Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  A Mickey Mouse alarm clock beside the bed gave the time as 06.35. He heard feet on the stairs.

  The door pushed open. He looked up.

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  He gaped. The shock was electric.

  ‘Christ!’

  It was Chrissie, mannequin-cool in a cream linen suit.

  5

  SEEING HER THERE in the doorway brought a lump to his throat and a stab of the old longing in his guts. But why was she here, this woman who’d walked into his life six years back, then walked out again three months ago? Surely SIS wouldn’t have sent her?

  ‘She’s not staying long,’ Mowbray insisted from behind her. ‘I’ve told her you’re in no state for social calls.’

  I’ll be the judge of that, thought Sam, wishing he had a shirt on to cover up the marks on his chest. The last thing he wanted was her feeling sorry for him.

  Chrissie turned and waved Mowbray away.

  ‘I’ll be back from the embassy as soon as I can,’ he announced, heading for the stairs.

  ‘Officious prat,’ Chrissie mouthed as they heard him descend them.

  She pushed back the strands of hair that fell across her forehead, exposing the frown on her otherwise smooth brow. Her grey eyes registered shock as they took in the marks on Sam’s chest. Being told he’d been maltreated was one thing, seeing the results quite another.

  ‘God . . .’ She covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Oh you poor man. What have they done to you?’

  Sam’s mind was doing somersaults trying to work out why she was here. There’d be no simple reason. There never was with Chrissie.

  ‘But this is outrageous,’ she murmured, moving into the room. Her eyes were angry now. She turned the pink-painted child’s chair round and put it hard against the edge of the bed. She sat, gently taking hold of his hands. As she gaped at his scars, Sam’s eyes lingered on her mouth – a mouth that had tasted every inch of him. ‘They burned you.’

  ‘You sound so surprised,’ he mocked. ‘They do that in Iraq.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘Anyway, it looks worse than it is,’ he assured her, uncomfortable at the fuss she was making. He tried to see beyond those cool eyes of hers for some small sign that she might have changed her mind again, that she’d come here to tell him she wanted him back. ‘Good to see you,’ he mouthed.

  ‘You too.’ She squeezed his hands, blinking back tears.

  ‘How come you’re here?’ She didn’t seem about to volunteer the information.

  ‘They sent me on the plane with Salah Khalil. To make sure the hand-over went okay.’

  Official visit then. Not personal.

  ‘They gave me strict orders not to contact you of course,’ she confided, ‘but sod that. I had to check you were all right.’ Her gaze kept returning to his scars. ‘But you’re not, are you? You’re not all right.’

  ‘I’m fine. A few scratches, that’s all. I’ll put on a shirt.’

  ‘Oh, Sam. Don’t be so damned English. They tortured you for God’s sake.’ She detached her hands from his and clasped them on her lap as if not entirely trusting them. ‘Will you tell me about it?’

  ‘No. I don’t think that’d be much fun for either of us.’

  She bit her lip. ‘But are you okay – you know – inside?’

  ‘Getting better every second.’ He reached out and rested his hand on her knee.

  She was a tactile woman with a body she’d always liked him to touch. Her legs were bare now. Always were in summer. Only in the winter had there been tights to remove. But touching something he couldn’t have any more was a fool’s game. He returned his hand to his lap.

  ‘I really was about to get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Quentin said there’s food in the fridge.’

  ‘You must be starved.’

  It felt odd being alone with Chrissie in a bedroom, now that the rules had changed. For five years a great deal of their time together had been spent lying down, and despite his present debilitated state and the impractical narrowness of the child’s divan, it was hard to shut his mind to the idea that they could make love here. And she? What was she thinking? He couldn’t tell. The old signals were muted.

  ‘Clothes . . .’ Chrissie jerked her eyes away from him. ‘There’s a suitcase in the corner. Is it yours?’

  ‘Good heavens!’ He hadn’t noticed it before. ‘Last time I saw that was in the Rashid Hotel.’

