Adrian Magson - No Tears for the Lost

‘So how come you’re still walking around?’

‘Because they couldn’t prove anything. They listened to the rumours, they tracked down everyone I ever met and they talked to every junkie who had a deal to cut. It’s no surprise they got the story they wanted to hear.’

‘But?’

‘In the end they decided to drop it. And you know why? Because it never would have stood up in court. Trouble is, shit sticks. After that I couldn’t get hired to write page numbers.’ His look of disgust deepened at the memory of how he’d been treated and Riley felt a flicker of sympathy. But it didn’t explain why he’d been in the woods at the shoot in Gloucestershire, or why he was now sitting in front of her. Nor how he’d tracked her down.

‘How did you find me?’

He took his time answering, as if he was marshalling his words to make sure they came out right. ‘I need your help. I need someone I can trust. To be honest, I’d never heard of you until I picked up the name of your military cop pal, Palmer.’

‘In relation to what?’

He gave a thin smile. ‘Sir Kenneth Myburghe. Who else?’ When Riley remained blank-faced, he continued, ‘I took a drive in the country and followed the shooting party Myburghe was supposed to be in. I knew straight away he wasn’t there, though, and figured it was a decoy set-up. That’s where I saw you and Palmer.’

‘How did you get our names?’ Weller had told her that Henzigger had Palmer’s name in his wallet at Immigration, suggesting he knew the name before entering the country. But that didn’t explain how he’d got hold of it.

He seemed to read her mind. ‘I still got friends, don’t worry. They found out Palmer was running protection on Myburghe and got his name through the licence plate number. Then they hooked onto you. The rest was easy.’

‘What’s your interest in Myburghe?’

‘It’s because of him that I was set up.’ He sat back suddenly, looking tired, as if he’d been harbouring the words for a long time and it had cost him a great deal to get them out. He shook his head. ‘That sounds lame, right?’

Riley agreed. It did. It also sounded like every crook who’d ever been caught with his nose in the trough, making excuses. Criminals were always innocent and crooked cops were victims of a frame-up. It was an old song.

‘How could he have been involved? He’s a British diplomat.’

He looked away. ‘Oh, he’s involved, believe me. It’s why I came over here. I fouled up coming in on false papers, but it gets to be a habit in my line of work. By the time I realised, I was in line at Immigration and couldn’t get to my real ID. I figured, what the hell, it was nothing that couldn’t be sorted out.’ He shrugged fatalistically. ‘I was wrong. In the end someone at the embassy made a call and they let me go. I guess they knew it wasn’t worth the hassle.’

He made it sound so simple, Riley almost found herself believing him. She had never used a false ID, so had to take it on trust that if you did so all the time, you might reach for the wrong one under stress. But would Immigration really allow someone who’d used false papers to go free on the say-so of the US Embassy?

‘How does this affect me?’

‘You were out near Myburghe’s place in — where is it, Gloucestershire.’ He pronounced it the American way, with staccato syllables. ‘At the shoot. Are you doing a piece on him? You should — it’d make your hair curl.’

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. He guessed he was referring to Colombia. As a journalist, Henzigger would have made it his business to know all the key players in the area he was covering, putting names to faces, sorting out the friendly from the hostile. It was a subtle balancing-act, having to mix and meet on one hand with people from embassies and trade missions, and then going off to rub shoulders with men and women who wouldn’t know a canapé from a can of beans.

‘What were you doing in the woods?’ she asked.

He smiled crookedly, a thin sliver of charm breaking through the angry veneer. ‘That wasn’t my finest hour, was it? I’m getting too old for all that backwoods stuff. They nearly had me.’ The expression dropped away just as quickly as it had come. ‘I was just doing some groundwork. I got past the guards but I didn’t expect you and your partner to roll up. Is he for real? That was some fancy gunplay. I thought there was strict etiquette to hunting over here.’

‘There is. But Palmer doesn’t play by the rules. It’s why they don’t invite him very often.’

‘I guess not. He any good?’

‘Yes. So what was this groundwork for?’ She was getting irritated by the way he was constantly wandering away from the subject, as if reluctant to approach it head-on.

‘You ever heard of a guy called Walter Asner?’ When she shook her head, he continued, ‘He was a trade secretary at the US embassy in Bogotá. Career diplomat, like Myburghe, only lower down on the totem. He’d moved around a bit, the way those guys do — Europe, Middle East, Far East, places like that. Then he learned Spanish and moved to South America. He was out there a long time.’ He tapped his fingers on the tabletop, a nervous reaction. ‘Just over a year ago he returned Stateside. He’d done his time, put in the hours, and he wanted out.’

‘Early retirement?’

‘Uh-huh. Supposed to be, anyway. He was in his fifties. Good time to go. Still a lot of years left to kick back and watch the flowers grow.’ He tracd a line through a puddle of moisture on the table top, and Riley suddenly knew he was going to tell her something unpleasant.

‘Go on.’

‘He never made it. One evening he pulled into his garage, closed the door behind him and blew out his brains.’

*********

Riley waited, not quite sure where this was leading.

‘Walter Asner,’ Henzigger continued after a few heartbeats, ‘wasn’t what everyone thought.’ The way he said ‘Walter’ produced a faint softening of his features — at least, for a moment. ‘By that I mean he wasn’t the embassy suit he pretended to be.’

‘Not a diplomat?’

He shook his head. ‘Walt was special… part of a unique programme. He came from a family of career administrators. He was smart, well educated and knew pretty much what made the world tick. But he wanted to join a team that made a difference. He wasn’t prepared to simply push paper around the way his father had done. The administration recognised that. But they knew he had other skills, too. Skills they could use. They put him through training with the DEA — Drug Enforcement — and once he’d finished he was dropped out and fed into the embassy circuit under deep cover. Not even the staff he worked with knew what he was really doing.’

‘Why the secrecy?’

‘It was a programme set up about twenty years ago. A focus group in the Department of Justice decided it would be a neat idea if they had some special agents who knew how to hold a knife and fork, to blend into the embassy circuit. Their job would be to work the corridors, mix with the foreign mucky-mucks and look for sources, contacts, that sort of stuff. But they weren’t to get involved with the day-to-day anti-drugs war. They’d concentrate on the people at the top, their aides and secretaries, while the rest of the DEA troops would work the streets. It was a good plan, too. It brought in great intelligence from both ends, some of it top grade. You’d be amazed what those stiff collars hear at some of those fancy trade gatherings. And Walt knew how to work ‘em. He was good.’

Riley saw where he was going. ‘But somebody found out what his true function was?’

‘Must have. He was way too experienced after all those years to have let it slip. Hell, I’m not even sure his wife knew.’