by Chris Ryan
‘Everyone except me,’ smiled Slater.
‘Yes, you’re pretty unreconstructed,’ Eve agreed, tucking herself comfortably under his good shoulder.
A moment later the phone rang in her bag.
‘That was Ridley,’ she said when the brief conversation was finished. ‘All Cadre members invited to lunch at River House tomorrow. Apologies for short notice. No three-line-whip but he’d like to see us if we’re free.’
Within minutes, Slater’s phone rang with the same message. They agreed that they might as well drive up together – if the others were still in London they would probably be doubling up too.
In Eve’s flat, later that evening, Slater noticed the details that bore out the truth of what she had told him about her background. She owned very few clothes, and very little furniture, but what she had was of a very good quality. She had decorated the flat herself – not a huge job, given its size – and most of her salary still went towards her mortgage. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of her, aged about nine, posing like Annie Oakley with a pair of long-barrelled Colts. Next to her was a man of about forty in a brown coat.
‘That’s me and Dad. You can’t see it there, but I’m standing on the counter of the shop. And the revolvers are the real thing, too.’
‘Gals and guns,’ murmured Slater, burying his face in her hair. ‘Works every time. What do you keep here in the flat? A cupboard full of Claymore mines?’
‘Just my Glock. Nothing serious. What exactly are you doing?’
‘Just kissing your neck and unbuttoning you. Nothing serious.’
Eyes closed, she allowed him to undress her. ‘You know something,’ she said, her back arching as his mouth found her breasts. ‘We still haven’t decided . . .’
His mouth moved downwards. ‘Decided what?’
‘What we’re going to call each other,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s get your clothes off.’
Gently, she helped him pull his T-shirt from the hectic shoulder-wound, the cracked ribs, and the fading but still lurid bruises.
‘Perhaps I should do most of the work this time. In Paris you were slightly less damaged.’
‘At least it’s just you and me. No corpse making up a ménage à trois.’
She smiled, the smile became a gasp, and she began to move against him.
Afterwards, quite a long time later, he came to a decision.
‘You know that CD,’ he said. ‘The one we took from Fanon-Khayat. The one that the RDB wanted to swap you for?’
‘Mmmm.’ Her face was buried in the pillow.
‘I looked at it.’
She half-rose, frowning at him through sleepy eyes. ‘You what?’ When?’
‘The other day. When it arrived in London.’
‘And?’
‘And it was nothing to do with Cambodia or the Regiment at all. The pictures were of an SS officer visiting a concentration camp in Yugoslavia during the war.’
‘Well maybe we got the wrong tape. Maybe there was something they couldn’t tell us. Maybe there are several tapes. Is that all there was on it? Just some SS officer?’
‘His name was Dietrich Wegner. He was a nineteen-year-old captain. In the concentration camp they called him “the Snake”. He was a sadistic voyeur – he got excited by other people’s suffering.’
She rubbed her eyes. ‘How do you know this?’
He took a deep breath and told her.
She heard him out.
When he had finished she pressed the pillow to her face and shook her head. ‘Will you swear to me you will never again do anything so stupid, so reckless, so . . .’ She dropped the pillow. ‘I just can’t believe you’ve—’
‘They lied to us. They looked us in the eye and fucking lied to us!’
‘So maybe they lied, and maybe they made a mistake. Who gives a shit? People do both the whole time. Our job was to take out Fanon-Khayat and retrieve that CD, and we did both — end of story.’
‘So why feed us all that Khmer Rouge crap?’
‘I don’t have the first idea,’ said Eve. ‘And do you know what? Right now I don’t care. The point is that your little jaunt to Brighton could have cost people their lives. That Marcovic woman’s a fucking Serb, for God’s sake! Her friends are officers in the Serbian secret service – the same people who kidnapped me at gunpoint a fortnight ago, killed Andreas, and were pretty keen to stuff you into a wood-chipper.’
