‘Yes. I don’t mean to be rude, but judging by your appearance, they’re caused by all-round exhaustion – lack of sleep, poor diet, too many stimulants – and of course general pressure. Do you take any exercise?’
‘No time.’
‘You should make time, and you should certainly look into your diet and eating habits. Do you bolt your food? Eat irregularly? Sleep poorly?’
She nodded to all three.
‘And you have a fair degree of unpredictable stress in your life? Do you ever relax?’
She shook her head. She knew this man was SIS-approved and must have seen the odd case of burnt-out spy before. Although the Service was notoriously bad at helping the casualties of the trade, it reacted quickly to any hint of psychological disrepair.
‘So, how long is this going to last? What can you give me for it?’ As she talked, the heaviness in her chest began to disappear and she breathed more easily.
‘Nothing. As soon as you take some rest the symptoms will leave you but in future you’ll have to learn to manage your stress levels. I suggest regular physical activity, maybe some abdominal breathing exercises. Perhaps you should consider yoga?’
‘Yoga!’ she said contemptuously.
He shrugged. ‘Look, it’s up to you. I can’t give you a pill to affect the choices you make. You have an overactive fight and flight response. This releases your body’s hormones to enable you to meet a dangerous situation, or flee from it. You’re leading your life at such a pitch that your body is unable to distinguish between what is real danger and what is simply pressure. You’re constantly on the alert, boiling over with unspent hormones. This is the first episode and there is very little to concern yourself about. It’s an amber light, that’s all. If I were you, I’d go home, have a sleep and then take some time off. If you don’t accept this advice, you will eventually find yourself with more serious problems – possibly a nervous breakdown, alcohol dependency, that sort of thing. You have to look after yourself, you’re getting on.’
‘I’m in my early thirties!’
‘As I said, getting on.’
‘Do you have any advice for the short term?’ she said sharply.
‘If you experience the hyperventilation again, you can stop it by breathing into a paper bag to slow your intake of oxygen. But it’s not ideal. It may not give the right impression. ’
‘I see that,’ she said.
She left the surgery with Christine Selvey, whom she found sitting primly in the waiting room reading the Economist.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Selvey pointedly.
‘Iron deficiency,’ said Herrick. ‘A few supplements and some rest and I’ll be fine.’
‘Good. Then we’ll see you in a couple of weeks or so. I hope you don’t mind me saying that the Chief was quite emphatic you take the time off.’
They parted, Selvey giving her a last matronly nod.
‘Fuck it,’ said Herrick, as she made her way up Sloane Street to find a cab.
When she reached home she had no difficulty in falling asleep. She woke at 2.00 p.m. feeling disorientated and vaguely guilty. How the hell was she meant to turn off just like that? She called her father, but found herself being evasive when he asked why she had so much time to talk. He was busy painting – the light was right, the tempera just mixed – and he would prefer to ring her later on. She read the paper and ate some salad with self- conscious restraint, then phoned St Mary’s Hospital. Dolph and Lapping were still too poorly to receive visitors, but Harland was sitting up in his room. She asked them to tell him to expect her.
On the drive there, she stopped at Wild at Heart on Westbourne Grove and chose another bunch of flowers. As she waited for the credit card payment to go through, her eyes drifted to the couples sitting outside the cafes along the north side of the street, and she thought that the doctor was right. She really must find a way of taking more time off, having more fun.
It was 3.25 by the time she found Harland’s room. He was sitting by an open window, in the shade of half- drawn curtains that lifted into the room on the breeze. One shoulder was bare, but the rest of his torso was wrapped in bandages. He sat forward so as not to risk his back coming in contact with the chair, and winced a greeting at her.
‘What happened?’ he snapped. ‘Why were you out of the office? I phoned you. They said you were on holiday. What’s going on, Isis?’
‘I felt a little faint in the meeting this morning and suddenly I’m pegged as a borderline neurotic. I was given two weeks’ gardening leave. More important, how are you?’
His eyes turned to the floor. ‘Shitty. They won’t give me any more painkillers.’
‘Did you get the things I brought last night?’ She was aware they were talking like a married couple, concern somehow metabolising into briskness and formality.
He nodded.
‘Don’t you have some painkillers in the sponge bag?’
‘You’re right.’ He gestured to the bedside cabinet.
She gave him the bag and knelt down beside him, determined to end the difficulty. ‘I don’t know how to say this…’
‘You don’t have to. She wouldn’t have hit you. I just put myself in the line of fire. Bloody stupid of me.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what the police say. They say you pushed me out of the way, and I know that to be the case. Please, I want to thank you… I mean, I am thanking you… I’m just not very good at putting it into words.’
‘Isis, this doesn’t suit you.’ He smiled. ‘Please get up and tell me what’s going on. There are a few hints on the news, but they must be keeping most of it quiet.’
‘They’ve arrested the lot of them, plus Rahe’s associate in Bristol. But it was more serious than anyone suspected – nerve agents, suicide bombers. They still don’t know what four of them were planning to do. That’s as of this morning, when I was last in the loop.’
There was silence. Harland looked at the window. ‘I’ve just had a call from Eva. She said she needed to see me in New York.’
‘So it’s back on – you and her?’ asked Herrick.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid, Isis.’ He paused. ‘She told me there had been some activity on a website that had been dormant these past three weeks. It’s an important site and before it went down they were gaining useful information from it.’
‘You’re talking about the thing on Rahe’s computer. The encrypted messages in the screensaver?’
‘No, this is something they kept to themselves.’
‘By they, you mean Ha Mossad Le Teum,’ she said.
‘Yes, the dear old Institute for Coordination in Israel,’ he said.
At this moment a nurse walked through the open door with Herrick’s flowers in a vase. ‘I hope you’re telling Mr Harland that he’s not allowed to use his mobile phone in here. Just because he’s darling of the ward doesn’t mean he can break all the rules.’ She fussed over the flowers and bent down to look into Harland’s face.
‘I saw a doctor using one ten minutes ago,’ he said.
‘If you kept to the odd text message, no one would know.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said.
Harland swallowed a couple of pills with a gulp of water, then the nurse left with a friendly wink at Herrick.
‘The Institute had been watching the activities of Sammi Loz for some while,’ he said. ‘And I know Eva well enough to be certain that she wouldn’t leave her dying mother to go to New York unless it was absolutely essential. Second, if she called me about it, she probably needs help. And I’m not exactly in a position to give that help.’
‘You say this website has been down for the last three weeks. You’re thinking that was the time Loz was with us?’
He nodded.
‘What did you tell her?’
