He went over to her and shook her hand. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said.
She glanced at the discreet Rolex on her left wrist. ‘You’re bang on time,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just got here myself.’
She sat down and smoothed her skirt. Shepherd sat opposite her. A young waiter in black hovered at her shoulder and she ordered afternoon tea for two, with English Breakfast and Blue Mountain coffee. Shepherd knew that the coffee was for him and she went up another notch in his estimation: that she had remembered he didn’t drink tea showed that she was attentive to detail.
‘I though we could have a bite as we talk,’ she said. ‘I’ve been on the go all day.’
‘No problem,’ he said. There were only half a dozen men in the room and he was the youngest by a good two decades. It wasn’t the sort of place Hargrove would have suggested as a venue.
When he looked back at Button, he was surprised to find her smiling at him. ‘I can hazard a guess as to what you’re thinking, Dan. I hope you don’t mind me being so informal, but I can hardly keep calling you Mr Shepherd.’
‘Dan’s fine.’
‘So, you’re probably thinking, tea at the Ritz, she’s a fast-track Oxbridge graduate, Cheltenham Ladies’ College perhaps, rode to hounds as a kid, father was a lawyer or maybe even a judge, mother spent her time on various charitable committees, family connections got her into Five, silver spoon, playing at a career until she finds the right man to make her happy. Am I close?’
‘Close.’ Shepherd grinned. ‘I’d have said your father was a doctor, though.’
Button smiled. ‘No, he was a lawyer,’ she said. ‘There’s the thing, Dan. I’ve been able to go through your file with a fine-tooth comb and there’s almost nothing I don’t know about you. But my working life is a closed book. Totally hidden from view to all but those with the highest security clearance.’
She stopped speaking as the waiter reappeared with a laden tray. With a minimum of fuss he put down the pot of tea and the cafetiere of coffee, a selection of sandwiches and cakes, then left with a courteous half-bow. ‘Isn’t the service just out of this world?’ she said to Shepherd.
Shepherd figured that the question was rhetorical, so he shrugged. She picked up the cafetiere and poured coffee into his cup, then added a splash of milk. Just as he liked it. He glanced at her left hand. No wedding ring. Her nails were short with clear varnish. And there was a faint nicotine stain between the first and second fingers of her right hand. At least she had one weakness.
‘I much prefer tea,’ said Button, ‘and the English Breakfast here is the best there is. I like the sandwiches they do too. And the cakes.’
‘So we’re at the Ritz because you like cucumber sandwiches,’ said Shepherd. ‘I get the picture.’
‘No, you don’t, Dan. You have a perception, that’s all. Like you noticed I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. You probably assume I’m not married. But maybe I took off my ring before this meeting.’
‘The skin isn’t white where the ring would be.’
‘The ring, if there is one, could go on and off as often as the Rolex. Or the pearls.’
‘Are you married?’
She smiled, ignored the question, and finished pouring her tea. ‘Apart from the English Breakfast and the sandwiches, the great thing about the Ritz is that you can be among people but the tables are so far apart you won’t be overheard. Planting any sort of listening device would take a huge amount of effort, and there’s no guarantee that your target would be in range. Most of the people here are tourists so there’s little chance of bumping into someone you know. And the dress code will keep out most of the followers – the ones in the hooded tops and trainers. So, you walk through the Virgin megastore on Oxford Street, wander through Borders, then head here. The contrast will show up all but the most versatile, don’t you think?’
Shepherd’s stomach lurched. He’d had no inkling that anyone was on his tail. ‘You know surveillance.’
She added milk to her tea and stirred it slowly. ‘I was trained by the best, Dan, and now I work with the best. The problem is, I can’t trot out my CV to prove to you that I’m the sort of person you’d want to work with. And, frankly, we don’t have time to build up the sort of trust you and Hargrove have established. We have to hit the ground running, so to speak.’
Shepherd nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘I know you do,’ she said. ‘So what I’m doing here isn’t playing some silly game, trying to show you what a clever girl I am. I just want you to know that I’m a professional. I’ve run agents in some very dangerous places and I’ve never lost a man or a woman. I’ve never lied to one of my people. And I’ve never asked them to do something I wouldn’t do myself.’
‘You had a team on me?’ said Shepherd. He wondered if any of her watchers was still in the vicinity. Wherever they were, they were good.
‘No team, Dan,’ said Button. ‘Just little old me.’
Shepherd sat back and stared at her in disbelief. ‘But you were here when I arrived.’
‘I had to run a little, I admit.’ Her smile widened. ‘Remember, all I needed to know was where you went. I knew your ultimate destination and that you were meeting me, so even if I’d lost you I’d have been able to pick you up again.’
‘But you didn’t lose me.’
She smiled. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘All the way from Ealing?’
‘You have a nice house. The garden could do with some TLC, though.’
Shepherd was annoyed with himself. He took pride in his ability to spot a tail, but more than his pride was at stake: his life depended on it. Button was on his side, but there were plenty of men, the odd woman too, who would love to get close to him – close enough to do him harm.
‘Now I’ve hurt your feelings,’ she said.
She offered him a plate of sandwiches and he took one. Egg and watercress. ‘I’m not used to being followed,’ he said.
‘If it makes you feel any better, I was never closer than fifty feet.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Sorry. But if you could tail me so easily, so could others. And they might not have my best interests at heart. Hell’s bells, they could follow me home. I could put my boy at risk.’
‘Dan, you were spot on with what you did. But I knew what to expect. An amateur wouldn’t.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Is there anything you’d like to know about me? My background?’
‘You were Five, right?’
‘Straight from university. Fast-track graduate entry.’
‘You applied to be a spy, is that it?’
‘Pretty much. The days of university lecturers having a quiet word with likely candidates are long gone. It’s just another branch of the civil service, these days.’
‘And you ran surveillance teams?’
‘That was part of my work,’ she said. ‘I was in Belfast for a few years.’ She smiled. ‘I didn’t talk like a Brit bastard when I was there, of course, I had more of the Irish in me,’ she said, in a perfect North Belfast accent.
‘Counter-terrorism?’
‘I wasn’t handing out parking tickets,’ she said.
‘And in the UK?’
‘The National Security Advice Centre, working on serious crime investigations. And then, after 9/11, I moved to International Counter-terrorism Investigations, mainly because of my language skills.’
‘You speak Arabic?’
‘Fluently. And half a dozen other languages, as it happens.’
‘Why would Five want to lose someone like you?’ asked Shepherd. He took a bite of his sandwich.
‘They don’t see it as losing me, Dan,’ said Button. ‘They see it as forging a link with a new investigative organisation.’
‘So you’ll go back to Five one day?’
‘I’m not going to lie to you, Dan. This job is a stepping-stone for me. Sometimes you have to leave an organisation for a while to progress up through it.’
‘So, just as I’m getting used to you, you could up and leave?’
