Closer, page 6
She did come back, though. Of course she did. She was away for a week and a half – no messages, no calls, nothing until she phoned me from the City Airport to say she was back and she hadn’t arranged anywhere to stay and would she need to?
The following morning, though, roles were reversed, a mirror-like inversion of that scene outside her hotel, the morning after.
“It’s my turn,” I told her, over coffee on the little balcony overlooking the communal back garden.
“Hmm?” She paused with the coffee cup almost touching her lips.
“I have to be away for the weekend. I promised an old friend I’d head up to his place in Scotland and see him.” Napier had insisted, said I was lovestruck and moping, just because the girl had had the good sense to get away from me so soon. I hadn’t known she was returning – had feared she would not – and so accepted the invitation.
Looking at her now, though, I knew I never wanted to be without her again.
“Are you free?” I asked. “You could come. He wouldn’t mind. There’s plenty of room.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be. You should come. Meet my old friend, Stewart Napier. He’ll love you.”
Because even so soon, I knew I already did.
§
She’d played it so cool, not batting an eyelid at the mention of Napier.
Now, I hated to think that she might have been working toward that moment all along. Using me to get to my old friend.
Had it all been a ruse? An elaborate seduction with the sole aim of getting an in with Napier?
Had those orgasms been fake? Had the first murmured I love you been a line well-rehearsed?
Was that little shy smile I believed she kept only for me just another weapon in the arsenal of entrapment?
I really didn’t know. And the worst of it, even as I sat in the library at Auldbrigg Haw, awaiting the arrival of my contact from MI5, still in shock at the disappearance and apparent double life of the woman I loved... still, I craved her. Longed for her. Would have done anything for just five more minutes of the happiness we’d shared, one last flash of that shy smile, and the belief that she really had felt for me at least some of what I had felt for her.
Louise was, if anything, even more glamorous than I recalled.
She phoned when she was fifteen minutes out, and we arranged to meet in the hotel bar down in the village.
The Pier Hotel had been grand at one time, but its proximity to the now-closed Navy base at the mouth of the sea loch had transformed it from genteel retreat to working serviceman’s bar. It still had its charms, and Napier and I were regulars when we were up here, but it was cheap and cheerful, to say the least.
When Louise walked in, there was a genuine lull in the conversation around the bar. She wore skin-tight leather leggings, a tight black top, and a leather jacket. For a spy, she didn’t exactly do discreet.
She kissed me on the cheek in greeting, and we sat on bar stools as our Glenlivets were poured.
“What is it?” she asked me, when the barman had retreated. “What’s happened, Matt?”
Still I hesitated. The sense of betrayal was suddenly strong. All I wanted was for Cassie to be okay. Why was it so hard to work out what to do, and who to trust?
I shook my head, and took a sip of my whisky. “I don’t know,” I said.
She reached along the bar, put a hand on my arm, and squeezed. For a moment I assumed she was coming on to me, and I actually flinched. Then I saw the look on her face, the sympathy, and felt guilty. She’d read my pain, was simply being nice. I really had reached the point where I mistrusted everyone around me.
I gave a little smile, and she withdrew her hand. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just...”
“You don’t have any idea where she is?”
I stared. How naïve was I being? Of course she knew what had happened. She was a spy, for goodness sake!
I shook my head. “I don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing... Or who she is.”
The hand on my arm again. The squeeze. And that little voice in the back of my head – the old me – asked just how I would feel if she actually was coming on to me. What did I owe to Cassie? Our relationship had been a lie.
“Tell me everything,” she said, brisk and efficient.
I looked at her, shocked at the sudden intensity. She could switch from persona to persona in the blink of an eye, it seemed.
It would be easy to fall under her spell, but now I realized that little voice in the back of my head was a me that no longer existed. I had changed. I needed more.
“No,” I said softly. I wasn’t ready to betray Cassie yet. Or Napier. I had to believe she knew what she was doing, and was safe.
“You have to, Matt. You’ve come too far, already.”
She paused to let that sink in. Twice now, I’d met Louise behind the backs of the two people closest to me, and kept those meetings secret.
In Napier’s world, he couldn’t afford to have the people close to him keeping secrets like this. And Cassie? I had no idea what this would mean for Cassie.
“I just want my friends to be safe,” I said.
Louise smiled.
“I work for our nation’s security service,” she told me. “That’s what I do. I keep people safe. Tell me what you know, Matt, and we can work this thing out together.”
Her hand was still on my arm.
“Tell me...”
5. Cassie
Was it strange that Cassie was so good at all this? That she took the horrors of her job in her stride?
She’d never been squeamish, but even Cassie would admit there was non-squeamish and then somewhere way off the end of the scale was the kind of person who could drag a dead body several hundred meters over uneven terrain in the dark, steal one of Napier’s Land Rovers, and then drive down into the village with the same dead body slumped forward in the passenger seat.
That kind of thing would very likely freak most people out.
