As it turned out, Fane decided to call on Andy Bokus at his office in the American Embassy, rather than summoning him to Vauxhall Cross as protocol would dictate. He thought he might get more out of Bokus on his own ground.
It was something of a sacrifice, though, for Fane hated the sight of Grosvenor Square, littered as it now was with concrete blocks, huge flower pots and metal barriers. He was in a bad temper when he got out of his taxi on the opposite side of the square into a steady drizzle. ‘Can’t get no nearer, guv,’ the taxi driver had just announced.
Fane paid him off, unfurled his umbrella and strode round the barriers to the police post outside the embassy. He waved his Foreign Office pass and glowered as he waited for clearance to come through from inside. Thank goodness the Americans were moving south of the river, to a brand-new compound where they could be isolated and have no neighbours to annoy. The Mayfair residents would be delighted to see them go.
He thought about Bokus – a man with whom he had nothing at all in common. Bokus presented himself as the typical corn-fed Midwesterner; a man whose idea of a foreign country was New York City. Once when Fane had taken him for lunch at the Travellers, Bokus had asked for a can of Budweiser – Fane still smiled to himself at the memory of the waiter’s expression. But Fane had come to suspect that this unsophisticated, not to say boorish, exterior was carefully cultivated. Bokus disliked and distrusted the Brits, so he had adopted a persona designed to discomfit them. But Fane knew what he was up to; Bokus was no fool. In fact, Fane was certain that beneath that crude exterior lay a razor-sharp mind. Which made him simultaneously more interesting and more difficult to deal with.
‘What’s this all about, Geoffrey?’ Bokus asked bluntly.
‘We’ve got a rather interesting situation on our hands,’ Fane replied languidly, shooting his cuffs.
‘Well, take a seat and tell me about it.’
Fane sat down. Crossing one long leg casually over the other, he proceeded to outline the problems UCSO had been having with their shipments. As he talked, he decided that there would be no harm in mentioning the young British-Pakistani, Amir Khan, who had been picked up by the French.
Bokus nodded. ‘Yeah, we heard from the French about that kid,’ he said indifferently.
Fane raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He wondered for a moment why Bokus hadn’t been more interested in Amir Khan. Why hadn’t he enquired what the British knew about the lad, if he’d heard about him from the French? Were the Americans doing something with the French that Fane didn’t know about? Was Elizabeth Carlyle right in thinking that the CIA had something going on in UCSO? But then he decided that Bokus’ lack of interest was both genuine and utterly predictable – if something directly affected American interests you always had his full attention. If a US angle were less obvious, he’d play it cool.
Fane continued: ‘We thought it best to take a look at all the UCSO employees, since one of them would be the most likely source of any tip-off to the pirates about shipments coming past the Horn. It seemed a bit hard to believe at first,’ he added, ‘but on the other hand, it seemed too much of a coincidence that UCSO was so repeatedly the victim of these attacks.’ There were other reasons to think there was a traitor inside UCSO – including, of course, the wretched girl Maria’s murder – but Fane saw no need to lay these on the table. Instead he took out a typed piece of paper and, leaning over, put it on the desktop under Bokus’ eyes.
‘What’s this?’ the American demanded.
‘It’s the CV of the head of the UCSO office in Athens. Or do you chaps say “résumé”? He’s an American, as you see, and jolly interesting, I think you’ll agree.’
Bokus bent his head over the desk and his bald pate shone in the light. After thirty seconds’ silent inspection of the paper, his head lifted and Fane found Bokus’ brown eyes fixed on him. The American said neutrally, ‘What do you want me to say, Geoffrey?’
Fane decided to ignore this. ‘The thing is, Andy, this chap is no doubt perfectly sound. Blakey, his boss in London, swears by him.’
Bokus interjected, ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’
‘Possibly for the same reason Berger’s name rings bells for me.’ Fane shrugged, unwilling to be deflected, and stared back at Bokus.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bokus said. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours – is that it?’ He laughed unexpectedly, a full-throated guffaw that Fane found intensely annoying. He liked it when Bokus stayed close to stereotype – the serious heavy-set ex-football player who thought the Limeys were all too arch and highfalutin’ for words.
‘You go first,’ said Fane dryly.
Bokus thought about this for a moment then got up from his chair, which creaked when relieved of his weight. He went over to the wall and stood staring at a framed photograph of an American football team. Though Fane swung round in his chair, his only view was of Bokus’ back.
