The Last Temptation (20 page)

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of people who were heading towards drunk but hadn’t quite got there yet.

Her reverie was interrupted by the rude blurt of the entry phone buzzer. Carol frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She walked through to the living room and grabbed the handset. ‘Hello?’ she said. \ t,,

Through the crackle of static she heard a tinny voice say, ‘Carol? It’s me. Tony.’ She held the phone away from her ear, staring at it as if it were an unfamiliar artefact. Her free hand automatically moved to the door release button while she tried to get her head round what she’d just heard. Like a sleepwalker, she replaced the handset and crossed to open her front door. Outside the excellent soundproofing of her flat, she could hear the whine of the lift machinery.

The lift door slid open and she tensed herself for the familiar jolt that came with the sight of him. The harsh lighting bleached his skin tones to wood ash, turning him monochrome. Then Tony stepped forward and recovered his humanity. His hair had been cut since she’d seen him last, she noted as he walked towards her, looking unusually pleased with himself. ‘I hope this isn’t a bad time,’ he said.

Carol stepped back and waved him in. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, unable to suppress the laugh bubbling under her voice.

Tony walked in, touching her gently on the elbow and leaning forward to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘Forgive me if I seem presumptuous, but you sounded on the phone like a woman who could use a little moral support. And from what I know of you, I didn’t imagine you would be opening yourself up enough to be getting it anywhere else.’ He spread his hands out in a gesture of munificence. ‘So, here I am.’

‘But… shouldn’t you be at work? How did you get here? When did you get here?’

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Before he could answer, Nelson appeared, alerted by a familiar voice. The cat wound himself round Tony’s legs, sinuously shedding black hairs all over his blue jeans. Tony immediately dropped into a crouch to scratch the cat between the ears. ‘Hello, Nelson. You’re looking handsome as ever.’ Nelson purred, narrowing his eyes and watching Carol as if to say he could teach her a thing or two. Tony looked up. ‘I flew down on the shuttle from Edinburgh this morning. I don’t have any teaching commitments today, so I thought I’d take a chance on catching you at home.’

‘An expensive chance/ Carol said. ‘You could just have | phoned, made sure I’d be home.’

Tony stood up. ‘Sometimes I get fed up with being prosaic.’

Before she could stop herself, Carol said, ‘And what does Frances think about that?’ As soon as her words landed, they altered the landscape of his face. It was as if a physical shutter had closed down behind his eyes.

‘What I do is no longer any concern of Frances,’ he said. His tone of voice deflected discussion as effectively as armour plating.

Carol couldn’t help a squirm of delight in her stomach. It couldn’t be coincidence that Frances had been consigned to history so soon after her visit. Which meant… all sorts of things she couldn’t begin to permit herself to consider. It should be enough that he was here now, with her; his choice, not her request. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘Coffee, yes?’

‘Oh, please. They can map the human genome, but they still can’t make a decent cup of coffee on a plane.’

‘Make yourself at home,’ Carol said, gesturing towards the twin sofas that sat at right angles, making the most of her view. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She headed for the kitchen.

Rather than settling down, Tony roamed the room. Much of the contents were familiar, but some were new. There were

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a couple of large Jack Vettriano prints from his film noir series in heavy distressed gilt frames that would have been totally out of place in the cottage where Carol had been living previously but which looked strong and moody on these high white walls. The CD collection had expanded to include a tranche of contemporary guitar bands whose names he recognized but whose music was completely alien to him. He’d never seen the brightly coloured gabbeh that dominated the centre of the room either.

But there was nothing that didn’t chime with his understanding of Carol. She was still the person he knew. He stood at the window and gazed down at the old church, incongruous among the modernity of its surroundings. He wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, coming here like this. Sometimes, however, risks had to be taken. Otherwise, how would he know he was alive?

Carol’s voice cut through his introspection. ‘Coffee,’ she said, placing a cafetiere and two mugs on the low glass table.

He turned to face her and smiled. ‘Thanks.’ He took off his jacket, revealing a black V-necked sweater in fine wool; a more fashionable look than he used to go for, Carol noted. They settled down with their drinks, each on a separate sofa, but close enough at the angle between them to have touched if they’d felt able to. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Carol tucked her feet under her and cradled her mug in both hands. ‘I’m dying to talk about it. They’re sending me in deep. Total immersion undercover.’

