‘But you know all about me.’
‘Jesus, everyone knows about you.’ She touched the brakes, skimming uncomfortably close to a tractor parked on the side of the road. ‘Not many Fivers get tabbed for allowing two civilians and a cop to get killed.’
Harry stared, surprised by the brutality of her words. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry or not.
‘I didn’t-’ He stopped. She might not know all the grubby details, and he’d almost been lured into telling her. It was a reminder of her job prior to being sent here.
She looked disappointed. ‘Never mind; if you don’t want to tell, don’t. We hear rumours — and we get the newspapers here, and the internet, just like they do in SW1. You’d be famous, if only the public knew who you were.’ She glanced across. ‘I suppose there’s more to it than meets the eye?’
‘A lot more.’ He wondered how much to tell. But what could she do to him that hadn’t been done already? ‘It was a combined drugs bust. Five and the police. We had strong intel about a shipment of mixed narcotics. We were all ready to go, then the team was cut back hours before the operation on economic grounds. I decided it was too late to call it off, that the shipment was a big one and worth stopping.’
‘What happened?’
‘We were outgunned. Two civilians got in the way. I still don’t know how. They popped up out of nowhere.’ He didn’t elaborate; there was no need.
She drove in silence for a mile, then said, ‘So what made you come here? You could have refused.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve always gone where they sent me. It seemed a good idea.’
‘And now?’
‘It was a mistake.’ It sounded resentful, even weak. Maybe that was the trouble; he had meekly done what Paulton had told him, rather than risk facing exposure and possible humiliation, even though both would have been inherently unfair.
It still didn’t answer the mystery of the young couple who had died. The other question bugging him was, why a Land Rover? It was hardly the best transport for a bloke on the pull. And why had the man held up his hand the way he did just before he was shot? Was he trying to be cool? Did he think that would be enough to protect him?
Or was it a signal?
Later, as they passed through a huddle of small houses and began a steady climb into the foothills, Jardine asked him to pass her a cigarette from the glove box. He hadn’t seen her smoke before. She opened the side window and turned up the air-blower, and when she had the cigarette going, said, ‘Sorry. Nasty habit I picked up recently. It keeps me sane. I’ll pull over and have a quick drag outside if you’d prefer.’
Harry shook his head, wondering what other surprises were waiting for him.
‘I was tabbed for letting the game get away from me,’ she announced suddenly. She sounded angry. ‘I overstepped the mark and broke the golden rule of the Whitehall gentlemen’s club: I screwed the enemy.’
Harry remained silent, which seemed to annoy her even more.
‘Christ, you men are so bloody two-faced! How many of you,’ she demanded hotly, ‘if you had to get close to a target, and found her to be — I don’t know, a twenty-three-year-old with a body to die for and who wanted you — would say no? Tell me that.’
‘Beats me,’ said Harry honestly. ‘I’ve never been in that position.’ She had a point. Would he be able to resist, given those circumstances? He didn’t know. Not that he was expecting it to happen anytime soon — not unless the enemy started fielding older Mata Haris with a weakness for out-of-condition British men on the downward slope of manhood. Anyway, playing down and dirty in the street was one thing — he’d done it for years and was good at it. Boudoir games weren’t part of his armoury. ‘Did you know Jimmy Gulliver?’
She changed down and swerved past a donkey and cart loaded with cut grass. An old man watched them go, flicking a makeshift whip over the animal’s flanks.
‘What about him?’ She hadn’t answered the question, he noticed.
He told her about meeting Geordi Kostova and his wingman, Nikolai.
Clare nodded and said, ‘If you shook hands with Kostova, don’t bother counting your fingers — he’ll have kept one. He’s a wheeler-dealer. The only difference between him and a Mafioso is that he actually made mayor without sticking a gun to anyone’s head.’
‘You mean he paid for it.’
‘Did Mace tell you that?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Mace knows more about him than I do. He’s welcome. I had Kostova grease up to me once. He’s a toucher, he can’t help it; but he soon pulled in his horns.’
Harry recalled what Mace had said about her being hard-nosed. ‘What did you do?’
‘I showed him my little toy.’ She threw her cigarette out of the window and took a shiny black object out of her pocket. It was crescent-shaped, the width of her hand and carried a trace of powder residue on one edge. Clare rubbed it across her thigh to clean it, then gave a flick of her wrist. The compact opened into a razor-sharp knife with a three-inch curved blade. ‘It seemed to convince him.’
‘Nice.’ Harry’s belly contracted at the sight of the cold steel. He’d seen something like it once before, in the hands of a Dutch prostitute who believed in affirmative action. It was called a drop-point blade and for cutting rather than stabbing. He decided that Mace’s description of Clare Jardine had been much too generous.
‘I spent some time in Miami,’ she explained. ‘Got close to a girl who ran with a Cuban street gang. She got raped once and vowed never again. She showed me how to use it.’ She closed the blade with a click and put it away. ‘You say Kostova mentioned Jimmy Gulliver?’
‘Yes.’
She was silent for a mile or so, then said, ‘Jimmy was already here when I arrived. He stayed about a month. He was one of the first postings after Mace. He was nice. Sorry if I sounded cagey, but I wasn’t sure if you were just fishing.’
‘I was. Mace acted as if the name meant something.’
She threw him a glance. ‘It would. Jimmy never told us why he’d been sent here, and if Mace knew, he didn’t let on.’
‘He played dumb with me, too. What did you know about him?’
‘Only that he was part of a fast-track intake and marked out for higher things. Then something happened. He was pretty deep into the organization, considering his age. He was thirty-two. He hated being here — he thought it was a dead-end.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so, for some. Anyway, one day he packed his bags and went home.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m surprised Kostova admitted to knowing him.’
‘To me, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ She gave a sideways look. ‘You’re still an unknown quantity.’
‘Kostova knows what we do?’
She nodded. ‘Bound to. There isn’t much goes on in this town that he doesn’t know about. I doubt London will have been pleased to hear he and Jimmy knew each other — that’s if Jimmy ever admitted it.’
‘They’d have found out,’ said Harry. Any debrief after a posting like this place, so close to the Russian border, would have been highly intensive. Add in the punishment element and Gulliver would have been under the spotlight for weeks, every fragment of information about his movements and contacts being wheedled out of him by the company shrinks until he was left dry.
Clare nodded. ‘I guess. Still, nice to know — that he went back, I mean. It says there’s a chance for the rest of us, doesn’t it?’
‘Have you heard from him since?’
‘No. Not a word.’ Her voice carried a frown, but she didn’t elaborate. He wondered how close they had been. Then she added, ‘No surprise, though; once they go, they stay gone.’ She hesitated. ‘It would have taken a while, though.’
‘Why?’
‘He was going overland. He’d got a fantastic rate on a car from a local rental place, and the arrangement was he could drop it off at the dealer’s brother near Calais.’ She shook her head. ‘I said he was mad, because it’s a hell of a trip. But he said he wasn’t bothered because he hated flying. I think he just wanted a taste of freedom for a while. Who could blame him after this?’
