After Dave Armstrong had been freed from the pirate compound on the Somalian coast, he’d spent three days on board a French corvette sailing back to the Mediterranean, from where he’d been choppered to the French naval base in Toulon. There he’d been debriefed by a pleasant man from the French DGSE, Martin Seurat, whom he’d met the previous year when an operation had ended in France. Seurat had kept in touch with Liz Carlyle and, from what Dave had heard, they were now an item. Then an MI6 officer from Paris had turned up to question him; he’d assumed Dave would want to fly back to England straight away and had offered to arrange it.
But Dave knew exactly what he wanted, and it wasn’t a flight back to England. He needed a break. He wanted to go somewhere comfortable but not over the top; somewhere where he could do nothing and be alone when he wanted to, but with people around if he felt like socialising. In short, somewhere where he could completely relax.
So, instead of flying to London, he had joined the Tiara, which was sailing from Toulon, down the coast of Italy and up the Adriatic to Venice. The shipping agents for the Tiara were contacts of the DGSE, and after Martin Seurat had spoken to their CEO, it turned out that there was a vacant berth in first class and that Dave would be welcome on board as an honoured guest of the company.
Now as the ship cruised gently through the Ligurian Sea, he looked out from the deck at the coast of Italy in the evening sunshine and saw the island of Elba rising from the deep blue water. He found himself beginning to feel very fortunate to be alive.
He thought of his narrow escape from the pen in Somalia. It was the second time he’d been abducted within the space of a year. Was he getting careless? Had his capture each time been his own fault? It was hard to say. He still loved his work, but without the youthful passion he had brought to it during his early years in the Service. Now, there were times when he’d encounter a situation and feel an almost weary sensation of déjà vu, a feeling that he’d seen the same thing many times before. There were only so many variations to an intelligence operation, only so many different kinds of terrorist to pursue or agent to run. Maybe he was just getting stale. Maybe it was time to look for another job.
He was paid to risk his life if necessary, but that hadn’t made it any less frightening when he was faced with the imminent prospect of death. If Taban hadn’t got away, who knows how long it would have taken the SAS to find the compound. And by then he might well have been tortured, or murdered, or both, by the fanatics who’d taken him captive.
He owed a lot to the African boy, whom he’d seen again on the French corvette. He had even been able to help him after explaining to the French crew that he owed his life to Taban. The Captain – was it Thibault? Some name like that – had understood at once, and when Martin Seurat had come aboard, the two of them had talked about Taban and promised Dave that they would do their best to help him stay in France, where he could get an education. Dave was glad he had done something for the boy, and he had promised to keep in touch with him through Martin Seurat.
As they sailed smoothly on down the coast of Italy he pushed the buzzer on the table in front of him. When the waiter came, he ordered a gin and tonic – a large one.
The days wore gently on. The ship called at Naples and Dave stirred himself enough to join the organised trip to Pompeii, where he listened to the guide’s account of the eruption of Vesuvius, and bought some postcards in the gift shop, which he didn’t send.
A few days later, as he was sitting on deck at his favourite table, he looked up and saw Mount Etna silhouetted against a deep blue sky, snow-capped and majestic, with a trail of smoke wafting from one of its volcanic cones. The waiter brought his drink, and when he’d gone Dave raised his glass. This volcano was alive; so, by the skin of his teeth, was Dave.
Berger went to meet Hal Stimkin at what the CIA man now referred to as their ‘watering hole’. Fortunately this would be the last time Berger would have to drink with him in the bar of the Venus de Milo; the last time he’d have to come running when Hal Stimkin called. Goodbye, Athens, he thought cheerfully, and good riddance to his former employer, the CIA.
Stimkin was already there on his usual bar stool. Berger sat down next to him, ordered a beer, and came right to the point.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ he said.
‘Good or bad?’
‘Good for me.’ He took a long swallow of his beer. ‘My boss back in London’s resigned.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, and the thing is, they’ve offered me the post and I’ve accepted.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Stimkin matter-of-factly. Berger was slightly taken aback that he didn’t seem more surprised.
‘So you see, Hal, this is our valedictory session. I’ll be leaving Athens next week. And it’s going to be my farewell to Langley too. In my new job it just wouldn’t be right for me to moonlight for you guys. I’m sure Langley will understand.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Stimkin said disconcertingly. ‘You see, news of your appointment has already reached Langley and they’ve passed it on to Grosvenor Square. I had a call from the Head of Station there just this afternoon. Guy called Andy Bokus . . . he can’t wait to meet you. Andy isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I’m sure you two will get along like a house on fire.’
Berger put his head in his hands and groaned. Stimkin patted him on the back. ‘Cheer up, Mitchell. Remember what they say, don’t you? You can take the boy out of Langley, but you can’t take Langley out of the boy.’
Chapter 63
That evening, Liz and Martin had supper in his flat in Paris. Neither of them wanted any more excitement after the stress and frantic activity of recent weeks.
They had spent several hours that afternoon at the Santé prison, talking to Amir Khan. Martin had already told him about events in Birmingham – how Malik, his old friend and comrade at the mosque, had tried to blow himself up at a pop concert. Amir had remained silent, clearly shocked. It was as though, for the first time, he’d realised what the extremist views that both he and Malik had held, actually meant. How the logical end of them was the death of people, casually chosen, when they were doing no more than enjoying themselves.
Then Seurat added something else – that at the end, Malik had done his best to kill Tahira too – and Amir’s shock had turned to outrage.
