The Hit List (42 page)

Slater held her.

'Please,' she whispered. 'For the time we've got together, just take me to a place where things like that don't happen.'

'I will,' murmured Slater, stroking her hair. 'I promise you.'

With Eve, for the first time in his life, he could see the possibility of a shared future. In the past his

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lielationships had foundered because no woman had |ever come close to understanding the life that he lived,

nth its wild terrors and fierce triumphs. But here at

st was one who would understand - and more than iderstand. She would share the terrors and share the

riumphs and at the end of the day she would still be a

roman.

The next morning he woke before she did. The sun ras pouring through the curtains, and he gently drew ack the sheet and lay for a while admiring her. As Jways when she was asleep she looked lost, almost lildlike, and it occurred to Slater that every time he jiw her he discovered that he knew less about her. low much more unlearning would he have to do, he pondered, before he could start to understand her? Gently, he started to kiss her, beginning with the rk triangle of her pubic hair and working his way jwards towards her mouth. At the end of his travels discovered two sea-blue eyes regarding him >ugh half-closed lids. 'That was nice.' She smiled drowsily. 'What time is

S>

r Whatever time it was, it was two hours before they ere both dressed. Slater wondered if he should go 2>me and change into smarter clothes than he'd arrived I the night before but Eve assured him that wasn't

cessary. 'Go as you are. Ridley doesn't like to be ade to feel he's someone who has to be given special

atment.'

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They made it to the M3 by 11am. Slater drove the BMW and Eve tilted back the passenger seat at his side. When they had driven to Hampshire a month earlier the countryside had still held the green expectancy of spring - now it was full-blown summer and a lazy heat overlaid the fields and the winding roads.

Never in his life had Slater felt as happy or as at ease with a woman as he did with Eve. The week's leave would come to an end and they would have to distance themselves from each other and there would be new assignments and dangers, but for the moment she was his and he was hers.

Wanting to express something of this he pulled the car over under the spreading branches of an oak tree. Switched off the engine. Turned to her in the sudden silence.

She held his gaze. Reached out and touched his cheek. And he knew that there was nothing to say, that the moment said it for them more perfectly than he ever could.

Slowly, they drove on through the warm countryside. 'I guess we should try not to look too . .. together,' said Slater.

'Perhaps if I get into the driving seat that might be a bit more believable,' said Eve. 'And if, when we get there, you thank me for the lift. . .'

'I was going to suggest that perhaps you should give one of the others a lift back,' said Slater. 'I could go back with Leon or someone and then we could meet up back in London.'

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Chris Ryan

/nwillingly, she conceded that this was a good idea.

jhi're not going back with Chris, though. My spies me that you and she made a very convincing

�>le in Paris -- snogging on street corners and all

>

Snogging's a bit of an exaggeration,' Slater

sted. 'She was just showing me how to be icingly French.' )h well,' said Eve, 'that makes all the difference.

next time you catch someone with his hand up

if jumper and my tongue down his throat I'll remind

of it. Don't make such a fuss, I'll say, he was just

ing me--'

didn't have my hand up Chris's jumper,' said

r. 'And she didn't have her tongue--' E know,' said Eve. 'I was just teasing you. As you've kpably guessed, Chris is more of a girl's girl.' Leally!' said Slater, interested. re rolled her eyes heavenwards. 'Just why is it that men find all that so endlessly fascinating? I wish I j't told you now.'

it you have told me,' said Slater. 'And it's going ce my French lessons even more exciting.'

lut up and swap places. We're going to be there Piminute.'

Hey met them at the door in a cricket shirt and an it pair of grey flannels. Shaking Slater's hand throwing an avuncular arm around Eve's

Jder, he led them into the cool, stone-flagged

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hall, where Leon and Terry were drinking beer from pewter tankards.

'I was just saying to the others,' Ridley began, 'that if this service gave medals to agents in the field you'd all be in line for one. It was a particularly nasty job, and I understand from Manderson that you handled it with great courage. Jolly well done. Drink?'

'Thanks,' said Eve. Til have a glass of that Pimm's.'

Slater accepted a beer.

