Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (24 page)

Now he was going to put all that behind him. Since landing back at Heathrow he had been pumped full of antibiotics and a thorough two-hour medical had found no lasting physical damage. After an initial debrief the Service had told him to take as much time off as he needed to recuperate from his ordeal so he and Elise were enjoying something akin to an unofficial honeymoon. Both naked on the bed, their bodies still steaming from a hot bubble bath, they had lost all track of time.

For Elise, the days since Luke had returned had been uninterrupted bliss. She wanted never to let him out of her sight again.
True, at times he seemed a little withdrawn, a little preoccupied, as if something was weighing heavily on his mind, but she put it down to his ordeal and didn’t press him. He could tell her everything in his own time and that was fine by her. Now she leaned over his legs, caressing them with her hair as it fell loose, and began working her way up them, planting kisses higher and higher. Suddenly his whole body tensed and she stopped, fearful she might have touched some damaged nerve. But it was something else: his work mobile was buzzing. Elise’s eyes said, ‘Please, not now, just ignore it,’ but Luke reached over and grabbed it from the bedside table, looked at the number and sucked in his cheeks. Covering the phone with his hand, he whispered, ‘Sorry, got to take this,’ and kissed her softly on the lips before rolling off the bed and carrying the phone into the next room. He was no longer hobbling.

‘Luke?’ said the voice at the other end. ‘It’s Angela.’ And there it was,
bang
, just like that: the ‘honeymoon’ was over. Luke perched himself on the arm of the sofa in the sitting room, recognizing the subdued office voices he could hear in the background. ‘Look, I’m sorry to ring you,’ continued his boss, ‘I know you’re officially on medical leave, but I thought you’d want to know—’

‘Know what?’ snapped Luke, suddenly impatient for news. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense! Please tell me you’ve found the weapon.’ Serene as his reunion with Elise had been, he hadn’t been able to get the thought of the unknown device out of his head. While Elise had slept peacefully beside him, he had lain awake at three in the morning, racking his brain for what it might be and how they could track it down before it was too late.

‘No,’ replied Angela. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We think it’s still at large somewhere out in the Atlantic, but things are moving very fast on many levels. Washington are redirecting a lot of their assets over the Channel approaches. Fleet HQ at Northwood are deploying a destroyer to the Scilly Isles, HMS
Dauntless
, I think. They’ve sent one of our nuclear subs to patrol off the entrance to the Bristol Channel. And . . .’

‘And?’ Luke dug his fingernails into the soft material of the sofa as he waited for Angela to reveal why she was phoning.

‘You’ll not be surprised to hear that your old mob from Poole are deploying,’ she said. ‘They’re sending the Maritime Counter-terrorism Squadron. They’re setting up a forward base in Cornwall, ready to move the moment we can identify the incoming vessel. Some place called Culdrose. I expect you know it? They’re giving them a corner of the base cordoned off from everyone else. They’ve got Merlins and Sea Kings down there. Director Special Forces has tasked the SBS to take down the ship and secure the weapon as soon as we have a lead. It’s crunch time, Luke.’

‘And you’re telling me this because?’

‘Well, you are still on the payroll and—’

‘Angela, I want in, you know I do. My foot is fine now.’ It was a lie and she probably knew it. Even as he spoke he felt a faint throb emanating from it, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. ‘I’m good to go,’ he told her. ‘I’m seeing this one through.’

‘I thought that might be the case. But are you absolutely certain you’re up to it? You’ve just been through much worse than most of our agents ever risk if they get caught.’

Luke hesitated. He was wondering how Elise would take it. Not well, he suspected.

‘I’m in,’ he said.

‘Good. Because I’ve already gone ahead and nominated you as Service liaison on the Poole team. I had a bit of pushback from HR. They want you to spend all next week sitting in a country house in Buckinghamshire going through some “situational re-evaluation programme”, but I’ve batted that away. You need to be ready in an hour. They’ll pick you up from Battersea heliport and fly you down to Culdrose by Chinook. Best pack for a few days. This could take a while.’

