Fire Hawk (6 page)

‘But London agreed to the deal? Just like that?'

‘No. They were highly suspicious. Didn't want to touch it. You see, it wasn't for another couple of days that your German friend remembered to phone your message through. Only after they got your cryptic warning about a BW attack did the Firm start taking things seriously.'

‘I see.' What if the German had
never
remembered? Would he still be in Baghdad?

‘Colonel Omar rang me every other day. Always on a satellite phone, judging by the echo. Wouldn't give me a number to call him back on. Odd man.' Mowbray's thin lips curved in a faint smile. ‘Had the sort of plummy voice you'd expect in an officers' mess in Wiltshire.'

‘Good God!' Sam sat up with a jolt. ‘But that must've been Sandhurst. He was my interrogator.'

‘Really?' Mowbray's eyes popped.

‘And the same bloke was in charge of transporting me to the border.'

‘Extraordinary. Sounds almost like a one-man operation,' Mowbray murmured, deeply perplexed. ‘There
were
others I take it?'

‘Three of them altogether that I was aware of, plus the messenger. Sandhurst and one other less senior man arrested me and worked me over in the interrogation room. The same two took me to the border. I was blindfolded, so there could have been others involved, but I don't think so.'

‘And the third man?'

‘Saw him for just a couple of minutes when they forgot to cover my eyes after they'd shown me what they'd done to the messenger. An older man. Greying hair and moustache. I got the clear impression he was in charge.'

‘I see.' Mowbray stood up from the chair and crossed to the window, half-opening the curtains. A hazy dawn light had turned the flat-roofed Amman skyline into a mass of pink cubes. ‘You say they knew from the start that you worked for SIS?' he checked, without turning his head. ‘Could that just have been a good guess?'

‘They knew my real name, Quentin. They'd need to be world champions at guessing to have worked that one out.'

Mowbray sat down again. He seemed to be puzzling over what to tell London.

‘How did they break your cover, d'you think?' he asked with a casualness that wasn't entirely natural.

‘I have no idea.' Sam fixed Mowbray in the eyes. ‘But I'm determined to find out.'

‘So is London,' Mowbray warned. ‘There've been mutterings already that you might have let something slip over a drink or three.'

‘They can mutter till their teeth fall out, it wasn't me,' Sam snapped.

‘Yes, but in their minds the alternative's pretty frightening, you see. If the Iraqis knew about you because of some higher level security breach, then what other areas of SIS business might Saddam also have an inside track on?'

‘Well, they'd better start looking,' Sam growled, sickened to be under suspicion from his own side after what he'd been through. He ran his fingers through his thick hair. He felt greasy and sweaty. Defiled.

Mowbray shifted uncomfortably. ‘Look, will you be okay on your own for a couple of hours? I've got to go to the embassy to talk with London. If you want more to eat and drink, raid the fridge.'

‘I'll be fine. By the way, what's the date? I've lost track of time.'

‘Twenty-ninth of September. It's a Sunday. They had you for about ten days.'

And they were still beating the life out of him three days ago, while making final plans for the swap. He was right about the anthrax warning, he was sure of it. The messenger
hadn't
been ordered to tell him.

Suddenly Mowbray sat up dead straight and cocked his head like a heron listening for fish. He'd heard a car pull up outside. He stood up and peered through the window.

‘Damn.' He made for the door. ‘Excuse me a moment.'

Sam eased himself into a sitting position, realising he was still hungry. A plate of bacon and eggs and a mug of tea would do wonders. He began to look around for his clothes but couldn't see any.

He heard voices downstairs – Mowbray saying ‘bad idea' and ‘asked you not to come'. The second voice was little more than a murmur, but it sounded like a woman's.

A Mickey Mouse alarm clock beside the bed gave the time as 06.35. He heard feet on the stairs.

The door pushed open. He looked up.

‘Hello, Sam.'

He gaped. The shock was electric.

‘Christ!'

It was Chrissie, mannequin-cool in a cream linen suit.