They stared at each other, both of them speechless with anger.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually, her voice muted. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, but I just don’t want you to get into trouble, and I mean serious trouble. Please, promise me you’ll never do anything like that again. Please.’
He nodded. ‘OK. I guess it was a bit on the daft side.’
She placed her arms gently round his neck. ‘Look, I’m sure no one will ever find out. Can we just forget about the whole thing – the pictures, the woman in Brighton, everything?’ She kissed him softly on the mouth. ‘After all, we’re supposed to be escaping from all that, aren’t we?’
‘That we are,’ said Slater.
‘So please, let’s escape and put it behind us. I wouldn’t say this to anyone except you, but when those RDB people took me away I was really, really scared. They were bloody rough – not least your little friend Branca, who I promise you is pretty handy with the butt of an MP5.’
Slater held her.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘For the time we’ve got together, just take me to a place where things like that don’t happen.’
‘I will,’ murmured Slater, stroking her hair. ‘I promise you.’
With Eve, for the first time in his life, he could see the possibility of a shared future. In the past his relationships had foundered because no woman had ever come close to understanding the life that he lived, with its wild terrors and fierce triumphs. But here at last was one who would understand — and more than understand. She would share the terrors and share the triumphs and at the end of the day she would still be a woman.
The next morning he woke before she did. The sun was pouring through the curtains, and he gently drew back the sheet and lay for a while admiring her. As always when she was asleep she looked lost, almost childlike, and it occurred to Slater that every time he saw her he discovered that he knew less about her. How much more unlearning would he have to do, he wondered, before he could start to understand her?
Gently, he started to kiss her, beginning with the dark triangle of her pubic hair and working his way upwards towards her mouth. At the end of his travels he discovered two sea-blue eyes regarding him through half-closed lids.
‘That was nice.’ She smiled drowsily. ‘What time is it?’
Whatever time it was, it was two hours before they were both dressed. Slater wondered if he should go home and change into smarter clothes than he’d arrived in the night before but Eve assured him that wasn’t necessary. ‘Go as you are. Ridley doesn’t like to be made to feel he’s someone who has to be given special treatment.’
They made it to the M3 by 11am. Slater drove the BMW and Eve tilted back the passenger seat at his side. When they had driven to Hampshire a month earlier the countryside had still held the green expectancy of spring – now it was full-blown summer and a lazy heat overlaid the fields and the winding roads.
Never in his life had Slater felt as happy or as at ease with a woman as he did with Eve. The week’s leave would come to an end and they would have to distance themselves from each other and there would be new assignments and dangers, but for the moment she was his and he was hers.
Wanting to express something of this he pulled the car over under the spreading branches of an oak tree. Switched off the engine. Turned to her in the sudden silence.
She held his gaze. Reached out and touched his cheek. And he knew that there was nothing to say, that the moment said it for them more perfectly than he ever could.
Slowly, they drove on through the warm countryside. ‘
I guess we should try not to look too . . . together,’ said Slater.
‘Perhaps if I get into the driving seat that might be a bit more believable,’ said Eve. ‘And if, when we get there, you thank me for the lift . . .’
‘I was going to suggest that perhaps you should give one of the others a lift back,’ said Slater. ‘I could go back with Leon or someone and then we could meet up back in London.’
Unwillingly, she conceded that this was a good idea. ‘You’re not going back with Chris, though. My spies tell me that you and she made a very convincing couple in Paris – snogging on street corners and all sorts.’
‘Snogging’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ Slater protested. ‘She was just showing me how to be convincingly French.’
‘Oh well,’ said Eve, ‘that makes all the difference. The next time you catch someone with his hand up my jumper and my tongue down his throat I’ll remind you of it. Don’t make such a fuss, I’ll say, he was just showing me—’
‘I didn’t have my hand up Chris’s jumper,’ said Slater. ‘And she didn’t have her tongue—’
‘I know,’ said Eve. ‘I was just teasing you. As you’ve probably guessed, Chris is more of a girl’s girl.’
‘Really!’ said Slater, interested.
