‘What’s that?’ Susan asked warily.
Cavendish shifted in his seat. He leaned closer. ‘I believe the reason you received that second letter from your brother is because someone is trying to contact me.’
‘You?’ Susan interrupted. ‘Why didn’t they send you the letter then?’
‘Too obvious,’ he told her. ‘I believe from intelligence I have received from Afghanistan that there is a problem within the organisation. I’m not too clear on exactly what it is, but I believe that there is an element of unrest somewhere in their loop, so to speak.’
Susan was nodding her head as he spoke. She stopped and lifted the cup to her lips. Marcus watched her closely. She looked over the top of her cup at him, her eyes almost sparkling. Once again she felt conscious of her own behaviour and glanced away.
‘So I want to try to develop that weakness, so to speak. It might just be someone giving us an opportunity to get your brother out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘But I have a gut feeling that there is more to it than that.’
‘So why have you asked me to come here?’ Susan asked him.
Cavendish studied the tips of his fingers for a while. Then he looked up at Susan.
‘When your brother was working under cover at the Mission, there was another agent there also, but your brother did not know. That agent has never been replaced because the risk of exposure was too great; the organisation would have known immediately. But now I think we have someone who could be ready to work for us in Jalalabad; a case of seeing an opportunity present itself and grabbing that opportunity.’
Susan was curious and for some reason, alarm bells began ringing in her head. She stared at Cavendish with a frown gathering over her lovely, dark eyes.
Cavendish dropped his gaze away and looked into his cup. When he saw that it was empty he wrinkled his nose in disappointment.
‘Do you want another coffee, Sir Giles?’ Marcus asked him.
‘Thank you Marcus, yes.’
Marcus got up and went across to the counter. Cavendish turned his attention back to Susan.
‘As I was saying, I believe we now have somebody ready to go to Jalalabad.’
Susan expected him to carry on with his explanation, but when she realised Cavendish had stopped for a moment and was looking directly at her, almost peering deep into her soul, she said; ‘Is it Marcus?’
He shook his head. ‘No my dear; it’s you.’
Marcus had returned with Cavendish’s coffee before Susan finally spoke. He was unaware that the bombshell had been dropped, although he had been warned by Sir Giles that it was going to happen.
Susan felt a weakness in her legs. It was as though they were emptying and losing their strength. In fact, she thought she was going to faint, but because she was sitting down she was able to rely on the chair for support. Then her hands started trembling and she could see her fingers shaking. She tried to say something but her voice faltered in her throat and simply came out in a husky croak.
She lifted her cup and took a mouthful of coffee, swallowing it down with a certain amount of difficulty. Cavendish could see she was in trouble, but he had seen the same reaction many times before. He knew that if Susan had an immediate rejection in her mind, it would have resulted in an almost certain display of histrionics and no doubt she would have walked out of the coffee house.
But she was still there.
‘It would give you an opportunity to look for your brother,’ he told her.
Susan cleared her throat. ‘What on earth makes you think I could work for you in Jalalabad? I have no training, no qualifications, nothing.’
He smiled almost patronisingly. ‘You have all the qualifications you need; your brother’s welfare.’
‘But I have a job,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t just walk out.’
He shook his head. ‘Of course you couldn’t. But it has already been taken care of.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘You’ve spoken to my manager?’ She could hardly believe it, but then, Cavendish seemed to do whatever he wanted.
‘Not quite. Let us say that his superiors have been apprised of a situation that has developed in your life, the need for discretion on his part and the need for a certain amount of shall we say; laissez faire? so that you may travel to India in search of your brother. I can assure you that your job is safe and will be there for you when you return.’
‘You told them I was going to India?’
That certain kind of smile slid across his face. ‘I couldn’t tell them the truth now, could I?’
‘What makes you think I want to go anyway,’ she asked him haughtily.
‘Because you haven’t said no.’
Susan looked away from Cavendish and could feel tears welling up at the backs of her eyes. Suddenly she was being given a chance to do something to help her brother, but at the same time she was almost certainly being asked to risk her own life. She thought of Cavendish’s remark that the previous agent had been killed by the organisation. It made her fearful that her own inadequacies might result in her death too.
But as rational as her thinking might be, and as obvious to her as it was that she was not properly trained for such a task, she knew she could not turn down the opportunity to at least get close to her brother.
‘What about Marcus?’ she asked, glancing across at him.
‘Later,’ was all Cavendish said.
‘Your previous agent was murdered?’ she asked warily.
Cavendish nodded but said nothing.
‘Was the agent a woman?’
He nodded again.
‘Who was it?’ she asked knowing already what he would say.
‘It was Shakira.’
Shakira had arrived in Jalalabad shortly after enjoying a holiday with her parents in Mumbai, India. She had told them that she had managed to get a job with The Chapter of Mercy; a charitable organisation that took in orphans and unwanted children at their orphanage known as The Mission in Jalalabad. And because of the traditional bigotry against infant females, there were many young girls growing up at the orphanage.
Shakira had no problem getting used to the customs and way of life in Afghanistan. Because she had Indian parents, Shakira might have been expected to wear the traditional Burqa or Chadiri to give it the correct name, but she chose to dress as a westerner because that is where she had been raised while her parents had lived in England before returning to India. Her only sop to tradition and culture was to wear a headscarf at all times.
Shakira’s first day at The Mission was spent being introduced to the children, of whom there were many, and to the staff of course, who were mainly nuns of a local order. The office where Shakira was to take up her duties had not been used for a few weeks, and it was clear to her that tidying it up was her responsibility.
It took Shakira about a week to settle in to her job which was Programme Development Co-ordinator. At first she wasn’t really sure exactly what was expected of her, but it soon became apparent that the nuns had little time for administration because they were either battling away with the children by tending to them, playing with them, nursing them, feeding them and bathing them. After their devotions there was little time left for anything else.
The Mission was situated on the north east approaches to the city about ten miles beyond the well- defined city boundaries. A dirt road wound its way up through the foothills, following a river course for a short while before rounding a sharp bend and leaving the river behind. The Mission overlooked a valley lush with vegetation and vineyards, and each morning the sun would lift its head above the ridge between two adjacent hills and shine down like God’s eternal blessing.
In the winter the sun could be a blessing, but in the middle of summer, it was more of a curse which plagued the lives of the young and old who lived and worked at The Mission.
Shakira knew she had to juggle two jobs at once: one was the job she had been employed to do by The Chapter of Mercy, and the other was to feed information back to Sir Giles Cavendish at MI6 whenever she had something to send and whenever she had the opportunity.