“Lord Hawke!” cried a lovely young woman, walking purposefully toward him across the polished granite. He thought he recognized the tall and perfectly tailored auburn-haired beauty, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name or even place her. She was a type, to be sure, the English Rose with large liquid eyes and exquisite manners.
“How do you do? Has he sent you down for me?” Hawke said, extending his hand and shaking hers. It was surprisingly warm and for some reason triggered his memory, the name popping to the forefront. He smiled at her and turned away, slipping out of his dripping mackintosh.
“Guinevere, isn’t it? You were last seen at Number Ten Downing working for the PM.”
“Gwendolyn. Kind of you to remember. Yes, I’m the same Miss Guinness. My friends call me Pippa. I was one of the PM’s Garden Girls at Number Ten until this thrilling life of derring-do beckoned. I’ve been working for Sir David now, oh, a year at least, your lordship.”
“Call me Alex, won’t you, Pippa? Don’t use the title, never have.”
She looked at him. It was a brief appraisal, no more than three seconds, tops.
She would find him all right looking, he supposed, at least other people seemed to think so, as far as that went.
Alex Hawke was a strikingly handsome man, high-browed, with a sense of powerful self-control—indifference, some of his harshest critics called it. At best, it was an odd combination of latent ferocity and languid, mannered elegance. He stood a few inches north of six feet and had a full head of unruly black hair. He was well proportioned and quite fit for a man without a current exercise regime beyond sit-ups and pull-ups every morning.
Of course, he had lost a bit of weight in the jungle and it was mercifully slow coming back on. He had that strong Hawke jaw line and a slight cleft in the middle of his determined chin. Above his narrow and imperious nose, a pair of pale, arctic blue eyes. Eyes that turned ice cold when he was troubled. Deep within the iris, flecks of dark blue burned like a welder’s torch when he was angered. The overall impression one got, however, was of resolution, tempered by boyish good humor.
Having completed her cursory evaluation, Miss Guinness smiled.
“Sorry. Alex it is, then. So, won’t you come along with me? We’re up on the fourth floor as you probably know.”
“I didn’t know, actually,” Alex said, happily following her into the lift. “First time he’s invited me to the sanctum santorem.”
“I’ll give you the penny tour later if you have time. There’s a rather contentious meeting going on in his office right now, so he’s slipped out to meet you down the hall in the Salon Privee.”
“Salon Privee? That’s new.”
“Sorry. Inside joke. We use the language of diplomacy around here sometimes to break the tension. It’s what he calls his private study.”
“Splendid,” Alex said, regretting the word as soon as it came rolling out. She was young and bright and beautiful and here he was sounding like some ancient and pompous toff. He was curious about the appealing Miss Guinness. To rise from a Garden Girl at Number Ten Downing to C’s personal assistant at MI6 Headquarters was a dizzying leap.
Hawke, who dreaded small talk, said, “He keeps you very busy, I imagine.”
“Oh, yes. We never close around here.”
“You’re his personal assistant?”
She looked back at him before getting out of the lift. It suddenly went rather chilly inside.
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Collecting visitors in the lobby. No, we’re very egalitarian around here. I’m fetching you because I was the only one available.”
“Ah.”
“I hear you were tortured by Indians in the Amazon. Pity, that.”
“Les hommes sauvages, n’est-ce pas?” Hawke said, smiling.
She walked out, her heels clicking smartly on the granite floor and he quickly followed.
“So, Pippa,” Hawke said, struggling to keep up with her pace, “what exactly do you do here?”
“I’m Senior Analyst, Latin American Affairs. It was my field of study at Cambridge.”
“Ah. Fascinating.”
“WELL,HERE we are, then,” Pippa said, leading the way. They had left the granite behind and quickly covered the distance down a thickly carpeted hallway. He certainly didn’t miss the drab Ministry-of-Works green corridors of the old Headquarters. The darkly paneled walls here were hung with lovely nineteenth-century marine art, Hawke noticed, some older Thomas Butterfields scattered amongst the Samuel Walters and the newer Geoff Hunts. He considered commenting on his own meager collection and then decided against. Surely he’d inflicted enough damage already.
Pippa opened one of a pair of double doors and gave him an encouraging smile. “Go right in, Mr. Hawke, he’ll be with you momentarily. He’s on with his wife.”
She smiled again, it was a warmish smile, practiced, and then she left him, pulling the door firmly closed behind her. Only now did it come back to him. Yes. Gwendolyn. He and Congreve had been going up the cantilevered stairs at No. 10 Downing behind her, both of them relishing the sight of Miss Guinness’s spectacular ascent. Seamed stockings, as he recalled…yes. Quite a girl.
Sir David Trulove, his face half in shadow, was seated at a small crescent desk. A brass reading lamp with a green glass shade created a pool of light on the red leather top. He was on the telephone and waved Hawke into an armchair by the fire. Hawke sat, and used the few found moments to take in the inner sanctum of the Chief of British Intelligence. It was a far cry from the old digs at Century House, a short stroll from the Lambeth North Underground, but still uninspired.
C’s small room was finished in gleaming Bermuda cedar panels. All the lamps, paintings, and fixtures were nautical. Above the fire was a not very good portrait of Admiral Lord Nelson wearing the Order of the Nile given him by the Sultan of Turkey. Nelson, Hawke’s hero since boyhood, was also clearly a favorite of C’s. In the famous picture, Hawke knew, the decoration was worn incorrectly, having been sewn on by Nelson’s manservant upside down. Hawke decided he would be ill advised to point out this irregularity to his boss.
There was, atop the mantel, a glass-encased model of Sir David’s last command, the HMS Yarmouth. Hawke, like everyone in the Navy, knew her history. She’d had a narrow escape, down in the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina.
Two days after the British nuclear submarine Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, Sir David’s Yarmouth, along with another destroyer, the Sheffield, had joined the fray in the Falklands. Both destroyers had been ordered forward to provide a “picket” far from the British carriers. A squadron of Argentine Dassault Super Etendards from the ARA attacked the British fleet. The Sheffield, mortally wounded by an Exocet missile strike, had sunk while under tow by Admiral Trulove’s Yarmouth.
Trulove’s destroyer had also been fired upon, but Yarmouth had deployed chaff and the missile had missed. It was common knowledge that the tragic loss of the Sheffield, finally abandoned as an official war grave, still played upon Sir David’s mind. He was convinced the Argentine junta’s decision to go to war over the Falkland Islands had been capricious and an act of outright political convenience. Nearly a thousand British boys had been killed or wounded because an unpopular regime had found it expedient to start a war.
“Lord Alexander Hawke,” Sir David said, replacing the receiver and getting to his feet. “How very good of you to come.”
“Not at all,” Hawke said, rising to shake the man’s hand. “Very good to see you again.” He’d forgotten just what an imposing figure Trulove was when he rose to his full height. He was a good inch taller than Alex, very trim, with a full head of white hair and enormous bushy eyebrows sprouting over his shrewd gray-blue eyes and hawkish nose. Most MI6 chiefs are recognized with a title only upon completing their tour of duty. Trulove had enjoyed enormous success in a private sector career that followed the Navy. This had led to an early knighthood, long before he’d been lured into the spy game.
“You look a bit thin,” Trulove said, looking him up and down. “No Pelham to look after you in the jungle, Alex?”
“Jolly mingy rations out there, I must say.”