Luke walked back into the bedroom, his bare feet noiseless on the thick carpet. Elise was sitting up in bed, a towel around her shoulders, staring silently at the bookcase. She had heard most of his side of the conversation and now there was nothing more to be said. The moment between them had passed.

LIFE FOR CECILIA
Cruz had not turned out the way she’d planned. Her husband had brought her from Colombia to London after the birth of their first child and she still crossed herself each time she thought of him, God rest his soul. A merchant sailor from Barranquilla, he had showered her with presents. She’d never asked where he got the money to pay for them and he’d never offered to tell her. Cecilia had, at first, found it hard to adapt to life in Britain, with its dull grey winters that sometimes seemed identical to its summers. She missed the colour, the heat, the vibrant passion of her Caribbean village just west of Cartagena. Somehow, she had ended up trading
fiesta
, friends and family for a tiny one-bedroom basement flat in Ealing. When her husband’s drinking and his tempers became so bad that his employers, the shipping agents, fired him, the hard truth had dawned on her. From now on she would have to be the breadwinner. Cecilia found herself a job as a cleaner, working double shifts and doing her best to raise her boy. When the cirrhosis eventually got the better of her husband she buried him just before her fortieth birthday.

It was in the week after the funeral that there was a ring at the doorbell.

‘I am a friend of your late husband,’ said the man in the corridor outside. ‘Well, more of a business contact from the old days, you could say. May I come in?’ Cecilia looked him up and down with
suspicion. Nobody came to their flat, except to try to sell her something or pester her for overdue rent. But this man was different. His shoes were polished, his tie was shiny, his hair slicked back in the way the
muchachos
used to wear it back home. What did she have to lose?

‘I understand,’ said the man, sitting at the kitchen table and resting his hands on his lap, ‘that you are in the cleaning business, no?’

‘I am a cleaner, yes.’

‘These must be difficult times for you, with your husband gone and . . .’ He looked down at the cracked lino where her son was playing with a cheap toy. There was a ragged hole in the elbow of his sweater. ‘So I have a proposition for you,’ he said brightly. ‘Because we Colombianos must do all we can to help each other, yes? There is a job starting on Monday at an establishment just west of here. It pays good money.’

‘How much?’ she demanded.

‘Let me ask how much you take home now, Señora?’

‘Nine pounds fifty an hour. And I pay my taxes.’

‘How does twenty-five pounds an hour sound? Cash in hand.’

Cecilia’s eyes narrowed. Was this a trick? A cruel joke? For a moment an absurd thought flashed through her mind, but she dismissed it at once. She was much too old now for anyone to want to put her on the game. There had to be a catch, so what was it?

‘Twenty-five pounds an hour is a lot,’ she replied. ‘What do you want from me?’ She was no fool: she knew from bitter experience that if something seems too good to be true it usually is.

‘Only your cleaning skills, Señora. We hear you are a perfectionist!’ He flashed her a crooked smile. She did not believe him for a second, but twenty-five pounds an hour? She could hardly afford to say no. Perhaps it was best not to ask too many questions.

‘
Bueno
. The job is at Northwood, a place just outside London. You will be part of a contract team that cleans the premises. It is
some sort of government headquarters. They call it PJHQ for short, but that is not important. Now, I have arranged a day of extra training for you tomorrow and—’

‘I don’t need training,’ she interrupted. ‘I am a good cleaner.’ Really, this was an insult.

‘Ah, but you do,’ insisted the man. ‘This is special training. Tell me, Señora, do you own a laptop?’

Cecilia shook her head. They had computers at her son’s school, but she had never owned one, never needed one. What use would she have for it?

‘No? I thought not,’ he said slowly, with that sickly smile. ‘But that is no problem, no problem at all. We will give you one and teach you everything you need to know. And enjoy it! After all, it’s free!’ This left her more confused than ever. What did she need a laptop computer for if she was to clean some government office? This made no sense. But the man was standing up now, buttoning his jacket with an air of finality and handing her a piece of paper with an address on it.

‘If you would be so good, Señora, to present yourself at this address tomorrow morning at nine, they will take care of everything. And here, in this envelope, is a little something to help with expenses. Maybe treat yourself to a cab on the first day.’