Eve rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Just why is it that you men find all that so endlessly fascinating? I wish I hadn’t told you now.’
‘But you have told me,’ said Slater. ‘And it’s going to make my French lessons even more exciting.’
‘Shut up and swap places. We’re going to be there any minute.’
Ridley met them at the door in a cricket shirt and an ancient pair of grey flannels. Shaking Slater’s hand and throwing an avuncular arm around Eve’s shoulder, he led them into the cool, stone-flagged hall, where Leon and Terry were drinking beer from pewter tankards.
‘I was just saying to the others,’ Ridley began, ‘that if this service gave medals to agents in the field you’d all be in line for one. It was a particularly nasty job, and I understand from Manderson that you handled it with great courage. Jolly well done. Drink?’
‘Thanks,’ said Eve. ‘I’ll have a glass of that Pimm’s.’
Slater accepted a beer.
‘Something of a baptism of fire for you, Neil.’
‘It went a bit pear-shaped towards the end. We lost a good man.’
Ridley nodded. ‘Andreas, yes. He’ll be a great loss. We’ll have to think about who’s going to take his place. Perhaps you might have some recommendations – we always ask existing members of the Cadre whom they suggest before casting our net wider.’ He smiled and turned to Slater. ‘Talking of which, you must come fishing again. There are some very wily old trout hiding in that river.’
‘If you can’t lure them out, sir, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to.’
‘Don’t be too sure, Neil. Your lateral approach may succeed where my more traditional tactics have failed. I’ve always thought that espionage and fishing go hand in hand. Both are essentially concerned with what happens beneath the surface, with what happens in the . . . let’s call it the realm of the invisible.’
‘Well, I’d be happy to give it a go,’ smiled Slater. He turned to Terry and Leon. ‘Do you lads fish?’
‘I used to do a bit of match angling,’ said Terry. ‘Hours and hours on end sitting at the side of a canal smoking roll-ups. Then I found I was doing pretty much the same thing at work on surveillance details. It made for a bit of a sedentary lifestyle, so’ – he indicated the back of his voluminous bowling shirt, which had the words ‘Bali-Hai Casuals, Romford’ on it – ‘I took up darts instead.’
They all laughed, and Leon explained that he had been something of a fast bowler in his youth. Cricket, however, had not been one of the sports practised by the second parachute regiment of the Foreign Legion, and his skills had rusted. Now he was a member of an Aikido Club, and practised the art of combat with Samurai swords.
‘Real Samurai swords?’ asked Slater.
‘Wooden ones,’ said Leon. ‘And you know something? I’m crap!’
A popping of gravel announced Chris’s arrival. Like Terry she drove a neutral-toned Honda Accord – the classically invisible, reliable surveillance vehicle. She looked jazzier than usual, however, in an Ellis-style leather jacket and with her hair slicked back.
‘Stop staring!’ Eve hissed, kicking Slater smartly in the shins. ‘Honestly, you’re like a sixteen-year-old!’
‘Would you like a drink?’ Ridley politely asked Chris. ‘Or to employ the most depressing words in the English language, shall we go straight through?’
Lunch – a cold salmon – was served by Ridley himself, so that they could all speak freely. And they did, recounting to Ridley the bizarre, horrifying and occasionally hilarious details of the operation. The Miko Pasquale sequence, in particular, seemed to amuse the old spymaster.
‘Malt whisky at gunpoint,’ he smiled. ‘I can think of several colleagues from the old days who could have downed a bottle of twelve-year-old Islay for breakfast and not noticed the difference.’
Slater enjoyed himself, and enjoyed the company of the others. He felt that he had been accepted as a full member of the Cadre, rather than a probationer. They were a very mixed bunch, who under any other circumstances would probably never have met, but the surreal nature of their professional lives bound them together.
After lunch, which the housekeeper arrived to clear, they walked in the watermeadows by the river. The sun shone drowsily down, bees hummed around the thistles, the river-weed shone emerald green in the shadow of the bankside willows and poplars.
