She dialled the number.
“Eva? I didn’t expect to be speaking to you again.”
“Nor me you, and you’re still in Moscow, you must really like it there.”
Beatrice laughed. “Or they’re punishing me. Jobs in this Embassy aren’t exactly on the list of cool assignments.”
“But still the most interesting?” Eva remembered Moscow had been Beatrice’s first choice of posting and she’d studied very hard to make herself the best candidate.
“Indeed. What brings you back to SIS?”
“I’m consulting on something, I’m sending you an e-fit, can you see if he was anywhere near Moscow before the Hunter Malone assassination?”
“Interesting. Sure, fire it over. Is he a suspect?”
“If not for that, for a murder here. Do you have any leads on the ground?”
Beatrice blew out frustration. “Not really, all we’re finding is smoke and mirrors, which makes me wonder. There’s an official state investigation. We all know that means nothing, but the word is that they’re appeasing the Americans.”
Which meant they weren’t behind it.
Eva pulled out the file Gordon had given her – he was right, Eric had sourced little on the charm school, but he hadn’t known Charles. Eva grabbed paper and pen and brainstormed what she knew about his connections to the USA. He’d told her he’d interned there in the summers during his first degree, spent time there during his PhD, but he went just about everywhere in the world all the time to attend academic conferences.
She set the SIS search function loose to worm out details it would have taken her days to cross reference while she went to make a drink.
Gordon poked his head into the kitchen.
“You want one?” Eva asked, dropping a teabag into her mug.
“Heading out for a meeting, how’s it going?”
“I might have something, a little sideways, but it’s looking promising.”
“I have news for you.”
“You found them?”
“Not quite. Charles knocked out the man you saw unconscious in the hangar. Only he got on board the plane, no hostiles involved.”
No hostiles. Eva rolled that around in her mind. No hostiles, no trafficking ring, no assassins. Tension leaked out of her, Lily was safe with her father. But Charles knocking Luke out, commandeering the plane—Charles making them take off without her?
“Are you certain? Could Charles have been under duress?”
Gordon shrugged. “No one else was seen anywhere near the plane. Of course he could have been contacted remotely, but it’s unlikely, where’s the duress?”
So she was going down the right route.
Back at her desk her search had given her the titles of all the conferences and symposia Charles had attended since he qualified, the titles of which were beyond her or sounded as boring as hell until she got a rogue result. Double checking her search instructions showed her it wasn’t the system at fault, but her knowledge of her husband. Charles was a chemical engineer, with the world to choose from. Why would he attend a psychology conference in London every year?
Psychology, he didn’t even rate it as an academic field. So if not what, then who? She set the system searching, watching it flick through the new parameters she’d set.
When the phone rang, she answered it almost absent mindedly.
“It’s Dario, thought you’d want to know they sacked me.”
“What? They can’t do that.”
“Apparently Vaishali can, I’m undermining her authority, not following her orders.”
“Every Drop’s not the military, we value everyone’s opinions.”
“Not anymore.”
Eva felt the pain of betrayal sharpen inside her. “How did you upset her?”
“She wasn’t upset, she was, it was weird, it was more like she was terrified. I’d told her I was going to see our pipe suppliers. Things are getting worse at Tirupudur since they dismantled the aerial network but at Seitu, where it’s intact, things aren’t as bad. It’s probably a wasted trip, but I wanted to rule it out.”
Eva should have been watching it, shouldn’t have abandoned the people she’d sworn to help. Pressure pushed at her, another weighty priority to juggle. She massaged her temples around her bruise. The dull residual ache from whatever sedative CJ had used on her was blooming into a full-on stress headache.
“I’m really sorry, Dario.” She should have been there to look out for him. “Leave that with me, I’ll go. There’s a whole procedure Vaishali must follow. It’s on the employee pages, protocols, termination plans, numbers of employment law specialists. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
Time only to talk herself out of the urge to get on the phone to Vaishali when the system told her it had completed its new search. The cursor blinked at her, waiting for her next instruction.
One man had met Charles away from the psychology conference, a dinner reservation for two. CCTV confirmed it, both men had arrived at and left the restaurant separately. Eva clicked onto the public-facing profile of Professor Louie Steinman, gripped the mouse.
He was older, maybe some margin for error there in a looser chin, under-eye bags, age-spots and a thin halo of white hair. Eva closed her eyes to check her memory, opened them looking directly into the Professor’s eyes. No doubt at all.
46
Eva shuddered, she was safe. It wasn’t him. She looked again at the photo of Professor Louie Steinman on her computer screen, past the mild-mannered professional façade. In his eyes, even in the pixels, albeit watered down, she recognised the same cold brutality she’d seen in the man who killed Nancy Seymour and tried to kill her.
Eva’s desk phone made her start like a gun had gone off beside her.
“Eva, Beatrice from Moscow. Got an ID for you. Your e-fit was pretty accurate.” Eva wasn’t surprised, she’d never forget that face. “Brett Steinman entered Russia on a tourist visa two days before Malone’s assassination.”
“He
