by Greg Rucka
This time Seccombe didn’t smile. He nodded once, slowly, and Crocker sensed a change in his manner, something felt rather than seen. Whatever trap had been laid here, Crocker had just avoided it.
“Then I have a proposition for you, Paul,” Sir Walter Seccombe said. “One that I recommend you think quite seriously about accepting.”
CHAPTER 7
Lancashire—Barnoldswick,
Residence of Wallace, Valerie
14 February, 1414 Hours GMT
She was changing Tamsin when the call came, her daughter screaming in protest at either the discomfort or the indignity of it all, and Chace felt again the incredible frustration of trying to use reason on someone who has no use, nor need, of such things.
It didn’t matter that Tamsin’s struggling made the whole procedure take five times as long as it should have; it didn’t matter that what Chace was trying to do, for God’s sake, was to help the little noisemaker. No, Tamsin didn’t want to be on her back on the changing table and she didn’t want to be put in a nappy and she was damn certain it was her right, her obligation, even, to make sure that everyone from Weets Moor to the town square knew it.
The telephone, then, with its jangling bell, was just insult added to injury, and Chace heard it, acknowledged it, and then discarded the information just as quickly, because she was certain the call wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—for her. No one called Valerie Wallace to speak to Tara Chace. Not on Valentine’s Day, or on any other day for that matter.
It wasn’t that Chace hadn’t tried to fit in with town life. She had, she truly had. She’d attended the church services and the teas and the social get-togethers, she’d worn the stoic face and said all the right things, as much as for Valerie’s peace of mind as her own. And it wasn’t that people were unkind, certainly not once Valerie had explained that Chace’s baby was her grandchild, that her son had died before he’d even learned that Tara was pregnant. That particular tragedy had earned her a unique respect, even, with Valerie’s friends and neighbors clucking in placid concern.
“Eeee, the poor dear, having to raise the wee thing alone.”
“Ooo, all alone, but it’s good she’s come back here, raise the child right.”
“Oh yes, raise a good Lancashire girl, among her own people.”
And so on, and on, and ever on.
But there was a pity to it as well, and Chace couldn’t stomach that. She didn’t want to be pitied, nor did she wish to become prey to self-pity, and so she had come to avoid people, describing an orbit to her life that included Tamsin and Valerie, and not much more. When she went out, she went out pushing the pram, walking alone. She carried out her business around town with the barest of interactions, the most minimal of required pleasantries. She avoided conversation and contact; she steered clear of people when she saw them coming.
She was that poor girl who’d lost her baby’s father. A little distant, a little odd, not unpleasant, but best to leave her alone for now, you know how it is. She’ll speak when she’s ready, when her daughter’s out and about, the wee thing will lead the mother back into the world, and the mother will follow, to be sure. Just you wait and see.
When Valerie stuck her head into the bedroom, then, as Chace was snapping Tamsin back into her clothes, she’d already forgotten that the telephone had rung at all.
“It’s for you, Tara,” Valerie said.
“What is? Dammit, Tam, stop fidgeting!”
“The phone, dear. I’ll take Tam, you go and answer it.”
Chace looked at Valerie with a mixture of confusion and suspicion, hoisting Tamsin to her shoulder, stroking her daughter’s hair. It was coming in faster now, soft as silk and so blond as to be almost white, and whenever Chace found her patience running short with her daughter, she would stroke Tamsin’s hair, amazed by the feel of it, always surprised by the way her baby would nestle against her in response.
“I’m not making it up, dear, it really is for you,” Valerie said again, almost laughing at her expression.
“Who?”
“Didn’t get his name. But he asked for you straightaway, quite polite.”
Chace frowned, and Tamsin shifted, responding to the tension suddenly coming from her mother, pushing her face against her shoulder with a soft whimper. If it had been Poole calling, he’d have said as much, and Valerie would have shared it. So it wasn’t Poole on the phone, and there was only one other person Chace could think of who knew where to find her.
“Shall I tell him to ring again later?”
Chace shook her head, then reluctantly handed Tamsin over to Valerie. The baby resisted, taking hold of Chace’s hair, and she had to free her daughter’s fingers before she could slip out of the room down the narrow flight of stairs back to the ground floor, to the telephone in the hall. Behind and above, she heard Tamsin cry again, then go quiet.
Chace picked up the handset and said, “What do you want?”
“I’m in Colne,” Crocker said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. You can meet me outside.”
“I don’t want to meet you at all.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Crocker repeated, and hung up.
Chace replaced the handset in its cradle, slowly, then stared at the phone for several seconds, thinking.
From the top of the stairs, Valerie asked, “Who was that, Tara?”
“Nobody,” Chace said, and then added, “I have to go out for a while.”
Valerie adjusted her grip on the baby, repositioning her at her hip, fixing Chace with a stare from above, her expression draining, the corners of her mouth tightening. It had been well over a year now that Chace had shared her home, and in that time they’d talked about Tom only a little, and about the work they’d done together even less. But Valerie Wallace wasn’t stupid, and Chace was certain she’d long ago deduced at least the broad strokes of the job Chace had shared with her son, if not the specifics.
