Her eyes narrowed for a second. “If he’s hurt then it was your people! Your kind don’t change,” she said fiercely.
“True” he said, “but I just do a job of work. I don’t scar and blind men. Any more than you did. Yes, I checked on you. Your cells are subject matter in our school. Did you know that? I never listened very well so I don’t remember, but the people in records do. They say you were considered a real menace for forty years. But Adrian is blinded and he was the only man with any feel for this thing. So I need your help, Gabriella – and Adrian needs your help too.”
“Why Adrian?”
“Because we are looking for the same thing.”
“Did he send you?”
“No.”
He could see he would need to expand on his answer.
“I was following him when he was attacked. A few feet closer and perhaps I could have helped. Now he’s out of the game and the English have put a desk man on it. They’re licking their wounds and, all the while, the trail grows colder.”
“The trail of what?” she asked. The gun was still in her hand and pointing at his belly. He thought for a second, weighing the alternatives. So far everyone who knew anything of the matter was dead or injured.
“You don’t want to know that. It would be very dangerous. I just need to know why he came here, and what you told him.”
“It’s dangerous now,” she replied caustically, her accent thickening.
“We call it Long Knives We have never worked out why it was not an MI5 job –but the MI6 file was called ‘Broken Square’.”
She flinched for a second but recovered quickly. That was it! The name she couldn’t remember for young Mr Black.
“Why Five?”
“Because it should have been seen as an internal security problem,” Kirov answered.
“By the British?” she queried firmly.
“By everyone.”
She thought about that and finally lowered the gun a measure. “Are you armed?”
“Yes.”
He could have come in with a gun pointed at her. That seemed to be enough.
“Sit down, Mr Kirov,” she said. “It was a Six file because the man who wrote it was Six. And that is about all I can tell you.”
“He is dead. You knew him?”
She nodded.
Sitting, he offered her the wrapped fish and chips but she shook her head. “I’ve eaten. But thank you.”
“So, Gabriella Kreski. What was it that Adrian Black wanted?”
“You wonder what a working intelligence agent wants with an old retired woman?” she countered.
“Whatever it is must be from the past…”
“He came to ask me about the man who wrote the file. What he was like, how good his work would have been. That sort of thing.”
“You knew him well?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He was the best.”
Kirov uttered, “Everyone says that about the old men.”
She sat back, her eyes blazing at his impudence, and jabbed a finger at him. “You asked, so I’m telling. If your people considered me a threat then they never knew Edward Morton. You youngsters use computers and electronics and satellites. You know nothing! Teddy could look at things with his own eyes. He could smell things! He could take talk and news clippings and snippets and stock prices and give intelligence! Don’t you sit here and mock the old men. They were squaring up before others like you were even born.”
Kirov laughed softly – not at her but with her. It was a friendly noise, rough and throaty. “So he was good, then – but surely the department has files on ex staff. Why come to you?”
“They have files on staff. But the problem was the file itself.”
Kirov pitched forward in his seat. “The Broken Square file? What about it?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Ask your mole…”
“Ask who?”
“Your agent in place.”
“I’m not sure if there is one. If there was, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Don’t treat me like a fool, young man!”
“We had someone. A woman. Your counter people picked her up and then she was killed. By the same people who did the other killings and attacked Adrian Black.” He paused, letting that sink in. “So what about the file?”
“It’s gone. Your agent saw to that. Try your masters,” she said with forced politeness.
“What are you saying?”
“Adrian Black was here because the file has gone. It no longer exists. Your agent purged it from the system.”
Kirov had turns suddenly pale. “You are sure. The file is gone?”
“Adrian told me. The reason he needed to know about Teddy Morton was to work out a way to try and reconstruct it.”
“Then we have a problem, me and Adrian Black,” he said softly. “Tell me, a kill order has gone out on a retired British agent. A man called Quayle. Did you or Morton know him?”
She looked up sharply. “A kill order?”
“He has gone sour, so they say.”
“Sour? No. I don’t believe a word of it!” she said defiantly. “He was one of Teddy’s boys.”
After that, the conversation turned to other things – but Kirov would never forget the way she had hardened, triumphantly, on hearing Quayle’s name. When, at last, Kirov stood to leave, he looked down with newfound respect at the woman in the chair. “Be careful now, Gabriella Kreski. I found you. Others might.” Then, in a lighter tone and smiling in his awkward way, he said, “There is a cat across the road. He reminds me of you. He is old and tough. If you don’t mind, I will take the fish...”
*
Vehicle lights from the highway threw occasional shafts up the dark walls of the hotel room as Quayle lay back on the bed and smoked. It was a characterless room, renovated in the American style, with two double beds and a third foldout sofa. Pope slept the sleep of the dead in the adjoining room and, every now and then, Quayle crossed to the window and stared out into the car park, taking his turn to stay awake seriously in spite of the fact they were now hundreds of miles from the border.
Holly
