“You go on,” Valerie told her. “We’ll be fine here without you for a while.”
Crocker surprised her, not because he was on time, but because he was driving a red Volvo wagon, and the car was at least ten years old. She didn’t know why, but it seemed an absurd choice for him, and as she climbed into the front passenger seat beside him, she told him as much.
“It’s my wife’s,” Crocker replied. “We’re going someplace we can talk. Where’s someplace we can talk?”
“The Yorkshire Dales aren’t too terribly far,” Chace responded, belting herself in. “Though I’m not certain you want to take me anyplace away from witnesses.”
“You’re going to murder me?”
“I haven’t decided yet, to tell the truth.”
“Then let’s hope what I have to say doesn’t push you over the edge,” Crocker said.
Crocker waited until he’d found his way onto the Skipton Road before speaking.
“You think I sent you to Iraq knowing you were knocked up.”
“You did send me to Iraq knowing I was knocked up,” Chace retorted.
Crocker shook his head, flicking the indicator, turning onto one of the narrower lanes. It was a clear day, cold, windy, and out the car windows Chace could see the rolling Lancashire hills, the beautiful houses and the winter-stripped trees, smoke rising from occasional chimneys. The heat was on in the Volvo, the hot, dry air blowing hard from the vents, and both of them had to raise their voices to be sure they were heard.
“When I got to the Farm, I was given a complete workup,” Chace said after another mile. “A complete workup, and that included a fucking blood draw.”
“And the blood work showed you were pregnant,” Crocker confirmed.
“Yes,” Chace said, emphatic. He’d made her point.
“I didn’t see the results until after you’d come back from Red Panda.”
“That’s the best you can come up with? You had the entire drive up from London, and that’s the best lie you could come up with?”
“Which should tell you that I’m not lying at all.”
“Or that you don’t think terribly highly of me.”
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t have made the drive in the first place.”
Crocker signaled again, turning them onto an alarmingly narrow strip of road that curled along one of the hillsides. Dry stone walls bordered the way on both sides, and Chace wondered what Crocker would do if they encountered an oncoming car.
“Do you really believe that I’m that much of a bastard?” Crocker asked. “That I’d not only keep that information from you, but then put you into harm’s way besides?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“Well, at least we’re being honest with each other.”
“It wasn’t always that way, Paul,” Chace said. “Don’t misunderstand. I mean, I always knew you were a bastard, from the moment you brought me into the Section. But I believed you were, at least, our bastard. That was the rule, wasn’t it? D-Ops says ‘frog’ and the Minders jump, never mind how high, all with the understanding that you’ll be there to catch us when we come down. That was the agreement. You broke the trust, and Tom died for it.”
Crocker shook his head angrily. “No, that one’s not mine. I have more than my share of ghosts, but Tom Wallace is not one of them. He is not one of them, and I won’t let you put that blame on me. You brought him into it, not me. You went to Tom for help, not me.”
“Of course I went to Tom for help! What else was I supposed to do? You’d fucking abandoned me! You were supposed to protect me, damn you!”
“I did! For God’s sake, I did everything in my power to keep you safe!”
“Safe? You were going to sell me to the Saudis!”
“It wasn’t me!”
A blue Ford, a squat and square little car, came around the bend ahead of them, and Crocker braked hard, turning the wheel, and Chace heard the tires on the Volvo leave the tarmac, felt the vehicle vibrate as it slid onto gravel. The Ford passed by, hitting its horn, and Chace winced in expectation of the inevitable sound of scraping metal, but it never came.
“It wasn’t me,” Crocker insisted.
She ended up giving him directions around Pendleside, through Foulridge and then the villages of Blacko and Roughlee, finally pointing him to Newchurch-in-Pendle. Crocker parked them on a steep incline, and they walked uphill another hundred meters or so, to the Church of St. Mary. Chace opened the gate, descended onto the grounds, surrounded by ancient gravestones and slabs. The first recorded construction on the site dated back to 1250, though the current building, a small stone nave and chapel with a squat tower, was most likely built four centuries later. The church and its grounds served as a minor tourist attraction, purportedly linked to the infamous Pendle Witches. Nine women had been hanged in 1612, and one had died in her prison cell. Two of the dead were said to be buried in the yard. Chace suspected it was utter nonsense; the women in question had both been convicted of witchcraft, and, thus declared to be in league with devil, would never have been interred on holy ground.
Etched into the stone tower was a small, odd oval. Called the Eye of God, it was said to have been added as a ward against the witches who had once roamed the nearby hills. Now it overlooked the steps down from the road, the trees, and the distant Forest of Trawden, part of the larger Forest of Pendle.
Chace walked down past the church, finally stopping on the grass beside one of the weathered grave slabs. The wind snapped at her coat and trousers, making the temperature feel even colder. From behind her came the ring of Crocker’s lighter opening, closing, and the scent of his tobacco whipped past her, torn through the air in the wind. She’d given up smoking as soon as she’d learned she was pregnant, just as she had given up alcohol, and it pleased her to discover that the proximity of Crocker’s cigarettes failed to entice. She’d had a few drinks since Tamsin had been born, wine at dinner, whiskey on occasion, but thus far, that was the only vice of hers to have returned home.
“There’s a job,” Crocker said.
“I don’t want a job. I have a job, I’m Tamsin’s mother.” She turned, looking up the slope at him, her expression daring him to call her a liar.
Crocker squinted past her, into the wind, into the distance, and decided to continue as if he hadn’t heard. “It’s in Uzbekistan, and it needs to happen soon, within the week. Have you been following the news?”
Chace refused to answer.
“You know the strategic importance,” Crocker said. “You know that Uzbekistan is considered a crucial ally. The Americans have been using the country as a staging ground for their operations, working with the Uzbeks to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda, on what’s happening in northern Afghanistan. They’ve built air bases, put troops on the ground, all manner of infrastructure and support for personnel and operations.
“You know the human rights angle. What happened with Ambassador McInnes.”
She simply stared at him, trying to resist his attempt to draw her in. Robert McInnes had been the U.K.’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, recalled in late 2004 because of his insistence on publicizing Uzbekistan’s appalling record on human rights. He’d made the papers, in particular the Guardian, with his descriptions of the NSS’ use of torture. McInnes had openly condemned both the U.K. and the U.S. for its tacit complicity in such crimes.