'Something of a baptism of fire for you, Neil.'

'It went a bit pear-shaped towards the end. We lost a good man.'

Ridley nodded. 'Andreas, yes. He'll be a great loss. We'll have to think about who's going to take his place. Perhaps you might have some recommendations -- we always ask existing members of the Cadre whom they suggest before casting our net wider.' He smiled and turned to Slater. 'Talking of which, you must come fishing again. There are some very wily old trout hiding in that river.'

'If you can't lure them out, sir, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to.'

'Don't be too sure, Neil. Your lateral approach may succeed where my more traditional tactics have failed. I've always thought that espionage and fishing go hand in hand. Both are essentially concerned with what happens beneath the surface, with what happens in the . . . let's call it the realm of the invisible.'

'Well, I'd be happy to give it a go,' smiled Slater. He turned to Terry and Leon. 'Do you lads fish?'

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Chris Ryan

'I used to do a bit of match angling,' said Terry.

lours and hours on end sitting at the side of a canal

loking roll-ups. Then I found I was doing pretty

ich the same thing at work on surveillance details. It

ade for a bit of a sedentary lifestyle, so' - he indicated

ie back of his voluminous bowling shirt, which had

|e words 'Bali-Hai Casuals, Romfbrd' on it -- 'I took

darts instead.'

They all laughed, and Leon explained that he had en something of a fast bowler in his youth. Cricket, fcwever, had not been one of the sports practised by second parachute regiment of the Foreign Legion, |d his skills had rusted. Now he was a member of an ido Club, and practised the art of combat with lurai swords. I 'Real Samurai swords?' asked Slater. I'Wooden ones,' said Leon. 'And you know

icthing? I'm crap!'

|A popping of gravel announced Chris's arrival. Like she drove a neutral-toned Honda Accord -- the sically invisible, reliable surveillance vehicle. She iked jazzier than usual, however, in an EUis-style Mher jacket and with her hair slicked back. I'Stop staringl' Eve hissed, kicking Slater smartly in

shins. 'Honestly, you're like a sixteen-year-old!' pWould you like a drink?' Ridley politely asked s. 'Or to employ the most depressing words in the ish language, shall we go straight through?'

ich -- a cold salmon -- was served by Ridley himself, 435

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so that they could all speak freely. And they did recounting to Ridley the bizarre, horrifying and occasionally hilarious details of the operation. The Miko Pasquale sequence, in particular, seemed to amuse the old spymaster.

'Malt whisky at gunpoint,' he smiled. 'I can think of several colleagues from the old days who could have downed a bottle of twelve-year-old Islay for breakfast and not noticed the difference.'

Slater enjoyed himself, and enjoyed the company of the others. He felt that he had been accepted as a full member of the Cadre, rather than a probationer. They were a very mixed bunch, who under any other circumstance^ would probably never have met, but the surreal nature 6f-their professional lives bound them together.

After lunch, which the housekeeper arrived to clear, they walked in the watermeadows by the river. The sun shone drowsily down, bees hummed around the thistles, the river-weed shone emerald green in the shadow of the bankside willows and poplars.

There were long periods of silence; while appreciating the beauty of the afternoon, Slater guessed, his colleagues were already wondering what dangers and terrors the future might hold. It was this that hooked you, he reflected -- the anticipation of the next operation. And then, of course, once the operation was under way, the only thought was for its successful completion. And so you went on, drawn constantly forward to the next operation, the next

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Chris Ryan

snaline fix, the next desperate call on your jurcefiilness. fSo,' said Chris, beside him. 'How are you feeling?' ji'It's all healing,' said Slater. 'The shoulder's a bit stiff the ribs aren't brilliant when I laugh, but apart Run that. . .'

' 'How about the rest, though?' asked Chris. 'Are you feeping all right?'

t 'For the moment, yeah, the nightmares seem to be i hold. Only a question of time, though - they always i>me sooner or later. Along with the rest of the post iumatic package. How about you?'

