Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (17 page)

Peggy wrote the letters down and looked at them hard. She liked crosswords and, sure enough, an answer came to her. ‘That’s a big help,’ she said. ‘I may have more luck with Dr Cowdray now. Many thanks.’

She walked back into the interview room and sat down again. She said abruptly, ‘Just to recap, you say you barely know Belinda Duggan?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then why did you meet her in the Novotel?’

It was only a hunch, backed by the bare bones of an email, but it seemed worth the gamble.

At first it didn’t seem to work. ‘Who says I did?’ Cowdray demanded.

He stared at her defiantly, but Peggy’s hunch wouldn’t go away – and suddenly she saw what this was about. She had no evidence, but Cowdray didn’t know that, and if it didn’t work she wouldn’t have lost anything – she hadn’t got anywhere as it was. She said, ‘The French call it
cinq à sept
, I believe. You know, a quick rendezvous at the end of the day, then on home as if you’ve come straight from work. In your case, straight from Norfolk where you’d had a busy week.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But Peggy saw that his right hand was trembling.

‘I think you do. The Novotel is very convenient – a stone’s throw from King’s Cross, where the train from Downham Market comes in. We’ve checked the register,’ she said, her imagination in full flight. ‘You must have used a different name to sign in. But hotels have CCTV – what doesn’t these days? That’s what the interruption just now was about; they’ve been going through the tapes and they’ve found you on one of them. And on the right day of the week …’

Peggy was slightly alarmed at how easily she’d invented all this, but Cowdray looked stunned. He tried to speak, licking his lips and opening his mouth, but nothing came out. He swallowed, then swallowed again. At last he said haltingly, ‘How did you find out?’

‘Your email.’

‘But I––’ And he stopped, realising what he had admitted.

‘Yes, you deleted it, and Belinda deleted it – twice in fact, once on her laptop and once on the server.’

‘Then how did you read it?’

‘We couldn’t at first,’ Peggy admitted. ‘But finally we salvaged just enough. Why don’t you tell me what you two were up to?’

Cowdray lowered his head and pushed his fingertips against his eyebrows. When he looked up his eyes were red, slightly teary, but he gave Peggy a sheepish smile. ‘Well, I’m not going to say “it isn’t what it looks like”.’

Peggy nodded. ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you did. But your personal life is your own business, Dr Cowdray. I don’t want to know the details. It’s only the security aspect I’m concerned about.’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t have to worry about that. The one thing we never talked about was work.’

‘No pillow talk about encryption?’

Cowdray looked horrified. ‘Absolutely not. I wouldn’t talk about my work with anyone.’

She believed him, though his indignation was a little hard to take, given the alarm he’d caused. ‘Why did you send an email? You know better than I do what the risks of doing that are. I understand it could help an outsider get into the system. That’s why security is so strict – you helped set the parameters.’

‘I know. What can I say? It was a fit of madness.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘We’d had a row. Belinda threatened to stop seeing me and I … I suppose I must have been desperate.’

‘Had you ever sent an email to her by that route before?’

‘Never,’ said Cowdray, so quickly and firmly that Peggy was left wondering if he was telling the truth.

What would your wife think about it? Peggy wondered, but she said nothing. She knew that Cowdray had five children. He had a lot to lose on a personal level, as well as jeopardising his career. What on earth did he see in that cold, arrogant woman to make it worth risking all that?

As Hugo Cowdray left the office, he looked smaller than he had when he’d come in. He’d asked what would happen next but Peggy had told him that would be decided by the MOD. Her job with him was done.

Later that evening she met Charlie Fielding again in the Angler’s Arms.

When she told him what Cowdray had admitted, he was dismayed at first, then angry. ‘We’ll have to suspend him at once. There’ll be a disciplinary board, and I know what their verdict will be. It’s such a waste. Hugo’s immensely talented, and he’s gone and thrown it all away for the sake of a fling. As for Belinda Duggan, she’ll be suspended too, though she may keep her job. After all, she didn’t initiate the security violation, Hugo did.’

