Fire Hawk (15 page)

‘Yes.'

‘And in your debriefs after you'd been released with the rest of the hostages you both said you'd seen no evidence that the Iraqis had identified you as intelligence agents.'

‘Correct. They'd have hung onto us if they had.'

‘More than likely. But let's dig over that time in a little more detail, could we?'

With a razor-keen mind for detail, the security investigator took him through that visit. They talked for more than ten minutes until he was as knowledgeable about events as Sam was.

‘And your relationship with Christine during this period,' Charles asked with beguiling innocence. ‘How would you categorise it?'

‘Very professional,' Sam replied, stony-faced. He noticed Waddell's eyes on him, wide with anticipation. They knew something, he realised. The question was how
much. ‘Once we'd identified one another, we collaborated and shared the workload. I put it all in my report at the time.'

‘So you did. So you did.'

His affair with Chrissie had been secret. Secret until the end, he was convinced of that. But had Kessler now told the Firm?

‘Let's move on.' Charles's eyes gave nothing away. ‘Your next visit to Baghdad was the one you've just had, yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘With most of the intervening years spent in eastern Europe.'

‘Correct.'

‘And your cover remained intact throughout that time. As far as you know.'

‘Exactly. As far as I know.'

It wasn't entirely true. The ex-KGB man in Kiev working for the Ukrainian SBU on the drug operation last year had known about him. But they'd been on the same side at the time and dragging that episode up would open a can of worms.

‘So, let's turn to
this
Baghdad visit,' Charles continued.

Sam described the uneventful flight out to Amman, the journey to Baghdad in a GMC minibus, his chats with trade officials and businessmen from other countries that had produced a few meagre scraps of intelligence about potential post-sanctions arms deals. And he talked of the German who'd carried his message to the outside world.

‘Did
he
know who you worked for?' asked Waddell.

‘No. It was just one businessman helping another out. Happens all the time in places where you can't phone and there's no post.'

As he described the day of his arrest Sam felt himself being dissected by these men. There was something about Waddell that he both feared and despised. The man had
gained a first at Cambridge, was magical with paperwork, and was a born conspirator. Above all, he had the power to put Sam on the dole. But he'd never got sand between his toes and believed gut feelings were to do with diarrhoea.

When he finished speaking, both men sat back to reflect. For a moment he thought he'd got through to them.

‘You were there to hoover, wouldn't you say?' Waddell averred suddenly.

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Chatting in
bars
,' Waddell stressed. ‘That was your main way to gather intelligence.'

‘Well, yes. Iraq's not a country where people talk freely. Bars and restaurants are where I pick most stuff up. It's called
socialising,
Duncan.'

Waddell was a man with no known social life – a man, Chrissie had once told him, whose office juniors had awarded him the sobriquet of ‘Robbie the Robot'.

‘Easy enough to let something slip when you're
socialising,
wouldn't you say?' Waddell probed. ‘When you've had a few. Without even knowing it, probably.'

‘Easy for someone with a death wish, yes.'

‘Or for someone who's a little too fond of the pop,' Waddell added, gloves off at last. ‘No restrictions on drink in Baghdad for foreigners, I understand?'

‘No restrictions if you can find the stuff. Heard of UN sanctions, Duncan? It has to be smuggled—'

‘And even though you may not have a death wish, you did have reason to feel rather sorry for yourself on this trip. A reason perhaps to down a little more of the loose tongue juice than is strictly wise? Mmm?'

Sam froze. ‘I don't know what you mean.' But he did.

‘I mean that your long-running, adulterous relationship with Mrs Christine Kessler which began in Baghdad
six years ago had come to an abrupt end, and you weren't exactly over the moon about it.'

Sam stared from one headquarters man to the other, his face reddening.

‘It's common knowledge now,' Waddell stated, his lips pursed puritanically.

‘My personal life and my work are not connected,' Sam protested lamely.

Waddell raised a derisory eyebrow and looked across at Charles.

