“And if I say no?”
“Then, presumably, you’ll leave without blemish.”
Was that a threat? Was it an implicit warning that they did know about him and Naumenko, and that this was the price for them turning a blind eye? He had to assume it wasn’t, that it was actually Louisa’s subtle way of suggesting there were nobler things than a clean but undistinguished record.
He thought back to some of the things he’d learned about Karasek in the last year or so, and to the thing he’d learned about him in the past couple of days, and said, “If it gives us a chance of removing Karasek from the face of the earth, I’ll take the fall.”
She smiled and raised her glass again, but this time she drank. Was she surprised? Pleased with herself? It was hard to tell. Then she became more somber and put the glass back down.
“For some time, we’ve suspected one of our people might be working with Karasek. It barely registered to begin with, only the slightest indications that something was amiss. Even now, we don’t have anything concrete, which is why we want you to help build a case. If all goes well, you’ll tell Karasek about the need for secrecy and you’ll get him to acknowledge the name of his man on our team. Acknowledge, no more than that—we don’t need to prosecute this person, just pin him down.”
Finn thought back to the face-to-face meetings he’d had with Karasek and said, “I wouldn’t be able to go in there wearing a wire. I presume we’d be meeting at his club? His guys are scrupulous—electronic scan, pat down.”
“That’s all being taken care of as we speak, and you won’t be wearing a wire. It’ll all be explained, but all you really need to do is get him to respond to one name.”
For some reason, Finn had been assuming it was someone from the embassy, but he realized now it was more likely one of their own, and his mind made a sudden and unexpected leap. It was based on instinct alone, but he felt it so strongly that he said, “It’s Ed Perry, isn’t it?”
“You see, you were cut out for this line of work. How did you know?”
Even though he’d guessed, he was shocked by her tacit confirmation. But he saw it clearly now, and was impressed at some level, that the touching concern for Harry and the others was all a sham. It even made him feel better about himself and his own foolishness.
“I’m not sure. Just the way he’s been acting the last few days.”
Finn noticed the driver become more alert then, and a moment later he heard voices himself, and a small party of red-faced and leery English guys piled through the door. One of them was wearing a sequined tutu and a wig. They were already drunk but harmless enough, and the driver relaxed again.
“Oh dear, I’d heard it wasn’t good at the weekend out here.”
Finn laughed and said, “Actually, they’re off the beaten track—some streets really are no-go zones come the weekend.”
Louisa pushed her drink toward the center of the table. “We do ruin everything, don’t we? Come on, let’s go.”
He stood, his mind still reeling—with what seemed like his own narrow escape, with the revelation that Perry was rotten, the realization that he’d signed up not only to ignominy but also to danger in the week ahead, and underpinning it all, with the knowledge that there was a girl in Harry’s apartment, a girl Finn had vowed to get to safety.
They stepped out into the cold, the English stag party raucously singing behind them. It was the sort of jolly rowdiness Finn usually viewed with contempt, but right now he envied those men, envied both them and everything they represented.
Chapter Ten
Sparrowhawk—a name that brought all its attendant ghosts with it. He walked back like a man tranquilized, only dimly aware of his body and its progress along the street, his thoughts flitting around without settling on anything in particular. The only thought that registered with any certainty was the realization that his new life was over, that the rebuilding effort had been in vain.
Like the message Gibson had apparently received, Finn too could forget about the Albigensian Crusade, because he doubted he would get to write that book. He immediately countered, asking himself what was to stop him—they wouldn’t kill him, or at least, they would have killed him already if that had been the plan, and they couldn’t try to pin anything on him now, not unless there had been some seismic shift in the hierarchy.
So why were they interested in him again? Either they’d found out that his activities had stretched beyond what had happened at Kaliningrad, crimes for which they could still prosecute, or he was misreading the situation completely and it wasn’t even his own people watching him.