Geoffrey Fane stalked into his office on the fifth floor of Vauxhall Cross. The room was flooded with light, shining in through the two large windows overlooking the Thames. He walked across and stared out at the little tourist boat just turning to go back towards Westminster, having completed its tour up river. He knew the boat’s crew would be drawing the passengers’ attention to the building, reminding them how it had featured in a James Bond film and giving them some garbled account of what went on inside. He himself wasn’t at all convinced that they should ever have moved into such an exotic-looking place. Its outlandish appearance just invited people to gawp, and made it more of a target too. Admittedly the previous office block, Century House, where he’d worked when he first joined, was a dreadful hole, with masonry falling off the front and an interior like a squalid tenement. No one would ever have wanted to take tourists to see that or put it in a film. Good thing too.
Fane was feeling thoroughly out of sorts. He’d just been to a meeting in ‘C’’s office upstairs, to discuss the launch of the forthcoming History of MI6. Geoffrey didn’t agree with that scheme at all – what was the point of it? he’d asked. There were other ways they could have celebrated the centenary. A Secret Intelligence Service should be secret. But he’d been unable to prevent it, especially when Five had announced that they were doing one, and the defeat had annoyed him greatly. At least he’d managed to ensure the book stopped at 1949. Over at Five they’d gone almost up to the present day and then found themselves criticised because the last chapters were too thin. What else did people expect?
Perhaps it was time to retire, he thought, before he started to get the reputation of being old-fashioned and dyed in the wool. But retire to what? One of his troubles was that there was no woman in his life. Since Adele had gone off with her Frenchman, various short affairs had come to nothing. The women had all bored him; intellectually negligible, with nothing at all interesting to say. He still lived by himself in the flat in Fulham he’d bought after the divorce, since Adele had got away with – as he saw it – their house in Kensington. Not that she needed it (her new husband was as rich as Croesus), yet now she was pressing Geoffrey to sell the small country house that had been in his family for generations. It wasn’t that he went there very often now, and there was no prospect of grandchildren to enjoy it with. But it was his, damn it, not Adele’s.
His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of the phone on his desk. He picked it up. ‘Yes, Daisy?’ he said. A new girl, rather sweet if a little slow. Still, he’d get her up to speed soon enough. He prided himself on having a deft hand with his PAs, though it was annoying that they never seemed to stay with him very long.
‘Liz Carlyle rang, Geoffrey, while you were upstairs.’
‘Oh?’ Fane said, a little tetchily, cross that Daisy hadn’t told him straight away.
‘Yes. She wondered if she could come across. Preferably today, she said.’
‘Hmm,’ said Fane. He would have liked to tell Daisy to ask Elizabeth Carlyle to come over right away, but that wouldn’t do. Though he would like to see her, he couldn’t conquer a need to demonstrate what a very busy man he was; so busy that he might, just might, be able to squeeze her in between more pressing appointments. He said, ‘Tell her I can probably fit her in at the end of the day. Let’s say half-past five.’ Then another thought came into his head. Perhaps he could persuade her to stay for a drink after their meeting.
Because the truth was that Elizabeth Carlyle was the one woman he’d met since Adele went who really aroused his interest. He found her attractive, both physically and intellectually. Her slim figure, brown hair and calm but watchful grey-green eyes fascinated him. She was a woman of real intelligence and he wanted to know what she was thinking about – other than the problem of the moment, which was all they ever found themselves discussing.
But now she’d got herself involved with that DGSE chap, Seurat. What was it with the French? First Adele and now Elizabeth. Anyway, he thought spitefully, he’d embarrassed them both that afternoon in the Athenaeum, telling neither of them that he was inviting the other. He toyed with the top of his pen as he thought of that awkward meeting, and of how Elizabeth’s expression had stayed rigidly business-like while Martin Seurat blithely chatted on, all Gallic charm, assuming Fane did not know they were seeing each other. But Geoffrey Fane was always in the know. He prided himself on that.
By five-thirty the sun was in the west and glancing off the windows. Fane heard Reception ring Daisy to say that Miss Carlyle was in the waiting room. He got up from his desk and pulled a Venetian blind partway down.
‘Liz is here,’ said Daisy a few minutes later, poking her head round the door.
‘Come in, Elizabeth,’ he called out, frowning slightly to himself at Daisy’s informality. Liz walked in, looking cool in black trousers and a satin blouse. Was she getting slimmer? he wondered, admiring her figure.
