Office of Security, thought Pacman with a sudden tingle, the spooks’ spooks.
‘You want to check me out,’ said the man nodding at the phone on the wall, ‘Gandrell’s on the other end.’
Pacman shook his head. ‘I buy it.’
‘We got a little problem you can help with. Detach you from duty from time to time. Intensive monitoring of a few targets. Personal for me and my mob. Could just include one or two unorthodox operations.’
Unorthodox operations. Pacman thought about it. ‘Do I get paperwork?’
The older man looked at him coolly. ‘No, I guess not.’
The four words hung between them and the meaning was quite clear. Even by the NSA’s unaccountable standards this was an unaccountable assignment. If anything misfired no one but Pacman himself would be in the firing line. Private snooping would be the explanation, a regrettable departure from this officer’s impeccable record, a lapse of judgement with implications for his future career. End of story.
As if Ray knew what he was thinking, the other man said, ‘Been reading your life story. Get stuck or something? You’re only a GG12, Pacman. GG12 with a great record and a double load of talent. That the limit of your ambition, son? Gonna stay a technician all your life?’
To go higher in the NSA, you had to professionalize, cross the line to the back room. Somewhere in Pacman’s image of his future self was a man who would always be at the sharp end, ready for the days when they’d take to the air again to ride their electronic chariots against some other evil empire.
‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Just wondered. File says you’re too smart for it.’
‘I like it.’
‘Your choice. Thing is, on the back of this one, say you happen to want promotion, then I guess I could help.’ The man looked at him, summing him up. ‘Your old man would have wanted you to move up the ladder.’
‘My dad? What do you know about my dad?’
‘Walt? We were pals at Incirlik. I flew with him. Shoulda been on that flight myself but I went sick with some kinda stomach bug. Saved my life, that bug.’
‘You were on the ferret flights?’ Pacman reassessed the man’s age. Had to be late fifties – older than he looked, old for the NSA.
‘And some. I was on the Liberty too.’
‘Ray…’ Pacman reviewed the ship’s survivor list in his head and got it. ‘You’re Ray Mackeson?’
‘Yeah.’ The man nodded and knew that Pacman was his, hook, line and sinker. ‘Tell you ’bout your old man later,’ he said, ‘we gotta move. See, the way it is, we got a little problem with your wife and I aim to see you ain’t compromised. This phone trespass thing? She took a call. Guess she was a bit indiscreet. She said some things she shouldn’t have.’
Pacman looked shocked and then angry. ‘Goddam. OK, I’ll talk to her. I’ll see she don’t talk to them again.’
‘No, no, son,’ said Mackeson, ‘you got it all wrong. You and I need to go have a friendly chat with Lanie. Calling them again is just exactly what we do want.’
Heather was amazed when the phone call came so quickly.
‘Heather. It’s Lanie Gerow? I was thinking about what you said? I’d really like to meet.’
‘Fine. Where did you have in mind?’
At the end of the call, Lanie – her eyes still red – put the phone down. Pacman squeezed her shoulder.
‘That’s my girl.’
The scary old man with the funny skin just gave her a big wolfish grin.
Chapter Seven
They were still reminiscing about the day of the telephone trespass on the drive to Malham.
‘Getting Lanie on board was a real coup,’ said Margo. ‘It was very brave of her to give you the documents. Have you talked to her lately?’
‘Three times in eight weeks. I don’t want to push her too hard. She has to be very careful which phones she uses. I told her we sent the stuff to the Hurst Inquiry but I’m not at all sure she knew what it was. She’s totally unpolitical.’
‘Could she get in trouble?’
‘She says it can’t be traced back.’
They made good time to Skipton in the Friday evening traffic, though the little Citroën was slow up anything resembling a hill. Beyond Gargrave a new lightness crept into the countryside, small fields now divided by pale stone walls of gleaming limestone. Beside the splashing course of the River Aire black-faced sheep cropped bright grass, their spindly legs looking inadequate for the thick woolly mass they had to support. Up to Malham the road wound through fields and small hamlets with the river running beside them from time to time, then veering away again. The roof of the 2CV was rolled back and they could smell the summer evening warmth releasing a rich mixture from the fields as they passed.
‘We haven’t done this for a while,’ said Margo, looking at the view.
‘We shouldn’t be doing it now,’ Heather replied. ‘It’s very extravagant of you but I do appreciate it.’
‘I can’t think of a better use for a hundred pounds which I wasn’t even expecting. I think you need the fresh air, not to mention a break from the evil presence of Ramsgill Stray.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Heather first met Margo her first week at the Hall. Tinderley Hall was a last resort for incorrigible boys, sent there from all over the country when all else failed. Margo was a legend there. She was a visiting psychologist who possessed a rare ability to break through the age gap, and the even bigger attitude gap, to the boys in the Hall. Heather tried to follow her lead and found it hard. Then Margo disappeared and it was only by persistent questioning that Heather found out where she was. It was a shock to learn she was in prison. She went to visit to find out what it was that meant so much to this sane, stable mother-figure, twenty years older than her, that she was prepared to hazard everything. A month for criminal damage was one thing but worse was the threat of professional censure that followed, a threat that Margo fought off by insisting that her ultimate professional commitment was to preserve life and if her personal belief was that active involvement in the peace movement was the logical final flowering of that, then she was only doing what she ought to. It took little time to radicalize Heather and when Margo was finally banned from entering the base by bail conditions and an onerous injunction, she took up the challenge to the full.
For the last few miles past Airton and Kirkby Malham there was a sports car behind them, a little green Mazda MX5 with the top down. Heather expected it to whizz past at the first straight but the driver seemed content to loaf along behind them in the evening sun. She could see in the mirror he had dark glasses and a flying jacket on and but for his slow pace she would have dismissed him as another macho jerk. He was still behind them as they drove into the village of Malham, still behind them when they turned down the lane to the guest-house, still behind them when she turned into the gate and as she stopped he pulled up alongside.
‘Hmm,’ said Margo, ‘fellow guest, do you think? Or is he just a closet Citroën fancier?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘Well, don’t let me cramp your style, Heather. He’s rather gorgeous.’
‘Oh come on, Margo. Not my type, I like wholemeal, not sliced white.’
Matthew Quill had come to the end of a very surprising week. In the last month, he had come to dread the postman. The pile of letters on the mat when he got back home from the labs each evening seemed to make his predicament worse and worse. So many petty things, all conspiring to empty his bank account. Now the bloody washing machine too. There quite simply wasn’t any money left and it wasn’t as if he’d been extravagant. He was absolutely certain he hadn’t take out the cash his statement said he had. The receipts made no sense. What had he been doing, sleepwalking? He had the receipts. He couldn’t argue with that and therefore he couldn’t argue with the bank. Was he going mad? Then his bank manager refused him a loan and that was very, very nearly the final straw. The call from the head hunters had come out of the blue. He knew such things happened but somehow not to him. What he had going for him was a very slender body of research and it needed more time. It wasn’t as if he had results he could publish yet, so why did they want him?