A Different War mg-4

by Craig Thomas

  Seven-fifteen. Fraser sat on the sofa, an impatient, barely restrained machine.

  Winterborne had chosen to sit at the desk, in the leather swivel chair, toying with his fat black pen with his long fingers, his bathrobe closed primly over his knees.

  '… must have gone Stateside, on an early tourist flight. That's the best Roussillon's been able to do, trace him as far as Schipol. He's going home—"

  "After Strickland?" Winterborne asked quickly.

  Fraser shrugged.

  "Could be."

  The man's features were pinched with anticipation, and something like resentment.

  For Winterborne, Fraser's presence obscured the vista of the day's anticipated successes. The Skyliner flight, the publicity that would attend it, the assiduousness of EC officials Fraser had come to his suite with dirty moral hands, informing him of Gant's escape, and demanding that he commit himself irrevocably regarding Marian.

  Strick-land had not replied to the e-mail, had not taken the bait.

  Fraser did not believe he would. He had another way' You positive that an approach to this man Mclntyre is the way to proceed?"

  Fraser nodded, shifting slightly on the sofa, to greater comfort.

  "Mclntyre is the man looking for Gant, just as seriously as we are.

  Gant's gone home—"

  "You think."

  "I think we know. Sir…" Winterborne waved him to continue, the permission of a sultan.

  "He's a vindictive sod… ex-CIA, joined the Bureau in the early nineties. I know him, sir. And he was Strickland's Case Officer in the field. They did a lot of dirty things for the Company and Washington, none of which Mclntyre would want seeing the light of day."

  It was a rehearsed, carefully offered argument.

  Persuasively complete.

  "I'm certain he would help us, in order to keep Strickland quiet, if he thought he could get his hands on Gant by doing so. And keep his own nose clean… If not, you can offer him a security vice-presidency.

  Fat salary, big title, key to the executive bog—" His nose wrinkled in contempt. They like that sort of thing, his sort of Yank."

  "So you've reiterated."

  "He'd be likely to know Strickland's bolt holes aliases, the sort of detail we don't have." It was seductive. The shadow of a flitting bird crossed the windows. The email stratagem might not work, this could be more certain. A pigeon settled on the windowsill.

  "I see that." He leaned forward, adding: "You and Roussillon should have stopped Gant yesterday, Fraser."

  There have been underestimations all round sir."

  Winterborne could not keep the faint, momentary flush from his cheeks.

  He snapped back: "Stopping a rogue accident investigator who's already wanted by the FBI is, I would have thought, easier than disposing of a high-profile MP!" He instantly regretted his loss of control.

  "I still don't see how you avoid the danger of involving the FBI in this."

  Fraser seemed mollified. The whiteness that had appeared at the sides of his nose vanished.

  "Offer him the choice, sir. If Gant finds Strickland before Mclntyre finds Gant, then maybe all the dirty tricks will pop out of the box. To prevent that, and to secure a prosperous future… which would you choose, sir if you weren't already you?" His hands opened in a gesture of conclusion.

  "You can get rid of Gant and Strickland at the same time and have the resources of the FBI to do it for you." It was the voice of a tempter.

  Or was it simply that of a machine holding the recorded voice of inevitability?

  Winterborne wrapped the bathrobe around his legs as he refolded them.

  He sensed himself as shuffling indecisively before a subordinate, of having been dragooned into choice.

  "Mclntyre isn't popular or liked maybe not even trusted by the Bureau.

  He could be shaken out any time. And he's greedy…"

  Tell him nothing!" Winterborne felt impelled to insist.

  "Of course not, sir."

  "Very well. Take the earliest flight to Washington you can get.

  Persuade Mclntyre—" He stood up.

  "I have a breakfast meeting at eight, I need to—"

  "Sir the woman?" It was a demand rather than a question, and Winterborne was reduced to the sensation of himself as a boy about to leave the headmaster's study, half-escaped from punishment, and then called back to face more accusations.

  "What?" he snapped.

  "What about the woman?"

  "You have to decide, sir you have to give a clear instruction."

