“Wouldn’t say that, darling,” murmured Widgett.
“Try the next one. I’ll be able to work out who it is.”
The technician sighed heavily and moved on. It was Morton C. again, this time from the back, wetsuit peeled to the waist to show his impeccable torso. Morton C. was glancing over his shoulder in a pose which was oddly reminiscent of a fifties pinup.
“Very alluring,” said Widgett.
“He’s not alluring,” she said, blinking angrily, humiliated. “He’s the guy I told you about who pulled a gun on me. He’s a creep.”
Widgett’s mouth twisted in amusement. “Ooh! A creep? He’s the one who works for Monsieur Feramo, we think? And in what capacity do we think? A pimp? A toyboy?”
“Well, it looked as though Feramo had taken him on fairly recently to do diving trips with the wannabes. To be honest, I think he was playing everybody off against everybody else. He was pretending to be one of the divers. He was schmoozing up to everyone in the bar and on the boat. He was just using everyone.”
Widgett leaned forward, raised his eyebrows wickedly, and whispered, “Did you have him?”
“No, I did not,” hissed Olivia, staring furiously at the screen. The really annoying thing was that Morton C. looked bloody attractive. He had that dangerous, focused expression on his face which had first caught her eye in Honduras.
“Pity. Interesting-looking fellow.”
“He’s a shallow, double-crossing creep. He’s little better than a common prostitute.”
There was a slight cough at the back of the room. Professor Widgett studiously inspected his fingernails as a figure rose up from one of the computer booths, a familiar figure in unfamiliar clothes: a hip-looking dark suit, tie and shirt loosened at the collar. The cropped hair was no longer peroxide. Widgett glanced around.
“ ‘Little better than a common prostitute,’ she says.”
“Yes, sir,” said Morton C.
“What was it she stabbed you with again?” said Widgett.
“Hatpin, sir,” said Morton C. dryly, emerging from the booth.
Widgett unraveled himself and rose to his feet. “Ms. Joules, may I present Scott Rich of the CIA, formerly of the Special Boat Service and one of the brightest stars of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Widgett was overemphasizing his ts and ss as if he were Laurence Olivier on stage at the Old Vic. “He’s going to be at the helm of our current operation.”
“Finest computer genius you could hope to meet,” added Dodd.
“Welcome to the operation,” said Scott Rich, nodding slightly nervously at Olivia.
“Welcome to the operation?” she said. “How dare you!”
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice. You heard.”
“Sorry about this,” said Widgett to the computer tech. “Slightly wobbly moment approaching.”
“What were you doing?”
“Surveillance,” said Morton C. slash Scott Rich of the CIA.
“I know that. I mean, what were you doing? If you were working for the CIA, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Some might say you should have guessed.”
“I thought you were working for Feramo.”
“Likewise,” said Scott Rich.
“What do you . . . are you suggesting . . . ?”
“Far be it from me . . .” Widgett murmured to the computer tech as if they were in a sewing circle. “But didn’t she just call him a common prostitute?”
“If I’d told you, you might have told him.”
“If you’d told me, we could have got to the bottom of what he was doing. I would have stayed.”
“I agree with her,” said Widgett, still in the gossipy voice to the computer tech. “Can’t imagine what he was doing pulling her out so quickly. Some misguided notion of chivalry.”
“Chivalry? Chivalry?” said Olivia. “You used me from the moment you set eyes on me.”
“If I’d really wanted to use you, I’d have made sure you stayed.”
“You’d have used me before that if I’d let you, and you know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”
“All right, all right,” said Widgett, and Olivia heard the authority in his voice. The flash of cold detachment in his eyes told her he had given orders for harsh things in his time. “Sort yourselves out, and I’ll see the pair of you by the steps on the front lawn. You’ll find Wellingtons and Barbours in the boot room.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Scott Rich.
“Wet-weather gear, Rich. Can’t have you tramping through the woods dressed like a waiter, can we?”