“You go on,” Valerie told her. “We’ll be fine here without you for a while.”
Crocker surprised her, not because he was on time, but because he was driving a red Volvo wagon, and the car was at least ten years old. She didn’t know why, but it seemed an absurd choice for him, and as she climbed into the front passenger seat beside him, she told him as much.
“It’s my wife’s,” Crocker replied. “We’re going someplace we can talk. Where’s someplace we can talk?”
“The Yorkshire Dales aren’t too terribly far,” Chace responded, belting herself in. “Though I’m not certain you want to take me anyplace away from witnesses.”
“You’re going to murder me?”
“I haven’t decided yet, to tell the truth.”
“Then let’s hope what I have to say doesn’t push you over the edge,” Crocker said.
Crocker waited until he’d found his way onto the Skipton Road before speaking.
“You think I sent you to Iraq knowing you were knocked up.”
“You did send me to Iraq knowing I was knocked up,” Chace retorted.
Crocker shook his head, flicking the indicator, turning onto one of the narrower lanes. It was a clear day, cold, windy, and out the car windows Chace could see the rolling Lancashire hills, the beautiful houses and the winter-stripped trees, smoke rising from occasional chimneys. The heat was on in the Volvo, the hot, dry air blowing hard from the vents, and both of them had to raise their voices to be sure they were heard.
“When I got to the Farm, I was given a complete workup,” Chace said after another mile. “A complete workup, and that included a fucking blood draw.”
“And the blood work showed you were pregnant,” Crocker confirmed.
“Yes,” Chace said, emphatic. He’d made her point.
“I didn’t see the results until after you’d come back from Red Panda.”
“That’s the best you can come up with? You had the entire drive up from London, and that’s the best lie you could come up with?”
“Which should tell you that I’m not l
ying at all.”
“Or that you don’t think terribly highly of me.”
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t have made the drive in the first place.”
Crocker signaled again, turning them onto an alarmingly narrow strip of road that curled along one of the hillsides. Dry stone walls bordered the way on both sides, and Chace wondered what Crocker would do if they encountered an oncoming car.
“Do you really believe that I’m that much of a bastard?” Crocker asked. “That I’d not only keep that information from you, but then put you into harm’s way besides?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“Well, at least we’re being honest with each other.”
“It wasn’t always that way, Paul,” Chace said. “Don’t misunderstand. I mean, I always knew you were a bastard, from the moment you brought me into the Section. But I believed you were, at least, our bastard. That was the rule, wasn’t it? D-Ops says ‘frog’ and the Minders jump, never mind how high, all with the understanding that you’ll be there to catch us when we come down. That was the agreement. You broke the trust, and Tom died for it.”
Crocker shook his head angrily. “No, that one’s not mine. I have more than my share of ghosts, but Tom Wallace is not one of them. He is not one of them, and I won’t let you put that blame on me. You brought him into it, not me. You went to Tom for help, not me.”
“Of course I went to Tom for help! What else was I supposed to do? You’d fucking abandoned me! You were supposed to protect me, damn you!”
“I did! For God’s sake, I did everything in my power to keep you safe!”
“Safe? You were going to sell me to the Saudis!”
“It wasn’t me!”
A blue Ford, a squat and square little car, came around the bend ahead of them, and Crocker braked hard, turning the wheel, and Chace heard the tires on the Volvo leave the tarmac, felt the vehicle vibrate as it slid onto gravel. The Ford passed by, hitting its horn, and Chace winced in expectation of the inevitable sound of scraping metal, but it never came.
“It wasn’t me,” Crocker insisted.
She ended up giving him directions around Pendleside, through Foulridge and then the villages of Blacko and Roughlee, finally pointing him to Newchurch-in-Pendle. Crocker parked them on a steep incline, and they walked uphill another hundred meters or so, to the Church of St. Mary. Chace opened the gate, descended onto the grounds, surrounded by ancient gravestones and slabs. The first recorded construction on the site dated back to 1250, though the current building, a small stone nave and chapel with a squat tower, was most likely built four centuries later. The church and its grounds served as a minor tourist attraction, purportedly linked to the infamous Pendle Witches. Nine women had been hanged in 1612, and one had died in her prison cell. Two of the dead were said to be buried in the yard. Chace suspected it was utter nonsense; the women in question had both been convicted of witchcraft, and, thus declared to be in league with devil, would never have been interred on holy ground.
Etched into the stone tower was a small, odd oval. Called the Eye of God, it was said to have been added as a ward against the witches who had once roamed the nearby hills. Now it overlooked the steps down from the road, the trees, and the distant Forest of Trawden, part of the larger Forest of Pendle.
Chace walked down past the church, finally stopping on the grass beside one of the weathered grave slabs. The wind snapped at her coat and trousers, making the temperature feel even colder. From behind her came the ring of Crocker’s lighter opening, closing, and the scent of his tobacco whipped past her, torn through the air in the wind. She’d given up smoking as soon as she’d learned she was pregnant, just as she had given up alcohol, and it pleased her to discover that the proximity of Crocker’s cigarettes failed to entice. She’d had a few drinks since Tamsin had been born, wine at dinner, whiskey on occasion, but thus far, that was the only vice of hers to have returned home.