*! Chris shrugged. 'OK so far, but as you say . . .' She id still and turned to him. 'When it happens, talk jut it, OK? To me, or Leon, or whoever. We're all

I the same boat, and we all go off our heads from time time.'

i Slater nodded appreciatively. 'Thanks. I'll do that.

id-likewise if you're . . .' 'OK.'

* They walked for a moment in silence.

* 'What are you doing for the week off?' Slater asked Irentually.

'Oh, this and that,' said Chris. 'Nothing special. |*ou?'

'Same,' said Slater. 'This and that.' I' They both smiled. Looking around them, they saw at the dark shadow of a cloud was spreading across water-meadow. Soon, taking their pace from lidley, they were moving purposefully back towards

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the village. They just made it back to River House before the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. The arrival of the rain was taken as a signal that the afternoon was at an end, and one by one the Cadre members departed.

'As a cricketer -- or at least an ex-cricketer - I want to show you something,' Ridley told Leon before he left, leading him to a photograph by the side of the large fireplace. 'This is the service's cricket team in 1949. We called ourselves the Carlton House Eleven. I made a rather useful opening batsman, as I remember -- managed fifty once against the Ministry of Supply, including two sixes!'

'I'm impressed,' Leon smiled, shaking Ridley's hand and waving a general goodbye.

Soon only Eve and Slater remained. Eve requested a word with Ridley in private, and disappearing into his office left Slater in the hall. The sudden silence amplified the insistent beat of the rain on the leaded windows. His mind on his conversation with Chris, Slater wandered around the room, examining the various books, photographs and stuffed animal trophies. Something nagged at him, some curious unaccountable absence that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He paused for a moment in front of a nineteenth-century photograph, presumably taken in India, in which a dozen languid young officers in pith helmets lounged with polo-sticks on the steps of some official building. The legend 'Walter Ridley, Lieut.'

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Chris Ryan

was legible among the others in faded sepia ink-. Next it an equally browned but slightly more recent photograph showed a man in a Norfolk jacket and ureeches landing a salmon with the help of a ghillie. Clearly the father had been something of a sportsman >o.

Conscious of the baleful eye of the stuffed pike,

Slater approached the mantelpiece to take a closer look

It the 1949 Carlton House cricket-team. A dozen men

their late twenties and early thirties, their attitudes

aot dissimilar to those of the Indian Army officers,

sported themselves on the steps of a suburban

pavilion. Their caps were various and unmatching --

iton, Harrow, and Winchester predominant among

lem, Slater guessed - and their wide-cut white

jusers were held up in several cases by ties rather than

elts. So which was Ridley? Which was the demon jener who had thrashed the Ministry of Supply's awling all round the ground? Taking a large agnifying-glass from the mantelpiece he ran it down ic line of good-humoured faces. There was a man fith a bat over his shoulder, a man touching his cap to ic photographer, and a man striking a vaudeville pose i a pair of wicket-keeping gloves. Next to the wicket keeper, sardonic beneath a floppy sun-hat, was lauptmann Dietrich Wegner.

Lowering the magnifying glass, Slater took an ^voluntary step back. He was mistaken. It was apossible.

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Slowly, he readdressed the photograph. The face was Ridley's. A younger Ridley, a Ridley without the moustache, a Ridley he would not have recognised if he hadn't been looking for him - but the face was also Dietrich Wegner's.

His heart pounding, Slater went from wall to wall, examining the photographs. He found three more of Ridley as an adult -- among a group in evening dress at a reception, standing with several other men in tweeds on a grouse-moor, sharing a picnic from the boot of a Range Rover at a race meeting - but as he had subconsciously noted earlier, none of Ridley as a child or teenager. No family groups. No tottering first steps across a lawn, no buckets and spades on the beach, no sports days or tree-climbing or messing about in boats.

Lifting the framed photograph of the cricket team from the wall, unwilling to believe the evidence of his eyes but knowing deep down that he was right, Slater carried it to the window. No wonder Ridley - or should he say Wegner - had wanted the disc returned. No wonder it been so imperative that it be kept from the hands of the Serbs. Did the Ondine system even exist, or had the sole purpose of Firewall been to suppress the truth about the old spymaster's identity?