* * *
The housekeeper was waiting outside the operations room. Olivia and Scott Rich followed her down the dark, wood-paneled staircase and through to the kitchens, where there were scrubbed wooden tables, warm pipes and baking smells. The boot room was warm too and paneled in white-painted tongue-and-groove, with boots, scarves, socks and coats in neat lines on hooks and racks. It was soothing and comforting, but only up to a point.
“Why did you kill Drew?” hissed Olivia, putting on a pair of thick socks and green wellies.
“What are you talking about?” said Scott Rich, pulling a black sweater over his head. “I didn’t kill that coke-crazed hippie. I tried to rescue him. Jesus!”
“Don’t pretend it was the shark,” she said, wriggling into a woolly jumper.
“If you really want the grisly details: Drew went after Feramo’s divers on his own. He got into a fight underwater. Someone pulled a knife. The sharks were coming in. Feramo’s people pulled him up onto their boat. I was following at a distance. The next thing I knew, bits of Drew were dropping over the side and every predator this side of Tobago was heading for the scene. And, by the way, your sweater’s inside out and back to front.”
She looked down uncertainly, then took it off and put it back on.
“It was you who put the cocaine in my bag in Tegucigalpa, wasn’t it?” she said, as Scott Rich pushed open the door to let her go outside.
“No,” he said.
“Don’t lie.”
He looked like a country squire. She realized she probably looked like a country squire’s wife. The cold air hit her with a shock.
They rounded the corner and the full beauty of the house revealed itself: an Elizabethan manor with tall, square chimneys and mullioned windows, perfectly proportioned in honeyed Cotswold stone.
“I didn’t put coke in your room.”
“Then who did?” she said. “And what were you doing in that tunnel? You nearly killed me.”
“Killed you?” said Scott Rich. Widgett was standing waiting for them on the steps. He saw them and set off to meet them halfway across the lawn, coat and scarf flapping. “I saved your life in that tunnel. I gave you my air. You guys were the idiots who went in without leaving a marker buoy. But look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“So you did plant the coke?”
“No, I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Oh gawd. You two are not still arguing, are you?” said Widgett as he joined them. “Come on, let’s head for the woods. Olivia, when we get back to the house you’ll be required to sign the Official Secrets Act. All right?”
“Yes, sir,” gabbled Olivia, thrilled. “Absolutely, sir.”
“Yeees, I rather thought you’d like secrets,” said Widgett. “Everything you hear here stays here, understood? Or you’ll be taken to the Tower.”
* * *
It was a crisp winter day and the air was filled with English countryside smells, principally manure. Olivia followed the two spies along a path through the woodland, breathing in damp wood, rotting fungus, squelching through puddles in her Wellingtons, remembering the joys of being wrapped up warm outside on a cold day. She noticed a camera fastened to a tree, and then another, and then, through the mist
y woodland, a high-security fence with four layers of barbed wire on top of it and a soldier in camouflage gear behind it.
In the cold, Widgett’s face looked even older. The red thread veins stood out through his skin, and there was a circle of bluish tinge, like a bruise, beneath each eye. He almost looked as if he was dead: a walking cadaver.
“There are two key questions,” Scott Rich was saying. “One, what are they planning? We’re picking up Intelligence chatter which points to—”
“Oh God, Intelligence chatter. I hate that term,” said Widgett. “Intelligence chatter. Intelligence chatter. Retarded intelligence, more like. Men on the ground is what we need. Human beings with human reactions to other human beings.”
“We are picking up Intelligence chatter which strongly points to imminent attacks on London and Los Angeles.”
“As well as Sydney, New York, Barcelona, Singapore, San Francisco, Bilbao, Bogotá, Bolton, Bognor and anywhere else where people send e-mails,” muttered Widgett.
Scott Rich lowered his eyelids slightly. Olivia was starting to learn this would often be the only sign you got that he was rattled. “All right. We’ve got a real human being here. She’s all yours,” he said, leaning back against a tree.
Widgett appeared to be ruminating, chewing his lip or maybe his false teeth. He fixed her with his blue eyes. “Two questions. One: What does Feramo have up his sleeve? Divers in sewers, reservoirs—nuclear cooling systems? Two: They’re trafficking explosives from the hotel setup in Honduras into southern California. How are they getting them in?”
