Drawing the curtains, he stripped off and fell into bed. He had no need of an alarm. An early stint in the armed forces ensured that he was capable of waking at four-hourly intervals. Sure enough, and in spite of a toxic level of caffeine in his body, he slept deeply and awoke at half past ten. A shower and shave later, he pulled on a robe, made a big pot of tea and cooked bacon and eggs, eating and drinking in the kitchen. Conscious that it might be some time before he returned, he washed up, his gaze fixed on the garden, where two crows the size of small turkeys were having the equivalent of a punch-up, feathers flying. Afterwards he dressed in a pair of clean jeans and pale blue cotton shirt. He splashed on the remains of a bottle of Versace aftershave. He was looking forward to seeing Charlie. She, of all people, would understand his despondency with and disconnection from life.
With time to spare, he left, closing the door behind him, touched wood, not for good luck but to remind himself that he was an ordinary man, that he was mortal.
The return journey was unremarkable other than the sky was now entirely empty of sunshine. He had a touch of déjà vu as he entered the underground building for the second time in
twenty-four hours. Asim, immutable, constant, inexhaustible, was waiting for him.
‘Like I said,’ Asim said, ‘we thought it would be good for you to work with someone familiar.’
‘Couldn’t agree more.’ Tallis smiled. ‘So where is she?’
The sleek expression remained in place. ‘She?’
‘Lavender.’
‘Ah,’ Asim said. ‘I fear I didn’t make myself clear.’
‘A spy’s prerogative, I guess.’ A swampy feeling of disappointment smothered Tallis’s good mood.
‘Backup is male, and goes by the codename: Clay.’
‘As in Cassius the boxer, or mud?’
Asim smiled some more. Tallis definitely got the impression that his controller was enjoying the thrill of the chase. ‘Much as I enjoy playing I Spy - no pun intended - could you be a little more specific?’
Asim looked to the door. On cue, it opened. A man strode in. Sturdy, eyes slightly too close together and with a face deeply tanned as if the flesh had been cured. Tallis took all this in and more: Turkey, mission before last, a man called Koroglu. He flinched at the deep scar on the other man’s face.
For which he was responsible.
A man called Jack befriended us. An aid worker, he brought sweets and cigarettes and a pack of playing cards, which he taught us how to shuffle and deal. We liked him. He made us laugh when there was nothing to laugh at. One day he told us that he could get us out of the camp.
‘Imagine,’ Sabina said, her face lighting up, ‘Freedom.’
‘But where would we go?’ I said.
It was late 1995 and there was talk that the war, and all its depravity, was coming to an end. I had only two desires: to return to my village and take Sabina with me.
Jack told us that he’d got it all planned. He would spirit us out after dark and take us to a café nearby. From there he could fix it for us to travel with false papers to Italy where we could start a new life.
I wasn’t so certain. I’d only ever known home. I’d never travelled anywhere before, but Sabina was insistent.
‘What is there left for us here? And how do we know that we will be safe?’
She had a point, I thought. So one night, aided by two peacekeepers, we made our escape.
As we neared the gate of the camp I had my first premonition of danger. I had never seen such a big car before. A saloon, it had blacked-out windows. An unmistakable chill surged through me, as strong as when the soldiers had come to our village. I turned to Sabina and tugged at her sleeve.
‘What is it?’ she hissed.
‘I have a bad feeling.’
‘Anna, this is our one chance, our only chance. You heard what Jack said. He will be there to meet us.’
‘But what if he isn’t? What if this is a trick?’
‘Come on, you two, hurry,’ one of the soldiers chided, moonlight glinting off the top of his helmet.
And so we did.
A big burly man with a shaved head and earrings in both ears got out of the passenger side. He nodded to the soldiers, opened the rear door of the car for us. Sabina scurried inside, sliding across the cream leather. I followed, sneezing at the wall of cigarette smoke. When the door to the saloon slammed shut I felt as if someone had stolen the key to my soul and thrown it away.