“There’s a job,” Crocker said.
“I don’t want a job. I have a job, I’m Tamsin’s mother.” She turned, looking up the slope at him, her expression daring him to call her a liar.
Crocker squinted past her, into the wind, into the distance, and decided to continue as if he hadn’t heard. “It’s in Uzbekistan, and it needs to happen soon, within the week. Have you been following the news?”
Chace refused to answer.
“You know the strategic importance,” Crocker said. “You know that Uzbekistan is considered a crucial ally. The Americans have been using the country as a staging ground for their operations, working with the Uzbeks to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda, on what’s happening in northern Afghanistan. They’ve built air bases, put troops on the ground, all manner of infrastructure and support for personnel and operations.
“You know the human rights angle. What happened with Ambassador McInnes.”
She simply stared at him, trying to resist his attempt to draw her in. Robert McInnes had been the U.K.’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, recalled in late 2004 because of his insistence on publicizing Uzbekistan’s appalling record on human rights. He’d made the papers, in particular the Guardian, with his descriptions of the NSS’ use of torture. McInnes had openly condemned both the U.K. and the U.S. for its tacit complicity in such crimes.
It had stuck in Chace’s memory because, among his targets, McInnes had pointed a finger directly at SIS, accusing the Firm of profiting from the questionable intelligence gained from these torture sessions. McInnes had been recalled to London following his final outburst and forced out of the Foreign Service within a week of his return home. The last she’d read, the former Ambassador had retained an attorney and was planning on suing the Government.
“President Malikov is not long for this world, Tara,” Crocker said. “The old man’s got two kids, and it’s anyone’s guess which one of them will take over when he goes. There’s a daughter—”
“Sevara Mihailovna Malikov-Ganiev.” She shook her head, angry that she’d taken the bait, unsure whether or not he was testing her, or if he was expecting a faulty memory. Whichever, it was galling. “The son’s name is Ruslam Mihailovich Malikov.”
“Ruslan Mihailovich,” Crocker corrected. “Roughly four days ago, Ruslan’s wife was arrested, tortured, and murdered, most likely by the NSS, possibly by Sevara’s agents. We think Ruslan may be next on Sevara’s hit list, that she’s preparing to clear the way for a run at her father’s position.”
“Ruslan should probably leave, then.”
“Yes, well, what you don’t know is that Ruslan Mihailovich also has a two-year-old son, Stepan Ruslanovich.”
Chace folded her arms across her chest. “So he should take the boy with him.”
“Your job is to get them out of the country,” Crocker said. “Both of them. Get them out, and bring them safely back to England.”
She stared at him.
“We’ve been told that Ruslan is pro-West, that he’s a reformer in the making. If you can confirm that as well, so much the better. We get him here, we can discuss the viability of a coup, either against his father or against his sister, whomever, depending on the situation. Since you’ll already have a working relationship with Ruslan, you’ll be expected to help facilitate and implement that also.”
Chace continued to stare at him.
Crocker drew a last time from his cigarette, then dropped the butt, watching as the cinder died in the wet grass. From inside his overcoat he withdrew a large gray envelope, creased lengthwise from where he’d carried it, folded, in an inside pocket. He held the envelope out to Chace, who made no move to take it.
“There’s one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in an account at HSBC,” Crocker said. “It should cover expenses for the operation, anything that might arise. I’ve included contact protocols as well; you’re to report directly to me on this, and not through official channels. The documents enclosed, and the account, are in the name of Carlisle, Tracy Elizabeth, the same identity you used durin
g Dandelion, you remember.”
“You’re recycling a cover?” She looked at him, now even more suspicious.
“There’s no reason to believe it was compromised. It’s still current, all the paper, right up to the passport.”
“It was used. That’s what compromises it.”
“Would you take the damn envelope, please?”
“I don’t want the envelope, Paul. I don’t want what’s inside it. I don’t want the job.”
Crocker lowered his hand, the wind catching the envelope in his grip, bending it skyward, as if trying to make it into a kite. Chace saw his eyes flick along the fence that bordered the lane, as paranoid as she was that they might be observed. Somewhere, from farther below on the hillside, they heard a child’s laughter.
“There’s nobody else,” he said. “It has to be you.”
“There should be three others else,” Chace responded. “Unless you’ve managed to kill all of them, too, and as I saw Nicky only Sunday last, you’d have been working damn quick at it.”
“I can’t use the Minders.”
“Go to Cheng.”
“Cheng’s in Washington, and that’s beside the point. I’ve been asked to keep the involved parties to a minimum.”
“How minimum?”
“Barclay and the CIA are not included on the distribution list, shall we say.”
A gust caught her hair, sent strands across her eyes, and Chace pushed them clear with her finger, tucking the strays back behind her ear. “So it’s unsanctioned. You’re trying to sell me an unsanctioned lift from a hostile theater, and you want me to do it without alerting either our people or the Americans.”
“Ideally. Though I’m told there’s the possibility of limited American support once you’re on the ground in Tashkent. What form that support will take, I can’t say.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“It’s not unsanctioned, it’s unofficial. I have permission for the operation, just not through the traditional channels.”