With the news of his former friend’s betrayal, whatever doubts he might have had about his own recent collaboration with the security authorities disappeared in an instant. It was clear that the entire belief system by which Amir had recently lived had now collapsed. He had asked Martin Seurat how anyone could defend a cause which would slaughter the person closest to him in the world. And Martin replied that no one could.
So when Liz had arrived that afternoon, Amir Khan had listened quietly to the joint French and English proposal. He would be released from prison and would stay in France, under the protection of the security authorities there, who would give him a new identity and a place to live. In return he would help them by reporting on extremist Islamist activity. They did not spell it out in detail at that stage, but what Amir was being offered was a job as an agent, to be run by colleagues of Martin Seurat.
As Amir hesitated, trying to understand the implications of what they were saying, Liz added that there was something else she had to suggest. It was no longer safe, she said, for Tahira to live in Birmingham. She might well be suspected of having helped to prevent Malik’s suicide attempt, even if she had not been seen in the park with Liz or leaving in DI Fontana’s car. Tahira was longing to see her brother. Liz told Amir that she’d promised the girl she would arrange for her to come to Paris as soon as possible. But more than that, when Liz had suggested to Tahira that she might like to live in France too if Amir agreed to settle there, she had jumped at the idea. What did he think of that?
To the relief of both Liz and Martin, Amir had liked the idea. In fact he had been delighted by it, and grinned as he shook Liz’s hand when she sa
id goodbye. ‘I hope we meet again – but not in a prison,’ were his parting words.
Liz had been looking forward to relaxing for a few days with Martin in Paris. But now, as she cleared the dinner plates from the table in the small dining alcove overlooking the square, she realised there were unresolved issues even here.
They were both tired. Martin had been closely involved in the planning that had foiled the last attempted hijack of the Aristides, and had flown an hour south to the French base at Toulon as soon as he’d heard that Dave and Captain Guthrie had been taken off the ship as hostages. Though they had been freed without any losses on the French or British side, it had been a close-run thing.
Liz was tired too, but not pleasantly so. She felt on edge. It wasn’t the recent operation or that afternoon’s conversation with Amir that was nagging at her. It was Martin. Well, not the man himself, but what he had come to represent. Since he had asked her to come and live with him in Paris, he had started to pose a threat to the one other love of her life – her job. For Liz, her work wasn’t just important to her; to a large extent it was her.
She sat down again at the table and Martin poured her another glass of Burgundy and offered the plate of cheeses they had carefully chosen that afternoon from Madame Lileau’s little shop around the corner. He was looking at her thoughtfully. He said, ‘You seem tired, ma chérie.’
‘I suppose I am. You must be exhausted too.’
He shook his head. ‘Having you here gives me energy.’
She smiled to acknowledge the compliment, but words were forming in her head. ‘Martin, you know, I’ve been thinking – ’
But he interrupted her, reaching across the table to hold her hand. ‘Let me speak first, if you don’t mind. I have been thinking too. When I asked if you would consider moving to Paris and coming to live with me, I thought it was an offer you couldn’t refuse.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘But that was very selfish of me, I see it now. Love is not always about the other person; it is all too often about one’s self.’
‘You’re the least selfish man I know.’
‘That is very kind of you to say, but sadly untrue. However, a man can make amends,’ he said lightly. ‘And in my case the situation can be recovered. Even an old dog like me can learn a new trick or two. And I have come to realise, my dear Miss Carlyle,’ he said now, gently stroking her hand, ‘that fond as you may be of me, there is another love in your life.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. Could he really think she was seeing someone else?
He shook his head. ‘I don’t mean another man. Much as Geoffrey Fane might like to play that role.’ He smiled. ‘I was thinking of your career. Only the proper word, I believe, is vocation. It is not just important to you, Liz, it is part of you. If I kept nagging at you then possibly you would be willing to give it up – we are all sometimes tempted to quit, ours are not the easiest jobs in the world. But that would not only be selfish of me, but very wrong – and I would know, however happy we were together, that I had taken you away from something you hold tremendously dear.’
He let go of her hand and leaned back in his chair, a look of wry amusement on his face. ‘You know, I practised that speech a hundred times, and still it came out different from the way I’d intended.’
‘It came out very well, Martin,’ Liz said, touched by what he had just said. He was not the first man in her life to have understood how important her work was to her – but he was the first to swallow his disappointment, accept the way things had to be for them, and continue to offer her his love and support.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as his arms came around her and she rested her head against his shoulder. She remembered what her friend Elaine, an ex-researcher in the Service turned Hampstead housewife and mother, had once told her: ‘Life is about love and work. If neither’s right, you’re in trouble. If one’s right, you’ll probably be okay. But for a truly fulfilled life, you need them both to be in order.’
Liz could see the truth in that. It was a difficult balance and one she hadn’t so far managed to achieve. Might she be able to with this patient man who, for now at least, was prepared to put her needs ahead of his own? Martin said softly, ‘I do hate having the Channel between us. But thanks to Eurostar I can just about put up with it. I only hope you can as well.’
Liz looked at Martin. ‘Of course I can.’
Then, with a grin, she said, ‘Tell you what: let’s buy each other season tickets for Christmas.’
A Note on the Author
Dame Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and five Liz Carlyle novels. She lives in London and Norfolk.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Liz Carlyle series
At Risk
Secret Asset
Illegal Action
Dead Line
Present Danger
Non-fiction
Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5
First published in Great Britain 2011
Copyright © Stella Rimington 2011
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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