“Hello Titus,” she said brightly. “Well, I’m here.”
“So you are,” he smiled back, taking her case from the boy.
He showed her through to the bedroom and gestured at the curtainless window uncomfortably.
“I borrowed the chest of drawers. I’m sorry the mirror’s cracked.”
“Never mind, this will be very comfy.”
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
“That would be nice,” she said, the smile now genuine.
Later, her bag unpacked, she walked out to the veranda where he sat on the steps, alongside a tea tray of mismatched cups and saucers and an old dented teapot.
In the sunlight, he looked worse, the broad deep criss-crossed scars across his back that she knew could only have come from floggings .Across his shoulder a more jagged scar rose in a discoloured ridge, and through the short hair she could see other smaller scars across the back of his head.
She lowered herself beside him, took the cup from his hand, and saw the small purple circular scar above its powerful cords of tendon.
She looked up into his eyes. “My God Ti, what did they do to you?”
He looked at his hand, as if noticing the old wound for the first time, and clenched the fist.
“My own fault. You father always said I was an obstinate bugger.”
He smiled then, but his ice blue eyes were hard and flecked.
“I saw pictures once at Guys.” She raised her hand to her mouth as the realisation dawned. “Crucifixion marks. Oh my God, they crucified you… and your back?”
“Means I wear a shirt down into the cafe. Stops the tourists gawking. Drink your tea.”
They sat in an awkward silence for a minute before she lowered the cup and spoke. “Hugh phoned before I left. Hugh Cockburn.”
“I’m surprised you came then,” he replied softly.
“Why?”
“I am dangerous. Didn’t he tell you? Prolonged psychological trauma.”
“Poppycock!” she snorted. Quayle laughed, softly thinking how like her father she was. “Anyway, he sends his regards,” she finished.
They had been recruited the same year, Hugh from Oxford, and had met at the Foreign Office induction meeting. The front was maintained until they’d completed the battery and language tests and, on the third morning, the pair had been told to pack a bag. The first phase of their training was in a converted school in Lincolnshire where they were thrown in with a handful of actively serving intelligence officers from the army, three people from MI5 and an Australian identified only by his code name of ‘Douglas’. There they learnt the rudiments of fieldcraft, the networking, recruiting, cyphers and cut-outs, and endured the all important know-your-enemy lectures. where a middle-aged matronly type with a caustic tongue hammered in the latest details on the KGB, GRU and their satellite counterparts, the counter intelligence people from 5 being pitted against the others for the practical sessions. Each of the nine course subjects would be expanded on in detail on later courses at other facilities.
Within days, the trainers had isolated the particular abilities of the students. Hugh Cockburn had begun to score very highly on the logistical planning and management sessions, with Quayle the opposite, very direct and preferring to think through a problem and then solve it alone. Six months later, as Quayle left for the combat school at Acton, Hugh was sent on to the languages facility to brush up his French. Their paths had crossed frequently over the years and they had remained friends – with Hugh actually working as Quayle’s controller on two occasions while under the cover of Cultural Attaché in Bucharest. Quayle’s skills had driven him underground from the start and he became one of only four British truly covert operatives on the MI6 full-time payroll. They were used all over the world wherever necessary, to support the local Station Chief on high risk tasks.
“How is Hugh?” Quayle asked.
“He’s fine. Thinks you got the shitty end of the deal.”
“Did he say that?” Quayle was surprised. It would have been most unlike Hugh to breach security by even discussing personnel he associated with.
“No, but I could tell. All this bloody cloak and dagger nonsense. Daddy was the same. All the mysterious trips down to London to see chaps in some boring club. Foreign Office my eye!”
Quayle said nothing.
“Go on,” she said, “deny it!”
“Deny what?” he grinned.
“You’re bloody impossible, the lot of you!”
“Drink your tea” he said patiently.
She smiled and looked at him. “Its nice to see you again, Ti…”
During the first few days they took lots of walks through the hills, eating in small tavernas whenever they were hungry. It was Holly, having badgered him out of the house, who did most of the talking. People who came across the odd looking couple found it difficult to label them, the pretty English woman and her big silent companion. He had a way of making men uneasy in his presence, his motives and intentions unknown. The effect was softened by the woman, who sometimes threw her head back and laughed, touching his arm like a comfortable old friend, and at other times sat locked in her own thoughts.
As the days went by, they dropped into an easy routine. Quayle worked on his icons at the big kitchen table which they had moved onto the veranda, a pair of incongruous bi-focal spectacles on his nose, while Holly sat on a big cushion against the white stucco wall, devouring his library or sometimes preparing scones in clouds of flour dust. Meals were simple affairs of feta cheese salads with fresh sardines, or bread from the village with spiced meats and bottles of cold beer.
The nights were when things were different, each with their private pain in the dark lonely hours, Holly in the old saggy bed, and Quayle with his nightmares across the other side of the house on the camp stretcher.
It was the first night that Holly understood Hugh’s veiled