‘This is Europol?’ he asked.

‘Not exactly. It’s a UK operation. To tell you the truth, the lines are a bit blurred. I’m not sure where Special Branch ends and Customs and Excise begins on this one. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence services have got a finger in

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the pie too.’ She gave a wry little smile. ‘All I know for sure is that my own chain of command goes through Superintendent Morgan, who is attached to NCIS. And that’s all I’m supposed to need to know.’

Tony was experienced enough as an interviewer of serial offenders not to let his unease show. But already he didn’t like the sound of this. In his limited experience of British policing, grey areas always heralded deniability. If the time came when someone had to be shot down in flames, the only person visible in the sights would be Carol. That she wasn’t admitting this even to herself was worrying. ‘What’s the j assignment?’ ,

Carol relayed everything Morgan had told her about f Tadeusz Radecki. ‘Morgan said that when he saw my Europol application, he couldn’t believe his eyes,’ she continued. ‘Katerina was dead, but here was her double, applying to work , at the sharp end of intelligence. And so he came up with the ; idea of mounting an operation using me as the bait to sucker i Radecki in.’ , f

‘You’re going undercover to try to seduce Radecki?’ Tony felt the ground shift under his feet. He’d thought the honey trap had died with the Cold War.

‘No, no, it’s much more subtle than that. It’s a sting. According to Morgan, Radecki used to have a sweet little deal going with a gangster in Essex, Colin Osborne. Osborne would funnel Radecki’s illegal immigrants in via a couple of clothing sweatshops he ran in the East End. Every few months he’d tip off a contact in Immigration and get them hustled away to detention centres. Then he’d replace them with the next shipment from Radecki. He managed to keep his own nose clean, because the sweatshops were always set up using m false names and credit references.’ ‘Neat,’ Tony said.

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‘Very. Anyway, Osborne got himself killed in a gangland shooting about six weeks ago. And everybody’s still squabbling over who gets which piece of turf from his nasty little empire. Meanwhile, nobody is providing a convenient refuge for Radecki’s illegals.’ ^io<4/

‘And that’s where you come in?’

‘That’s exactly where I come in.’ She grinned. ‘I turn up in Berlin with a proposition for Radecki. I’m Caroline Jackson.’ She gestured with her thumb towards the small office that opened off the living room. ‘I’ve got a file half an inch thick with Caroline’s back story. Where she went to school, when she lost her virginity, when her parents died and how, where she’s lived over the years, how she’s made a living. Now, she’s a wealthy businesswoman with some very dodgy contacts.’

Tony raised an admonishing finger. ‘Not “she”, Carol. It has to be “I” from now on.’

Carol pursed her lips in rueful acknowledgement. ‘I own the lease on a former US airbase in East Anglia. I have a factory producing hand-made wooden toys on the site, as well as the former barracks. I also have a source of forged Italian passports. I knew Colin Osborne and knew he was getting workers from Radecki. And now Colin’s dead, I’m here to take up the slack. I need workers and I can offer them an even better deal than Colin. They work for me for free for a year and they get legal EU papers. And Radecki gets a market for his illegals.’

Tony nodded. ‘I can see how that would appeal to him. So why do they need the added incentive of someone who looks like his dead girlfriend?’

‘Well, Morgan said it wasn’t the first time they’d thought of putting someone in to pull the scam I’m going to be doing. But there were some reservations because the chances were

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they’d only be able to get evidence on the final stage of thes racket. So, although they would probably net Radecki, they might not be able to roll up his networks behind him. Then I came along. The general idea is that he’ll open up further and faster to me than he would to someone else. Assuming I can gain his confidence, I should be able to find out exactly how his operations work. If I play my cards right, we could close down his drug smuggling, his gunrunning and his people trafficking. And that would be a result worth having.’ Her eagerness worried Tony. He knew that to succeed in so difficult an assignment Carol would have to maintain a high level of confidence. She’d be thrown on her own resources for most of the time and, without self-belief, she’d sink like a stone. But it wasn’t like her to be blind to the perils of a task so fraught with jeopardy. ‘It’s obvious that they’re right, psychologically speaking,’ he said. ‘Radecki’s bound to be attracted to you. And his emotional investment will make it easier for you to maintain your undercover story. He’ll find it hard to be as suspicious of you as he would be of any other stranger. Still, you’re really going to be out there on a limb. If your cover does get blown, he’s going to be far more dangerous to you than if you were just another undercover cop. It won’t be enough to eliminate you. He’ll need to make you suffer. You do know that?’

