by Chris Ryan
Ireland had discouraged him, too. He'd seen brave soldiers fall apart when their wives and children were threatened. What would it be like, Alex wondered, planning a future with someone? And what sort of person would that someone have to be if they weren't going to end up at each other's throats?
Far below, in Sloane Street, an articulated lorry straddled the traffic where it had jackknifed while attempting to turn into a side street. Long lines of cars had built up on both sides of the road and the faint blare of their protest was audible through the heavy plate glass. Behind him Alex heard the suck of the opening fridge.
"You must be Jamie's friend. Sophie thought you'd done a runner."
He turned to find a pretty fair-haired girl in jeans and a floaty top jacking open one of the Mexican beers.
"Still here, I'm afraid." He extended his hand.
"I'm Alex."
"I'm Stella." She looked at him appraisingly and grinned.
"She'll be really glad you're still here. She was like oh no, he's gone, we've completely freaked him out. Not that I'm supposed to tell you that, of course.
"I can keep a secret," said Alex.
"Yeah, I'll bet you can," said Stella, drawing alongside him.
"Interesting view down there?"
They peered down through the summer twilight.
"Fashion's not really one of my special subjects," Alex told her. Stella nodded.
"Unlike most fashion ista babes, there's a lot more to Sophie than her job."
"I'm sure," said Alex.
"Are you a PR too?"
"Nah. Sophie does the London PR for my company.
I'm a designer."
Behind them there was a sudden overexcited hubbub. Alex glanced over his shoulder to discover a tall, anxious-looking girl chopping lines of white powder on one of the polished aluminium draining boards. A half-dozen other modelly looking boys and girls crowded impatiently round her. Banknotes were produced and small hoovering sounds ensued. One evenly tanned young man whom Alex vaguely recognised had a violent sneezing fit into a paper kitchen towel. There was nervous laughter from the others, but by the sixth sneeze the blood spatters were clearly visible.
"You don't disapprove?" asked Stella, watching him watching them.
"Me? No." Alex held up his beer and squinted at the label.
"Personally I'd rather go this way than that way, but .. ." He shrugged.
"Each to his own?"
Alex looked over at the powder-nosed models.
"Or her own.
The kitchen was filling up. Stella introduced Alex to a film director named Danny Biggs, for whose latest project she was designing costumes.
"What's the picture going to be about?" Alex asked.
"Bunch of geezers turning over a bank," said Danny.
"Working title "Hair of the Dog"."
"Why do you need a fashion designer to dress bank robbers?" Alex asked him.
"Most villains I've come across are fat, middle-aged white men in dodgy gold jewellery and knocked-off sports gear the sort of stuff you can pick up in any high street."
"Well, we 'ave to improve on reality," explained Danny.
"Dress 'em in ruffled shirts an' Gucci whistles."
At that moment Jamie appeared with the Prada girl and touched fists with Stella.
"You'd better watch out," he told her, indicating Alex.
"This man gave us a lecture, yesterday on ambushes and surprise attacks.
Keep him in view at all times!"
Stella raised an eyebrow.
"I thought you were one of the... what do you call them, students? Cadets?"
"I am," said Alex.
"But I came up through the ranks for ten years first, hence my advanced age. From time to time us old lags get called on to address the Ruperts that's Jamie and his friends and pass on a few dirty tricks."
"Dirty tricks, eh?" mused Stella.
"Sounds interesting." As Jamie and the Prada girl exited with their drinks, Sophie reappeared.
Alex's heart thumped in his chest. She was beautiful, he realised, and beautiful in a much more interesting way than the models, with their stick-thin limbs and their dim, drug-dazed faces.
"Hey, girlfriend!" Stella greeted Sophie.
"Look who's still here!"
As Sophie met Alex's eye, the beginnings of a smile touched the corners of her mouth.
"Well! I thought we'd shocked you into flight."
Alex attempted an answering smile.
"I don't scare quite as easily as you think," he said.
At the draining board the anxious-looking model was rubbing the last of the cocaine into her gums.
