Part 14 (2/2)

'Luke. Come on in, for Heaven's sake!'

A dripping handshake as they bundle her into the entrance hall. Ollie, the best back-door man in the business, finds a hanger for her raincoat and hangs it in the loo to drip on to the tiled floor. A three-month-long working relations.h.i.+p that does not exist has begun. Hector's strictures about paper did not extend to Yvonne's bulky bag, Luke quickly learned later that same night. That was because whatever she brought in her bag left in it the same day. And the reason for this again was that Yvonne was no mere researcher, she was a clandestine source.

One day her bag might contain a bulky file from the Bank of England. Another, it would be from the Financial Services Authority, the Treasury, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency. And on one momentous Friday evening, never to be forgotten, it was a stack of six fat volumes and a score of audio ca.s.settes, enough to fill the bag to bursting, from the hallowed archives of the Government Communications Headquarters itself. Ollie, Luke and Yvonne spent the whole weekend copying, photographing and replicating the material any way they could, so that Yvonne could return it to its rightful owners at crack of dawn on Monday morning.

Whether she came by her loot licitly or by stealth, whether she filched it or cajoled it out of her colleagues and accomplices, Luke to this day had no idea. He knew only that as soon as she arrived with her bag, Ollie would whisk it to his lair behind the kitchen, there to scan its contents, transfer them to a memory stick, and return the bag to Yvonne: and Yvonne, come end of day, to whichever Whitehall department officially owned her services.

For that too was a mystery, never once revealed in the long afternoons when Luke and Yvonne sat cloistered together comparing the ill.u.s.trious names of Vulture Capitalists with billion-dollar cash transfers conducted at lightning speed across three continents in a day; or chatting in the kitchen over Ollie's lunchtime soup, tomato a speciality, French onion not bad either. And his crab chowder, which he brought part-cooked in a picnic Thermos and completed on the gas stove, a miracle by common consent. But as far as Billy Boy Matlock is concerned, Yvonne does not and will not ever exist. Weeks of training in the arts of resisting interrogation say so: so does a month of crouching handcuffed in a mad drug lord's jungle redoute redoute while your wife discovers that you are a compulsive womanizer. while your wife discovers that you are a compulsive womanizer.

'So what are we looking at here for whistleblowers, Luke?' Matlock inquires of Luke over a nice cup of tea in the comfortable corner of his large office in la Lubianka-sur-Tamise la Lubianka-sur-Tamise, having invited him to drop by for a chat, and no need to tell Hector. 'You're a fellow who knows a thing or two about informants. I was thinking of you only the other day when the question of a new senior trainer in agent-running came up. A nice five-year contract for somebody just your age,' Matlock says in his homespun Midlands drawl.

'To be perfectly honest with you, Billy, your guess is as good as mine,' Luke replies, mindful that Yvonne does not, will not exist, even if Billy Boy straps him to the chandelier by his b.a.l.l.s, which was about the one thing the drug lord's boys didn't think of doing to him. 'Hector just conjures up his information out of the fresh air, frankly. It's amazing,' he adds, with appropriate bewilderment.

Matlock seems not to hear this answer, or perhaps not to care for it, for the geniality disappears from his voice as if it had never been.

'Mind you, it's a double-edged sword, is a training appointment like that one. We'd be looking for the veteran officer whose career would serve as a role model to our idealistic young trainees. Male and and female, I don't have to emphasize. The Board would need to be convinced there were no suggestions of impropriety that might be levelled against the successful candidate. And Secretariat would be tendering that advice, naturally enough. In your case, we might have to be looking at a little creative restructuring of your CV.' female, I don't have to emphasize. The Board would need to be convinced there were no suggestions of impropriety that might be levelled against the successful candidate. And Secretariat would be tendering that advice, naturally enough. In your case, we might have to be looking at a little creative restructuring of your CV.'

'That would be generous, Billy.'

'It would indeed, Luke,' Matlock agreed. 'It would indeed. And somewhat conditional on your current behaviour too.'

Who was was Yvonne? For the first of those three months, she had driven Luke he could say it now, he could admit it just a little bit wild. He loved her demureness and her privacy, which he longed to share. Her discreetly scented body, if she ever allowed it to be revealed, would border on the cla.s.sic, he could imagine it exactly. Yet they could sit for hours on end, cheek by jowl in front of her computer screen, or poring over her Tate Modern mural, feeling each other's body-warmth, grazing hands by accident. They could share every twist and turn of the chase, every false trail, dead end and temporary triumph: all at a distance of a few inches from each other, in the upstairs bedroom of a secret house that for most of the day they shared alone. Yvonne? For the first of those three months, she had driven Luke he could say it now, he could admit it just a little bit wild. He loved her demureness and her privacy, which he longed to share. Her discreetly scented body, if she ever allowed it to be revealed, would border on the cla.s.sic, he could imagine it exactly. Yet they could sit for hours on end, cheek by jowl in front of her computer screen, or poring over her Tate Modern mural, feeling each other's body-warmth, grazing hands by accident. They could share every twist and turn of the chase, every false trail, dead end and temporary triumph: all at a distance of a few inches from each other, in the upstairs bedroom of a secret house that for most of the day they shared alone.