Cassie kept her mind focused on the immediate requirements of the situation. Getting clear of the Auldbrigg Haw estate. Reaching the village without drawing attention.
Parking next to the battered old Honda Civic the section had left here for emergency use.
Hauling the body out of the Land Rover and into the trunk of the Honda.
When, at last, she sat behind the steering wheel of the emergency car, she allowed herself to take a deep breath, gather herself.
She could just drive now, and keep on going. Get as far away as possible. Find a safe house where she could hand over the car and the body, and get passed into the system for debriefing. Hand this job on to whoever was next in line to take it on.
No one in the section would frown at that. Her position had been compromised. It would be the safe option.
But Section Eight always gave its operatives absolute discretion in the field. Yes, there were contingency plans, and escape routes, but plans had to be adapted to suit circumstances and, right now, Cassie knew that retreat would be the coward’s choice rather than the tactical one. Things had changed around her up at Auldbrigg. Someone had identified her and moved against her. In all likelihood that meant things were going to kick off, and at least until the section put some other plan into action, she was the person best placed to at least monitor developments, and act if necessary.
The reasoning was sound, and nothing to do with a reluctance to completely walk away from Matthew. Nothing at all.
She drove out of the village. The Land Rover would be found tomorrow, unless the section got there first to clear up, but that shouldn’t be a problem. She doubted Napier’s people would have reported it stolen. He wouldn’t want the police – or the press – sniffing around if he could help it.
A couple of miles out a rough track turned off the main road. To any passerby, it was just another farm track, but Cassie had scouted this place out weeks ago. After a steep and precarious drop, the track opened out onto an area of flat land by the loch, and here a tall fence marked off a cluster of buildings that had once been an offshoot of the nearby Navy base.
There were lots of places like this on Scotland’s west coast, mostly relics of the Cold War. The heavy Navy presence here was a result of the deep sea lochs being such good bases for nuclear submarines. Some of these establishments survived as bases, while others were used for more covert activities – training camps, and transit bases for off-the-books prisoner transfer in the war on terror.
This one had been long since abandoned, though, which made it the ideal hiding place for Cassie while she worked out what to do next. And the ideal place to provide at least temporary storage for the body of a man whose role was yet to be ascertained.
Who was he? Who had he been working for, and what had he hoped to achieve after he killed Cassie?
She couldn’t find the answers to these questions alone.
A short time after she’d let herself into the base, she sat on a flat rock overlooking the loch. She allowed herself a few minutes to gather her thoughts, but that was a mistake. All it served to do was remind her that the life she’d shared with Matthew was over now. She might have been unwilling to drive away tonight, but she could never go back. She’d been a fool to think it could last. Those six months had been a gift, but they were gone now.
She’d retrieved a cellphone from a stash in the base’s main building, and now she took it out, unlocked it, and pressed to dial the one number stored on it.
Even though it was now past three in the morning, Doug Connor answered her call on the second ring.
“Yes?”
“Sir? It’s Deane. I need to report, and get fresh instructions. Can you talk now?”
“Go ahead.”
“My position with Napier has been compromised. I’ve retreated to a safe place after an unidentified assailant tried to take me out.”
Silence, for a moment, then Connor said, “What’s the status of the assailant?”
Cassie thumbed ‘send’ to dispatch the photos she’d taken earlier of her attacker: front and profile pictures of his face, a smear of blood under his chin the only sign of what had happened to the man. “He’s no longer a problem,” she said. “Can you ID him?”
“I’ll run him through the system. Take me through it, step by step.”
Cassie took a deep breath, then gave her superior a detailed account of the evening, from drinks with Napier right up to her escape with the body.
“Your assessment?”
“It’s possible Napier sent the man to take me out, but I don’t think that’s a likely scenario. That could have been done far better away from Auldbrigg Haw, with far less risk of him being associated with it. More likely, I think, is that someone is about to make a move on Napier, and somehow they identified me as an obstacle that had to be removed before that could happen.”
Napier was a mover and shaker in the political world, mostly behind the scenes until more recently when he’d taken on a more public profile. As principal advisor to the Way Forward movement’s leader, Bernard Bowler, he’d come to be seen as one of the key people in an increasingly chaotic political landscape.
And suspicions were rife that the Way Forward was a front for outside forces – Russia or China trying to destabilize the country, organized crime trying to secure its interests.
The section had a watching brief on Bowler and his people, which was why Cassie had been put in place as a sleeper in Napier’s inner circle. Someone close to watch and maybe protect, and if it proved necessary, to close him down by any means required.
She’d expected to get close to Napier by using her role as a PR and image consultant – get him to hire her to manage his image. Matthew Scullery had been a stroke of luck.
She had to try to see him like that, just as she wrote in her reports.
“Are you sure Napier doesn’t have any suspicions about you?”
“He will do if I’m not back there soon.”
“And can you do that?”