Nobody spoke.
We were driven to a café, just as Jack said, but Jack was nowhere to be seen. We were taken to a back room, where four men were playing cards. The air was dense with tobacco and the smell of strong liquor. At our arrival four pairs of eyes fastened on and devoured us. We were pushed towards a man called Bilal, an Albanian. He was big, muscular, thick-necked. He had green eyes like a snake. I feared him immediately. He announced that we would undergo a short period of training after which we would be taken by boat to Britain. He looked at the others and laughed. They laughed, too. I did not understand. I did not see what was funny. I glanced at Sabina, noticed the shallow rise and fall of her chest, the panic in her face, the fear of something bad suddenly remembered.
When one of the men unbuckled his belt, I knew. I understood. And I was terrified.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The young woman absently touched her thick fringe of hair, fingers bumping against the jagged ridge of scar tissue along her forehead, a reminder of the day a Croatian thug smashed a beer bottle over her head and ransacked her virginity. Since then she could not bear the smell of yeast and hops. And one thing she had come to know from travelling in Britain: the English, almost as much as her own people, loved ale.
Her pale blue eyes narrowed against the sun, she stood on a tree-lined avenue, looking up at an elegant residence in Hampstead Garden Suburb. It belonged to a retired American general. She knew exactly the layout of the building. She also knew that nobody else was at home that day. She was there for an interview for the position of housekeeper, and the general and his wife were expecting her. The young woman’s papers stated that she was German by birth. She was not; her roots were Serbian. Her real name was Senka Martinovic.
What a contrast to home, Martinovic thought, crossing the road, remembering the simple dwelling in a Serb-populated village in the Krajina, not that it was there any more; it had been burnt down. Now she believed a family of Croats lived on the old site in a new house.
She pulled the bell ring, listened to its cry. The door was opened by a tall, stick-thin woman who moved with care. She had a lined face from too much exposure to sunshine, yet her skin remained stubbornly pallid.
‘Miss Sterne?’ the woman said, clipped, extending a hand.
Senka Martinovic nodded deferentially and forced herself to shake hands with a smile. ‘Mrs Everett.’
She was ushered into a hall of marble and quartz with a staircase leading off.
‘The general and I will interview you in the little sitting room.’ Mrs Everett indicated a door to the left. Martinovic followed, her footsteps as silent as a church at night.
At the sight of the luxurious drapes at the sash windows, the polished wooden floor with its thick pile rugs, the tastefully chosen furniture, so expensive, so opposite to all she’d ever known, Martinovic was forced to stifle a gasp and lower her gaze to hide the gnawing envy. When she raised her head she saw that General Laine Everett had his back to her. For a few seconds she allowed her eyes to bore into him with a hatred nursed and nurtured over many years. The general whose home she now visited had remained stubbornly impartial during a war that had robbed her of her home, her dignity, her brothers and father. Thanks to him and his advice to the then President of the United States, centuries of Serbian culture were obliterated in a day, civilians, the sick and elderly left wandering the streets with nothing other than an acute desperation to escape the killing zone. Sickening of all, they were forgotten. If you were Serb, you were evil. If you were Serb, you deserv
ed to have pain visited on you. If you were Serb, you were destined for a sham trial in Brussels. The generals and the politicians decreed it, and the mealy-mouthed men at the UN did nothing to prevent it.
The general turned his craggy face towards her. He was silver-haired, with dark, hawkish eyes, and broad-shouldered, although age and disease had taken their toll, the yellow-tinged flesh loose on his large-boned frame. He gestured for her to sit down. Mrs Everett also sat. The general continued to stand. A man used to taking control, Martinovic thought.
He waved a sheaf of papers in her direction. ‘Your references are impressive, Miss Sterne.’
‘Thank you.’ Martinovic smiled.
‘May I ask why you have chosen to work for us?’
‘You may,’ Martinovic said, reaching for her bag and opening it. Taking out a pistol, she aimed it at the general’s wife. ‘This is the reason.’