In the silence left by his departure Cecilia Cruz wondered what she was letting herself in for. She felt as if she were being herded onto a bus going somewhere she didn’t want to go. She might not own a laptop but she wasn’t stupid. It was obvious something distinctly fishy was going on. The envelope lay open on the kitchen table, with crisp twenty-pound notes spilling out. This was rather more than a cab fare.

She moved to the gas cooker, all scratched and stained with rust, and put the kettle on to boil. Then she sat down with a sigh. Her options were not good, that was clear. She was on her own now, although in truth she had been on her own for quite some time. What chance did she have of finding another husband? And these people, these ‘business associates’ of her late husband,
they were offering her a lifeline. Cecilia Cruz poured herself a cup of milky English Breakfast tea and glanced at her son, Emilio, still playing with the same toy on the cracked lino. Yes, she decided, she would accept the offer. She would take it with both hands and she would play their games, if only for the sake of beloved Emilio.

NUMBER 94 ASHBURNHAM
Gardens was not at all what she was expecting. Cecilia Cruz had had little difficulty in making her way to the address she had been given in Westbourne Grove but somehow she had imagined something more down to earth, more like the basement flat she and Emilio shared. Now she stood on the front porch, clutching the crumpled piece of paper she had been given, looking up at an elegant white façade with black wrought-iron balconies and tidy windowboxes. She squinted at the list of names beside the door buzzers. Standish. Duckworth. Trenton-Smith. This was a fancy neighbourhood, no question, but which button should she press? As her finger hovered uncertainly, the front door opened and a woman stepped out to greet her. She was tall, expensively dressed in a silk blouse, jacket and pencil skirt, and she exuded an air of confidence that Cecilia could only envy. One thing struck her immediately: this woman smelt of money.

‘Señora Cruz?
Bienvenida!
I am Ana María. Please, come in. Here, let me take your coat.’ She addressed her in Spanish. ‘What can I get you to drink?’ Cecilia wasn’t used to this – the people she cleaned for barely acknowledged her presence. But she soon got over her surprise because there was something warm and welcoming about the elegant woman with the long, lustrous hair and beautifully manicured nails now leading her into the living
room. Her lispy Castilian accent revealed her to be Spanish rather than South American, and she moved around her apartment so gracefully.

‘I understand,’ the woman said gently, motioning her to sit down on a soft sofa, ‘that you are new to computers.’ Cecilia didn’t answer at first: she was too busy studying the bookcase set into the wall beside her. It held all the books she had ever wanted to read:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
,
Love in the Time of Cholera
and
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
, all by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

‘Señora Cruz?’ the woman prompted her, coaxing her out of her reverie.

‘
Perdón
,’ Cecilia apologized, turning back towards her and giving the lady her full attention.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Ana María. ‘We have all day and will not be disturbed. By the time you leave here you will know everything you need to know.’

Everything I need to know for what?

Together they worked through the morning, with Ana María patiently explaining and encouraging, at times holding her own hand over the cleaner’s to move the mouse and the cursor on the screen. By midday Cecilia Cruz had sent her first email and by lunchtime she was ecstatic: with Ana María’s help she had found her old village on the Caribbean coast on Google Earth. Laughing, she zoomed in and out of the page, watching the pixels forming and re-forming, the landmarks of her childhood swimming up into focus.

At lunchtime they broke off for tortillas, freshly made and warm from the oven. Cecilia was enjoying herself now and they talked over the clatter of plates and cutlery, comparing childhoods, hers in a poor
barrio
in Colombia, Ana María’s in a leafy suburb of Madrid. Of course, Cecilia was itching to ask how she knew someone as shifty as that slick
muchacho
who had set up their day – they seemed like creatures from two different planets – but she thought better of it.

Lunch over, Ana María poured them each a cup of
café tinto
and led her into another room. On the table was another, larger computer, and beside it a printer. ‘This one is a desktop,’ she said lightly, ‘but of course you know that. You must have cleaned around them so many times.’ She stepped a few paces back from Cecilia and looked her up and down, as if admiring a work of art.