brings you over here on this lovely evening?’

‘Sorry it’s such short notice, Geoffrey, but it’s rather important.’

‘Ah, well, spill the beans,’ he said, showing by his smile that he was not taking her too seriously.

Liz remained standing and looked straight at him without a trace of a smile. She said, ‘We’ve come across something that makes us think Langley has an agent working in the UCSO Athens office.’

Fane was so surprised he said nothing. His thoughts were racing: if this were true why hadn’t Blakey told him? Or did Blakey himself not know? And how had Elizabeth found this out?

His voice remained unruffled. ‘Sit down, my dear Elizabeth, and tell me what makes you think that.’

‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ she said sharply, not sitting down. By now Fane was behind his desk.

‘What is? Do tell.’

Liz fished in her bag and plonked Mitchell Berger’s CV down on the desk. She stood back and waited while he scanned it.

‘I knew nothing of this,’ he said when he’d finished reading. ‘All I know about the man is that Blakey vouched for him. In unequivocal terms.’

‘Blakey must have known he was CIA.’

‘I’m not sure he did . . . What’s obvious to expert eyes is sometimes muzzy to the rest of us.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Geoffrey. Blakey’s eyes
are
expert.’

‘
Were
would be a better word. He’s been out of the Service for ages now.’

‘Five years,’ she said through tight lips.

Fane shrugged. ‘That’s two decades in intelligence terms, as we both know. And between you and me, though David was a perfectly competent officer, he was not perhaps the sharpest knife in the box.’

‘That’s not how you described him before.’

‘Loyalty is our business’s first line of defence. You don’t need me to tell you that.’ Fane’s lips curled in a slight smile.

‘I don’t buy it,’ she said with an angry shake of her head.

‘I’m not selling anything, Elizabeth,’ he said coldly. Who the hell did she think she was, acting as if he were on trial?

Nevertheless, he was put out when she shook her head again, unpacified. ‘Blakey must have known . . . and you must have known as well. What I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.’ She looked at him with open exasperation. ‘You keep doing this, Geoffrey – you keep holding back information. I don’t see how we can work together if you won’t be straight with me.’

He thought how magnificent she looked when she was angry. Normally he wouldn’t have been at all bothered to find that she suspected him of not telling her everything. Normally, he had to admit, she would have been right. But she was accusing him of holding back on her when for once he actually wasn’t. He hadn’t had the faintest inkling that Berger was a CIA man.

Why should he have thought it? Blakey had assured him that Berger was OK – and if Blakey turned out to have been economical with the truth, Fane would have his guts for garters. If it were true, it meant the Agency knew that the woman who’d been murdered had been put in by his Athens Station. That was embarrassing to say the least. Particularly as he suspected that Bruno Mackay had not conducted that operation very cleverly. Damn!

‘Elizabeth, please hear me out. I give you my word that I hadn’t the faintest idea until three minutes ago that this man Berger was anything but what I was told – a chap with a lot of international experience who was doing a fine job running a charity office in Greece, but whose ships had started disappearing.’

Liz did not reply, and Fane waited as the silence between them expressed her doubt as loudly as words would have done. He was frustrated by her refusal to believe him, but couldn’t bring himself to reiterate his assurance. It was too undignified. Instead he said, ‘Look, I see I can’t persuade you now. But let me talk to the Agency. I’ll get Bokus over from the embassy. You know him?’

She nodded, still looking sceptical.

‘He’s not going to deny it if this chap is one of theirs. Langley never actually lies to us overtly – just by omission. A point-blank question will get us the answer we need, one way or the other. Will that do?’

Liz pondered this as Fane watched her, wondering when she might decide to relax with him, when she might realise he wanted to help her if only she would let him. He found it galling to have his offers so consistently refused, especially by someone he would happily admit to admiring.

At last she said, ‘All right. See what your friend Bokus has to say. But do it soon, please.’

Fane sighed as Liz made to leave. ‘I haven’t seen Andy Bokus for a while. I was hoping to keep it that way.’

An enigmatic smile appeared on Liz’s face. ‘That’s funny. I was saying something just like that to Peggy Kinsolving earlier today.’

Chapter 32

As it turned out, Fane decided to call on Andy Bokus at his office in the American Embassy, rather than summoning him to Vauxhall Cross as protocol would dictate. He thought he might get more out of Bokus on his own ground.

It was something of a sacrifice, though, for Fane hated the sight of Grosvenor Square, littered as it now was with concrete blocks, huge flower pots and metal barriers. He was in a bad temper when he got out of his taxi on the opposite side of the square into a steady drizzle. ‘Can’t get no nearer, guv,’ the taxi driver had just announced.

Fane paid him off, unfurled his umbrella and strode round the barriers to the police post outside the embassy. He waved his Foreign Office pass and glowered as he waited for clearance to come through from inside. Thank goodness the Americans were moving south of the river, to a brand-new compound where they could be isolated and have no neighbours to annoy. The Mayfair residents would be delighted to see them go.

He thought about Bokus – a man with whom he had nothing at all in common. Bokus presented himself as the typical corn-fed Midwesterner; a man whose idea of a foreign country was New York City. Once when Fane had taken him for lunch at the Travellers, Bokus had asked for a can of Budweiser – Fane still smiled to himself at the memory of the waiter’s expression. But Fane had come to suspect that this unsophisticated, not to say boorish, exterior was carefully cultivated. Bokus disliked and distrusted the Brits, so he had adopted a persona designed to discomfit them. But Fane knew what he was up to; Bokus was no fool. In fact, Fane was certain that beneath that crude exterior lay a razor-sharp mind. Which made him simultaneously more interesting and more difficult to deal with.