Both men stared at the other, Asim regarding each with vigilance, like a referee overseeing a football match. Clay was first to speak and break the deadlock.
‘I guess this is what you call mission change.’
Mission creep, more like, Tallis thought. Apart from the scar, Clay, the man he’d known as Koroglu, hadn’t altered much. Still full of bullshit attitude. His sawn-off hairstyle made him instantly spottable as a CIA spook. Tallis idly wondered what Clay’s take on him would be.
The door swung open and Jonty Beckett strode in. Introductions were brisk and perfunctory. In spite of the courtesies, Tallis sensed low-level aggro between his handler, Asim, and the man from the Secret Intelligence Service; nothing overt, simply an unspoken grievance smouldering between them. Terrific.
Beckett took charge. ‘I’ve arranged for us to move next door. It’s better placed for a presentation.’
Tallis inwardly groaned and imagined a full PowerPoint trip: maps, crime scenes and appraisal of events and possible terrorist suspects. Amidmuch scraping of chairs, they decamped and made themselves comfortable, Clay and Tallis down one end of an oval table, Beckett and Asim at the far end.
‘I take it you’re familiar with the contents of the file?’ Beckett said, addressing his remarks exclusively to Clay and Tallis.
Both nodded.
‘Let’s start with facts that are incontrovertible. We have a series of co-ordinated and planned attacks on UN personnel culminating with the latest events in the Sudan in which Americans have been killed, notably Alliance members. I’ll come back to that in more detail in a moment.
‘Whether the Balkan incident was part of this strategy is unclear. Added to this, individuals have been targeted and murdered, all having links to the United Nations, most obviously those who had an involvement during the dark period of the 1990s.
‘Despite a thorough appraisal of crime scenes and ballistics, no firm lead has been forthcoming. However, in several incidents, it would seem that the perpetrators or assassins were women. We’ve heard nothing on the wire, no intercept of cellphones, no activity reported at GCHQ.’
Clay, who’d been watching Beckett with impassivity bordering on tedium, noisily cleared his throat. Obviously thinks that the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham is synonymous with Carphone Warehouse, Tallis thought, stretching his long legs.
‘Silence is often employed to conceal dirty operations,’ Clay drawled.
Straight from the master, Tallis thought. He wondered what exactly Clay/Koroglu had been up to since they’d last made each other’s acquaintance.
Assuming a manner of cool superiority, Beckett fixed Clay with a sharp, penetrating stare.
‘You think this is an agency job?’ Beckett’s tone was as contemptuous as it was incredulous.
Clay shrugged his broad shoulders, giving the impression that he didn’t really give a damn one way or the other. Work was work. Tallis considered whether Clay was also more used to operating alone, whether he, too, was chafing against officialdom in action.
Asim met Beckett’s glance, something unspoken passing between the two men. Tallis wondered what it was.
‘The 1990s, the dark period, as you put it,’ Tallis said, addressing Beckett, ‘Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone…’
‘Take your pick,’ Asim chipped in.
‘The Balkans definitely belonged to that era,’ Tallis continued, ‘ but isn’t it also possible that the recent shootings in Croatia were something entirely separate and unconnected?’
‘Except, as in the other incidents, we believe the sniper was female,’ Asim said.
‘Hold it right there,’ Clay burst out. ‘Are you guys suggesting a bunch of disgruntled broads are running around the globe operating some loony terrorist network because of a universal screw-up almost two decades ago?’
Tallis let some air escape through his nostrils. Working with someone from another intelligence agency, even an agency that shared the same world perspective, posed certain difficulties. States could be allies and on the same page with one issue and sworn enemies on another. Tallis appreciated the need for countries to work together in a dangerous world, but it didn’t negate the real difficulties of a clash of culture, of background, of personality. He really didn’t relish the thought of working with Clay, who was about as attractive as an improvised explosive device waiting to go off. But the guy had made a fair point that could not be denied. What was being suggested did seem fairly remarkable. ‘Perhaps we’re running ahead of the evidence a little,’ he conceded.
