“These passengers,” Porter said, “I mean, aside from yourself. They’re coming willingly?”
“I’m not certain how that’s relevant.”
“It’s relevant to my fee.”
“Give me a quote.”
“Seventy-five thousand.”
“We’re talking pounds?”
“Do I look American to you?”
“Fifty.”
“I have to cover expenses—most of it will go to the aircraft, Ms. Carlisle. I’ll need a helicopter for the RV and the exfil. I’ll need to have it maintained, ready, and fueled. I’ll need to then fly you and your . . . guests to another location, where we’ll need to switch to a private plane. I’ll need that plane fueled, permitted, and ready as well, and I won’t be able to sit on it if I’m at a make-ready station waiting for a go signal from you. It gets expensive. Can’t do it for less than seventy.”
“Sixty.”
“We’re not in a bloody suq, Ms. Carlisle. Seventy or you find another pilot.”
Chace made a show of wrestling with the number, furrowing her brow. “Seventy, then. Half up front, half on completion.”
“No, three-quarters up front, the rest on completion, and that’s not counting my incidentals.”
“For seventy, you can cover your own incidentals, Mr. Porter.”
He crushed out his cigarette, drained the rest of the beer from his glass. “Deal.”
“Give me the account information and I’ll have the funds wired to you first thing tomorrow. How long will it take you to get to the theater, set up a staging position?”
“I can be in place and ready by the eighteenth, don’t worry about that.” Porter scooped up the package of cigarettes, dropped them into an inside pocket of his jacket, then produced a pen from the same pocket. He moved his empty glass, then flipped over the cardboard coaster it had been resting upon, and scribbled down a sequence of letters and numbers. Finished, he slid it across to Chace, taking hold of the pager on the return trip.
“I don’t move until I confirm the funds have been deposited,” he said, pocketing the pager.
“I wouldn’t expect you to do otherwise.”
Porter nodded curtly, then got to his feet, offering his hand. Chace rose, and confirmed that he was, in fact, smaller than she’d expected, no more than five foot eight. His handshake was firm and businesslike, and she liked that he didn’t muscle the grip, nor did he soften it because he was dealing with a woman.
“See you in Uzbekistan, then,” Geoffrey Porter said.
CHAPTER 9
London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops
15 February, 1611 Hours GMT
When he’d left for Barnoldswick early the previous morning, the only person who knew where Crocker was going was Kate Cooke. He’d told her for two reasons, the first being that, should all hell break loose, she would know where to contact him; the second was that, as far as Crocker was concerned, Kate was almost as facile a liar as he was, and he needed her to cover for him. She wasn’t as experienced at it as he was, but she played the part of a dutiful servant well, and if push came to shove, Crocker had great faith in her ability to look C in the eye, smile prettily, and say, “I honestly don’t know, sir.”
Which would ideally have been enough, except that when Crocker returned to the office on Wednesday morning, the first thing Kate told him was “C wanted to know where you were yesterday.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Simple wage slave, aren’t I? I told him you’d had a family emergency.”
Crocker looked at the memo in front of him, for the moment not seeing it. “Nothing more specific?”
“I thought it best to leave it vague, so you could fill in the details.”
Crocker grunted. “Good.”
Kate scooped up the pile of files Crocker had already vetted, then paused. “DC didn’t know where you were, did she?”
“The only person who knew where I was yesterday was you, Kate.” Crocker looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”
“Only it was C who asked where you were, not DC. I’d have thought it would come from the DC in the first instance, that she’d be the one doing the asking.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Kate shrugged. “Simple wage slave. Why should I worry?”
Crocker watched her leave his office, closing the door as she went, and again turned his attention to the memo open before him, then abandoned it, turning his chair to look out the window. It was triple-paned glass, coated on the outside so that, from the street, the windows took on a slight verdigris tinge. The spaces between the panes were filled with argon, to prevent eavesdropping through the use of directional laser microphones. The blinds themselves were similarly treated and lined with lead, to further deter surveillance. But through the slats in the blinds, there was just enough space to see, and from Crocker’s office, if the weather permitted, he had a view across the Thames, to the Tate Britain. Farther north, blocked by the angle and intervening structures, stood Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and then, continuing along, the offices of Whitehall, the land of Seccombe.
Kate was correct: it should have been Gordon-Palmer who’d been asking after Crocker, not C. As Deputy Chief, it was Gordon-Palmer’s job, in part, to attend the day-to-day running of SIS, leaving Barclay free to deal with the more time-consuming and arguably more important work of liaising with the rest of HMG. That it had been C and not Gordon-Palmer who had come looking for him was troubling. It meant C was keeping the promised close eye on Crocker.
But that didn’t explain why Barclay had come calling and not Gordon-Palmer. It was possible, Crocker supposed, that, occupied elsewhere in the building or Whitehall, Gordon-Palmer simply hadn’t known that Crocker was away. Yet even as he considered it, he discarded the idea. It wasn’t the kind of thing she was liable to miss.
The only answer to it that Crocker could see, in fact, was that Gordon-Palmer had known he was away, and had known why. And as it had been Gordon-Palmer who had pointed Crocker to Seccombe, the conclusion therefore was that, whatever game Sir Walter Seccombe, PUS at the FCO, was playing, Gordon-Palmer was playing it with him.
The intercom on his desk buzzed and Crocker reflexively reached back to the telephone, hitting the button without looking. “What?”
“Minder One to see you, sir,” Kate said.
Crocker thought about refusing Fincher, telling him to return to the Pit, but it would simply postpone the inevitable. “Roll him in.”
The intercom clicked off, and Crocker swiveled around in time to watch Kate open the door for Andrew Fincher. She withdrew silently, closing the door after her.
“Sir,” Fincher said.
“Andrew.” Crocker rifled through the stack in his inbox and pulled the Candlelight after-action from where he’d been keeping it at the bottom of the pile, holding it up to show to Fincher before dropping it once again. The file landed on his desk with a soft but significant slap. “Explain this.”
Fincher hesitated, stiffening, as if coming to military attention. He stood five nine, average build, with ginger hair and the faded memory of freckles on his face, wearing the same dark blue Marks & Sparks suit he always wore to work. Crocker didn’t hold that against him; at the wages the Minders earned, if Fincher owned more than three suits, Crocker would have been surprised. Today’s shirt was ivory, the tie the same navy as his trousers.