There were long periods of silence; while appreciating the beauty of the afternoon, Slater guessed, his colleagues were already wondering what dangers and terrors the future might hold. It was this that hooked you, he reflected – the anticipation of the next operation. And then, of course, once the operation was under way, the only thought was for its successful completion. And so you went on, drawn constantly forward to the next operation, the next adrenaline fix, the next desperate call on your resourcefulness.
‘So,’ said Chris, beside him. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘It’s all healing,’ said Slater. ‘The shoulder’s a bit stiff and the ribs aren’t brilliant when I laugh, but apart from that . . .’
‘How about the rest, though?’ asked Chris. ‘Are you sleeping all right?’
‘For the moment, yeah, the nightmares seem to be on hold. Only a question of time, though – they always come sooner or later. Along with the rest of the post-traumatic package. How about you?’
Chris shrugged. ‘OK so far, but as you say . . .’ She stood still and turned to him. ‘When it happens, talk about it, OK? To me, or Leon, or whoever. We’re all in the same boat, and we all go off our heads from time to time.’
Slater nodded appreciatively. ‘Thanks. I’ll do that. And likewise if you’re . . .’
‘OK.’
They walked for a moment in silence.
‘What are you doing for the week off?’ Slater asked eventually.
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Chris. ‘Nothing special. You?’
‘Same,’ said Slater. ‘This and that.’
They both smiled. Looking around them, they saw that the dark shadow of a cloud was spreading across the water-meadow. Soon, taking their pace from Ridley, they were moving purposefully back towards the village. They just made it back to River House before the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. The arrival of the rain was taken as a signal that the afternoon was at an end, and one by one the Cadre members departed.
‘As a cricketer – or at least an ex-cricketer – I want to show you something,’ Ridley told Leon before he left, leading him to a photograph by the side of the large fireplace. ‘This is the service’s cricket team in 1949. We called ourselves the Carlton House Eleven. I made a rather useful opening batsman, as I remember – managed fifty once against the Ministry of Supply, including two sixes!’
/> ‘I’m impressed,’ Leon smiled, shaking Ridley’s hand and waving a general goodbye.
Soon only Eve and Slater remained. Eve requested a word with Ridley in private, and disappearing into his office left Slater in the hall. The sudden silence amplified the insistent beat of the rain on the leaded windows.
His mind on his conversation with Chris, Slater wandered around the room, examining the various books, photographs and stuffed animal trophies. Something nagged at him, some curious unaccountable absence that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He paused for a moment in front of a nineteenth-century photograph, presumably taken in India, in which a dozen languid young officers in pith helmets lounged with polo-sticks on the steps of some official building. The legend ‘Walter Ridley, Lieut.’ was legible among the others in faded sepia ink. Next to it an equally browned but slightly more recent photograph showed a man in a Norfolk jacket and breeches landing a salmon with the help of a ghillie. Clearly the father had been something of a sportsman too.
Conscious of the baleful eye of the stuffed pike, Slater approached the mantelpiece to take a closer look at the 1949 Carlton House cricket-team. A dozen men in their late twenties and early thirties, their attitudes not dissimilar to those of the Indian Army officers, disported themselves on the steps of a suburban pavilion. Their caps were various and unmatching – Eton, Harrow, and Winchester predominant among them, Slater guessed – and their wide-cut white trousers were held up in several cases by ties rather than belts.
So which was Ridley? Which was the demon opener who had thrashed the Ministry of Supply’s bowling all round the ground? Taking a large magnifying-glass from the mantelpiece he ran it down the line of good-humoured faces. There was a man with a bat over his shoulder, a man touching his cap to the photographer, and a man striking a vaudeville pose in a pair of wicket-keeping gloves. Next to the wicket-keeper, sardonic beneath a floppy sun-hat, was Hauptmann Dietrich Wegner.
Lowering the magnifying glass, Slater took an involuntary step back. He was mistaken. It was impossible.