‘But she lied to me,’ said Peggy. ‘If you hadn’t cracked that email, Cowdray wouldn’t have admitted anything, and I don’t think we’d have got to the bottom of it. Duggan’s as unreliable as Hugo Cowdray, and that affects her vetting status. I’d like to be confident that she’s put somewhere where she doesn’t have access to highly classified information – at least for a time.’

‘I suppose your Service will be making that demand formally.’

‘I would think so. As for Cowdray, we have a bit of a dilemma. If I understand what you told me, the one possible way into the Brigham Hall system would be through the MOD intranet – which is why you were at such pains to keep the two systems separate?’

‘That’s right. I never thought anyone would breach that firewall – everyone knew it was absolutely forbidden.’

Peggy nodded, but she wasn’t interested in Cowdray’s behaviour any more; she had something more important on her mind. ‘I also understand that even if the communication between MOD and Brigham were innocent, the danger is that someone – a mole in particular – could latch on to this link and somehow get into your system.’

‘It’s possible if you know how to do it. We call it “hitching” – like hitching a lift. It’s a very remote possibility, as I think I told you, but theoretically a mole could use the email as a vehicle to get in.’

‘But does it have to hitch in via Cowdray’s machine? Because if that’s the case, then if we immediately shut that down there won’t be any way in. The gateway will be locked.’

‘Yes. That’s exactly right.’ said Fielding with relief. ‘Unless we’re too late, of course.’

‘But that’s exactly what we don’t want,’ Peggy said. Fielding looked baffled, and she explained: ‘Don’t you see? This is our best bet for catching the mole, if there is one. If he tries to get into Brigham Hall through Cowdray’s machine then we can spot him.’

‘I suppose so …’ said Fielding warily. ‘But I’d need to think about that – and what the risks are that he’ll get in and we won’t see he’s there.’

‘If we can’t do something like that, we’ll be right where we are now in looking for this mole – which is nowhere. And he might already have got into the system.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Fielding, scratching his head. ‘I’ll have to work out the implications of all this. I can’t help thinking how weird it will be to tell Hugo that he’s screwed up so badly we want him to keep working.’

Peggy smiled at him. ‘Well, not as weird as to find that everything you’re working on was being monitored by some foreign state. Don’t take too long to work it out,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got much time.’

Chapter 28

‘What did you say?’ asked Liz, looking up from her plate.

Martin said with a smile, ‘I was asking if you’d like some cheese.’

‘I’m sorry. I was thinking about something else.’

‘I can see that. Do you want to talk about it?’

Normally conversation flowed easily when they were together but tonight Liz couldn’t prevent her mind from drifting back to Switzerland. She’d come straight on from there to Paris to spend the weekend with Martin but she was finding it impossible to relax. She was disappointed that the French had lost Kubiak in Marseilles, when it had seemed that they were so near to finding out what business he had there.

And underneath that worry was a continuous mixture of guilt and anxiety about what might be happening to Alexander Sorsky. Liz couldn’t help going over her meetings with the Russian, replaying everything he’d said.

She didn’t want to explain all this to Martin. He would have understood, of course, being in the same business himself, but they normally avoided talking shop, unless, as occasionally happened, they found themselves working on two ends of the same case.

He laughed. ‘I can see you
don’t
want to talk about it, so let me tell you my news. My old friend Milraud has been spotted back in France with his wife. I’m going down to Toulon this week to see if they’ve shown up at the shop there or their house in Bandol. Milraud’s too clever to do something so obvious, so I’m not very hopeful, but I need to check it out.’ Liz nodded. She knew Martin would never rest until he had caught his former colleague from the DGSE, who had resigned and set himself up as an arms dealer. A crooked arms dealer, in fact, who now had an Interpol warrant over his head.

