Samuel Edwards - Neptune

‘It goes almost without saying that I’ll need to go into the deep freeze until this blows over, darling. I’ve never met Andropov personally, of course. I’m not that important. But I’m told he has a pathological hatred of double agents. I’ll need your protection as a condition of the deal.’

The manservant came to the door and announced that dinner was served.

‘Let’s talk about it after we eat,’ Porter said, and knew he had given her something to think about for the next hour or two. Her request for help was genuine, and there was no doubt in his mind that her fear of KGB retaliation was genuine. But she hadn’t revealed all of her motives for seeking him, and a feeling of insecurity would make her more vulnerable.

A glass-topped table in a small dining-room was set for two, and a second Chinese manservant served onion soup, a fillet of beef with souffle potatoes, a salad with Roquefort cheese dressing and a spectacular Cherries Jubilee. Vintage wines were offered throughout the meal and at its end the houseman placed a magnum of French champagne in an ice bucket.

Porter ate and drank sparingly. Tom Lee was making a gesture on his behalf, perhaps misunderstanding his interest in the Eurasian girl, and there was no way he would have known that Porter would have preferred beer and pizza, or even that exclusively American dish, chop suey.

Nancy Wing was ravenous, and Porter wondered how she kept her slender figure; he guessed she didn’t eat this well very often. She drank steadily, too, which he interpreted as a sign of her nervousness, and he kept her glass filled.

She held her drink with aplomb, however, and when they returned to the living-room after dinner, the houseman bringing the bucket of champagne, she still looked and sounded sober, ‘What plans are you making for us, darling?’ she asked when they were alone.

‘I’ll have someone pay my bill at the hotel and bring my luggage here,’ he said. ‘This is the safest place I know for tonight. Obviously, if my friends could find you in a furnished room, so could the KGB.’

‘I don’t care where we stay, as long as we’re together.’

She was pressing too hard now, he reflected, so his strategy was working.

Nancy draped her arms around his neck and kissed him as they returned to the divan, her lips, tongue, and teeth active.

Eventually he disentangled himself, increasingly convinced that she was going to great lengths to bind herself to him. ‘First thing tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’ll get Washington’s approval for the deal, including the price ceiling.’

‘There’s one other condition,’ the girl said. ‘I won’t turn over the information to anyone but you. You’re the only one I trust.’ She looked up at him, her dark eyes luminous.

She had been a minor cog in a machine, Porter reflected, but she had been an agent too long to trust anyone. ‘I’m sure my boss will be amenable to that,’ he said, and refilled her glass.

‘Will they let you take me into hiding, do you suppose?’

‘I don’t know.’ Here was the crux of a delicate situation, and he needed time to work out details. ‘I’ve been on holiday since I’ve come back from Hong Kong, but I never know when they’ll put me to work again. Even if I can’t stay with you, I’m certain they’ll provide you with maximum security.’ Provided, he thought, the Corporation believed the data she fed them was authentic.

‘I want to go with you.’ Even when she was being petulant Nancy was exceptionally appealing. ‘If you’re still on holiday, I don’t see why they wouldn’t permit it.’

‘Did you have any special part of America in mind?’

‘Well, the only places I know here are San Francisco and New York, and neither would be suitable, really.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I don’t see why we couldn’t take a little place on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s isolated there, and you could go right on with your holiday.’

At last she had given herself away, but he remained impassive. He had not mentioned to her that he was spending time on the northern coast of Washington state, and no one to whom she had spoken since her arrival in the United States had known where he was making his current headquarters.

So it was clear she had known his whereabouts before she had flown here, and was using flattery and sex to ensure that he took her to the vicinity of the Richards shipyard. Was she aware of Project Neptune or was she on a fishing expedition? And for whom was she working? Porter’s mind raced.

‘When I speak to my boss in the morning,’ he said, hedging, ‘I’ll try to find out when I’m being given a new assignment.’

Nancy undid his necktie, opened his shirt and rubbed a hand back and forth across his bare chest. ‘I’m sure you’ll arrange everything, darling. And right now let’s find the bedrooms, or we’ll do something right here. We haven’t been together for ages, and I simply can’t wait any longer.’

Porter found a bell that summoned a houseman, who conducted them to a chamber on the second floor.

As they mounted the stairs together, their arms around each other, it occurred to Porter that as recently as a few days ago he would have welcomed this part of the job. If he had to sleep with Nancy Wing in order to discover the identity of her employers and how much she knew, he would sleep with her, and remembering her sexual proclivities he realized that any agent in the business would envy him.

But just last night he had gone to bed with Adrienne, and she was very much on his mind as he and Nancy went up the stairs.

Porter made an early morning telephone call to Adrienne, before Nancy Wing awakened. Several hours later he went into San Francisco, leaving Nancy at the Oakland house, explaining that he would pick up her belongings and call his superiors in Washington regarding her offer of a deal. What he did not tell her was that he had also scheduled a meeting with his principal associates, who were flying down from the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

He retrieved the Eurasian girl’s luggage, then went on to the Corporation’s local headquarters, which were located in one of the older office buildings. Chipped lettering on the frosted glass door indicated that this was a firm of insurance adjustors.

A casual visitor would have found it difficult to identify the place as the office of an intelligence agency. A few calendars were pinned to otherwise bare walls, the plain wooden furniture was battered and even the typewriters and filing cabinets were old. The middle-aged receptionist-switchboard operator seemed to spend most of her time filing and painting her fingernails.

The appearance of the innermost rooms of the suite was far different. One was equipped with a walk-in safe protected by a bank vault door, an operator was on round-the-clock duty at a short-wave sending and receiving radio console, and there was a miniature laboratory for on-the-spot investigative checks.

Porter made his call to Brian Davidson in Washington on a telephone with a scrambler device, and when he went into the adjoining, sound-proofed conference room, his colleagues were waiting for him. The impeccably dressed Blackman would have been at home at an Ivy League college class reunion, but he had been attending another type of school for the past decade and a half, and there was a veiled menace in his eyes. The Deacon, sombrely attired as always in a dark suit, white shirt and solid-coloured necktie, might have been mistaken for a clergyman, but his eyes, too, were hard and penetrating.

Adrienne, in a colourful print dress, appeared out of place in the gathering but she was relaxed, and there was a hint of amusement in her expression when she greeted Porter.

He wasted no time, filling them in on what had happened since his arrival in San Francisco the previous day. ‘I’ve just now had a little chat with Davidson,’ he said. ‘The girl has offered us full information on the KGB naval observation station in Hong Kong. Location, personnel, everything. Davidson is putting through an immediate call to Chang in Hong Kong, and he’ll turn the case over to British MI-6. If the tip is accurate we’ll pay the girl twenty-five thousand dollars.’