  He pulled his knees up ready to swing his feet off the bed and Chrissie backed the chair away to give him room. As his soles took his weight on the floor, pain shot through his bandaged shins.

  ‘Shit,’ he winced, dropping back onto the edge of the bed.

  ‘I saw that, you idiot!’ She screwed up her face as if the pain were hers. ‘You’re far from all right. What did they do to you, Sam? What happened to your legs? Tell me.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, they kept banging into things,’ he answered facetiously. ‘I’m told they’ll heal.’

  ‘The bastards.’ Her frown was back. ‘I simply don’t understand. Why mess you about like that if all they wanted was a hostage to swap with Salah Khalil?’

  ‘Perhaps they thought that I knew something. Something sensitive which I wasn’t telling them.’

  She sat beside him on the bed and slipped her arm round his waist as if to give him support.

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was that what your message was about? Your message to me. The BW attack?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘So, what was it exactly?’ She rested her head against his shoulder and asked it in an offhand way as if her interest in the matter were only peripheral. ‘What had you found out?’

  About to reply, Sam checked himself. In their years together they’d sometimes blurred the service’s rules on case confidentiality, but their relationship was different now. Different because she’d made it so.

  ‘We can’t talk about this, Chrissie, you know that.’

  She detached herself from him. She’d understood the point he was making.

  ‘No. You’re right. I was just being curious. I mean, it was me you addressed the message to. And I am involved in the case. I mean, I’m here aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But why was she here? What did she want from him?

  She thrust her chin forward. ‘There is one thing you can tell me,’ she said, more abrasively.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Why did you have to give my number to your courier? Why not one of the unlisted lines at Vauxhall Cross?’

  He looked towards the window. The truth was he didn’t fully know why. ‘I only had a couple of minutes to think. It was in case the German got stopped. I thought it best not to give one of the official numbers. Yours just came into my head.’

  Chrissie’s look was sceptical. ‘Just came into your head,’ she repeated doubtfully. Then, lowering her voice, she continued. ‘Martin took the call, you know. Not me. I was out.’

  ‘Ah. How awkward for you.’ There’d always been the risk of that.

  She stood up from the bed and crossed to the window. She opened it and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside.

  ‘I was at the gym,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘It was in the evening.’ She sucked in a lungful of nicotine then expelled it into the cool morning air. ‘Martin went ballistic when I got home. Thought the whole thing was a stunt. Some little billet-doux from you to me, in code.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He shivered at the thought that Kessler might have binned the message.

  Chrissie had her back to him still. There was something he didn’t want to ask but knew he had to.

  ‘How are things with Martin?’

  She turned slowly, then leaned against the window sill.

  ‘I made my choice back in midsummer, Sam,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry, but it was the right choice.’

  There it was. Quite unequivocal.

  ‘Ah. Well bully f
or you, then.’

  He cast his mind back to the day in June when she’d asked him to meet her in the middle of Barnes Common. A meeting in the open for once, at which she’d said her husband had found out about their affair and had told her she had to choose. A brief and bitter encounter, witnessed from afar by curious dog-walkers and, Sam had discovered a few minutes later, by Martin Kessler himself, watching from a car.

  He hadn’t seen Chrissie since that day. Not until this morning.

  Sam stood up again, trying to ignore the protests from his shins. He looked down at his suitcase. ‘I shall now get dressed,’ he announced determinedly.

  Chrissie took a last puff on the cigarette then threw it out of the window. Pulling her mouth into a tight smile, she came towards him and slipped her arms round his waist. She touched her soft, tanned cheek to his, taking care not to press her body against his burns. She smelled of smoke and perfume. To him it was a sexual smell that was uniquely hers.

  ‘Shall I tell you the truth, lover?’ she whispered by his ear. ‘It’s been hell. Absolute bloody hell. I’ve missed you dreadfully. But—’

  ‘You took the right decision,’ he interjected. One that had never made sense to him after all her talk of divorcing Martin.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘As I told you, I need Martin, Sam. I don’t want to but I do. And he needs me. And I’ve promised to be good. A promise I mean to keep.’