‘We have to dig, Sam,' the investigator intervened. ‘There's been a very serious breach of security here. The PM's terrified the Iraqis will make capital of the whole affair and go public on how they penetrated British intelligence.'

‘Well dig somewhere else, chum,' Sam remonstrated, rapidly losing control. ‘Whatever the Iraqis knew, it didn't come from me.'

There was a moment's hiatus as they studied him wordlessly.

‘Fine,' Charles continued eventually, brushing the lapel of his blazer. ‘Let's move on then. Who arrested you?'

‘He didn't give me his card.'

‘But you thought it was the Mukhabarat?'

‘It was security. I'd no way of knowing which bunch. They were official and they were nasty, that's all that mattered to me.'

‘And you admitted to them that you were SIS?'

‘No. I stuck to my cover story.'

‘Gave them a few names, perhaps? Quentin Mowbray's, for example.'

‘Come off it. What is this?'

‘Suggested they should give Mowbray a call at the embassy in Amman so he could fix up a swap?'

‘Did I
bollocks
! I can't believe you're coming out with this stuff.'

‘I'm asking you, that's all.'

‘And I'm
telling
you. No. I didn't give them anything.'

Charles sat rigidly in his chair scrutinising Sam without blinking. Waddell leaned forward and ripped open the cardboard of the drinks six-pack. He selected a can of lemon and indicated that Sam should take one too. But Packer shook his head. What he badly wanted at that moment was something far stronger.

‘Och hell.' Suddenly Waddell smiled at him like an old friend. ‘It's dreadful for us having to give you the third degree. Believe me, Sam, this hurts—'

‘—you more than it hurts me.'

‘Yes.'

‘Don't be a cunt, Duncan.'

Waddell recoiled.

‘Anyway, have you finished?' Sam stood up abruptly. ‘Because if that's it, I've got things to see to at home.'

‘Finished for now, yes.' Waddell remained seated, knowing he would be dwarfed if he stood. ‘We've heard what you've said, old son. We'll need to talk with you again at some stage. But for now, you'd better take some time off.'

‘Time off?' Sam's heart sank. Were they suspending him?

‘You deserve a break after what you've been through. Entryline are in the picture. They're not expecting to hear from you for a week or two.'

‘And then?'

‘We'll see.' Waddell had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘We'll talk about the future when the dust's settled.'

‘Gardening leave. Is that what you're saying?'

Waddell shrugged. ‘We just have to work out how this whole mess came about, Sam. You surely understand that?'

‘Oh yes. I understand all right. My problem is I don't
trust you to look in the right place for the answers.' The words tumbled out before he could stop them.

Waddell glanced at Charles and smiled smugly. ‘Don't underestimate the Service, Sam. I can assure you it's our job to know where to look.' He stood up. ‘You can go now. The car's waiting outside. It'll take you to the clinic first. If they give the all clear then you can head off home. We'll contact you in a day or two. And you can always call me, remember. Maybe something else'll come to you. Some recollection of a little conversation over a jar that you might have overlooked.'

‘Like fuck, Duncan. Like fuck it will.'

Charles reached out his hand. ‘Good luck. And I'm truly sorry for having to put you through this.'

Waddell led him back through the kitchen towards the fire escape. He opened the back door for him.

‘It's funny, you know . . .' He puckered his boyish brows as Sam brushed past him. ‘I would never have guessed that Chrissie was your type.'

Sam restrained his urge to hit him.

‘Have yourself a good rest, old man,' said Waddell. He went back inside and closed the door.

Sam stood on the top grating of the rusty staircase. Below was the waiting Granada. He was seething with anger, but also with dread. Because more potent than the shock of being disbelieved by the men inside the flat was his certainty that some vital trick was being missed. That by focusing on his broken cover, they were ignoring the real danger.

Somewhere in the world there was a lunatic on the loose. And he had a load of anthrax to play with.