SEEING HER THERE
in the doorway brought a lump to his throat and a stab of the old longing in his guts. But why was she here, this woman who'd walked into his life six years back, then walked out again three months ago? Surely SIS wouldn't have sent her?

‘She's not staying long,' Mowbray insisted from behind her. ‘I've told her you're in no state for social calls.'

I'll be the judge of that, thought Sam, wishing he had a shirt on to cover up the marks on his chest. The last thing he wanted was her feeling sorry for him.

Chrissie turned and waved Mowbray away.

‘I'll be back from the embassy as soon as I can,' he announced, heading for the stairs.

‘Officious prat,' Chrissie mouthed as they heard him descend them.

She pushed back the strands of hair that fell across her forehead, exposing the frown on her otherwise smooth brow. Her grey eyes registered shock as they took in the marks on Sam's chest. Being told he'd been maltreated was one thing, seeing the results quite another.

‘God . . .' She covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Oh you poor man. What have they done to you?'

Sam's mind was doing somersaults trying to work out why she was here. There'd be no simple reason. There never was with Chrissie.

‘But this is outrageous,' she murmured, moving into
the room. Her eyes were angry now. She turned the pink-painted child's chair round and put it hard against the edge of the bed. She sat, gently taking hold of his hands. As she gaped at his scars, Sam's eyes lingered on her mouth – a mouth that had tasted every inch of him. ‘They
burned
you.'

‘You sound so surprised,' he mocked. ‘They
do
that in Iraq.'

‘Yes . . .' Her voice tailed away.

‘Anyway, it looks worse than it is,' he assured her, uncomfortable at the fuss she was making. He tried to see beyond those cool eyes of hers for some small sign that she might have changed her mind again, that she'd come here to tell him she wanted him back. ‘Good to see you,' he mouthed.

‘You too.' She squeezed his hands, blinking back tears.

‘How come you're here?' She didn't seem about to volunteer the information.

‘They sent me on the plane with Salah Khalil. To make sure the hand-over went okay.'

Official visit then. Not personal.

‘They gave me strict orders not to contact you of course,' she confided, ‘but sod that. I had to check you were all right.' Her gaze kept returning to his scars. ‘But you're not, are you? You're not all right.'

‘I'm fine. A few scratches, that's all. I'll put on a shirt.'

‘Oh, Sam. Don't be so damned
English.
They tortured you for God's sake.' She detached her hands from his and clasped them on her lap as if not entirely trusting them. ‘Will you tell me about it?'

‘No. I don't think that'd be much fun for either of us.'

She bit her lip. ‘But are you okay – you know – inside?'

‘Getting better every second.' He reached out and rested his hand on her knee.

She was a tactile woman with a body she'd always liked him to touch. Her legs were bare now. Always were
in summer. Only in the winter had there been tights to remove. But touching something he couldn't have any more was a fool's game. He returned his hand to his lap.

‘I really was about to get dressed,' he told her. ‘Quentin said there's food in the fridge.'

‘You must be starved.'

It felt odd being alone with Chrissie in a bedroom, now that the rules had changed. For five years a great deal of their time together had been spent lying down, and despite his present debilitated state and the impractical narrowness of the child's divan, it was hard to shut his mind to the idea that they could make love here. And she? What was
she
thinking? He couldn't tell. The old signals were muted.

‘Clothes . . .' Chrissie jerked her eyes away from him. ‘There's a suitcase in the corner. Is it yours?'

‘Good heavens!' He hadn't noticed it before. ‘Last time I saw that was in the Rashid Hotel.'

He pulled his knees up ready to swing his feet off the bed and Chrissie backed the chair away to give him room. As his soles took his weight on the floor, pain shot through his bandaged shins.

‘Shit,' he winced, dropping back onto the edge of the bed.

‘I saw that, you idiot!' She screwed up her face as if the pain were hers. ‘You're far from all right. What did they do to you, Sam? What happened to your legs? Tell me.'

‘Oh I don't know, they kept banging into things,' he answered facetiously. ‘I'm told they'll heal.'