Beckett regarded Asim, who removed two photographs from a file. He put them face-side down, giving the fleeting appearance of a croupier at a gaming table, one in front of Tallis, one in front of Clay.
‘These were taken by the NATO force that recovered the food convoy in the Sudan.’
‘From where the peacekeepers disappeared?’ Clay said.
‘That’s right. Two bodies were found buried and stripped of clothing. Given the heat, some decomposition has already taken place. ‘
Tallis sought Asim’s eyes, trying to read the message behind the words.
‘Take a look for yourself.’
Tallis flipped over the print. Accustomed to seeing photographs of the dead, he was not repulsed, but rather alarmed. Yes, decomposition had taken place, although not enough to entirely remove the sex of the corpses: both female.
‘Something else,’ Beckett said. ‘Flying in the face of standard operating procedure, the peacekeepers were first to attack with a rocket-propelled grenade, no less.’
‘How do you know?’ Clay growled.
‘Intelligence from a survivor.’ Beckett glared.
‘Maybe your survivor was lying.’
Before Beckett could bark a response, Tallis cut in. ‘Are you saying that the peacekeepers weren’t peacekeepers at all? That they were female fighters?’
‘Yes,’ Beckett said, ignoring Clay.
‘Then the Ghanaian peacekeepers could have been killed before the attack.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ Clay said, pushing the picture away. ‘People die in the desert. They could have been anyone.’
‘True,’ Tallis said. ‘But why were they naked?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because their uniforms would have given the game away. Come on, Clay,’ he said in response to Clay’s obvious doubts, ‘You know as well as I do that terrorist organisations employ women in some form or another. The Tamil Tigers used women soldiers for front-line activities. In the absence of their menfolk, godmothers are calling the shots in the Italian Mafia.’ He didn’t mention the Black Widows recruited by Chechen separatists to blow themselves up in the Moscow Underground.
‘Yeah, and women are taking over the world,’ Clay said with heavy cynicism. ‘A new brand of feminist movement, why the hell not?’
‘You’re missing my point. Mothers and children suffered appalling losses during the ‘90s. Think about it: some of those kids have come of age.’ Jesus, he thought, hadn’t he heard the same words trawled out about Chechnya? Couldn’t the same be true of other pl
aces, other war zones, the fight being passed down from one generation to the next, followed by the next in a never-ending cycle of violence?
He immediately thought of Stella Diamond, all that she’d seen and heard. Pictures of screaming women crashed through his brain. How many times had he, like others, watched the news and seen the footage and shaken his head, vowing it would never happen again? Several times? Too numerous to mention? Tallis felt chill fingers crawl across his scalp. How often had he witnessed it for real?
‘OK, just suppose, and it’s a big suppose, that bogus peacekeepers were responsible for the attack in the Sudan, and that they were all broads and part of a larger network,’ Clay said, his voice like gravel. ‘Who’s bankrolling them?’
A much better question, Tallis thought: follow the money. He looked to Asim and Beckett. Neither man spoke.
‘Someone who hates the US,’ Clay chipped in, an ugly twist to his lips.
‘Leaves the field wide open.’ Tallis flicked a smile at Clay that remained unreciprocated. ‘I take it you’ve already run through a list of possible candidates?’ Tallis looked at Asim.
‘Nobody leaps out of the woodwork.’
‘Returning to Mr Clay’s point,’ Beckett said, acknowledging the American with a slow and deadly smile. ‘He is right in certain respects, but whether hatred of the Americans is a
by-product or the end goal is hard to say. Gut feeling tells me that the United Nations is the main target.’
‘What are we saying, then?’ Tallis said, his question directed to Asim. ‘Are we looking at a new obscure group?’
Asim and Beckett nodded in unison.
‘Mobile, organised and unpredictable,’ Clay said speculatively. ‘On the upside, they seem to be targeting specific individuals, the ordinary civilian off-limits.’
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