“Is that what they were doing in Honduras?”
“Yes,” said Scott Rich, expressionless.
“How do you know?”
“Because I found C4 at the top of that cave you were on your way out of.”
Olivia looked down, frowning, thinking about herself swimming around in the cavern just looking at all the fish and thinking what bright colors they were.
“So . . . Agent Joules,” said Widgett. “Any thoughts behind that stunning façade?”
She looked at him sharply. Her mind wasn’t working properly. It had all got too important. She wanted to succeed as a spy too much.
“I need to think about it,” she said in a small voice. Widgett and Scott Rich looked at each other. She sensed disappointment from the one, and dismissiveness from the other.
“Shall we walk on?” said Widgett.
The two mismatched figures walked ahead, talking seriously, the one precariously tall, trailing scarves, coat flapping, with theatrical gestures, the other powerful, contained, self-possessed. Olivia followed behind miserably. She felt like a fabled musical prodigy who had got onto the stage, made a few feeble squeaking noises on a violin and let everybody down. The stress of the whole bizarre experience started to crowd in on her. She felt exhausted and strung out, girly and useless. Breathe, breathe, calm, calm, don’t panic, she told herself, trying to remember the Rules for Living.
Never panic. Stop, breathe, think.
Nothing is either as bad or as good as it seems.
When overwhelmed by disaster, think, “Oh, fuck it.”
The key to success lies in how you pick yourself up from failure.
Olivia thought back to when she’d last used that Rule for Living: Lighting a cigarette behind the Popayan general store. She thought about Pumpkin Hill, looking down at the concrete dock, the dinner with Feramo, the wannabes around the bar, swimming round the headland to see the divers reappear with surfboards.
“Excuse me!” she said, hurrying to catch up. “Excuse me! I know how they’re getting the explosive in!”
“Oh goody,” said Widgett. “Do tell.”
“They take it by road across Honduras, then up the Pacific Coast by boat.”
“Yes, we had managed to get ourselves to that point,” said Scott. “The question was how do they get the stuff into the States?”
“I think they transfer it to posh yachts and seal it inside surfboards, either on the yachts or at Feramo’s place in Catalina.”
Scott Rich and Widgett stopped walking and looked at her.
“Then they take the surfboards close into the California coast on the yacht. They weight and dead-drop them under the ocean either on the bottom or on a line. Then their surfers go down in scuba gear, pick up the boards, dead-drop their tanks, surf into shore at Malibu and drive off with the surfboards full of explosives in their camper vans.”
There was total silence.
“Hmm, splendid piece of lateral thinking,” said Widgett. “Based on . . . ?”
“I saw them practicing in Honduras. I swam round the headland in Popayan and saw them dead-dropping the boards, then surfing in.”
“Wasn’t that what you were supposed to be looking for, Rich?” said Widgett. “Or were you too busy getting her Burgundy out of your electronic bug? Puligny-Montrachet, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up, please, sir.”
“So you put a bug in Feramo’s potted fig tree?” said Olivia.
“And his cactus. And your cactus, come to mention it.”
“And you put a sweater over one, a glass of Cristal in the other, and a white burgundy in the third. Louis Jadot ’ninety-six, wasn’t it?” said Widgett.
“ ’Ninety-five,” said Olivia.
“Must have hurt, pouring it away.”
“It did,” said Olivia.
“Karl, hey.” Scott was talking into his phone. “Get the H section checking surfers on the SoCal coast, will you? Focus on the Malibu Lagoon break. Check the boards for C4 inside. And get some people onto Catalina—undercover—checking out the boat docks. Where was this place, Olivia? Olivia? Feramo’s place on Catalina?”
“Oh, er. It was right of Avalon.”
“Right?”
“East. North, maybe; you know, right when you’re facing Catalina from LA. It’s round the corner on the seaward side, towards Hawaii.”