Stella rolled her eyes at the girl.
"Tash, you should cool it with that stuff. I don't want you falling off the catwalk tomorrow."
"I know, Stell. I've just been like, so busy, yeah? I got this option for the new Virginity campaign and everyone at the agency's like hey, you really gotta do this, they're like really big clients and I'm like whoa, cool it, yeah? I just want to, like, chill out, y'know?"
"I know," said Stella gently. She turned to Sophie.
"Dad was asking how you were.
"Tell him fine," said Sophie.
"What does your dad do?" Alex asked Stella on impulse.
"He's a musician," said Stella.
"He used to play bass guitar with a band in the Sixties. And he still does a bit of song writing
Alex nodded.
"My dad's into cars. That's his thing."
He turned to Sophie.
"What about you? How's your old man fill his time?"
"He sells what he calls area-denial systems and the rest of the world calls land mines said Sophie.
"Mostly to third-world dictators. That's his thing."
Alex nodded again. This was clearly sensitive territory.
"And is business, er, good?" he ventured.
"Booming," said Sophie drily.
They looked at each other for a moment.
"Before you disappear," said Stella, "I've just had a thought. Why don't you and this nice young man come to dinner at my place tomorrow night?"
Sophie gazed into Alex's eyes. Her grey-green gaze poured over him like a wave.
"That would be lovely," she said quietly.
"Are you free?"
"Yes," said Alex.
"Good." Sophie kissed him softly but firmly on the mouth.
"See you there."
Alex watched her go. Stella watched him watch her.
"Smitten, I'd say." She smiled.
"Definitely smitten."
"Who?" asked Alex, smiling like an idiot.
"You tell me." Stella bent and rummaged in her bag.
"Here, I'll give you the address for tomorrow night."
She wrote it on the back of an invitation to a film premiere.
"Be there," she told him sternly.
"I'm counting on you, OK?"
"I promise," said Alex.
Ten minutes later he was walking down Sloane Street with Jamie who after a promising start had seen the Prada girl stolen away from him by the film director Danny Biggs.
"He told her he grew up hanging around the dog tracks and nicking cars," protested the disconsolate Jamie.
"The truth is that he went to Eton with me and his father's the Lord-Lieutenant of Shropshire.
Bastard."
"I'm afraid all's fair in love and war, mate," Alex told him.
"No prizes for second place."
"I guess not," Jamie agreed gloomily.
They walked on in silence for a few paces.
"By the way," said Alex, a little self-consciously, 'it looks like I'm seeing your sister tomorrow night' he checked his watch - "I mean tonight. Forum dinner."
"Oh, yeah?" said Jamie, amused at Alex's embarrassment.
"Glad you came, then?"
"I guess I am."
The next day Alex spent the afternoon at the Duke of York's Headquarters in the King's Road
, test-firing revolvers with Dave Constantine. Wondering if he should dress smartly for dinner at Stella's perhaps even buy some new clothes he had eventually ditched the idea and stuck to his jeans and a T-shirt.
In the evening he took the tube to Notting Hill Gate and walked northwards up Ladbroke Grove. Stella's flat was on the first floor of a vast white wedding cake of a Victorian house and overlooked a private garden.
From a dark staircase he walked into a huge room flooded with pale evening light. Several floor-to ceiling windows had been opened outwards on to an ironwork balcony, in front of which Stella and a guy with dark hair and a lazy smile were sitting at a table drinking champagne.
"Alex," said Stella.
"Hey. You made it!"
"I did," agreed Alex.
Trying to recall the event afterwards, he discovered there were gaps in his memory. He couldn't remember what Stella's boyfriend did it might have been something to do with the music industry, or possibly with TV, but then again it could have been advertising or PR and he couldn't remember anything that they ate or drank or talked about at the long table in front of the balcony. For Alex, this was one hell of a lot of information to forget in a short space of time but he didn't really give a damn because everything to do with Sophie her skin, her hair, her smell, the way she moved etched itself deeply and permanently into his consciousness.