‘That’s not all,’ Martin continued. ‘I spoke to Isobel Florian about the anarchists Edward’s daughter has got herself mixed up with. Isobel already knows about them – they’ve been involved in various anti-Capitalist protests. There’s concern they’ll try and disrupt a G20 meeting in Avignon next month; Isobel says they’ve got some violent people in their midst, so she’s taking the threat seriously. The DCRI office in the South has managed to put an agent in, and Isobel is going down to Cahors this week to meet him and his handler. If I’m finished at Toulon in time, I’m going to drive up and join them.’

‘That’s really kind of you. I hope it’s not a waste of your time.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s never a waste of time to keep in touch with the DCRI. I’ll need their help if I’m ever to catch Milraud.’

‘Talking about the DCRI in the South, are they a good outfit? Their surveillance lost a target in Marseilles I wanted followed.’

‘Is that what’s been bothering you?’

‘Partly.’ And she explained about the contact with Sorsky, and how Kubiak, the Russian Head of Security in Geneva, had been identified as the source of the information Sorsky had given her. ‘Apparently he visits Marseilles quite regularly, and we need to know what he’s doing there. I think it could be important. But the surveillance lost him, so we’re none the wiser.’

Martin thought for a moment. ‘Well, as I said, I’ll be in Toulon this week and Marseilles is only a few miles up the coast. If you think it would be useful, I could go and have a word with them and find out what happened. I’d want to ask Isobel first, but I don’t think she’d object.’

‘Could you? I got the impression that they weren’t taking it too seriously. If you could lean on them a bit, to find out what Kubiak’s doing down there, it would be a huge help. Whatever he’s up to, I can’t imagine it’s in France’s interests any more than ours.’

‘Of course. I’ll make that very clear to the DCRI in Marseilles.’

He walked over to the windows and started drawing the curtains. Outside dusk had turned to dark, the
boules
players in the square across the road had gone home, and lights were now turned on in the houses further down the street. He said, ‘Is there any other business to discuss?’

‘I hope not. As far as I’m concerned I’d rather talk about anything else for the rest of the weekend.’

‘I’ll hold you to that. I don’t think all this shop talk is good for either of us. Tomorrow I thought we might do something different for a change.’ There was a glint in his eyes.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. The races are on at Longchamp. ’

‘You mean, the horses?’

‘I don’t mean Formula One.’ He made a noise like a buzzing fly, and Liz laughed. Martin said, ‘I can think of nothing more boring than watching cars go round and round a track at three hundred kilometres an hour. Not when you have animals as beautiful as thoroughbreds to watch.’

‘I didn’t know you liked horses.’

‘I do, provided I don’t have to ride one. Though I imagine as a native of the countryside, you like that sort of thing,’ he said teasingly.

‘Pony Club for seven years.’

‘And rosettes?’

‘One or two,’ she said.

‘Modest as always – I’ve seen dozens of them in your room at Susan’s house. Anyway, would you like to go tomorrow? It’s in the Bois de Boulogne – and very pretty.’

‘Absolutely. My father used to take me to the races at Newbury every year. Shall we have a flutter?’

‘That goes without saying. You are looking at one of France’s leading handicappers.’

‘Really?’ Liz asked with a smile.

‘No, not really,’ Martin said with mock sadness. ‘If I ever have to make a living another way, betting on horses would not be an intelligent choice. I might as well throw money up in the air.’

‘Ah, but tomorrow will be different. I’m feeling lucky.’

‘Good. Now, you’d better join me in an Armagnac.’

Chapter 29

The waves of irritation emanating from Liz were washing over Peggy, who was sitting next to her in the MOD entrance hall, as they waited to be escorted up to Sy3A. Liz had hoped to see Charlie Fielding alone, without involving Henry Pennington any further, but she’d been told firmly that protocol required that he be kept in the loop. So here she was, about to subject herself to another hour of Pennington patronising her and flapping.