“Right, right,” said Scott Rich. “Round the corner towards Hawaii.” He sighed. “Just check all the landing stages,” he said into the phone.
“Jolly good. Well, that’s all sorted then,” said Widgett. “Now what about the target? Any thoughts?”
She told them about her theories, about the face cream with ricin in, the acetylene bubbles in the cooling pipes of the nuclear power stations, the attacks on the studios.
“But it’s too broad,” she said. “I need to spend more time with Feramo to narrow it down.”
“The perfect thing would be to take him up on this Sudan offer,” said Widgett. “It would be fascinating under any circumstances.”
“He’d be crazy to bring you out there,” said Scott.
“He is crazy,” said Olivia.
“He’s crazy to have let you go,” said Scott.
“Thank you,” said Olivia, thinking maybe Scott Rich wasn’t so bad after all.
“I meant because it was obvious you’d turn him in. As you have.”
“He trusts me. He thinks I’m his falcon.”
Scott let out an odd noise.
“Is something the matter, Scott, Rich, Morton, or whatever your name is?”
“Yes, Rachel, or Olivia, or Pixie, or whatever the fuck yours is today . . .”
“Oh God in heaven,” drawled Widgett, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his forehead. “It is rather the form for spooks to assume multiple identities. I mean some of us spent two full seasons as a drag queen at the Aswan Cataract Hotel.”
“Spooks, yes,” said Scott Rich.
“Which is what makes Ms. Joules so interesting,” said Widgett. “She’s a natural spy. Now the question is, if Pierre Feramo”—he said the name with an exaggerated French accent—“telephones you as promised and beckons you to his Bedouin lair in the Red Sea hills, would you go?”
“Yup,” said Olivia solemnly.
“Would you?” said Scott Rich, fixing her with his intense gray eyes. “Even if his only motive was to kill you?”
“If he wanted to kill
me, he would have killed me in Honduras.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Widgett. “A fellow could have a lot of perfectly good reasons for wanting to whisk Agent Joules off to the desert. Surely you’ve read The Arabian Nights, Rich? Profoundly erotic book. A girl swept away by a Bedouin could look forward to some most imaginative nights in his tent, I would wager.”
“And then what?” said Scott Rich, striding angrily ahead.
44
It was five days since Olivia had left Feramo in the Bay Islands and he hadn’t called. The team, which now, unfortunately, seemed to include Suraya the Undercover Bitch, had been holed up in a basement room since breakfast. Through some complex electronic maneuver, Scott Rich had routed the wrong number Olivia gave to Feramo through to the Tech Op Room so that, if Feramo rang, it would come to them direct.
The clock in the Operations Room was of the functional plastic type that Olivia remembered from school: a white face, black numbers and a red second hand. It was 4:00 P.M., 9:00 A.M. in Honduras on the fifth morning since—with a badly sucked finger—she had taken her leave of Feramo.
Scott Rich, Professor Widgett, Olivia, Dodd the tech op and Suraya were all, with varying degrees of subtlety or ostentation, glancing at the clock in turn and—in Olivia’s mind—all thinking the same thing: She’s made it up. He wasn’t interested in her at all. He’s not going to call.
“Rich, my dear fellow. Are you absolutely sure you got that number wired up properly?” said Widgett, picking at a morsel of foie gras and toast he had had sent up. “You seemed to be pressing an awful lot of buttons.”
“Yes,” said Scott Rich without looking up from the computer.
“He’s not going to call, is he?” said Suraya.
“You should call him, Olivia,” said Scott Rich.
“It will put him off,” Olivia insisted. “He has to pursue.”
“I thought you were his falcon,” said Scott Rich, a twinkle in the clever eyes. “Or was it a budgie?”
He turned away and started talking to the technician, both of them focusing intently on the screen. One half showed Olivia’s stolen shots of Feramo. The other was a slide show of known al-Qaeda terrorists. From time to time, they would stop and merge the shots to produce Feramo in a turban with a Kalashnikov, Feramo in a checked shirt in a bar in Hamburg, Feramo with a different nose, Feramo in a nightshirt with his hair standing on end.