LONDON ALERT (29 page)

Holt
gave
his wife
a desultory
pat on the shoulder
and,
feeling terrible,
disappeared inside to refill their glasses for the toast to
the hoped-for new baby…boy
.

Even though the Owl’s message had
been clear enough, he reread it to make sure there was no mistake.

My dearest Jeremy,

On checking to see how C was getting on, I discovered she had
given birth to a boy nine months after you two parted.

Her husband insisted on bringing it up as his own in the
knowledge that the father (you!) is highly intelligent.

For the sake of your darling Claire and any further offspring
you and Celia may procreate, you should keep this to yourselves. One never
knows what impediments could be put in their way should you be indiscreet.

I will never mention this in the context of our official
dealings, or indeed in any circumstances.

You will probably have the pleasure of seeing the growing
boy’s photo from time to time in the media, but do not let that tempt you to
make contact either with him or his mother.

The Wise One

Now he knew what
Consuela had meant when she thrust that half-million-dollar bracelet into his
hand, saying he had perhaps given her something worth far more. He was glad he
had kept it. Looking at it would remind him of his little boy.

The Owl had obviously
used terms such as the Wise One and C and avoided trigger words like ‘secret’ to
prevent GCHQ or the NSA (US National Security Agency) computers flagging up the
message.

It was uncanny. Had the
time-stamp on the message not been prior to the conversation he had just had
with Celia about trying for a son, he would have suspected the Owl of bugging
the villa, though surely he would have better things to do.

Officers and operatives
were supposed to report any situation laying them open to blackmail, but how
could he? If he did admit a woman linked to the Owl had had his baby, he would
no longer be entrusted with the pivotal role in the negotiations with him. Gone
would be his high status, not to mention his coveted military rank, now that of
major.

When should he – when
could he – tell Celia? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until she had her baby?
But what if it were yet another girl?

He had to consider her
distress at seeing him partnered with Consuela at the US embassy reception.
Admittedly, he and Consuela had made an outstanding couple on the dance floor,
not to mention their being seated with the ambassador at the top table, with
the ambassador telling Celia how prestigious it was for Holt to have such a glamorous
partner.

Even so, as someone who
herself went on missions that looked sexually compromising to outsiders, she
should
have been more
understanding. There surely had to be another reason for her over-the-top antipathy
towards Consuela.

To make matters worse, in
the taxi on his way to Sackville Street to report to Sir Charles on his
undercover mission, he had in a moment of weakness reassured her that he had
not been with Consuela long enough for anything
meaningful
to have happened between them. Now to admit
it had been meaningful enough to result in a baby would prove him a liar, when
his honesty was the one thing she claimed she truly liked about him.

The truth was he loved
them both. Consuela had made him grow up socially, sexually, and emotionally,
to some extent becoming a substitute for his late mother.

Having been in her
company for little more than a week, he knew much more about her than about
Celia. This included her overly strict upbringing in the sticks by her Baptist
foster parents and the abusive husband, from whom she had been liberated at the
doing no doubt of her current multibillionaire husband.

Even after having known
Celia very much longer, marriage and a child together, he still could not
fathom Celia’s inner being and could only guess at her background by her accent.
Her role-playing, rather than any rules forbidding agents discussing their
backgrounds, was what made it so difficult.

With a heavy heart, he
poured the drinks, a stiff one for himself and a weaker one for the mother of
his next child. A prayer rather than a toast was what was needed – a prayer
for a boy
.

‘Here’s to him.’

‘Or her – it may be
another beautiful girl,’ intoned Celia as they again clinked glasses.             

If he reassured her that
she had been uppermost in his mind while undercover, that might soften the blow
when she learnt about little Jeremy in the States.

Leaning forward, he took his wife’s left hand and
squeezed it hard.

‘I want you…to know…Celia…that
in risking my life undercover…I was thinking of you, my darling. You were
always there in the back of my mind.’

 ‘Really?’

To his surprise, her
voice had taken on a hard edge. What’s more, she forcefully extricated her hand
from his grip and looked at him with a look of sheer distaste he had never seen
before.

‘Yes, yes, believe me,’
he insisted, nonplussed.

‘I do believe you – only
too well.’

‘Then why are you so
upset?’

‘The very thought of
being there in the back of your mind while you were relishing that slut’s
pulsations is gross.’

‘
“Back of my mind”
was
only a figure of speech. Come on.’

‘It does not alter the
fact,’ insisted his wife, ‘that it was her falling-domino pulsations that rang
your bell.’

‘Whatever gave you that
idea?’

‘Blackwell.’

Holt remembered
bragging to a colleague about having made love to a woman with sensational,
rippling, falling-domino pulsations. The guy had obviously served the titbit up
to the Snake. Still, he had to deny it.

‘Blackwell must have
made it up. I didn’t even mention Consuela to him. Peter told him I was not
allowed to give any details regarding the mission other than that it was
undercover, with a woman whose name could not be revealed.’

‘Blackwell would dream
up something like that,’ admitted Celia.

Thinking he had
regained some ground by persuading her that Blackwell made up the rippling,
falling-domino pulsations scenario, Holt sought to capitalize on it.

‘Of course, when I said
you were in the back of my mind, I really meant those terrible moments under
interrogation when I was half expecting to be bumped off and that my body would
be dumped somewhere where no one would ever find it. Thinking of you, Celia,
gave me the will to survive…made all the difference.’

‘Jeremy, I have always admired
you for accepting to go undercover like you did – amazing really, considering
you were only meant to be a backroom boy, an ideas man. And even though I
suspect you were an accidental hero just like Dustin Hoffman in
Hero
,
I believe you deserved your medal from the Queen.’

