God, she was tired. Tired and woozy. Not exactly jet lag. She hadn’t got her sleep patterns together long enough for it to kick in, or at least that was how it felt. Two days in Washington had been a stupid idea. A knackering interruption to her training, not the relaxing jolly that had been sold to her. She could see why none of the others had wanted to go. She’d learned nothing, met no one of any value. Just a dreary round of mind-numbing presentations, tedious seminars, formal dinners, late-night sessions in the bar, fending off the advances of drunken marrieds who assumed, naturally, that their drawling American accents would be irresistible to any Brit.
It felt as if she’d had no sleep for days. She’d expected to be out cold on the return flight, but she’d slept fitfully, disturbed by the comings and goings of the flight attendants and the noisy family next to her.
She felt semi-conscious. She’d already alighted from the shuttle bus at the wrong stop and was having to trawl through the rows of vehicles, dragging her wheeled suitcase behind her, to wherever her own car was parked.
She’d planned to go back into work today, but that increasingly seemed like a bad idea. Everyone expected her to take the day off, anyway. All she wanted to do was head home and crawl into bed. Liam would be pleased, at least.
From somewhere close by, she heard the roar of an engine. That bloody van. It had reached the end of her row and was turning left, down towards where she was standing, its speed undiminished.
Instinctively, she stepped back, pulling her case with her, positioning herself between two parked cars. Joyriders, maybe, or some drunk. Either way, best avoided.
She moved back into the shadows, expecting the van to roar by. But just before it reached her, the driver braked hard. For a second, she thought the vehicle would skid, but the control was perfect. The van slammed to a halt just a few feet from her.
The driver’s door opened slowly and a figure, little more than a silhouette, leaned out. ‘In the back,’ the man said quietly. It was a command, and the object in his hand suggested he had the means of enforcing it.
What the fuck? She looked frantically around her. Moments before, as she’d watched the van careering round the edge of the car park, there’d seemed to be numerous other people making their way back to their cars. Now, suddenly, the place was deserted. Somewhere, across at the far edge of the car park, she could hear the churning of a car ignition, but that was no help to her.
‘In the back,’ the voice said again.
She stepped forwards, as though to obey, leaving her case and handbag on the ground behind her. Then, as she drew close to the van, she raised her right foot and kicked the driver’s door as hard as she could. It slammed shut, trapping the arm of the half-emerging figure.
‘Shit—’
She was already running, her head down, expecting gunfire at any moment. Instead, she heard the revving of the van’s engine and a squeak of tyres as it U-turned.
Where the hell was her car? In the half-light, all the vehicles looked similar, indistinguishable colours and shapes.
And then a further thought struck her.
Her keys. Her fucking keys. They were in her handbag.
She was running headlong now, with no idea what she was going to do. There was no point in trying to reach her car. Her only hope was that someone else would appear, someone who could help her.
She could hear the van’s engine coming up behind her. No longer speeding, but moving slowly, taunting her, knowing she couldn’t escape. There was nowhere to go. A high metal fence lined the car park perimeter. The entrance was half a mile away across the vast expanse of tarmac.
She stopped and turned, blinking in the van’s headlights until it pulled in alongside her. A head peered out from the passenger seat, the face invisible. A different voice.
‘Christ’s sake. You’re going nowhere. Just get in the back.’
She heard the sound of the driver’s door being opened, footsteps. She stood silently, gasping for breath, as a silhouetted figure emerged from behind the vehicle. He gestured her to step forwards, a pistol steady in his other hand.
‘Nice try. Hurt my bloody hand, though. Now don’t open your mouth; just get in the back.’
After only a moment’s hesitation, she obeyed both ins tructions.
‘And you’re sure you still want to go ahead?’ Winsor had asked, two months before.
‘Yes,’ Marie had replied confidently. Then, after a pause, ‘I think so, anyway. As best I can judge.’
He’d nodded approvingly and inscribed an ostentatious tick on the sheet in front of him. ‘Exactly the right answer,’ he said, a proud teacher commending a promising pupil. ‘Confident, but realistic. Just what we need.’
Patronizing git, she thought. Par for the course down here. She could live with it from the operational types. They might have been promoted to pen-pushing and desk-jockeying, but most had been through it. They had some idea of the front line.
Winsor was a different matter. He was a sodding psychologist, for Christ’s sake. Most of what he said was either blindingly obvious or plain wrong. Quite often both at once, remarkably. He was here on sufferance because they were supposed to give due consideration to the psychological well-being of officers. Winsor ticked a few boxes and showed that the Agency cared.
And yet here he was, passing judgement about her suitability for a job he probably couldn’t even imagine. Assessing her psychological equilibrium, she’d been told. Seeing whether she was really up to it, whether she could handle the unique pressures. In truth, though she doubted Winsor’s ability to assess her mental state, she knew the assessment was needed. This was a big deal. She wasn’t sure, even now, whether she really appreciated quite how big.
‘The main thing,’ Winsor said, unexpectedly echoing her thoughts, ‘is that you appreciate the magnitude of the challenge.’
Maybe he was better at this than she’d thought. ‘I’ve spoken to people who’ve done the job,’ she said. ‘Hugh Salter, for example.’
‘Ah, yes. Hugh.’ He spoke the name as if experimenting with an unfamiliar word. ‘Well, yes, Hugh was a great success in the role. For a long time.’ He left the phrase hanging, suggesting that he could say more.
She knew that Hugh had been withdrawn from the field eventually, but that was standard. No one did this forever. There’d been rumours about Hugh, but there were rumours about everyone. It was that kind of place. Whatever the truth, Hugh was still around, still apparently trusted. If she got through this, he was likely to end up as her contact. Her buddy, in his words, though that wasn’t how she’d ever describe him.
‘What did Hugh tell you?’ Winsor asked.
‘He said it was a challenge. Hard work. That it required certain qualities.’ She tried to recall exactly what Hugh had said. Nothing very coherent. She’d sought him out one evening when a group of them had been in the pub after work. Show willing, prepare for the selection process. But Hugh was already two or three pints ahead of her, and had mainly been interested in boosting his own ego. He was keen to let her know how difficult the job had been, how ill-suited she was likely to be to its rigours. Not because she was a woman, he’d been at pains to emphasize. That wasn’t the problem. The problem, she’d gathered, was that, like almost everyone else in the world, she just wasn’t Hugh Salter. Her loss.
‘What sort of qualities?’
‘Resilience,’ she said, though Hugh had offered nothing so succinct. ‘Attention to detail. Alertness.’ She paused, recognizing that she was trotting out clichés. ‘He said the main problem was the balancing act.’ She paused, trying to translate her memory of Salter’s semi-drunken ramble into something coherent. ‘Not just the obvious tension between the under-cover work and your home life. But the balance between the day-to-day stuff and the real focus of the work.’