“Okay . . . okay, then,” Burt said slowly. “What gets me, though, is why you’re so goddam keen to speak with her.”
Adrian contemplated the benefits of openness or concealment, and decided on the former.
“I have some unfinished business,” he said. “Finn’s killer. We know who he is now. But my orders”—he said the word as if it were choking him—“were to get to the woman first. Without getting to her, I’ve been told, we can’t terminate Finn’s killer. This will put pressure on them back in London to concede. They’ve been pussyfooting over this for long enough, and there’ll be no more excuses they can come up with.”
Adrian fixed Burt in the eye. He knew now he was on a winning streak.
“So,” he said. “You tell Langley that you’ve given me full access to her. I’ll inform my political masters, and I’m sure it will filter through to London from Langley anyhow. Then I’ll have what I want. I can wash my hands of Finn, we’ll have done the right thing. Honour is done and seen to be done.”
He drained his glass in a final punctuation of his triumph.
“In the meantime,” he summed up, “you need Mikhail more than ever. You have a Russian agent in one of your top defence establishments, Burt. So we don’t just have to find Mikhail for all the former reasons. We have to find him to know who this Russian agent is.”
“Working together,” Burt said.
“That’s right.” Adrian smiled thinly. “Working together.”
Burt turned towards the window of his study at the log house. It was dark outside, but in the porch lights he saw it had started to snow.
Adrian had given him a week with Anna, that was all. Otherwise the threat to go straight to Langley, to disrupt Burt’s debriefing of Anna, would become a reality. Adrian wanted in. It upset all of Burt’s carefully laid plans for her far longer debriefing. Things were going to have to move a lot faster than he’d expected. Never mind. It was what was happening.
Burt switched on the tape. First he listened to Rustam talking in the drugged state, at the beginning. Then he picked up the transcripts of Rustam’s later information, the further intelligence about this agent the Russians had in place in America.
Burt both did and didn’t want to believe it. For one, it would be a huge coup for him to take this to Langley; a huge badge of honour for Cougar, and an increase in procurement budgets. But it was also information that Adrian held over him, to get access to Anna. And he didn’t like that.
Chapter 16
BURT WAS WAITING FOR Anna when she came out onto the porch the next morning. He seemed his usual self, at ease with the world, content with what happens. But she also detected a new urgency. After three months of waiting, she guessed he wanted to proceed quickly now to the main event.
He asked after Little Finn, how he liked the nanny and housekeeper he’d provided—questions that had an unusually perfunctory attitude behind them.
Little Finn was with the nanny now, she told him as they walked down the wooden steps into the meadow and he took her arm.
“There’ll be ten of us here from now on,” he said. “The Hispanic lady Frutoza looks after Little Finn and cooks the meals. I know, she sounds like a fizzy drink. Her family’s lived in this valley for two hundred years, and she and her husband are like family. He’s the one who keeps the house running. Then there’s Larry, Christoff, and Joe. They’re backup in case of trouble, but no one will get down here in winter. That makes five, plus you, me, and Little Finn. And you have two constant companions from now on. They arrived at four o’clock this morning. They’re Logan and Marcie.”
“Interrogators?” she asked.
“Yes. And they’ll be with you every second of the day, whether there’s formal debriefing in progress or not. One or other of them never leaves your side.”
“They work for your company?” she asked.
“Marcie worked in conflict resolution down in the Balkans in the nineties. She’s a tough lady, and she was smart enough to handle a roomful of bad men, not to mention NATO troops. She’s a New Yorker, CIA background, now works for me. She’s been to Interrogation School,” he said, and smiled at her. “She went on to teach it at the Farm . . . at Langley.”
“And Logan?”
“Logan. Ah, Logan.” Burt walked on for a few paces before continuing. “He was a CIA officer, also in the Balkans in the nineties, who took a fall for someone else’s mistake. But he was one of the best.” He looked at her with a mixture of amusement and concern in his eyes. “I’m giving him another chance, Anna, let’s call it that. He’s complex. . . . Sometimes I feel he has similarities with Finn.”
“In what way?”
“Led by his passions. A little . . . undisciplined, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Finn was disciplined in his lack of discipline, I’d say.”
Burt chuckled. “In any case, I think you’ll like him. Not that that’s the point, of course,” he added.
She thought about this strange, unnecessary addition to Logan’s description.
“Both of them have been studying you for nearly two months,” Burt said. “As well as Finn. And Mikhail. All under my supervision, of course. They’ll be on top of their material.”
It didn’t sound like a threat, but Burt’s method, she’d learned, was indirect.
“Then I’ll try to be on top of my material too,” she said.
Burt laughed and patted her on the back.
“And your role?” she asked him. “You’re everywhere on the pitch, aren’t you, Burt?”
“I’ll be there,” he said vaguely.
“And what are your expectations?” she asked him.
“Expectations are for dummies. You know that. And you know what we need now. Mikhail.”
She didn’t reply.
He stopped and separated from her, then turned to face her.
“We have a week, Anna. Then Adrian arrives.”
She couldn’t conceal her shock.
“Adrian! Why? I’ve nothing to say to Adrian. I thought this was your operation.”
“I know,” he said. “And it is. So far. But that’s why it would be best for you to finish this up before he gets here. It’s all about Mikhail, Anna. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t know where Mikhail is, or who he is. Finn never told me. Mikhail was handled in a total vacuum by Finn.”
Burt linked his arm in hers again.
“Let’s just say you think you don’t know him,” he said mysteriously. “But he’s out there somewhere. Very close to Putin. You know him, even if you don’t know he’s Mikhail.”
She saw him looking at her intently, but she kept her face expressionless. One thing was true. Finn had never told her. It was Mikhail who had revealed himself to her.
“My future depends on finding Mikhail?” she asked.
“As do all our futures,” Burt replied.
At ten o’clock Logan sauntered over from the guesthouse alone. He was elated. Employed by Burt in a senior position at the company, he was now going to meet the woman he’d been thinking of since he’d first looked properly at her picture in the days after he’d taken it.
He was wearing jeans, a cowboy shirt, and boots that crumpled over at the top. His hair was long and tangled from sleep. To his surprise and even shock, he saw she was already in the kitchen.
Nodding a shy hello to her, he poured himself a coffee. When he had drunk half the cup with a swiftness that clearly burned his mouth, he walked over to Anna and held out his hand.
“Logan,” he said.