Unable to leave well
alone, Holt ploughed on unthinkingly.

‘I certainly wasn’t
thinking of you when…’

‘When what?’

‘When…’

‘Go on, tell me! Tell
me!’

‘I mean when…’

‘When what?’           

‘Er…’

‘When? Go on, tell me!
I’m waiting. It must be something big.’

‘It was – I mean, is.
Her baby, I mean.’

‘You mean she had
your
baby…and kept it?’

‘Apparently. Except
that it’s no longer a baby.’

‘And you’ve been hiding
it from me all this time.’

‘No, no. I only found
out just now…that text message was from the Owl.’

‘You didn’t take
precautions?’

‘She said there was no
need.’

‘So she did it on
purpose, the bitch!’

‘We don’t know that, do
we? She wouldn’t be the first married woman of a certain age to fall pregnant
after doing it for years with nothing happening and believing it never would.’

‘How come you’re so
knowledgeable about married women of a certain age
happening
to fall pregnant?’

‘I’m not. A couple of
my friends got caught out that way. That’s all.’

Holt was being
disingenuous, for Consuela’s sudden change of attitude on learning he had an
exceptionally high IQ signified it was no accident. The lying in bed for
breakfast at the Hotel du Cap and languishing there in the mornings on their
return to England had been for a reason. Though he was not a Nobel Prize winner,
she had evidently deemed him a worthy donor.

‘A boy or a girl?’

‘A boy, apparently.’

Celia grimaced at the
word ‘boy
’.

‘What do
you
plan to do?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely
nothing.’

‘I can’t believe that.
You’re the father, for God’s sake!’

‘You
can
believe it, because the Owl said it would be in everyone’s interest, including I
might say Claire’s, to keep it secret. He even put it stronger than that. He
said revealing it could be detrimental not only to Claire but also to any
future child you and I might conceive. I am not sure what he meant by that – better
we don’t find out. Her husband is a very powerful man with a long reach.’

‘We mustn’t let the Owl
have us dangling on the end of a piece of string – could prove dangerous
professionally.’

‘Now you know the truth,
he has less leverage. Anyway, he promised not to allude to it in our official
dealings. I think he told me not to pressure us but because he likes us. Though
it does make me feel a bit awkward, as if we owe him something.’

‘For Claire’s sake, we
will keep it to ourselves. She is more important than anything, even the service,
to me. But that does not make what you did with
that woman
right.’

‘In a way I
had
to do it. Sir Charles
specifically chose her from the rewards menu for me. I had to follow it
through.’

‘Don’t give me that just-doing-your-duty
crap. You knew we meant everything to each other. More perhaps than if we had
consummated our idyllic relationship. You betrayed me. You betrayed yourself.’

‘How can you sit up
there on your high horse when you exploit your feminine charms on your
missions? I’ve seen you stringing along your VIPs with coy glances and batting
eyelids.’

‘ “
Stringing along with coy glances and batting eyelids
”,
as
you so crudely put it, is as far as it ever went, though you’d be surprised how
effective batting eyelids can be. It brings out empathy. Makes people think you
are vulnerable, with the result that they drop their guard and open up. But
just like Mossad’s females – the top professional ones that is; for sexual
blackmail or entrapment they simply use prostitutes – I never go all the way.
We get what we want and sometimes more by flirting, admittedly sometimes so
outrageously that we have to fight them off. Once you go all the way, you’ve
lost the plot. The information spigot runs dry…or so I am told.’

‘I did not mean to
imply…It’s just that I cannot understand why you react so strongly to Consuela.
It’s irrational. You’re a big girl out in the wide world, rubbing shoulders
with socialites and politicians who are having affairs all the time. Surely you
are above all that.’

‘You would say that,
wouldn’t you? You don’t realize that while I have sacrificed myself for queen
and country, along comes Her Royal Kentucky Highness, gets a baby boy out of
it, and then, as the ambassador said, carries on with her high-society
lifestyle as if nothing had happened. She’s free. She’s her own man – or rather,
woman. Unlike me, she can be herself, have real friends. Have a life. I too
could have had it all.’

‘You have friends.’

‘Only the cat, and he
only thinks of himself.’

‘If working for the service
was not for you, why ever did you join up in the first place?’

‘You want to know?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

 ‘I was young, naïve. I
was at RADA, the famous school of dramatic art in London, in my second year,
with a promising acting career ahead of me, when out of the blue I received a
letter saying I had the exact profile for a job that would help my country and
save lives. How could I refuse to save lives? Besides, I thought it would be an
exciting adventure, but apart from our Japanese junket, that has hardly ever
proved to be the case. Now I’m stuck with accompanying boring old farts to
conferences and receptions, without being able to personally exploit any
situations that do open up. Unlike
her
.’

‘You have a top security
clearance. That must mean something. Shows they value you.’

‘No, not really. That’s
only to allow me to be privy to the secrets of top civil servants, cabinet ministers,
generals, and admirals. Since I don’t analyse the material I dredge up, or any
other material for that matter, I’m a mere dogsbody. I know it is sound policy
to separate the spooks from the analysts and officers, but in my case I am only
an operative like you, not a real insider, not commanding or managing anybody. I
don’t see the overall picture. What’s more, I’ll soon be too old to play the
naïve ingénue, and they’ll take that clearance away. Where will I be then? I’ve
missed out big time.’

‘Maybe they will find
you something more in keeping with your talents. More your age. Exploit your
experience.
You
could be a
trophy wife, an even better one than Consuela.’

‘That’s a joke. The service
does not have the funds for that. Anyway, they would rather spend their money
exploiting cheaper, eager-to-please ingénues like I once was. Apart from the
first year in the service, I have not even evolved personally like I would have
done as an actress.’