‘Can we offer you some tea? Or something stronger perhaps, as the sun is almost over the yardarm?’
‘No, thanks,’ she said. Turning to Daisy, she added, ‘I’d just like a glass of water, please.’
With a flicker of a smile and a nod he dismissed Daisy, and watched her blonde curls bouncing as she retreated from the room.
‘Sit down, Eliz… Liz. What brings you over here on this lovely evening?’
‘Sorry it’s such short notice, Geoffrey, but it’s rather important.’
‘Ah, well, spill the beans,’ he said, showing by his smile that he was not taking her too seriously.
Liz remained standing and looked straight at him without a trace of a smile. She said, ‘We’ve come across something that makes us think Langley has an agent working in the UCSO Athens office.’
Fane was so surprised he said nothing. His thoughts were racing: if this were true why hadn’t Blakey told him? Or did Blakey himself not know? And how had Elizabeth found this out?
His voice remained unruffled. ‘Sit down, my dear Elizabeth, and tell me what makes you think that.’
‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ she said sharply, not sitting down. By now Fane was behind his desk.
‘What is? Do tell.’
Liz fished in her bag and plonked Mitchell Berger’s CV down on the desk. She stood back and waited while he scanned it.
‘I knew nothing of this,’ he said when he’d finished reading. ‘All I know about the man is that Blakey vouched for him. In unequivocal terms.’
‘Blakey must have known he was CIA.’
‘I’m not sure he did… What’s obvious to expert eyes is sometimes muzzy to the rest of us.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Geoffrey. Blakey’s eyes are expert.’
‘ Were would be a better word. He’s been out of the Service for ages now.’
‘Five years,’ she said through tight lips.
Fane shrugged. ‘That’s two decades in intelligence terms, as we both know. And between you and me, though David was a perfectly competent officer, he was not perhaps the sharpest knife in the box.’
‘That’s not how you described him before.’
‘Loyalty is our business’s first line of defence. You don’t need me to tell you that.’ Fane’s lips curled in a slight smile.
‘I don’t buy it,’ she said with an angry shake of her head.
‘I’m not selling anything, Elizabeth,’ he said coldly. Who the hell did she think she was, acting as if he were on trial?
Nevertheless, he was put out when she shook her head again, unpacified. ‘Blakey must have known… and you must have known as well. What I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.’ She looked at him with open exasperation. ‘You keep doing this, Geoffrey – you keep holding back information. I don’t see how we can work together if you won’t be straight with me.’
He thought how magnificent she looked when she was angry. Normally he wouldn’t have been at all bothered to find that she suspected him of not telling her everything. Normally, he had to admit, she would have been right. But she was accusing him of holding back on her when for once he actually wasn’t. He hadn’t had the faintest inkling that Berger was a CIA man.
Why should he have thought it? Blakey had assured him that Berger was OK – and if Blakey turned out to have been economical with the truth, Fane would have his guts for garters. If it were true, it meant the Agency knew that the woman who’d been murdered had been put in by his Athens Station. That was embarrassing to say the least. Particularly as he suspected that Bruno Mackay had not conducted that operation very cleverly. Damn!
‘Elizabeth, please hear me out. I give you my word that I hadn’t the faintest idea until three minutes ago that this man Berger was anything but what I was told – a chap with a lot of international experience who was doing a fine job running a charity office in Greece, but whose ships had started disappearing.’
Liz did not reply, and Fane waited as the silence between them expressed her doubt as loudly as words would have done. He was frustrated by her refusal to believe him, but couldn’t bring himself to reiterate his assurance. It was too undignified. Instead he said, ‘Look, I see I can’t persuade you now. But let me talk to the Agency. I’ll get Bokus over from the embassy. You know him?’
She nodded, still looking sceptical.
‘He’s not going to deny it if this chap is one of theirs. Langley never actually lies to us overtly – just by omission. A point-blank question will get us the answer we need, one way or the other. Will that do?’
Liz pondered this as Fane watched her, wondering when she might decide to relax with him, when she might realise he wanted to help her if only she would let him. He found it galling to have his offers so consistently refused, especially by someone he would happily admit to admiring.
At last she said, ‘All right. See what your friend Bokus has to say. But do it soon, please.’
Fane sighed as Liz made to leave. ‘I haven’t seen Andy Bokus for a while. I was hoping to keep it that way.’
An enigmatic smile appeared on Liz’s face. ‘That’s funny. I was saying something just like that to Peggy Kinsolving earlier today.’