‘Mitchell Berger joined a couple of years before I did.’ Bokus’ voice sounded curiously disembodied, like the narrator’s in a film. ‘He was an operative in the field… kind of a famous one even when I started out. But he never had any interest in climbing the ladder.’ Bokus turned back towards the room and lifted his right hand, in a gesture designed to encompass his surroundings, his office, his status, his rise through the ranks… everything apparently that Mitchell Berger had not had time for.
Bokus looked straight at Fane. ‘I never met the guy. Heard he’d left the Agency a few years ago. Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes a fella wants a quiet life, and the way I heard it, Berger finally realised that one day his luck could run out. That’s not surprising – most sane people wouldn’t have taken half the postings he’d asked for. So I wouldn’t think there was any other agenda going on – he just took the buy-out and opted for a safer berth. Certainly I don’t know of any secret Langley agenda; like I said, the guy retired.’
This was as far as Bokus would go, Fane sensed. But it was enough – Berger was ex-Agency, all right, but not working on Langley’s orders. Fane believed Bokus about that; he had responded too quickly to have made up the story.
‘Your turn,’ said Bokus, without amusement. He clearly didn’t like having to offer up information.
‘In a minute,’ said Fane. ‘First, I’d like to ask you to find out if Mr Berger is active again.’
‘I just told you, he retired.’
‘You know as well as I do, one’s always on call. We may not be priests, Andy, but we work under the same terms and conditions. I’d like to know if Berger’s been reactivated.’
Bokus thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘OK, I’ll check it out. Now tell me why you want to know.’
And so Fane recounted the entire chain of events, from the first hijack to the phone call from Blakey and finally, reluctantly, Maria’s Galanos’ murder – there was no point in omitting it since it would be one of the first things Bokus would hear about.
When he’d finished the Agency man asked, ‘What do you think’s going on?’
‘Hard to tell. I would think, as I said, that someone inside UCSO is tipping off the hijackers. Why, I don’t know – it seems a pretty roundabout way to make money when other pickings off the Horn are so rich.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’ Bokus’ voice had lost its detachment, and Fane sensed the American had something specific in mind. That was the last thing Fane wanted, so he said quickly, ‘We’ve got some leads in Athens we’re following up and Five are on to the UK end, trying to find out how Amir Khan got out there.’
‘Yes, but what about Somalia? Don’t you want to know what’s happening there?’
‘Presumably your asking means you do,’ said Fane.
His subtlety was lost on the CIA Head of Station. ‘Damn’ tootin’ I do,’ he said vigorously. ‘Yemen and Somalia are top of our list for Al Qaeda movements right now.’
‘More than Afghanistan or Iraq?’
‘I didn’t say that. But in those places we know the bastards are there, and we can take the fight to them. We don’t want them taking root all over the place or it defeats the purpose of our military campaigns.’
Precisely, thought Fane, who had never been gung-ho about either the Iraq or Afghan adventures. To him, Al Qaeda was a global movement that used criminal means; it was best tackled through intelligence and, when necessary, specifically applied force, not with the blunderbuss of NATO’s military might – unless the US and its allies were going to be happy to fight a ‘war against terror’ on fifty fronts. But Bokus obviously didn’t agree, so Fane merely nodded.
The American added enthusiastically, ‘If we can find the Somalian end we could go in big-time.’
Fane had visions of F16s and Huey helicopters swarming over the Somalian coast, firing indiscriminately at targets that would turn out to be non-existent or entirely innocent. He suppressed a shudder, and the temptation to say ‘Down, boy’. He extemporised quickly, ‘That’s exactly what we had in mind. We’re planning to place our people on the next UCSO ship leaving Athens. We’ve set it up so it looks like a particularly attractive shipment; if things run to form, they’ll try to hijack it.’
‘When does it sail?’
‘Two weeks’ time,’ said Fane, thinking by then he could arrange to put someone on board. Anything to keep the Yanks from barging in; if Bokus had his way they’d never find out the truth. It would be lost in American overkill.
‘All right, but we want in on this. You haven’t got the firepower there to handle it yourself.’
Firepower was the last thing Fane was thinking about at this stage. But he replied, ‘When the time comes, Andy, you will be kept fully informed. I’m sure there’ll be a role for Langley in all of this. But let’s see it play out first. No point scaring them off by showing our hand too early.’
And he stared at Bokus until the other man nodded his agreement. Fane did not find his response reassuring, but it would have to do for the moment.