Matthew would be back in the guest suite by now. He’d have tried to be subtle, not to disturb her, but he must have noticed her absence by now.
“No. They’ll almost certainly know I’m missing by now.” And if they went through her possessions for any reason, they’d know an awful lot more.
“Then you can’t go back. That role is over now.” A pause, then: “Is that likely to be a problem for you?”
Had they read more into her reports than she’d intended to let on? Had some other source told them how close she’d got to Matthew?
“No. Not a problem at all.”
Matthew had just been a means to an end. No more.
“Good.”
The line went silent, and for a moment she thought Connor had hung up, then he spoke again. “Jan Kuyper. Hans Schmidt. Jurgen Kohl. Currently going by the name of Jonny Cole. Employed in Napier’s security team.”
He didn’t have to explain to Cassie that he was reeling off a list of aliases. While they’d been talking he must have run the photos of her attacker through the facial recognition system and come up with a match.
“Who does he belong to?”
“Whoever waves money in his face,” Connor said. “We’ll have to dig some more. Could be organized crime. Could be corporate. As if there’s a difference.”
“State?”
“Maybe.”
The ID hadn’t narrowed it down at all. There was a long list of those who might want Napier out of the way – Cassie’s presence at Auldbrigg Haw was evidence enough of that.
Despite what she’d said, Cassie knew that one of the simplest explanations was that Napier’s security team had identified her as a threat and ‘Cole’ had gone after her in that role – no outside involvement at all. Was that why Napier had been so insistent on drinks, encouraging Matthew to stay on when Cassie had retired to bed? A distraction while Cole did his work?
Perhaps, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was bigger than that...
She didn’t think highly of Matthew’s old school friend, but she didn’t think he’d send someone to kill her so readily – and certainly not in the suite she shared with Matthew.
“Instructions?”
“You’re our agent in the field until further notice. This changes nothing, apart from your approach to the job.”
As usual, Connor spoke tersely, no need to expand on his brief instructions. Her orders remained unchanged, to observe and protect – unless the command came through to take Napier out of the picture altogether. In her short time in the service, this wasn’t unusual: there were many in the higher echelons of the Establishment who were, to varying degrees, unknown quantities. They were tolerated and protected while they were useful, but there would be no hesitation in acting if they were ever identified as a threat to the national security.
That was the way of government, and it had been since Roman times.
This time, Connor had cut the line.
She tucked her feet up into a lotus position and remained on the flat rock overlooking the loch. Somewhere behind her, the sky was lightening already. Dawn came early up here, at this time of year.
Connor’s words had unsettled her.
Not the clear implication that she might still be called upon to kill a man she had come to know – she was a trained, experienced closer, that was what she did – but that hint of questioning.
Then you can’t go back. That role is over now. Is that likely to be a problem for you?
He knew. He knew about her and Matthew, knew her attachment had become more than mere convenience and cover.
Matthew...
Matthew had never been a convenience. He’d been a complication, and that was different. A tangle in her otherwise smooth operation.
She tried to remain objective.
She’d made a mistake. Somewhere. Somehow.
She never made mistakes.
In her line of work, mistakes killed.
Was Matthew the flaw, the weakness? Had he made her drop her game?
It was a moot point now. That phase of the operation was over. That distraction dispensed with.
Is that likely to be a problem for you?
Of course it wasn’t. She was a professional. She didn’t get involved.
And the tear rolling slowly down one cheek was caused by the sea breeze catching in her eye.
§
She lay low all day, trying to work out a strategy.
She wasn’t accustomed to this kind of distanced role. She’d been trained to work at close quarters, and those had always been the roles she’d been assigned since she’d gone into the field. How can you possibly do anything useful if you’re not right there in the midst of it all?
She knew all she could really hope to do was be on hand in case things kicked off. And then react to the situation, depending on what happened.
Protect Napier until ordered otherwise.
And in a day or so, someone else would show up, work their way into Napier’s entourage, and she would be ordered to stand down.
Before she knew it she would be back in London, or St Petersburg, or Istanbul, or Kiev... and Matthew would be a distant memory.
Late in the afternoon a message came through, telling her Napier had flown to London for meetings, and would be back tomorrow.
She could breathe more easily for a time. She had supplies here at the old Navy establishment. She had places to hide, if needs be. She had a Sig Sauer P229, a more heavy-duty back-up for the discreet little P238 sub-compact handgun she’d secreted in her luggage back at Auldbrigg Haw.
She had no need to move until Napier returned the next day – and by then she might already have been replaced and stood down.
Lying low had never been Cassie’s style, though.
Less than half an hour later, she parked the Honda Civic in a clearing off a forestry trail on the edge of the Auldbrigg Haw estate. She wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Wasn’t going to approach anyone, or get too close.
She just had to see Matthew again, even from a distance.
He must still be here. The message from Section Eight control had said Napier had traveled with his head of security his assistant, Ollie Nelson. No mention of Matthew.