  ‘Fine.’ Couldn’t be clearer.

  He took her by the shoulders and edged her out of his way. He stared at the closed suitcase on the floor, wondering whether he was capable of bending down to open it without falling over. Chrissie saw his dilemma, crouched and unzipped the lid for him.

  ‘They’ve folded everything so neatly,’ she murmured. ‘Such thoughtful jailers. D’you have any preference for a shirt?’

  The concept of wearing his own clothes again gave him unexpected pleasure. Chrissie’s fresh-washed smell, however, was a sharp reminder of his own pressing need for a clean-up.

  ‘I think I’ll take a shower first,’ he told her.

  ‘You can’t.’ She pointed at his shins. ‘You’ll get those dressings all wet. You could sit on the edge of a bath with your legs outside and do a sponge wash. I’ll help you. D’you know where the bathroom is?’

  ‘No. And I can manage thanks.’ He didn’t want her fiddling around with him when he was naked.

  He opened the bedroom door. Mowbray’s was a small, modern house with a narrow landing. He moved along it, touching the wall for support until he found the bathroom. Tiled in pink and white it had a small tub and a hand shower. He knew Chrissie was right behind him and he half-closed the door to keep her out. Some odd sense of propriety told him that if they weren’t having sex any more she wasn’t entitled to see his genitals. He slipped the white cotton pants down over the bandages on his shins, then tried to lift one leg while balancing on the other, but the pain became excruciating.

  ‘Fuck!’ He fell against the wall.

  He heard the door swing open behind him. ‘You halfwit,’ Chrissie clucked. ‘Let me help you.’

  He perched on the edge of the bath as she’d suggested and allowed her to untangle the shorts from his ankles. He saw her shoot a searching glance at the hairy tangle of his groin, as if checking for damage.

  ‘They didn’t . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  She remained crouched in front of him, looking up into his eyes.

  ‘Good,’ she mouthed, grinning in that silly way she’d often grinned when they were about to have sex.

  But they weren’t.

  She stood up again. ‘You’re a lot thinner,’ she told him.

  ‘It’s the diet I was on. Might write it up as a paperback and make my fortune.’

  His weak joke made her smile. But then, she’d always laughed at his jokes, however feeble. ‘You’re looking good,’ he added, even though he seemed to think her stomach wasn’t quite as flat as it used to be. All those dinners out with her husband, no doubt. ‘Nice suit.’

  ‘It’s Prada,’ she answered, smoothing it down.

  The label meant nothing to him, but he knew it would mean a lot to her. She’d always had expensive tastes in clothes.

  He turned round and ran the bath water until it was warm.

  ‘I wish you’d let me help,’ she pleaded.

  Twisting to reach the taps had caused a twinge in his kidneys. Every movement he made seemed to hurt.

  ‘Well, all right.’ Time he stopped being childish. ‘Thanks.’

  She took off her jacket and hung it on the hook on the door. Then she searched the cupboard over the basin and amongst bottles of baby oil and skin lotion found some shampoo. Wrapping a towel round her waist to protect her skirt from splashes, she wet his thick, dark hair with the hand shower and massaged the shampoo into it, her long fingers lovingly re-exploring the shape of his head as if recovering a half-lost memory. She worked the shampoo down to his neck and shoulders.

  ‘You’re so tense,’ she breathed. ‘Your neck muscles are like a statue’s.’

  ‘I can think of a nice way to loosen them,’ he murmured, reaching up to hold her hand against his neck.

  ‘Sam . . .’

  With a snort of a laugh she took her hands away. Picking up the shower, she rinsed his head. Then she laid it in the bath and stood back.

  ‘If you’re going to be like that, I think I’d better leave it to you to wash the rest.’