  "Now? Why now?" He felt heated, unnerved. He did not turn to face Fraser. The pigeon lifted away from the windowsill as if not wishing to become a coconspirator.

  "Not now…" he murmured.

  "I watched her, sir," Fraser insisted.

  "Watched her deal with Jessop and Cobb when they put the f righteners on late last night. Dark street, a man following her… She won't be frightened off, sir!"

  Winterborne whirled round on Fraser, his features compressed with a violent anger. Gant and Strickland yes. The situation had become unstable to the point of explosion, he must take a risk there… but this? Fraser was applying the perspective. The man thought Marian's death a simple matter, something expedient and hardly to be debated. But this is Marian.

  "Strickland, Gant, Marian anyone else?" he attempted.

  Eraser grinned.

  "It's not much… It's not out of control," he soothed. Not yet, his eyes declared.

  "But you need to watch Campbell, sir. She'll work on him and he's an invertebrate at the best of times—"

  "Ben Campbell now! For God's sake, Fraser!"

  "I'm not suggesting anything specific, sir. Just tell Roussillon to keep an eye on him. If you get rid of the woman, there'll be no need.

  He'll have been involved.

  The Judas-goat. That will shut him up. But you have to instruct Roussillon to eliminate her."

  "Not now! I do not intend to be late for my meeting, Fraser. Make your arrangements regarding Washington. I'll talk to you before you leave."

  He turned away, his body once more heated, quivery with a sense of being cornered. Marian was, indeed, his enemy yet how could he consign her to the dark? How could he—?

  As he walked into the bedroom to begin dressing, he heard Fraser telephone the hotel desk to make his flight reservation.

  Yes, that certainly would be achieved, the elimination of Strickland and Gant. But, Marian?

  She woke in the old-fashioned hotel bedroom, startled; as if she had expected the comfortable familiarity of other old houses, Uffingham especially, only to find herself betrayed by memory. She felt shaken from thin, fitful sleep. Her dreams had been filled with faces peering down at her which did not quite disappear whenever she roused. Grey daylight struggled through the heavy curtains. Marian sat bolt upright, rubbing her right arm with her left hand… just as she had done after the light-footed man, his single breath hot against her cheek, had collided with her on the dark, cobbled pavement outside the hotel.

  She had been walking back from the restaurant, replete, her fears and senses dulled with food, wine and bright conversation. He had appeared from a narrow, unlit doorway, clumsy as a drunk, and had lumbered into her. She had exhaled a small scream of surprise. She had been half-attending to the footsteps clicking in a magnified way off the high walls and facades of the Rue de Amigo, wondering if someone was following her, when the second man had blundered against her. His weight had been sharp, heavy, before he had staggered away and she stumbled into the hotel entrance.

  There had been no more to it than that footsteps clicking out like the exaggerated ticking of an ominous clock, a momentary collision… but she had understood the message as clearly as if it had been delivered by hand to the door of her room.

  She squinted at the illuminated bedside clock in the gloom.

  Seven-twenty. In the night, too, there had been a drunk or purported drunk knocking at her door, demanding ent
ry. She had, eventually, persuaded him hers was the wrong room, that he should go away… in somewhat obvious language. Reluctantly, she swung her legs out of the bed, at once lighting a cigarette, coughing, drawing the smoke in deeply, her hand shaking once she took the cigarette from her mouth.

  "God…" she heard herself breathe as if there was someone else in the room with her. The cigarette began to relax her, working against the new buffeting of her nerves when she realised what she had decided to do. The thought made her queasy, even blundered against her like the man in the street, the other man against her door.

  She thrust herself off the bed and dragged open the curtains. The unfamiliar, comforting nightdress swished with the anger of her movements. Traffic noise, the early summer morning blue after rain over the rooftops, the tower of the Hotel de Ville, the tiny minarets and up thrusts of the other heavy buildings of the Grand' Place.

