“Have you told the French about any of this?” he asked.
“I won’t leave the security of the British people in the hands of the DGSI. Besides, I’d like to find the Scorpion before the French. But I can’t,” she added quickly. “My mandate stops at the water’s edge.”
Seymour was silent.
“Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Graham. But if I were you, I’d send an officer to France first thing in the morning. Someone who speaks the language. Someone who knows his way around criminal networks. Someone who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.” She smiled. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone like that, would you, Graham?”
5
Hampshire, England
He had come to the port city in the south of England like many others before him, in the back of a government van with blacked-out windows. It had sped past the marinas and the old redbrick Victorian warehouses before finally turning onto a small track that carried it across the first fairway of a golf course, which on the morning of his arrival had been abandoned to the gulls. Just beyond the fairway was an empty moat, and beyond the moat was an ancient fort with walls of gray stone. Originally built by Henry VIII in 1545, it was now MI6’s primary school for spies.
The van paused briefly at the gatehouse before entering the central courtyard, where the cars of the DS, the Directing Staff, stood in three neat rows. The driver of the van, who was called Reg, switched off the engine and with little more than a dip of his head signaled to the man in the backseat that he could see himself out. The Fort was not a hotel, he might have added, but didn’t. The new recruit was a special case, or so the DS had been informed by Vauxhall Cross. Like all new recruits, he would be told at every opportunity that he was being admitted into an exclusive club. The members of this club lived by a different set of rules than their countrymen. They knew things, did things, that others did not. That said, the man in the backseat didn’t strike Reg as the sort of fellow who would be moved by such flattery. In fact, he looked as though he had been living by a different set of rules for a very long time.
The Fort consisted of three wings—the east, the west, and the main, where most of the actual training took place. Directly above the gatehouse was a suite of rooms reserved for the chief, and beyond the walls was a tennis court, a squash facility, a croquet pitch, a helipad, and an outdoor shooting range. There was an indoor range as well, though Reg suspected his passenger would not require much in the way of weapons training, firearms or otherwise. He was a soldier of the elite variety. You could see it in the shape of the body, the set of the jaw, and in the way he shouldered the canvas duffel bag before striking out across the courtyard. Without a sound, noted Reg. He was definitely the silent type. He had been places he wished to forget and had carried out missions no one talked about outside safe-speech rooms and secure facilities. He was classified, this one. He was trouble.
Just inside the entrance to the west wing was the little nook where George Halliday, the porter, waited to receive him. “Marlowe,” said the new recruit with little conviction. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Peter Marlowe.” And Halliday, who was the longest serving of the Directing Staff—a holdover from the days of King Henry, according to Fort legend—ran a pale, spidery forefinger down his list of names. “Ah, yes, Mr. Marlowe. We’ve been expecting you. Sorry about the weather, but I’d get used to it if I were you.”
Halliday said this while stooping to remove a key from the row of hooks beneath his desk. “Second floor, last room on the left. You’re lucky, it has a lovely view of the sea.” He laid the key on the desktop. “I trust you can manage your bag.”
“I trust I can,” said the new recruit with something like a smile.
“Oh,” said Halliday suddenly, “I nearly forgot.” He turned and clawed a small envelope from one of the pigeonhole mailboxes on the wall behind his desk. “This arrived for you last night. It’s from ‘C.’”
The new recruit scooped up the letter and shoved it into the pocket of his watch coat. Then he shouldered his canvas duffel—like a soldier, agreed Halliday—and carried it up the flight of ancient steps that led to the residential quarters. The door to the room opened with a groan. Entering, he allowed the duffel to slide from his sturdy shoulder to the floor. With the keen eye of a close-observation specialist, he surveyed his surroundings. A single bed, a nightstand and reading lamp, a small desk, a simple armoire for his things, a private toilet and bath. A recent graduate of an elite university might have found the apartment more than adequate, but the new recruit was not impressed. A man of considerable wealth—illegitimate, but considerable nonetheless—he was used to more comfortable lodgings.
He shed his coat and tossed it on the bed, dislodging the envelope from the pocket. Reluctantly, he tore open the flap and removed the small notecard. There was no letterhead, only three lines of neat script, rendered in distinctive green ink.
Britain is better off now that you are here to look after her . . .
An ordinary recruit might have retained possession of such a note as a memento of his first day as an officer in one of the world’s oldest and proudest intelligence services. But the man known as Peter Marlowe was no ordinary recruit. What’s more, he had worked in places where such a note could cost a man his life. And so after reading it—twice, as was his custom—he burned it in the bathroom sink and washed the ashes down the drain. Then he went to the room’s small arrow-slit of a window and gazed across the sea toward the Isle of Wight. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether he had made the worst mistake of his life.