She amazed him. There were her clothes, for a start electric blue and, presumably, vastly expensive which lent her the sheen of an exotic bird. And then there was her slender, delicately rounded body, and the limitless candour of her wave-green eyes. But more than her appearance there was her manner, her almost reckless confidence. Most women Alex had met up to that moment had seemed to watch themselves, to monitor their appearance and the impression that they were making minute by minute.
Not Sophie. Sophie didn't seem to give a damn. There was a huge mirror on one wall of the twilit room and though she passed it a score of times Alex never saw her glance into it once. She was just there, beautiful if you chose to think so and if not, well, who cared?
Alex chose to think so. He was entranced and the thing that really got him the thing that really ducked under his guard -was that she seemed to be as entranced as he was. She just stared at him, quite openly, fascinated.
"What's that smell?" she asked him as soon as she walked into the room. Walking over to Alex she sniffed at him.
"It's on your hands," she stated.
"A
kind of burnt..." She pressed his fingers to her nose and then touched her face to his hair.
"But you don't smoke, do you?" she murmured from behind his ear.
"It's gunpowder residue," said Alex, realising what she was referring to.
"Cordite. You get it from using firearms in an enclosed space.
"You've been killing people again," said Stella disapprovingly.
"Honestly, you boys!"
Alex smiled.
"Just trying out some new toys on the range."
"As one does," said Stella's boyfriend.
"What sort?"
"Moorsyth .50 super-magnum," said Alex.
"Ah." The boyfriend was clearly none the wiser.
"Right."
"Let's eat," said Stella.
After dinner they split up. Spooning the sugar crystals from the bottom of her coffee cup, Sophie announced her desire that Alex take her for a walk. It was a warm evening, the streets, the caf&s and the pavements were crowded, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should take his arm so as to avoid their becoming separated. At one moment, outside a noisy Portobello Road pub, she stopped in her tracks and turned to face him, placing her hands on his shoulders. When he met her gaze, however, she smiled enigmatically and moved on.
Ten minutes later she suddenly dived into a bar. It was tiny, the walls were yellowed with cigarette smoke and hung with ancient photographs of boxers and foot ballers
"Quick!" she told the barman.
"We need some malt whisky. Hurry, it's an emergency.
"Do you always get what you want?" asked Alex as the waiter placed two tumblers of Laphroaig in front of them.
She frowned. The whisky made its smoky way down their throats.
"I think .. . pretty much always," she admitted.
"What about you?"
"It's a long time since I've wanted anything as badly as ..
She reached for his thigh under the table.
"Do you want me ... badly?"
"Yes," said Alex.
Her eyes shone and she compressed her lips with pleasure.
They had finished their drinks and crossed Notting Hill Gate into Kensington Church Street. There, as if at a prearranged signal, both had raised their arms to the same cruising taxi.
In the back, ignoring the seat belts, he put his arm round her shoulders and she kissed his neck before moulding herself warmly against him. Taking his other hand, she placed it on her breast and he felt the nipple harden beneath his probing fingers.
"Mmm!" she murmured.
Laughing, but their movements urgent now, they ran up the stairs to her flat. They had kissed as soon as the door had closed behind them a long kiss, but one which swiftly proved to be less than either of them wanted or needed.
She led him inside, somehow managing to un belt him and to remove her blue silk top as she went. An antique velvet-covered sofa offered itself, and by then she was unzipping and stepping out of her skirt. His hand moved to the damp triangle between her legs, hers to the zip of his trousers. He sat back and she lowered herself gratefully on to him, gasping as she felt him thrust hard inside her. Her back arched and her hair fell away from the pale oval of her face.
"I
can still smell the gunpowder," she gasped and drove herself against him, hot and wet, clenching and releasing, rising and falling.
SIX.
Sleepily, Alex reached for her. Eyes closed, he allowed his fingers a lazy exploration of her body, felt the desire stir inside him once more.