‘What’s this all about, Geoffrey?’ Bokus asked bluntly.

‘We’ve got a rather interesting situation on our hands,’ Fane replied languidly, shooting his cuffs.

‘Well, take a seat and tell me about it.’

Fane sat down. Crossing one long leg casually over the other, he proceeded to outline the problems UCSO had been having with their shipments. As he talked, he decided that there would be no harm in mentioning the young British-Pakistani, Amir Khan, who had been picked up by the French.

Bokus nodded. ‘Yeah, we heard from the French about that kid,’ he said indifferently.

Fane raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He wondered for a moment why Bokus hadn’t been more interested in Amir Khan. Why hadn’t he enquired what the British knew about the lad, if he’d heard about him from the French? Were the Americans doing something with the French that Fane didn’t know about? Was Elizabeth Carlyle right in thinking that the CIA had something going on in UCSO? But then he decided that Bokus’ lack of interest was both genuine and utterly predictable – if something directly affected American interests you always had his full attention. If a US angle were less obvious, he’d play it cool.

Fane continued: ‘We thought it best to take a look at all the UCSO employees, since one of them would be the most likely source of any tip-off to the pirates about shipments coming past the Horn. It seemed a bit hard to believe at first,’ he added, ‘but on the other hand, it seemed too much of a coincidence that UCSO was so repeatedly the victim of these attacks.’ There were other reasons to think there was a traitor inside UCSO – including, of course, the wretched girl Maria’s murder – but Fane saw no need to lay these on the table. Instead he took out a typed piece of paper and, leaning over, put it on the desktop under Bokus’ eyes.

‘What’s this?’ the American demanded.

‘It’s the CV of the head of the UCSO office in Athens. Or do you chaps say “résumé”? He’s an American, as you see, and jolly interesting, I think you’ll agree.’

Bokus bent his head over the desk and his bald pate shone in the light. After thirty seconds’ silent inspection of the paper, his head lifted and Fane found Bokus’ brown eyes fixed on him. The American said neutrally, ‘What do you want me to say, Geoffrey?’

Fane decided to ignore this. ‘The thing is, Andy, this chap is no doubt perfectly sound. Blakey, his boss in London, swears by him.’

Bokus interjected, ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

‘Possibly for the same reason Berger’s name rings bells for me.’ Fane shrugged, unwilling to be deflected, and stared back at Bokus.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bokus said. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours – is that it?’ He laughed unexpectedly, a full-throated guffaw that Fane found intensely annoying. He liked it when Bokus stayed close to stereotype – the serious heavy-set ex-football player who thought the Limeys were all too arch and highfalutin’ for words.

‘You go first,’ said Fane dryly.

Bokus thought about this for a moment then got up from his chair, which creaked when relieved of his weight. He went over to the wall and stood staring at a framed photograph of an American football team. Though Fane swung round in his chair, his only view was of Bokus’ back.

‘Mitchell Berger joined a couple of years before I did.’ Bokus’ voice sounded curiously disembodied, like the narrator’s in a film. ‘He was an operative in the field . . . kind of a famous one even when I started out. But he never had any interest in climbing the ladder.’ Bokus turned back towards the room and lifted his right hand, in a gesture designed to encompass his surroundings, his office, his status, his rise through the ranks . . . everything apparently that Mitchell Berger had not had time for.

Bokus looked straight at Fane. ‘I never met the guy. Heard he’d left the Agency a few years ago. Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes a fella wants a quiet life, and the way I heard it, Berger finally realised that one day his luck could run out. That’s not surprising – most sane people wouldn’t have taken half the postings he’d asked for. So I wouldn’t think there was any other agenda going on – he just took the buy-out and opted for a safer berth. Certainly I don’t know of any secret Langley agenda; like I said, the guy retired.’

This was as far as Bokus would go, Fane sensed. But it was enough – Berger was ex-Agency, all right, but not working on Langley’s orders. Fane believed Bokus about that; he had responded too quickly to have made up the story.

‘Your turn,’ said Bokus, without amusement. He clearly didn’t like having to offer up information.

‘In a minute,’ said Fane. ‘First, I’d like to ask you to find out if Mr Berger is active again.’

‘I just told you, he retired.’

‘You know as well as I do, one’s always on call. We may not be priests, Andy, but we work under the same terms and conditions. I’d like to know if Berger’s been reactivated.’

Bokus thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘OK, I’ll check it out. Now tell me why you want to know.’

And so Fane recounted the entire chain of events, from the first hijack to the phone call from Blakey and finally, reluctantly, Maria’s Galanos’ murder – there was no point in omitting it since it would be one of the first things Bokus would hear about.

When he’d finished the Agency man asked, ‘What do you think’s going on?’

‘Hard to tell. I would think, as I said, that someone inside UCSO is tipping off the hijackers. Why, I don’t know – it seems a pretty roundabout way to make money when other pickings off the Horn are so rich.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Bokus’ voice had lost its detachment, and Fane sensed the American had something specific in mind. That was the last thing Fane wanted, so he said quickly, ‘We’ve got some leads in Athens we’re following up and Five are on to the UK end, trying to find out how Amir Khan got out there.’

‘Yes, but what about Somalia? Don’t you want to know what’s happening there?’

‘Presumably your asking means you do,’ said Fane.

His subtlety was lost on the CIA Head of Station. ‘Damn’ tootin’ I do,’ he said vigorously. ‘Yemen and Somalia are top of our list for Al Qaeda movements right now.’

‘More than Afghanistan or Iraq?’

‘I didn’t say that. But in those places we know the bastards are there, and we can take the fight to them. We don’t want them taking root all over the place or it defeats the purpose of our military campaigns.’