  David Winterborne his features flushed with drink and confidence seemed to stare into the room from just beyond the window. He would soon be at a power breakfast with EU officials, Aero UK and Balzac-Stendhal executives, and representatives from Sabena and other European carriers. She had overheard a time of eight bandied between table companions at the restaurant the previous evening. Already it was only a half-hour away. By ten-thirty, she and her colleagues, together with Winterborne and a tribe of officials and executives, would be at Brussels' Zaventem airport, boarding the Skyliner. The breakfast meeting would last for perhaps an hour. David's suite would be empty for no more than that.

  His PC… Silly idea now. And yet the image tugged at her like a hangnail caught in cloth. David, creature of habit, the boy who avoided the cracks in the pavement, walked the borders of the carpet, checked the light switches obsessively… there was the slim chance that he would still, like touchstones, use the old passwords.

  She began to hurry, stubbing out the cigarette in a cut-glass ashtray, scrubbing her face into wakefulness in the bathroom, dashing her make-up on, choosing her outfit. Eight… eight-five. They would be about to eat breakfast in the private room now, comfortable, assured, the windows slightly fogged with power, arrogance.

  Snatching up her handbag and the camera she always carried on jaunts, she closed the door behind her and stood for a moment in the corridor that smelt of thick carpet and dry air. Her heart was thudding against her ribs; she was already jogging against time.

  She went up two floors in the lift. There had been an open door on her own corridor, a maid bent over a bed, tugging off linen. She rounded the corridor-another housemaid, pinafored, tinily Oriental and almost hidden by the trolley of linen and cleaning materials she was pushing from one door to the next. David's suite was-two doors closer to her than the maid… Time, time. Eight-nine… A strange and ludicrous image of waiters clearing away grapefruit, melon, the scent of kedgeree, and bacon and eggs. David loved kedgeree, always had. The maid looked up with the shy, almost flinching in curiosity of her race and occupation. Marian clicked her fingers exaggeratedly, after fishing in her handbag, attempting to appear panicked. The maid seemed troubled on her behalf.

  "Do you speak English?" God, I hope so… "English?"

  The reply was precise. The girl was, on closer inspection, young enough to be a moonlighting student.

  "Yes, madam." Not even the French appellation. Nevertheless, Marian continued her impersonation of Anglo-Saxon patronage towards foreigners, speaking slowly.

  "I am Mr. Winterborne's personal assistant—" She gestured towards the suite's double doors.

  "He needs something from his room. He didn't give me the key. It is urgent. Can you let me in?"

  "Mr. Winterborne?" She consulted her list, nodding daintily, precisely.

  "Yes," she confirmed, looking up at the doors. Then she studied Marian and seemed satisfied.

  Her pass-key strained the material of the pinafore outwards as she tugged it towards the door on its brief chain. The lock clicked.

  Furiously, before the girl could turn, Marian wiped her finger along the sudden wet line on her forehead.

  Thank you thank you!" She lurched into the suite, still scented with David's aftershave. The maid remained in the doorway. Marian turned and said peremptorily: That's fine I won't be long. You can continue with your duties." It was insultingly dismissive and the maid turned away, letting the doors close behind her. Marian heard her own loud breathing in the spacious sitting room. The bedroom door remained half-open. A suit hung against the door of a dark old wardrobe like a hanged man.

  Eight-twelve. Croissants, preserves, waiters gliding like un hearing ghosts between the extravagant dollars, the dates, the counter-proposals. David at the head of the table, his slim hands on the white cloth, patiently still, stirring only slightly whenever the discussion moved in his direction. His presence was almost real enough to be in the bedroom next door.

  She was startled by the noise of a vacuum cleaner blurting awake in the next suite.

  She had miscalculated, the maid was only one room away… Nothing on the writing desk, the armchairs or the chaise. Small items of David's a fat black pen, his cigarette case, silver and initialled, a comb.

  Eight-eighteen.

  The bedroom, then The vacuum cleaner growled like a dog beyond the wall, occasionally lurching softly into furniture. The unmade bed, the discarded shoes and underwear, the hanged suit. Files, the open suitcase, a guide book, rolled fax messages. She touched at them but did not read… Eight-twenty… The satisfied, male clatter of knives and forks against crockery, the more desultory conversation, as the power breakfast consumed its allotted time. Eight-twenty-one… The wet line was back across her forehead. Her hair flopped over her cheek and eyes and she brushed it violently aside. She glanced towards the bedroom window. A pigeon, staring back, shocked her like an enemy.