But Sophie seemed to have changed. Her breasts, for a start, were very much larger and heavier than he remembered, and were now suspended in a loose nylon bra and resting against several warm rolls of flesh. The smell in his nostrils was not that of Guerlain perfume and expensive hairdressing but of sweat, airline cooking and recycled air.
Cautiously he opened an eye. The face that lay inches from his and the breast that he was fondling belonged to his fellow passenger from Banjul, Maureen. And it was Maureen's hand which was firmly cupping his crotch.
"You certainly do like big girls, don't you," she whispered hungrily. Her fingers tightened round him.
"In fact you're quite a big boy yourselfl' Alex stared at her. The whites of her eyes had a yellowish cast to them, as did her teeth. A centimetre of grey showed at the roots of her hennaed hair. In the opposite aisle, one of the few other male passengers on the flight caught his eye and gave him a leery wink.
"A little bird tells me that you and I are about to join the mile-high club," she whispered.
Alex struggled upright.
"That little bird is wrong," he said, searching his memory for the woman s name.
I'm sorry, I've I've been asleep."
She looked at him quizzically.
"You seemed so ..
"I was dreaming," he said firmly.
"Of my girlfriend."
"Ah," she said, drawing herself upright and pulling an in-flight magazine from the back of the seat in front.
"I see."
Every detail of her deportment spelt hurt and disappointment emotions to which Alex guessed she was no stranger.
He glanced at his watch: 2.45 p.m. London time.
Three bloody hours to go. He felt stale and overtired.
Whatever was waiting for him at the other end had to be an improvement on this.
Three men were waiting for him.
They were standing with one of the Customs officers at the EU citizens' immigration desk. On
e, in a shiny blazer and slacks, looked like a run-to-seed bodybuilder. Salaried muscle, thought Alex. Exsquaddie, 18K and a clothing allowance. The second, a florid-faced figure in a Barbour coat, had the tired, tolerant gaze of the time-serving civil servant. The third, a younger and more military-looking figure in a Brigade of Guards tie and a velvet-collared coat, Alex vaguely recognised. Box, he thought.
MIS.
"Captain Temple," asked the younger man.
"Could you step this way, sir?"
They hurried him into the Customs offices, down a flight of stone stairs and out into a car park where they convened round a nearly new Ford Mondeo.
"Alex, isn't it?" said the man in the velvet-collared coat.
"Gerald Farmilow. We met at Thames House.
I'm Five's liaison officer with the Regiment."
It came back to him now. He'd been introduced to a bunch of Security Services suits when he'd first taken over the RWW team. This Farmilow character had been one of them.
"I remember, Gerald," he said.
"I'm sorry it's been a bit of a long night."
"Congratulations, by the way," said Farmilow.
"An excellent result."
Alex nodded. He felt dry-throated and in need of a shower. And some halfway sensible clothes.
Farmilow glanced at his watch, a wafer-thin sliver of gold and enamel, and nodded towards the red-faced man in the Barbour.
"Alex, George will tell you what this is all about."
He held out his hand.
"I've got to push off back to Millbank."
A brief handshake and he was gone. Identification effected. Mission completed.
"I'm George Widdowes," said the man in the Barbour, opening one of the Mondeo's rear doors, 'and this is Tom Ritchie."
The driver mutely raised his hand.
"I'd also like to add my congratulations to Gerald's," Widdowes continued.
"I understand you had a major success last night."
Alex looked at him noncommittally and climbed into the car. He wasn't about to discuss Regiment business with these people.
Widdowes nodded approvingly.
"Lips sealed. Quite right. Look, Captain Temple, we've got a good hour's drive ahead of us we're going out to Goring, in Berkshire so I'll put you in the picture as we go. Do you smoke?"
Alex shook his head.
The younger man drove, Widdowes sat in the back with Alex. Alex's overnight bag joined a laptop computer that was lying on the front seat. No one spoke until they were crawling along the exit road towards the M4 with the rest of the evening rush-hour traffic, but finally Widdowes half turned in his seat.