Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

She had moved into this flat six months ago, after she’d got back from the operation where she had first met Martin. The flat was on the ground floor of a large Victorian house; she’d previously owned the basement flat in the same building. When she first bought that, it had been dark and gloomy, but it was all she could afford at the time and, as the first property she had ever owned, she had loved it. Gradually, over several years, she had brightened it up and improved it. The whole place had been painted white, and the wallpaper, which had hung off the wall in a strip over the bath where the steam had detached it, had been removed and the bathroom tiled. She’d bought a new washing machine to replace the one she’d inherited when she moved in, which had had a habit of stopping in the middle of its cycle, leaving her underwear in a puddle of grey scummy water.

But when she’d returned from her posting in Belfast, the flat, even in its improved state, had no longer seemed so welcoming. It had been empty while she’d been away and she seemed to have grown out of it. So when the flat above had come up for sale she’d gone to look at it, even though she knew she couldn’t afford it, and as soon as she saw the high airy living room with its corniced ceiling and Victorian fireplace, and the big sash windows overlooking the garden, she fell in love all over again. Her mother’s close friend Edward had lent her some money, and that, together with a breathtakingly huge mortgage and the surprisingly large profit she’d made selling the basement, had been enough to secure the flat.

She took her glass of wine into the bedroom, still feeling rattled by her experiences in Birmingham. She looked at the phone, hesitating, then picked up and dialled.

Martin answered at once.

‘Hello. It’s Liz.’

He laughed. ‘I was sitting here, thinking about you. I was just about to ring you.’

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes, of course. Though the lady I was after seems to have given us the slip this time.’

‘You’ll find her,’ Liz said confidently. Just talking to Martin was a relief.

‘What about you? What is your news?’

‘I’ve been in Birmingham all day, looking into the background of our friend in the Santé.’

‘Ah. How did it go?’

‘Okay, though some of his friends were not very pleased to see me.’

Martin could read between the lines. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not hurt, are you?’

‘No. Not hurt, just a bit shaken up. But I’m fine now,’ she said, and it was true. Just hearing his voice had made her feel better. They talked for a few minutes more, planning their next meeting, then they said good night and rang off.

Liz lay down on the big double bed. She’d bought it when she moved into the new flat where the large rooms had seemed to swallow up the furniture she’d had in the cramped basement accommodation. She snuggled under the goose-feather duvet, wishing Martin were snuggling with her. The duvet dated from the time of Piet, the Dutch investment banker she’d met at a colleague’s party. He had stayed with her when he came to London every third Friday for meetings at Canary Wharf. It was an arrangement which suited them both perfectly: warm, happy and undemanding. Until he’d telephoned one day to tell her that there would no longer be London meetings, and in any case he had met someone else.

She hadn’t had a man in her life since she broke up with Piet until she met Martin last year. It was the first time she’d been involved with someone she worked with. Was it a good idea to mix private life with work? Probably not, but the nature of the work, its secrecy and irregular hours, meant that most of the people she met were in the same business. She had had relationships in the past with people outside ‘the ring of secrecy’, as it was called, but it had never worked out. She’d not been able to be frank about what she did for a living. Piet had never enquired – it wasn’t that sort of relationship. Before him there was Mark Callendar, the Guardian journalist, who’d wanted to leave his wife for her. She had been tempted, just for a moment, but had known that, realistically, it wasn’t possible. If she’d got involved in Mark’s domestic upheaval, she’d have become a sort of Guardian pet spook – he and his friends had worked out without much difficulty what she did. Her career in the Service would not have prospered. The powers that be would have parked her somewhere safe, until they saw how her private life worked out.

Before Mark there was the photographer, Ed. She’d met him at the private view of an exhibition of photographs taken by a woman she’d known at university. Ed had been putting together a film about New Age travellers and had been living with them on and off. He viewed the world from a fascinatingly oblique perspective, and her part-time membership of his arty, kaleidoscopic world had provided a welcome escape for Liz from the grim world of organised crime, which she was working on at the time. She’d told Ed that her job was in a government personnel office, but the vagueness of her account must have aroused his suspicions. For one day he’d rung various departments, trying to find out exactly where she worked, and it was then she decided to end the relationship.

It was Charles Wetherby, her boss, who had held her heart for the longest. It had been strange, almost a non-relationship in fact, since Charles was married to a woman who was slowly dying. Liz knew instinctively that he returned her feelings, but he never spoke about it and while Joanne was alive Liz knew that he never would. It was as though they saw each other through a swirling mist, reaching out but never quite able to touch.

Then Joanne had died and Liz had waited for Charles to make a move. Instead he’d seemed to draw back from her and take comfort instead from his next-door neighbour, a widow whom he’d known for a long time. She helped him to look after his two boys. Liz was never sure whether this was any more than a relationship of convenience, but was hurt by his hesitation over contacting her. By the time Charles finally did make a move towards her, she had met Martin Seurat.

And now Martin was talking about her moving to Paris. Liz rolled on to her side and fell into a light sleep, troubled by confused impressions of the Santé prison, the Khans’ house in Birmingham and Martin’s flat in Paris. But as she dozed she could still feel around her wrist the iron grip of the young man who had tried to pull her down the lonely alley.

A welcome blast of air-conditioning greeted Maria Galanos as she got out of the lift on the second floor of the office block in suburban Athens. Waiting for her was a tall, middle-aged American who introduced himself as Mitchell Berger, Athens Director of UCSO. ‘I bet you could do with a cold drink,’ he said. ‘It’s hotter than ever today.’

‘They say it’s going to be worse at the weekend,’ replied Maria. The heat was one thing about her homeland that she had never missed when she’d worked abroad.

She followed Berger along a corridor to his office and sat down while he poured her some iced water from a small fridge in the corner. ‘We all look after ourselves here,’ he explained. ‘There are only eleven of us in this office. I share a secretary with my deputy, Katherine Ball. She’s on her way back from London. Should’ve been here by now but I gather there’s some trouble with the airlines.’

‘What’s new?’ said Maria, smiling in response to his grin.

‘Well,’ he said, sitting down opposite her behind his desk, ‘we both know why you’re here. I understand they explained the situation to you pretty fully at the embassy. I’ve prepared a list of the staff here, with background details on each one, so you can see who we’ve got. I think you’d better read it here and not take it away with you. We don’t want to raise anyone’s suspicions at this stage.’ He pushed a sheet of paper across the table to her.