“Just a glass. Keep me company.”
“OK, just one then. Tell me how you…”
“You don’t have the security clearance.”
Liz looked around her. No one could possibly have seen what she’d written. Nor were there any reflective surfaces in sight.
“Funny guy. Tell me.”
“Like I said…”
“Just tell me,” she said, overcome by irritation.
“OK, I will. We’ve developed contact lenses that enable us to see through documents. I’m wearing a pair now.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Despite her determination to remain objective, and to view the lunch as a kind of reconnaissance, she was beginning to feel distinctly angry.
“And you know something,” he continued in a low murmur, “they work on fabric too.”
Before Liz could respond, a shadow fell across the white tablecloth, and she looked up to see Geoffrey Fane standing over her.
“Elizabeth. What a pleasure to see you on our side of the river. I hope Bruno’s looking after you properly?”
“Indeed,” she said, and fell silent. There was something chilling about Fane’s efforts to be friendly.
He gave a slight bow. “Please give my regards to Charles Wetherby. As you know, or should know, we hold your department in the highest esteem.”
“Thank you,” said Liz. “I will.”
At that moment the food arrived. As Fane moved away Liz glanced at Mackay, and was in time to see a look of complicity-or the shadow of such a look-pass between the two men. What was that all about? Surely not just the fact that one of them was entertaining a female of the species to lunch. Was there an element of the put-up job about the occasion? Fane hadn’t seemed very surprised to see her.
“Tell me,” she said. “How is it, being back here?”
Mackay ran a hand through his sun-faded hair. “It’s good,” he said. “Islamabad was fascinating, but hard-core. I was undeclared there rather than part of the accredited diplomatic team, and while that meant I could get a lot more done in agent-running terms, it was also a lot more stressful.”
“You lived off-base?”
“Yes, in one of the suburbs. Nominally I was employed by one of the banks, so I turned up every day in a suit and then did the social circuit in the evening. After that I’d usually be up all night either debriefing agents or encrypting and flashing reports back to London. So while it was fascinating being at the sharp end of the game, it was pretty knackering too.”
“What drew you into the business in the first place?”
A smile touched the sculpted curve of his mouth. “Probably the same as you. The chance to practise the deceit that has always come naturally.”
“Has it? Always come naturally, I mean?”
“I’m told that I lied very early. And I never went into exams at school without a crib. I’d write it all up the night before with a mapping pen on airmail paper, and then roll it up inside a biro tube.”
“Is that how you got into Six?”
“No, sadly, it wasn’t. I think they just took one look at me, decided I was a suitably devious piece of work, and dragged me in.”
“What was the reason you gave for wanting to join?”
“Patriotism. It seemed the right line to take at the time.”
“And is that the true reason?”
“Well, you know what they say. Last refuge of the scoundrel, and so on. Really, of course, it was the women. All those glamorous Foreign Office secretaries. I’ve always had a Moneypenny complex.”
“I don’t see many Moneypennys in here.”
The grey eyes flickered amusedly around the room. “It does rather look as if I got it wrong, doesn’t it? Still, easy come, easy go. How about you?”
“I never had a secret agent complex, I’m afraid. I was one of the first intake that answered that ‘Waiting for Godot?’ advert.”
“Like the chatty Mr. Shayler.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you reckon you’ll go the distance? Stay in till you’re fifty-five or sixty or whatever the cut-off is for your lot? Or will you leave and join Lynx or Kroll or one of those private security consultancies? Or go off and have babies with a merchant banker?”
“Are those the alternatives? It’s a grim list.”
The waiter approached, and before Liz could protest Mackay had pointed at their glasses to indicate a refill. Liz took advantage of the brief hiatus to take stock of the situation. Bruno Mackay was an outrageous flirt but he was undeniably good company. She was having a much better day than she would have had if he hadn’t rung her.
“I don’t think I’d find it easy to leave the Service,” she said carefully. “It’s been my world for ten years now.” And it had. She had answered the advertisement during her last term at university and had joined the next spring’s intake. Her first three years, interrupted at intervals by training courses, had been spent on the Northern Ireland desk as a trainee. The work-sifting intelligence, making enquiries, preparing assessments-had been at times repetitive and at times stressful. Then she’d moved to counter-espionage and after three years-or had it been four?-there had been an unexpected secondment to Liverpool, to the Merseyside Police Force, followed by a transfer to the organised crime desk at Thames House. The work had been unremitting and her section leader, a dour ex-police officer named Donaldson, had made it abundantly clear that he disliked working with women. When the section finally had a breakthrough-a breakthrough for which Liz was largely responsible-things had started to look brighter. She was transferred to counter-terrorism, and discovered that Wetherby had been watching her progress for some time. “I’d quite understand if you’d had enough of it all,” he had told her with a melancholy smile. “If you’d looked at the world outside, seen the rewards available to someone of your abilities and the freedom and sociability of it all…” But by then she was certain that she didn’t want to do anything else. “I’m in for the duration,” she told Mackay. “I couldn’t go back.”
His hand moved across the table and covered hers. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think we’re all exiles from our own pasts.”
Liz looked down at his hand, and the big Breitling watch on his wrist, and after a moment he released her. The gesture, like everything about him, was untroubled, and left no after-trace of awkwardness or doubt. Did his words actually mean anything? They had a well-worn ring about them. To how many other women had he said precisely the same thing, and in precisely the same tone?
“So what about you, then?” she asked. “Where are you in exile from?”
“Nowhere terribly special,” he said. “My parents divorced when I was quite young, and I grew up shunting backwards and forwards between my father’s house in the Test Valley and my mother’s place in the South of France.”
“Are they both still alive?”
“I’m afraid so. In rude good health.”
“And did you join the Service straight out of university?”
“No. I read Arabic at Cambridge and went into the City as a Middle East analyst for one of the investment banks. Did a bit of territorial soldiering at the same time with the HAC.”
“The what?”
“The Honourable Artillery Company. Running round letting off explosives on Salisbury Plain. Good fun. But banking lost its shine after a bit, so I sat the Foreign Office exam. Do you want some pud?”
“No, I don’t want any pud, thanks, and I didn’t really want that second glass of wine either. I should be thinking about getting back across the river.”
“I’m sure our respective bosses won’t object to a little… inter-Service liaison work,” protested Mackay. “At least have some coffee.”
She agreed, and he signalled to the waiter.
“So tell me,” she said, when the coffee had been brought. “How did you see what I’d written on the menu?”