And still nothing: until an evening when the two of them were sitting exhausted and alone at the kitchen table enjoying a cup of Ollie's soup and, at Luke's suggestion, a shot of Hector's Islay malt. Taking himself by surprise, he asked Yvonne point-blank what sort of a life she led apart from this this, and whether she had anyone to share it with who could support her in her stressful labours adding, with the old sad smile of which he was instantly ashamed, that after all it was only our answers answers that were dangerous, wasn't it, not the questions, if she saw what he meant? that were dangerous, wasn't it, not the questions, if she saw what he meant?

For a long time her dangerous answer didn't materialize: 'I'm a government employee government employee,' she said, in the robotic tone of somebody speaking into camera for a quiz compet.i.tion. 'My name is not Yvonne. Where I am employed is none of your business. However, I don't think you're asking me that. I'm Hector's discovery, as I a.s.sume we both are. But I don't think you're asking me that either. You're asking me about my orientation. And whether, by extension, I wish to go to bed with you.'

'Yvonne, I was asking you nothing of the kind!' Luke protested, truthlessly.

'And for your information, I'm married to a man I'm in love with, we have a three-year-old daughter, and I don't f.u.c.k around even with people as nice as you. So let's get on with our soup, shall we?' she suggested at which, amazingly, they both broke out in cathartic laughter and, with the tension broken, returned peacefully to their separate corners.

And Hector, who was he, after three months of him, albeit in sporadic bursts? Hector of the feverish stare and the scatological tirades against the City crooks who were the source of all our evils? On the Service grapevine it was hinted that in successfully saving the life of his family firm, Hector had resorted to methods honed by half a lifetime in the black arts, and deemed, even by the City's abysmal standards, foul. So was the vendetta against the City's evildoers driven by revenge or guilt? Ollie, not normally given to gossip, had no doubt: Hector's experience of the City's bad manners and his own employment of them, said Ollie had turned him overnight into an avenging angel. 'It's a little vow he's taken,' he confided to them in the kitchen, while they waited for Hector to put in one of his late appearances. 'He's going to save the world before he leaves it if it kills him.'

But then Luke had always been a worrier. From infancy he had worried indiscriminately, rather in the way he fell in love.

He could worry as much about whether his watch was ten seconds fast or slow, as about the direction of a marriage that was null and void in every room except the kitchen.

He worried whether there was more to his son Ben's tantrums than just growing pains, and whether Ben was under his mother's orders not to love his father.

He worried about the fact that he was at peace when he was working, and that when he wasn't, even now walking along, he was a ma.s.s of unjoined ends.

He worried whether he should have swallowed his pride and accepted the Human Queen's offer of a shrink.

He worried about Gail, and his desire for her, or for some girl like her: a girl with real light in her face instead of the glum cloud that followed Eloise around even when the sun was on her.

He worried about Perry and tried not to be envious of him. He worried about which half of Perry would come out on top in an operational emergency: would it be the intrepid mountaineer or the unworldly university moralist and anyway, was there a difference?

He worried about the impending duel between Hector and Billy Boy Matlock, and which of them was going to lose his temper first or pretend to.

Leaving the sanctuary of Regent's Park, he entered the throng of Sunday shoppers looking for a bargain. Ease down, he told himself. It'll be all right. Hector's in charge, not you.

He was counting off landmarks. Ever since Bogota, landmarks had been important to him. If they kidnap me, these are the last things I saw before they put the blindfold on me.

The Chinese restaurant.

The Big Archway nightclub.

The Gentle Readers' Bookshop.

This is the ground coffee I smelled while I was wrestling with my attackers.

Those are the snowy pine trees I saw in the window of the art shop before they sandbagged me.

This is number 9, the house where I was reborn, three steps to the front door and act like any normal householder.

9.

There were no formalities between Hector and Matlock, friendly or otherwise, and perhaps there never had been: just a nod and a silent handshake of two veteran belligerents shaping up for another bout. Matlock arrived on foot, having been dropped round the corner by his driver.

'Very nice Wilton carpeting, Hector,' he said, while he took a slow look round that seemed to confirm his worst suspicions. 'You can't beat Wilton, not when it comes to cost versus quality. Good day to you, Luke. It's just the two of you, is it?' pa.s.sing Hector his coat.

'Staff are away at the races,' Hector said, hanging it up.

Matlock was a broad-shouldered bull of a man, as his nickname implied, broad-headed, and at first glance avuncular, with a crouch that reminded Luke of an ageing rugby forward. His Midlands accent, according to the ground-floor gossips, had become more noticeable under New Labour, but was receding with the prospect of electoral defeat.

'We're in the bas.e.m.e.nt, if you're comfortable with that, Billy,' said Hector.

'I've no alternative but to be comfortable with it, thank you, Hector,' said Matlock, neither pleasantly nor rudely, leading the way down the stone steps. 'What are we paying for this place, by the by?'

'You're not. This far it's on me.'

'You're on our our payroll, Hector. The Service is not on payroll, Hector. The Service is not on yours yours.'

'As soon as you greenlight the operation, I'll be putting in my bill.'

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