‘The bastards.' Her frown was back. ‘I simply don't understand. Why mess you about like that if all they wanted was a hostage to swap with Salah Khalil?'

‘Perhaps they thought that I knew something. Something sensitive which I wasn't telling them.'

She sat beside him on the bed and slipped her arm round his waist as if to give him support.

‘And did you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Was that what your message was about? Your message to me. The BW attack?'

Sam nodded.

‘So, what was it exactly?' She rested her head against his shoulder and asked it in an offhand way as if her interest in the matter were only peripheral. ‘What had you found out?'

About to reply, Sam checked himself. In their years together they'd sometimes blurred the service's rules on case confidentiality, but their relationship was different now. Different because she'd made it so.

‘We can't talk about this, Chrissie, you know that.'

She detached herself from him. She'd understood the point he was making.

‘No. You're right. I was just being curious. I mean, it
was
me you addressed the message to. And I
am
involved in the case. I mean, I'm here aren't I?'

‘Yes.'

But
why
was she here? What did she want from him?

She thrust her chin forward. ‘There is one thing you can tell me,' she said, more abrasively.

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. Why did you have to give my number to your courier? Why not one of the unlisted lines at Vauxhall Cross?'

He looked towards the window. The truth was he didn't fully know why. ‘I only had a couple of minutes to think. It was in case the German got stopped. I thought it best not to give one of the official numbers. Yours just came into my head.'

Chrissie's look was sceptical. ‘Just came into your head,' she repeated doubtfully. Then, lowering her voice, she continued. ‘Martin took the call, you know. Not me. I was out.'

‘Ah. How awkward for you.' There'd always been the risk of that.

She stood up from the bed and crossed to the window. She opened it and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside.

‘I was at the gym,' she told him over her shoulder. ‘It was in the evening.' She sucked in a lungful of nicotine then expelled it into the cool morning air. ‘Martin went ballistic when I got home. Thought the whole thing was a stunt. Some little billet-doux from you to me, in code.'

‘Ah, yes.' He shivered at the thought that Kessler might have binned the message.

Chrissie had her back to him still. There was something he didn't want to ask but knew he had to.

‘How
are
things with Martin?'

She turned slowly, then leaned against the window sill.

‘I made my choice back in midsummer, Sam,' she said in a small voice. ‘I'm sorry, but it was the right choice.'

There it was. Quite unequivocal.

‘Ah. Well bully for you, then.'

He cast his mind back to the day in June when she'd asked him to meet her in the middle of Barnes Common. A meeting in the open for once, at which she'd said her husband had found out about their affair and had told her she had to choose. A brief and bitter encounter, witnessed from afar by curious dog-walkers and, Sam had discovered a few minutes later, by Martin Kessler himself, watching from a car.

He hadn't seen Chrissie since that day. Not until this morning.

Sam stood up again, trying to ignore the protests from his shins. He looked down at his suitcase. ‘I shall now get dressed,' he announced determinedly.

Chrissie took a last puff on the cigarette then threw it out of the window. Pulling her mouth into a tight smile, she came towards him and slipped her arms round his
waist. She touched her soft, tanned cheek to his, taking care not to press her body against his burns. She smelled of smoke and perfume. To him it was a sexual smell that was uniquely hers.

‘Shall I tell you the truth, lover?' she whispered by his ear. ‘It's been hell. Absolute bloody hell. I've missed you dreadfully. But—'

‘You took the right decision,' he interjected. One that had never made sense to him after all her talk of divorcing Martin.

‘Yes,' she breathed. ‘As I told you, I
need
Martin, Sam. I don't want to but I do. And he needs me. And I've promised to be good. A promise I mean to keep.'

‘Fine.' Couldn't be clearer.

He took her by the shoulders and edged her out of his way. He stared at the closed suitcase on the floor, wondering whether he was capable of bending down to open it without falling over. Chrissie saw his dilemma, crouched and unzipped the lid for him.

‘They've folded everything so neatly,' she murmured. ‘Such thoughtful jailers. D'you have any preference for a shirt?'