  She folded her arms and watched as he soaped the more intimate parts of his body. When he’d almost done, she took the sponge from him and dabbed at his back, biting her lip at the extent of the bruising she saw there. By the time the washing was complete, there was water all over the floor.

  ‘I’ll mop it up in a minute,’ she told him.

  She took a towel from the rail and draped it over his shoulders. Her hands hovered for a few moments. If he’d been facing her he would have seen the indecision in her eyes. Making up her mind, she pressed her body against his, hugging him from behind as tightly as she dared. Her mouth reached the level of his shoulders.

  ‘I haven’t half missed you,’ she whispered, sighing.

  Sam knew that nothing had really changed in her, mind and body still pulling in opposite directions. And the body had usually won. A woman who wanted it all, whatever the consequences. He knew then that he could persuade her if he tried. He knew it for a certainty. And why not? Why shouldn’t they make love, even if it were for old time’s sake.

  ‘They’d written you off, lover.’

  Her words sliced through his thoughts.

  ‘Who had?’

  ‘The Firm.’

  He swallowed hard. He’d expected it – denying spies when they got into trouble was the name of the game – but to hear it confirmed that SIS had been ready to let him die was still shocking.

  ‘They’d got the denials all prepared,’ she continued softly, still clinging to him, ‘for when the Iraqis paraded you in front of the press. You were dead meat, Sam.’

  He didn’t need to know this. So why was she telling him?

  ‘And? What changed it?’ he croaked. ‘What swung it my way?’

  She clung to him harder than ever, her chin hooked onto his collar bone.

  ‘I changed it. I told Martin I’d divorce him if you died.’

  Slowly he twisted round. He stared at her in astonishment. There was, he supposed, some daft female logic in what she’d just said.

  ‘You’d divorce him if I was dead? But you weren’t prepared to do it when I was living and breathing and wanting you to?’

  She shrugged and looked down at the floor. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but then what she felt seldom did.

  ‘Well anyway,’ he breathed, nonplussed. ‘Thanks. Thanks for saving my life.’ He began to dry himself.

  She folded her arms as if feeling the need to get in control again.

  ‘Well,’ she added, deciding to make light of it, ‘I suppose I did owe it to you, since you
saved my life.’

  He watched her fingering the long strands of hair that curved down to beneath her jaw line. They were dark and damp from being pressed against his wet shoulder.

  ‘You kept me sane when Martin was driving me mad,’ she explained. ‘And you took the flak on the Kiev cockup.’

  She was referring to a drugs investigation they’d both been involved in a year ago which had gone sour.

  ‘And you took it pretty well when . . . when I had to give you up,’ she concluded pointedly.

  Well? She had no idea how unwell he’d taken it.

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  Was that it? Was this the other reason she’d come here, he wondered cynically? To make sure he knew that it was she who’d saved his life? That she’d repaid all debts to him?

  ‘But above all, Sam,’ she added, noting the incredulity on his face, ‘I couldn’t let them kill you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean, could I? You knew that. That’s the real reason you gave my phone number to your pigeon.’

  She was right of course. Their eyes locked. They had the measure of one another.

  ‘There is one other thing I want to say,’ she declared softly, looking down. ‘Just for the record.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All those things I said to you when we broke up – I meant them. All of them.’

  Meant that despite deciding that from now on she had to be faithful to her husband, it was still Sam she really loved and always would.

  He stopped himself from asking her again. She’d explained why she’d chosen Martin instead of him, even if it defied logic.

  ‘Thanks a million, love.’ He pulled open the bathroom door and stumbled back to the little bedroom with its rabbit wallpaper.

  Chrissie followed a few minutes later, wiping up his wet footprints on the woodblock floor with the towel she’d used to mop up in the bathroom.

  ‘I expect you’ll need to be on your way,’ Sam mouthed when he heard her come in behind him. He was halfway through dressing.

  ‘That’s all right. You said you were hungry. I’ll cook you something.’

  ‘No need,’ he told her, still with his back towards her. ‘I’m sure you’ve got other things to do.’