‘No,’ said Purkiss. ‘I first met him in 2008.’
Gideon nodded. ‘So he had others before you. Interesting.’
Purkiss let that pass. He said: ‘What happened to the rest of you? Clay, Helen Marchand? You?’
‘Helen died five or six years ago of cancer. I hadn’t kept in touch with her, but I made it my business to update myself about her situation.’ Gideon paused for a moment, before he clapped his hands together softly, as if closing a book. ‘I myself started a small business, providing security to the shipping lanes along the Mediterranean seaways. The business turned out more successful than I’d expected, and I was able to retire in 2006. I met Vale only once after the great schism, but I’ve monitored his whereabouts and his movements all the way through. Right up until a few months ago.’
‘And the other one?’ said Purkiss. ‘Clay?’
Gideon folded his hands beneath his chin and leaned on them. His dark predator’s eyes focused on a distant point, in time as well as in space.
He held the position for a long time.
‘Oliver Clay has disappeared,’ he said. ‘My reach is extensive. But Clay has evaded my grasp. I know he remained with SIS up until at least 2002. Since then, however, he’s vanished from my radar. And that has always perturbed me. Because in order to make yourself invisible to me, you have to take special, deliberate measures.’
Purkiss thought he knew what was coming next. But he offered no prompt.
Gideon stood up. This time he didn’t pace.
He said, carefully, quietly, ‘I believe this current business, the downing of the Turkish Airlines flight in order to assassinate Vale, your arrival here to find me, is ultimately at the instigation of Clay. He was always the one I trusted the least. Vale, Helen, they were undemonstrative people. Vale was the more unreadable of the two, but you always had the sense that his taciturnity was genuine, that it wasn’t a mask. Whereas Clay and I were the volatile ones, the prima donnas if you like. And my experience after more than forty years in the game, Purkiss, is that the most effective and duplicitous spies are the flamboyant ones. Not the quiet, mousy wallflowers of popular depiction. Look at Burgess. Look at Maclean. They were raucous, promiscuous drunks who actively sought the limelight. Yet they hoodwinked the establishment for years while selling out their country, precisely because they seemed too obvious to be anything other than what they appeared to be.’
He took another sip of water from the cup of water he’d filled.
‘Clay was, as I’ve said, a buffoon. He was coarse and crass. But he was also calculating. He broke the rules, even by our standards. He always gave the impression that he enjoyed his status as a persecutor of renegade agents, not just because he was doing the right thing for the Service and for his country, but because he revelled in the power he wielded. I believe Clay has taken it upon himself to eliminate, after all these years, the rest of us. The other gods, and those who serve them. Helen is of course already dead, so that leaves Vale and me. Clay has been successful against Vale. I’m next. And you, Purkiss, as Vale’s protégé, are also in Clay’s sights.’
‘To what end?’ said Purkiss. ‘Why is Clay killing you off, after all these years as you say?’
Gideon tipped his head. ‘I can’t be certain. But a couple of possibilities spring to mind. One is that Clay has himself betrayed the Service. Gone renegade. And he knows there are people out there who will track him down. People like me, and Vale, and you. So he’s taking us out in a pre-emptive strike.’
‘You said a couple of possibilities.’
‘The second,’ said Gideon, ‘is that Clay intends to revive the agenda which Cronos tried to implement at the end. The creation of a fifth column, an underhand and clandestine faction within the Service whose mission it will be to steer Service policy towards ends that do not necessarily have official approval, and are not subject to the usual rigorous governance. Effectively, it would turn the entire Service into a black-ops outfit.’
‘Clay sees himself as a new Cronos,’ said Purkiss.
‘Precisely. I believe this second scenario is the more likely one. Cronos is rising, reborn.’
The questions crowded in Purkiss’s mind, jostling for priority. Something else was nagging at him, a half-formed notion that slipped out of his grasp every time he tried to concentrate on it.
He said, ‘And the original Cronos? What happened to him?’
‘We dealt with him.’
‘You killed him?’
‘We dealt with him,’ Gideon repeated. ‘He has nothing to do with this. Believe me.’
Rebecca said: ‘Look.’
She was staring at the bank of monitors. Purkiss got up and stepped forward, peering closely.
On two of the screens, each of them showing a different area of the island’s edge, men were clambering up the banks of rock. They moved with the quick stealth of professionals. Most of them had automatic weapons slung across their chests.
There were at least ten of them.
Gideon said softly, ‘And so it begins.’
Twenty-one
Purkiss said: ‘What’s through that door?’ He indicated the far end of the room.
They were on the move, Gideon opening the door to the storage cupboard from which he’d fetched the spare pair of boots for Purkiss. He removed a shotgun which he tossed to Purkiss, who caught it one-handed.
‘More storage,’ said Gideon. ‘There’s no way out through here. We have to go up.’ He produced a handgun and held it out to Delatour.
‘Or, we stay put,’ said Purkiss. He worked the slide of the shotgun. It was a Remington 11–87, a US police weapon. ‘Pick them off as they come down the hatch.’
Gideon shook his head as he jammed another pistol into his waistband. ‘Too much of a gamble. They may have teargas, grenades, whatever. Plus, the bulk of my weapons are up there in the tower.’ He nodded at Rebecca. ‘I haven’t got anything for you down here.’
Gideon reached the rungs in the wall first and began to ascend, Purkiss close behind. He’d glanced at the monitors as he passed them. The men were gone from the screens.
The daylight poured down as Gideon pushed the trapdoor open. Purkiss climbed out after him and crouched, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the environment. From where he was, down among the ruins, he couldn’t see the rest of the island.
They moved at a stoop among the ruins towards the ladder leading up to the tower. At the base, Purkiss turned again and did another survey.
No sign of the men.
‘Those screens covered the northern part of the island,’ said Gideon, indicating. The island stretched back towards the sea, longer behind than it was in front. Purkiss estimated the distance to the northern tip at around one mile.
It might buy them some time.
He climbed up after Gideon, feeling as if a target was painted in bright neon on his exposed back. If they have long guns… But he reached the door at the top. Instead of following Gideon through, he turned and gazed across the island while Rebecca, Delatour and Kendrick climbed up the ladder. Kendrick was grinning.
‘Like the old days,’ he said to Purkiss.
Purkiss propped the door open behind them. It meant that, with the window spaces in the front and side walls, they had a view in all directions.
Gideon was busy with the RPG launcher. Rebecca had picked up the other shotgun, while Kendrick laid immediate claim to the M16.
Purkiss said, ‘I’m going down. There’s no point all of us staying up here. If they close in, I might be able to pick some of them off from behind.’
Gideon nodded. ‘One of you needs to stay up here. In case I get taken out.’