‘It crossed my mind, yes. But you know I don’t like to brood.’ ‘You need to be aware of the potential pitfalls. I wouldn’t be any use to you if I just sat here uttering anodyne platitudes about how terrific you’re going to be at this. Undercover is the hardest job in policing.’ He leaned forward, his face earnest. ‘You’re never off duty. You can’t afford to be homesick for who you really are. You have to live it, and it’s the loneliest place there is. And you’re going to be in a foreign country, which will only compound that feeling of isolation.’

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His words hung in the air between them, the intensity speaking of something beyond their superficial meaning. Carol suddenly understood that he was telling her about himself and the way he had chosen to live. ‘You sound like youVe been there,’ she said softly.

Passing for human, he thought. This wasn’t the time or the place to get into that one. ‘Been there so long I gave the T-shirt to Oxfam,’ he said, striving for lightness. ‘Academic life is not my natural habitat.’ Carol looked disappointed. She had every right, he thought. She deserved better than that from him. ‘Nor was Frances,’ he added. ‘But I didn’t come here to talk about me. Will it be possible for us to be in touch?’

‘I hope so. Morgan said they’ll find a way of getting me secure e-mail access.’

Tony finished his coffee and topped it up from the cafetiere. ‘I’d like that. Not that I can be of much practical help, but it’d be good to know you were OK. And you might appreciate a place where you can be Carol Jordan for a few minutes every day. On the other hand, you might find that just disrupts staying in role. So play it as it lays. See how you feel when you’re in there.’

Carol put her mug down on the table and got to her feet. She walked over to the window and looked out. He could see her in profile, a series of planes and angles his memory held constantly clear. Some of the creases round her eyes were a little deeper, but that was the only change since he’d first known her. Now, though the line of her mouth was stubborn, determined, her eyes were troubled. ‘I’m scared, Tony. I’m trying not to be, because I know fear is a bad emotion to run an operation on. But I’m really, really scared.’

‘Don’t discount the usefulness of fear,’ Tony said. ‘You’re going to be running on adrenaline for as long as this assignment takes to complete. Fear’s a good provider of that. And

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it keeps complacency at bay. Whatever you think now, you’re going to have to get to like Radecki. You’ll start off consciously behaving as if you’re drawn to him, but the very act of maintaining that for any length of time tends to make it a reality. It’s a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages start to identify with their captors. Like it or not, you’re going to find yourself growing close to him, and probably getting very fond of him. Fear is a good antidote to that.’

Carol rubbed her eyes with finger and thumb. ‘I want what this could bring me so badly, I’m scared I’ll do whatever it takes. What if I fall for this guy?’ She turned back towards him, her face troubled. il*

‘You wouldn’t be the first. Arid there’s no easy recipe for avoiding it.’ He crossed to her and took her hands in his. ‘If he’s nice to you - and there’s no reason why he wouldn’t be it’s going to seem very appealing to go with the flow. What you have to do is hold on to one fact about this guy that you find totally abhorrent. I don’t know what that would be for you. But there has to be something in his file that really got to you. Remember what it was, and hold that thought like a mantra.’ He squeezed her hands tight, conscious of their coolness against his warm skin, trying not to think what they would feel like on his back.

‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘The callousness. The way he engineers all this without ever getting his hands dirty. I can’t get rid of the image of that dead dealer, lying on the steps of the police station with his brains on the pavement. And Radecki sitting in his expensive Charlottenburg apartment, sealed off from all the shit, listening to Verdi or Mozart, as if it wasn’t connected to him. That’s what gets to me.’