He showed Finn to a black Mercedes with tinted windows, opening the rear door for him. Finn smiled at him, then crouched down and looked inside before committing himself.
When he saw her, he said, “I’ll walk.”
Louisa laughed. “Do get in, Finn.” Finn handed his bag to the driver and climbed in, and she added, “Actually, I almost didn’t catch you this morning. I thought you’d still be in Finland.”
“My business there was finished more quickly than I’d anticipated.”
“So it seems.” The driver got in and pulled away. “Satisfied?”
“Can we talk candidly?”
She looked at the driver. “In front of Jim? Of course—he’s not a chauffeur!”
Jim looked in the rearview mirror and smiled.
“It wasn’t about satisfaction.”
“I know. It was about finishing what we started six years ago.”
“Something like that.” He looked out at a car alongside them, the driver staring quizzically at their tinted windows. Then he turned back to Louisa. “I don’t know how much of this’ll be news to you—you didn’t seem unduly surprised at Alex setting up our meeting at The Berkeley, so perhaps none of it. But there’s something I want you to know about Sparrowhawk, something about why I accepted the role of the fall guy.”
She smiled, looking quite touched, and said, “Oh, Finn, why do you think we chose you? We knew you wouldn’t say no, because we knew about you and Naumenko. It was an issue at the time, but we’re quite relaxed about it now, as we are about the fact that you profited very handsomely from those business dealings. Of course, best not tell me how much you profited or we might change our minds, these being austere times.”
Did they know about him and Naumenko? Some of it, maybe, but if they’d known everything he couldn’t imagine them being relaxed about it even now. It didn’t make sense for them to be relaxed at all.
“I don’t get it, why would you be relaxed about what I did back then?”
She thought about it for a moment and then said, “The answer’s complex. Firstly, you were never cut out for this line of work—you were too much the kind of maverick we try not to recruit anymore. Your actions, and I don’t mean to suggest we knew about them all along, only near the end, but your actions were those of the thrill-seeker. Perry was driven by greed, and a natural treachery that saw him sacrificing colleagues and his country’s interests. You never were, and although I don’t approve of what you did, you never put lives or our national interests in jeopardy, and you may even have accidentally enhanced the latter.”
“Perry knew I was coming yesterday. He implied the information had come from one of your people.” She smiled, sanguine. “Do you have any idea why he went out to his summerhouse?”
“It wasn’t a bad place to wait for you, I suppose. He knew you’d come after him, source or no source, and I suspect he wanted you to find him at his summer home, not his apartment in Helsinki. He had a wife and a young daughter.”
“He told me that.” Again, he felt a flash of sympathy for Perry, thinking of him out there on that cold, gray lake.
“Yes, the cost of our line of work’s always higher than we imagine it will be. You know that as well as anyone.”
He looked at her and nodded, the briefest acknowledgment of another part of their shared history, when Louisa alone had helped him pick up the pieces of a life that had seemed irreparably damaged. But he had no desire to dwell on that past, and he knew she wouldn’t want to either.
“So, I take it we can draw a line under all of this now?”
“We don’t want you back, if that’s what you mean, but no, you shouldn’t be bothered again.”
Finn smiled and said, “I’ve quite enjoyed parts of the last few days, but trust me, Louisa, I wouldn’t come back. Besides, I have a book to write.”
She faced forward, looking content with the way things had panned out, and they continued in silence for a while. After a few minutes, without looking at him, she spoke again.
“There is one last thing you could explain to me, Finn.”
“If I can.”
“Not about Sparrowhawk as such, more . . .” She looked at him and said, “Jerry de Borg.”
“Is Harry Simons dead?”
“Of course he is! That’s the second time you’ve asked me that.”
“I know, because Jerry de Borg was mentioned on Gibson’s network, and only Harry could have leaked that name.”
“Harry’s dead.” She stared at him for a second or two. “But he didn’t die that night on the dock. He lived another couple of days. At one point we thought he might even pull through.”
Finn felt a searing anger. “So why wasn’t I told?”