  It must be in the wardrobe. She held the suit over her arm, removed the small, flat crocodile leather case which contained the PC, rehanged the suit against the wardrobe door. With harsh, thankful breaths, she carried the case to the writing desk and flipped the locks. They sprang open. Another pigeon — perhaps the same one watched her from the sitting room window with red-eyed surveillance. She opened the lid, exposing the screen of the PC, its keyboard sliding smoothly into place. Tiny, delicate… The handbag's strap seemed to bite into her shoulder. She would have to photograph the screen, once she gained access… Her fingers trembled as she poised over the keyboard. The pigeon's beak tapped on the thick glass of the window, as if to encourage her. David's fat black executive pen lay beside the cuff of her blouse. Oh, David, she couldn't help but think. He had pleaded with her in the Musee, there had been exaggerated glances of entreaty over dinner, as if she had wounded or disappointed him.

  And a bleakness in his eyes.

  The PC came to life under her fingers. Hello, please tell me your name, it ingratiated itself. She hesitated. The request disappeared, then reappeared. That would happen only once more.

  Shadow, she typed.

  Hi, David, the machine replied. Marian wrinkled her nose. Her own computer was severely English, restrained in its responses to her.

  "Hi, David," she murmured, as if she was reading a headstone, and sighed.

  The memory remained clear to her, ten years later. After Robbie's death, David had presented her with a battered cardboard box. His brother would have wanted you to have some of his books, he had offered with savage, tearless restraint. The gesture had, nevertheless, touched her and was meant to indicate emotion. In a moment of recollection a few days later, she had opened the box and examined the books from Robbie's childhood, adolescence, student days. Most of them unread, some of them even given to Robbie by herself.

  And there was the well-thumbed copy of an anthology of Chinese poems of the eighth and ninth centuries in translation that she had given to David, not Robbie.

  In his late teens, David had been reacting with unexpected, oversensitive ferocity to the prejudice of his fellow pupils, and she had bought him the book partly as a
salve to wounded pride. A leaf of paper bearing Robbie's scrawl had fallen from between the pages. The poem it had marked was annotated in David's neater hand.

  A poem by Tu Fu, To a Younger Brother. From the handwriting of the two brothers, she had worked out that David had evolved the passwords into his first computer by using lines from the poem and that Robbie had discovered the trick and had betrayed the tenderness implicit in David's choice by breaking into the computer.

  She had never forgotten that small betrayal, nor the affection that had made David, years after she had bought the book, use that poem for his passwords.

  Eight-twenty-eight. Time stunned. The way into the PC's menu was Rumours, the first English word of the poem. The Shadow might have been David himself, or Robbie. Now it was herself.

  She felt very heated, her hands quivered. What did she want to know, what did she need? Wind in the dust prolongs our day of parting, the poem said, a metaphor for war. This was a different war, the one between her and David.

  The menu unrolled on the screen. The vacuum cleaner, she realised, had ceased unnoticed in the next room. Towels changed, duster wiped over surfaces. She strained to hear, but there was only a murmur. Come on She summoned Millennium because it was obvious. The fraud was upon the Millennium Urban Regeneration Project. a list of charities? She had fumbled the camera from her handbag, but the screen seemed to mock her as she held it. She scrolled the information forward with a jabbing, angry forefinger. Contributions, schemes, the names of dignitaries…

  Eight-thirty… The clearing of breakfast plates, the sense of coffee being served as sharply as if she had caught its aroma. The damp line across her forehead, at the roots of her hair… The Millennium file she had opened rolled to its engagingly innocent conclusion.

  Ceremonies, fundraising, invitations, monetary gestures.

  She returned the menu to the screen. Jabbed at Skyliner. She could hear the ticking of her blood's clock, accelerating. Investments, involvements, negotiations, the narrative of failure, the hurrah of recent success… innocent, all of it. Winterborne Holdings, she summoned. There was silence from the next-door room now.