HIS FLAT SMELLED
musty, a dusty airlessness combined with kitchen odours. The apartment had been locked since he left England. Dumping his case on the parquet floor of the tiny hallway he stood still for a moment, letting the place envelop him. There'd been moments when he'd feared he would never stand here again. He bent down to pick up the weeks of bills and junk mail splayed across the doormat, turned to close the front door then clicked on the overhead lamp to boost the pale daylight spilling from the living room. On the walls of the hall hung a few old square-rigger prints unearthed years ago in a Plymouth junk shop, together with a silent bracket clock that had belonged to his father. It displayed the hour at which its spring had unwound several days ago.

The mental mauling he'd received at the debrief had left him bruised, as had the fresh prodding he'd just undergone at the hands of an MI6 doctor. Instead of lifting from him, his anger at what the Iraqis had done to him in Baghdad clung like varnish. The doctor had told him he should find someone to talk to, in order to get it out of his system. Inevitably he'd thought of Chrissie.

The medical man had checked him over with great thoroughness before confirming that no lasting physical harm should result from his maltreatment. The growth of new skin over his shins would show progress in days, he'd said, making the fresh dressings he'd put on redundant. The medic had been more concerned about
post-traumatic stress. He'd offered counselling, but Sam insisted a few days' rest would see him right.

He was still in the hall. Hadn't moved a step further into the flat, because instead of feeling relieved at being home, he was experiencing a thudding emptiness. He walked into the living room and crossed to the sash windows that overlooked the river. But instead of taking in the view as he'd intended, he swung round, dogged by the feeling that someone else had been here while he was away.

Of course. They
would
have been. Charles's people, going through his things – hands down the sides of the sofa, a line by line check through the contents of his filing cabinet, and a readout of the hard disk on the Pentium PC.

‘Bugger!'

He felt as violated by their treatment of him as by the beatings in Baghdad. He'd not deserved any of this. Life was being outrageously unjust. And he'd always railed against the unfairness of fate, ever since being deprived as a young child of the father he'd worshipped.

‘Bollocks to them all.'

He unscrewed the security bolt on the centre sash then shoved it upwards to let in fresh air. Three floors below, a red bus droned past the front of the 1930s block. On the other side of the road a man exercised a black dog along the towpath. The tide was coming in, the water's surface ruffled by a contrary wind. Sam took a deep breath, hungry for the air that belonged to rivers, to their estuaries and to the sea. A smell of decay, but also of peace.

He turned his head to look down river, past the nature reserve of the old Barnes reservoirs. A pleasure craft cut through the water, bringing the last of the summer's tourists to Kew Gardens and Hampton Court. In the suburban maze to the right of the riverbank was where
Chrissie lived with her reconciled husband, the Kessler home only a few minutes' walk from his own. A neat coincidence of residential location which they'd shamelessly exploited for so bloody long . . .

Like his maltreatment in Baghdad,
she
was something else he needed to expunge from his mind. But how could he if it
was
his child she was carrying?

He turned away from the window. Chrissie had been rude about this flat, saying it reflected his years of institutionalisation in the Royal Navy. Sofa and armchairs in floral print. Pine green carpet. Built-in wall units, with a small hi-fi and TV set wedged among the paperbacks. Metal-framed prints of Turner seascapes. Not
bad
taste, she used to complain, more like no taste at all. She had a need to be surrounded by beautiful things, she'd told him, and marvelled at his ability to live without them.

For him the main trouble with this room was that he couldn't look at it without seeing her in it. She would appear without warning late at night after some spat with her husband and throw her arms round his neck, clinging to him like a drowning child. Jammed on the sofa like Siamese twins they would sit and drink wine while she unwound. Sometimes she would talk volumes, pouring out her troubles in a slalom ride of anger at her husband's stunted emotions and at her own stupidity for marrying him. Sometimes she would merely stare at the walls while he played Verdi on the CD, letting the demons fight their battles inside her.

But always her tension would eventually ebb. Then a smile as fragile as a mayfly would signal that she was ready for what she'd come for. Later, after they'd had their fill of each other in the bedroom and he'd drifted into post-coital slumber, she would dress again and leave him, descending the communal staircase as silently as she
had climbed it to walk or drive the few hundred yards that would take her back to her husband.