somebody from the past who could give me some advice. Even if it was just to tell me to mind my own business and stop worrying. And she realised that of course there was someone, a sort-of friend, whom she hadn’t seen for a while but knew well enough to ring up out of the blue. Someone whose judgement she respected, too, which was more important now than simple moral support. She got up and went to the wall phone by the kitchen door.
‘Liz Carlyle,’ Liz said mechanically, for she had been immersed in an agent runner’s report when her phone rang. ‘Liz, it’s Sophie Margolis.’
‘Hi there,’ said Liz, surprised. It had been a couple of years since she’d seen Sophie, and probably six or seven since Sophie had left the service. They’d kept in touch, at least at first, meeting for the occasional lunch. When the baby had been born, Liz had sent a present. What was his name? Zack, that was it. Hadn’t there been another one since? Liz felt a pang of guilt, since she hadn’t sent a present the second time round.
They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes. Sophie told Liz about her children, and how David was doing in the City (very well, apparently), and a recent holiday in Umbria. Liz did her best to sound cheery about her own single existence, and realised she had yet to plan a holiday for herself.
Then Sophie said, ‘Listen, it would be wonderful to see you. David and I were hoping to get you over for supper. Any chance?’
‘Of course. I’d love to.’
‘David’s mother is visiting from Israel. She’s American but moved to Tel Aviv when she got divorced last year.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. He was the monster from hell. Even David would admit that, and he’s his son. Listen, I know it’s not much notice, but could you come this Saturday?’
‘Oh, Sophie, I’m sorry but I’m going down to my mother’s this weekend.’ Yes, thought Liz, to meet this Edward man at last. She wasn’t going to miss that.
‘What a pity. How about next week some time? Say Wednesday?’
Liz looked at her diary. It was accusingly empty. ‘That would be fine.’
‘Great. You know where we are. Shall we say eight o’clock?’
‘Fine.’
But Sophie wasn’t ready to ring off. ‘Liz, we do want to see you, but I’d better confess – I have a slight ulterior motive.’
‘What’s that?’ Maybe Sophie was going to set her up with some City friend of her husband. Liz stifled a yawn. She could arrange her own romantic life, thank you very much.
‘Well, it’s about David’s mother. You see, she’s been going around with a man from the Israeli Embassy. A much younger man. And apparently…’
Two minutes later Liz had a pencil and was writing carefully. ‘K-o-l-l-e-k. Got it. Let me look into it, and I’ll let you know on Wednesday.’
Sophie was just putting the phone down when Hannah came in, holding Zack’s hand.
‘Hi Hannah,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was just talking to an old friend I haven’t seen in ages. I’ve asked her to dinner next week; I think you’ll like her. Her name’s Liz Carlyle.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Hannah, steering Zack to a chair by the table, while Sophie went to start on his supper. ‘How do you know her?’
‘We used to work together. In Personnel.’ She switched the kettle on. Hannah seemed to like the English habit of a cuppa in the late afternoon.
Hannah nodded. ‘Oh yes. That job you used to do.’
She said this with such irony that Sophie turned and stared at her.
‘Sophie, I’ve always had a pretty good idea of what you did for a living. The idea that you were in Personnel is just absurd.’ She held a hand up. ‘And no, David didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Oh,’ said Sophie, since it was all she could think of to say. She was annoyed her ruse had been found out. The sooner Liz checked out Danny Kollek the better.
SIXTEEN
So much for leaving early, thought Liz, as the roadworks signs appeared and the traffic began to slow. She had left her desk in Thames House at four, collected her dark blue Audi Quattro from the underground car park and headed off, hoping to reach her mother’s house in Wiltshire in time for a walk before supper.
It was a beautiful late summer afternoon, the sky an unbroken blue, but the Audi, which she had bought second hand several years ago with some money her father had left her, had no air-conditioning. To take her mind off the traffic fumes sucked in through the open window, she tried to imagine the smell of the countryside around Bowerbridge and of her mother’s house, filled as it always was with flowers.
But something was spoiling the picture. It was the thought of this man Edward. What would she find when she got there?
The invitation had arrived the week before.
It was easier to think about work, and as she sat waiting for the car in front to move, her mind drifted back to the previous day’s troubling conversation with Chris Marcham, after he’d surprised her in his Hampstead house. Marcham had turned out to be a man in his fifties, she reckoned, tall with longish hair, casually, almost raffishly dressed – a yellow jumper with a hole in one elbow, cracked brogues, and trousers that could do with a wash.
After the first shock and the discovery that Liz wasn’t actually a burglar, Marcham had relaxed a bit. She had introduced herself as Jane Falconer, her standard cover, but rather than claiming to be from the Home Office, as she would normally have done, she’d said right away that she was from the Security Service. After all, she knew this man to be a casual source of MI6.
‘Do you work for Geoffrey Fane?’ he’d asked suspiciously.
‘No, I’m with the other service.’
‘Ah, MI5.’
‘Do you have a gardener?’ Liz had begun.
‘No,’ Marcham had replied, looking mystified. ‘Why do you ask?’
Liz explained how she’d disturbed a man apparently working in the garden. She’d noted with interest that Marcham had shown no sign of wanting to report the intruder to the police.
As the traffic freed itself and she swung the Audi into the fast lane, Liz recalled the conversation that had followed. She’d decided beforehand that there was no point in alarming him about a threat she couldn’t be sure was real, so she’d explained instead that she’d come to see him about the forthcoming peace conference at Gleneagles. Intelligence sources, she’d said, without being specific, had picked up a higher level than usual of ‘chatter’, much of it relating to Syria, and there was concern that there might be an attempt to derail the conference. Since he was an expert on the country, she’d remarked flatteringly, and had just come back from interviewing President Assad, she wondered if he could help.
It turned out he knew already from sources in Damascus that Syria planned to attend the conference, but he claimed no insight into who might try to keep that from happening. The country certainly had plenty of enemies, he conceded, but since all of them seemed to have decided that it was to their advantage to attend the conference, none seemed likely to want to sabotage it.
Marcham had been impressed by President Assad, who’d seemed to him far savvier than his detractors allowed, not at all the puppet of his late father’s henchmen, much more his own man. It didn’t sound to Liz as if the journalist was writing anything about Bashar Al-Assad that would prove particularly provocative, either to the Syrians or their enemies.
Yet there had been one odd exchange which, as the Audi picked up speed, Liz was puzzling over. Marcham had said at one point, ‘You might want to talk with your counterparts in Tel Aviv. Though doubtless you already have.’
‘Doubtless,’ she had replied dryly. ‘Have you?’
