Dead Line

known from which country, much less which source, the information came.

Bokus scratched his forehead, as if he still had the hair that had once grown there. ‘What are these two individuals meant to be planning to do to screw up the conference?’ he asked.

Fane shrugged. ‘It’s not clear. We’re pushing our source to try to find out.’

‘I mean, is it supposed to be a bomb?’ demanded Bokus. ‘Or a bullet? Or maybe an embarrassment? One of your newspapers catching a president or a Prime Minister in bed with an eight-year-old girl.’

Fane laughed politely, noticing that Brookhaven could only manage a wan smile. There was nothing very subtle about Andy Bokus. Fane said, ‘If the News of the World was the extent of the problem, I wouldn’t be troubling you with this. No, we can only assume that it’s something dramatic – and lethal.’ He sat back against the taut padding of the couch, adding almost casually, ‘I was hoping you might know something about these two people.’

Brookhaven looked surprised, but Bokus responded stolidly. ‘What are their names again?’ he asked nonchalantly.

‘Veshara and Marcham.’

‘Sounds like a Vaudeville act,’ Bokus said, and this time Brookhaven made a better show of laughing.

‘I’m afraid these two have rather limited comic potential,’ Fane said, letting his tone slowly frost. ‘Veshara is Lebanese; lives here in London. That’s all we know so far. Marcham’s a journalist.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll find out more about them in due course, but I thought you might save us some time.’ There was nothing casual about his tone now. ‘Can you?’

Bokus looked questioningly at Brookhaven. The younger man shook his head at once. ‘Neither rings any sort of bell. I’ll check the files, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Fane and looked again at Bokus.

Bokus stared at him blankly, but then his mouth opened, as if it were not being controlled by his brain. ‘We’ll check it out with HQ in Langley if there’s nothing here, but maybe…’

‘Right,’ said Fane, accepting defeat. But he wasn’t through yet. ‘I’d like to stay in touch with this. Our protective security people are already liaising, but this is highly sensitive intelligence and I want to keep it like that for the time being.’

Brookhaven interjected hesitantly. ‘I’m talking to MI5 about the conference. Are you suggesting something else?’

Fane lifted his palms about an inch and a half from his knees to indicate reassurance. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘Charles Wetherby is completely au fait. I told him I was coming to see you. He’s got one of his best people on this already - I’m sure he’d want you to deal with her.’

‘Liz Carlyle?’

Was there a hint of eagerness in Brookhaven’s voice? Fane hoped not. ‘That’s the one,’ he declared.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Bokus. ‘Miles here will intermediate with Carlyle.’ His voice took on a peremptory tone. ‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ said Fane, as they left the bubble and returned to Bokus’s office, ‘though if we could have a quick word a deux, I’d be grateful.’ He smiled at Brookhaven to show it was nothing personal. Turning slightly red-faced, the younger man made his excuses and left.

Fane remained standing as Bokus went back to sit behind his desk. ‘As I hope I’ve made clear, strictly speaking this is a matter between you and Thames House.’

‘Strictly speaking, yes,’ said Bokus, giving nothing away.

‘Well, what I’d like to suggest – that is, if we can speak off the record?’

‘Off the record?’ Bokus seemed amused for the first time. ‘You sound like a reporter from one of those… what do you call them, red tops?’

Fane inclined his head slightly. ‘Well, perhaps. But between us, I think you and I should have a sort of informal channel of communication. Just to keep in touch – about this matter, of course, and anything else that might crop up. It seems important, given the possible urgency.’

‘Sounds okay to me,’ said Bokus without enthusiasm.

TEN

When Fane had left, Andy Bokus picked up the phone and dialled an extension. ‘Miles, could you come back for a minute?’ he said, though it wasn’t really a question.

There was something puppy-like about Brookhaven that annoyed Bokus almost as much as his East Coast manners, his English-style clothes (elbow patches for Christ’s sakes) and his open admiration for all things English.

What kind of a name was Miles Brookhaven anyway? His people were probably landing in Massachusetts while Bokus’s forebears were shovelling shit in the Ukraine. ‘Miles’ for godsake – anybody with a first name like that had ivy twined round his head.

Bokus hadn’t been poor, but unlike most of his Agency colleagues he had come from America’s small-town heartland, where ‘sophisticated’ was not a word used admiringly. But he had always believed in himself, and in the American promise that anyone in that country could, if they worked hard and put their mind to it (and, he admitted to himself, enjoyed a fair share of luck), do anything. When a football injury in his second year at college had put paid to his hopes for a professional career, Bokus had for the first time in his life paid attention to his studies. A political science major, he had known he wanted to see a bigger world than rural Ohio had to offer, so when one of his professors had suggested he take the Agency’s exams, he had seized the chance.

And by now, he’d seen a fair amount of it. His most recent posting before London was Madrid. He spoke Spanish fluently and he had liked the Spanish people – the men were dignified but straightforward, the women often beautiful and full of grace. He’d been there at an interesting time, too – the Madrid train bombings had been a real wake-up call in that country and had put the Agency’s Madrid station into the front line at Langley. He’d done well in Madrid, which was why he’d got this plum job of London.

But he wasn’t as happy here. The English struck Bokus as a sour bunch; snooty, devious when it suited them, willing to rely on American firepower while making it clear they had the superior intellects. Like Fane, who couldn’t ever disguise his obvious conviction that Bokus was an idiot.

Yet it wasn’t Fane’s patronising manner that was worrying him now; it was what Fane had said. You didn’t have to like the Brits – which God knows Bokus didn’t – to respect them. Once they got their teeth into something they shed all their ‘jolly good this’ and ‘jolly good that’ and acted like old-fashioned bloodhounds. They didn’t give up.

Bokus could not be seen to refuse to help the Brits with this high-alert threat to the Gleneagles conference, but he was going to have to walk a tightrope. There would be no doubt at Langley that ‘Tiger’, the source Bokus had spent the last eighteen months running in London under the nose of MI5, was too valuable to jeopardise. If the Brits even got a sniff of him, the shit would hit the fan with a massive splat. Tiger was a source so sensitive that no one else in the CIA’s London station was aware of it. Tiger’s reports went directly to a small group in Langley, who controlled the case. This was top-flight ‘need to know’ and only a handful of people were indoctrinated. If the Brits learned about Tiger, then Langley would, to use an English expression that Bokus actually liked, have his guts for garters.

There was a tap on the open door and he turned and motioned Brookhaven to come in. Brookhaven stood in front of the desk as Bokus, standing behind it, shuffled papers while he thought. ‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘I want you to do something.’

‘What’s that, Andy?’

‘I want you to get close to this MI5 woman, Carlyle. Okay?’

‘Sure,’ Brookhaven said dutifully. ‘I met her at the Cabinet Office meeting. She seemed perfectly competent, nice actually.’

Where did he learn to talk like that? At prep school? ‘Yeah, well, competent’s just dandy, but make sure you get close to her, and not the other way around. These people act like they’re your best friends. They aren’t, right?’